Weather: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

What Hacker News said

Cites liyanage · 2020-03 · on “Apple acquires Dark Sky”

> I'm pretty sure that UX for all the NOAA/NWS web sites is horrible by design That's spot on, John Oliver did a whole episode about this: [this video]

Cites throw0101d · 2024-10 · on “The unnecessary decline of U.S. numerical weather prediction”

> It's will known that AccuWeather's president Joel Myers and his younger brother (now former) AccuWeather CEO Barry Lee Myers want to kill public domain weather report data. John Oliver of all people had a segment on this: * [this video] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK]

Cites throw0101d · 2024-10 · on “The unnecessary decline of U.S. numerical weather prediction”

> unlikely that there is good precedent for a private weather organization. When has something being a bad idea or never having been tried stopped political apparatchik's from trying, especially given past appointee's opinions: * [this video] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] See also Project 2025: > The document describes NOAA as a primary component "of the climate change alarm industry" and said it "should be broken up and downsized." […] > Project 2025 would not outright end the National Weather Service. It says the agency "should focus on its data-gathering services," and "should fully commercialize its forecasting operations." > It said that "commercialization of weather technologies should be prio

Cites throw0101d · 2025-02 · on “NOAA's public weather data powers the local forecasts on your phone and TV”

> Cui bono? Barry Myers of AccuWeather for one: they charge for their services. See "The Plan to Privatize Weather Forecasts": * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] John Oliver did a story about this in 2019 (Trump 1.0): * [this video] * [LINK] If NOAA discontinues free weather forecasts, everyone (news, websites, apps) will have to pay someone to get them.

Cites throw0101a · 2025-02 · on “NASA's James Webb Space Telescope faces potential 20% budget cut”

> Generally speaking the current administration is looking to cut some functions and programs from federal agencies and then pay private entities to perform those same functions because they believe that private industry can perform those same functions better more cheaply [1]. In some cases they want the federal agency to completely stop doing things and let the private sector do them instead: for example the National Weather Service. Some folks (e.g., the CEO of AccuWeather) wants zero free weather reports from the government, and you'd have to go to a private corporation to get a forecast. John Oliver had a segment on it during Trump 1.0: * [this video]

Cites throw0101c · 2025-03 · on “The American Weather Forecast Is in Trouble”

> Among its other duties, NOAA employs thousands of people to help accurately predict the weather through the National Weather Service; privatizing federal weather data has long been a project of some conservative lawmakers too. John Oliver had a show on this during Trump 1.0: * [this video]

Cites throw0101c · 2025-03 · on “They flew into hurricanes for NOAA, until they got caught up in DOGE firings”

Project 2025's plan for NOAA is in the Department of Commerce chapter: > Break Up NOAA. The single biggest Department of Commerce agency outside of decennial census years is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which houses the National Weather Service, National Marine Fisheries Service, and other components. NOAA garners $6.5 billion of the department’s $12 billion annual operational budget and accounts for more than half of the department’s personnel in non-decadal Census years (2021 figures). […] > The NWS provides data the private companies use and should focus on its data-gathering services. Because private companies rely on these data, the NWS should fully commercialize

Cites fragmede · 2025-06 · on “US Defense Department will stop providing satellite weather data”

John Oliver had a whole episode about this [this video] tl;dw: AccuWeather, whos CEO donated to Trump's campaign.