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Apple acquires Dark Sky

blog.darksky.net

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Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#321

Post by Godel_unicode »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #216
rapind wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a systematic problem with crony capitalism. It will always be with us so long as lobbying and corporate campaign donations are a thing.

Fingers crossed that all the shenanigans preventing cheap ventilators coming to market will force some regulatory action.

By shenanigans, do you perhaps mean the rigorous testing regime applied to a device which will literally be putting the air in your lungs while you're unconscious??

I for one am super happy that people with this attitude have been totally unable to penetrate the medical devices field!

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#322

Post by [deleted] »

kingbirdy wrote: post #233
minimalist wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Restating a comment from about a year ago[0]: If you are in the United States, nothing beats getting the forecast straight from the horses mouth (NWS that is). Some companies are notorious for producing 30+ day forecasts, which can't have any meaningful levels of skill. NOAA/NWS should just create their own mobile application. I use Wx[1], which parses NWS data directly and can be found on f-droid[2] and g---le play.…

Why do you feel the need to censor the words Google and React?

[deleted]

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#323

Post by threeseed »

notthemessiah wrote: post #52
untog wrote: post #4

Sigh. I mean, congratulations to the founders of Dark Sky. It’s a wonderful app and they deserve all the money they’ll get from this and they deserve a lot of credit for not selling user data when almost every other weather app does. But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. And I hope we actually see a good improvement to the Apple weather app as a result of this. I remember a…

> I remember a few years ago Apple bought a fantastic public transit app (Embark?), shut it down and I still don’t think their Maps app comes close to the original transit app. When Edwin Howard Armstrong invented FM radio, he was working for RCA, which had everything invested in AM radio, an incompatible technology. RCA chose not to invest, and used their political clout to lobby the FCC to cripple FM radio, and the…

> For companies like Apple, these acquisitions are more about killing competition

This is just nonsense.

Every acquisition they've ever done can directly be seen in future projects:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

The products you don't see give a hint into their roadmap.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#324

Post by thayne »

untog wrote: post #4

Sigh. I mean, congratulations to the founders of Dark Sky. It’s a wonderful app and they deserve all the money they’ll get from this and they deserve a lot of credit for not selling user data when almost every other weather app does. But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. And I hope we actually see a good improvement to the Apple weather app as a result of this. I remember a…

> A large economic downturn means a lot of small, independent companies will struggle to survive. Being swallowed by a megacorp might be one of the few ways to keep something alive.

This occurred to me as well, almost as soon as the economic impacts of COVID-19 was apparent. And in particular that this will strenghen the power of large coporations that can weather the storm, at the expense of smaller companies, and competition.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#325

Post by ceejayoz »

PaulHoule wrote: post #255
clairity wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "...suicide by defenestration..." as an aside, my first thought at this phrase was that "he died by removing all the windows ?" it took a second to process that properly. but to the point, that's the kind of anti-competition we need to root out quickly. compete on merits, not on demerits. i'm sad about the embark app, but i'm hoping that the dark sky integration means no more sending data (however "anonymized") to…

Who needs the weather channel when we have the national weather service publishing forecasts on a 1km x 1km grid? Is the value of the weather channel that investors expect the national weather service to be abolished?

> Is the value of the weather channel that investors expect the national weather service to be abolished?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/25/weather-i...

"In 2017, Trump nominated Barry Myers, the former CEO of AccuWeather, a company that has advocated for the privatization of large parts of the National Weather Service, to lead NOAA. However, his nomination stalled, in part because of conflict-of-interest concerns since his family still owns the private forecasting company."

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#326

Post by sah2ed »

fenwick67 wrote: post #238
reaperducer wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. Is it? Did Shazam stop working on Android when Apple ate it? Honest question, since I don't have an Android device.

Shazam still works on Android. But Shazam usage data is valuable, arguably.

Perhaps you are right that data on listens is valuable to Apple.

Shazam on Android is a net producer of data, while Dark Sky on Android is a net consumer of data.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#327

Post by Godel_unicode »

sbahr001 wrote: post #245
Infinitesimus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But shutting down the API and Android apps feels like an egregious move by Apple. Yes but that's inline with what you'd expect Apple to do though. They won't support any non-Apple ecosystem unless they have to - it's just their way of doing things

This really sucks, I work for a stormwater environmental company and we were looking at darksky to replace our existing provider; DarkSky is one of the best providers of weather data.IBM also bought weather underground, I am really what these big tech companies want with forecasting/weather companies. I just wish they kept the API running though.

Have you considered using the National Weather Service API directly? To someone with only a casual interest in this stuff it seems like it has what I would want, curious about shortcomings compared with the many commercial offerings? Especially considering it's their data that e.g. DarkSky resells.

https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#328

Post by duanem »

thisisbrians wrote: post #120
maliker wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ain't pretty matches my experience. My team pulls a lot of weather data for utility engineering work we do, and the NOAA APIs have proven very hard to navigate. Some data only available via FTP, lots of different weather station networks with different metrics (e.g. lots of variety in the cloud/irradiance data). Darksky provided a nice clean interface, but I guess we'll go back to cobbling things together directly fr…

Any clue how hard it would be to create an open-source alternative to the DarkSky API? My company needs one, too. Maybe we could band forces and organize an open-source alternative. I know it won't be as good, but I'm curious what other people in our position think...

I process weather simulation data from around the world (22 data sources). My servers process around 400-500 GB of data a day and I store about 120 GB which gives me about 5 days of historic simulation data and up to 16 days forecast data.

Storage and processing is relatively easy since it's just a matter of throwing resources at it. However, it'll be damn expensive to store months or years of historic simulation data.

The difficult part is writing and maintaining the processing scripts. The different weather services store data in different formats, have different ways to download the data and sometimes change data structures or fall over.

Edit: removed a spurious sentence.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#329

Post by jacurtis »

kyledrake wrote: post #33

> Android and Wear OS App > The app will no longer be available for download. Service to existing users and subscribers will continue until July 1, 2020, at which point the app will be shut down. Subscribers who are still active at that time will receive a refund. IBM bought the Weather Underground app and ruined it, and now Dark Sky was bought by Apple and they're ruining that too. Now I will have zero good weather…

Try Carrot on iOS. It is really good. It is famous for its mini game and snarky robot comments that predict the weather. But the core weather is great and has the best interface.

Re: Apple acquires Dark Sky

#330

Post by jaywalk »

dmos62 wrote: post #286
jaywalk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really think Apple (or anyone else) should be forced to support software on a competing platform? That's absurd. It's a crappy decision on their part, no doubt. But saying it should be illegal is way out of line.

You can always come up with a ludicrous policy; it doesn't detract from the potential of regulation. Would you accept General Motors buying freeways and not allowing others' platforms on it? Competition must be regulated. Also, isn't the barrier between iOS and Android devices artificial? I don't see a veritable technical reason why the two platforms can't be compatible.

> Also, isn't the barrier between iOS and Android devices artificial?

No, not even remotely. They are completely different operating systems.

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