Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020)

#51

Post by bedast » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 2:36 AM UTC

Tagbert wrote: post #49

bedast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MyRadar on iOS does this very well. Has notifications on when rain will start, estimate on duration, warnings if storms are predicted in the next 24 hours, lightning nearby notifications, etc. It appears to be available for Android. I subscribe to MyRadar Pro and find it quite worth it to support the development.

Is it using Dark Sky data behind the scenes?

Dark Sky is not among the licenses and attributions. I suspect they generate their end product from various other data sources, much like Dark Sky did.

Re: Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020)

#52

Post by kalleboo » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 4:18 AM UTC

Larrikin wrote: post #18

mdrzn wrote: post #13

All and every weather data that ANY weather company uses is provided, for free, by the US Government [0] [0] https://www.weather.gov/

Dark Sky augmented their data with user reports and sensor data inside of the phones. There was a time during the summer of 2019 where I was able to impress friends by accurately predicting when rain would start and stop down to the minute based on the rain notifications I would get. When Apple bought them and shut down the Android app they threw away all the data Android users were giving them and Dark Sky became al…

It seems like replacing "the android users who used this app" with "every iPhone user" would increase their data acquisition rather than reduce it

Re: Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020)

#53

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 7:47 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #52

Larrikin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark Sky augmented their data with user reports and sensor data inside of the phones. There was a time during the summer of 2019 where I was able to impress friends by accurately predicting when rain would start and stop down to the minute based on the rain notifications I would get. When Apple bought them and shut down the Android app they threw away all the data Android users were giving them and Dark Sky became al…

It seems like replacing "the android users who used this app" with "every iPhone user" would increase their data acquisition rather than reduce it

[deleted]

Re: Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020)

#54

Post by a_square_peg » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:02 AM UTC

joekrill wrote: post #23

a_square_peg wrote: post #4

It's interesting that they'll continue to offer API with the new WeatherKit API. I have an impression that Dark Sky API was very popular with developers and have been wondering what stood out for them among many other weather APIs on the market.

It was the best weather API I've ever used, for a few reason: 1. Pricing. It was affordable and straight-forward pricing. There wasn't a huge "tier bump" - I think it was like a flat fee per 1000 requests after the free alotment. 2.You always could expect the same response, regardless of location or date. You could get an hourly forecast 3 years into the future, or 20 years in the past. Most other weather API will gi…

Thanks for the notes - it's really appreciated.

Re: Dark Sky Has a New Home (2020)

#55

Post by mdrzn » Wed, Jun 08, 2022, 11:03 AM UTC

throwaway290 wrote: post #35

mdrzn wrote: post #13

All and every weather data that ANY weather company uses is provided, for free, by the US Government [0] [0] https://www.weather.gov/

If what you claim was true, apps would at least be consistent with each other. This couldn't be further from reality. What I see in Dark Sky or Weather app is very different from what I see e.g. in Windy. Where I am now Dark Sky is almost completely wrong (neither real-time conditions nor predictions), while Windy manages to at least show accurate radar data and lets me make a short-term forecast myself.

Every app makes its own "forecast" based on their own "algorithms", which is why there's a discrepancy between different apps.