IBM selling The Weather Channel and the rest of its weather business::IBM will sell The Weather Company to Francisco Partners, a tech-focused private equity firm, for an undisclosed sum, it announced Tuesday.

  • LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In before a fascist wannabe billionaire buys the weather channel just to destroy any credibility it has and hijack the climate change debate. Even change the name of weather channel to something like “Y”.

    Let the enshittification begin.

    • kmkz_ninja@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s incredible. Both of those apps INSTANTLY became so much worse after they were bought out.

    • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      LogMeIn has way more free offerings now than just a couple of years ago. Source: used to work at LogMeIn. You are talking out of your ass.

        • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I don’t mind. but I’m pretty sure they are conflating two entirely different events: one was the almost complete removal of the free tier of the original LogMeIn, which at this point happened probably 10 years ago? LogMeIn (now GoTo) was privatized and sold two-ish years ago, maybe less.

          • adenoid@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Sorry! I conflated LogMeIn with a specific LogMeIn product, LastPass (Francisco acquired the whole thing but I’m only familiar with LastPass). To clarify, the free tier of LastPass was made less useful following acquisition, particularly with the limitation to a single device.

            • mint_tamas@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Wow, that’s a load of crap for sure. Not that it’s entirely unexpected tbh. LastPass was bought for the large userbase and the plan was to figure out later how to monetize them. Lots of hand-waving, little substance. Initially the lastpass teams were beefed up so much they filled all free space in the office. That lasted less than a year (which is around when I left). The embarrassing security incidents started after that. They really fumbled this, overall. Which is a shame, I used to be an early LastPass user, but moved on to 1pw long ago.

  • ironcrotch@aussie.zone
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    1 year ago

    I used to love Weather Underground but stopped using it once The Weather Channel took over but crazy that IBM own that, what an odd acquisition.

    • Ejh3k@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I still use it, mostly because I’ve been using them for nearly two decades and they’ve been the most consistently accurate in forecasting for my area.

      But since the IBM acquisition, the app has been so slow to load.

        • KrapKake@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The thing about weather underground is that it’s the only way to see weather data online from my (and others) personal weather station. As far as I know anyway, not sure if there’s an alternative.

    • vanontom@geddit.social
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      1 year ago

      I used to love the WU app, it was beautiful and accurate. A few years ago I started noticing more and more puzzling changes, before I realized IBM had purchased them. They ruined an incredible app. Seems like they just outsourced development to lowest international bidder.

    • nymwit@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      BM planned to leverage its Watson technology as part of the acquisition, foreseeing its use for weather analytics and predictions. The deal, which closed the following January,[27] does not include the Weather Channel itself, which remained owned by the Bain/Blackstone/NBCUniversal consortium, and entered into a long-term licensing agreement with IBM for use of its weather data and “The Weather Channel” name and branding

      wikipedia page for The Weather Channel

    • piecat@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      A good way to get GPS data. You “need” gps if you want your phone to show “weather near you”

    • nymwit@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Only the mobile app. They don’t own the tv channel.

      IBM planned to leverage its Watson technology as part of the acquisition, foreseeing its use for weather analytics and predictions. The deal, which closed the following January,[27] does not include the Weather Channel itself, which remained owned by the Bain/Blackstone/NBCUniversal consortium, and entered into a long-term licensing agreement with IBM for use of its weather data and “The Weather Channel” name and branding

      Wikipedia page for The Weather Channel

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Please don’t make Weather Underground shitty. It’s the only weather website that gives accurate information around here.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Maybe for you, but all the other weather websites I’ve tried are wrong. Even DarkSky was wrong half the time. It said sunny skies when we were in the middle of a blizzard once. I don’t know, maybe there’s something weird about where I am.

        • methodicalaspect@midwest.social
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          1 year ago

          I had a similar experience with Dark Sky, but Weather Underground was always great. The weird part of it is that I’m near Chicago, where the NWS office got trashed for their awful handling of the forecast and response to the storms that led to the Plainfield F5 in 1990 - bad radar was often cited as a reason for that response, so NEXRAD especially has been key to NWS’s improvement here.

          It’s www.weather.gov/lot for me now.

    • Doubletwist@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      They’ve been shitty since TWC bought them. Maybe a little before when they killed their old web interface which was informative and fast and replaced it with a new design that was difficult to read information, and worst of all, slow as fuck. That’s about when I stopped subscribing.

      • const_void@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        worst of all, slow as fuck.

        So true. Waiting 30 seconds to see the temperature is ridiculous.

    • ABeeinSpace@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      IBM will still sell you a brand new, updated mainframe in 2023.

      They’re also in the open source software space (IBM owns Red Hat, a software company that has a lot of projects for Linux. Red Hat has their own Linux distro too)

      • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Which threats users to had their subscription cancelled when they share the source code according to GPL.

        • ABeeinSpace@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah. I agree with ya there, Red Hat screwed over Alma and Rocky with that decision. I can see the utility of those two distros for testing before committing to RHEL.

          Plus, if Oracle has room to try to be the “good guys”, you’ve really screwed up

          • ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Nobody was “testing” rhel by using Rocky or Alma, they just didn’t want to pay for it. I mean you can test actual rhel for free!

            • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              Nah. Deploy Rocky or Alma in mass. Have RHEL for a few machines. When you got a problem, reproduce it in RHEL and call support.

              • ieatpillowtags@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                That sounds pretty exploitative to me, and exactly the kind of use case that red hat wouldn’t want to support.

                Think about what “bug for bug compatibility” actually means, they’re promising not to make any fixes or contribute to the build in any way!

    • hglman@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      We did away with that pesky business failures. Now all corporate are eternal.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      I knew they were a thing because I run into them in IT from time to time… but had no idea they owned the weather channel. Wild.

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Cool, could they sell Redhat to someone not actively evil, and fuck right off now?

  • t�m@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Does anyone know of a great alternative weather app?

  • to55@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 year ago

    Makes sense. Now they can focus more on their core business. Google recently sold it’s domain registry, I think it might be the same thing.

    • methodicalaspect@midwest.social
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      1 year ago

      I think it’s fair to look at IBM with a more cynical eye. Historically it’s been “acquire, way you’ll make no changes, wait a bit, make changes that piss off 80% of your customer base.” Somewhere in there is a “reduce customer service effectiveness” step that is distinct from “make changes.”

      After that it’s either “sell it off to the highest bidder” or “keep at it because who else are the customers gonna use?”

    • umami_wasabi@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      It’s a bummer that Google sold it’s registry to GoDaddySquarespace.

      EDIT: seems like I remember it incorrectly

    • fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com
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      1 year ago

      I hear this a lot, but every company I’ve been a part of that did it seemed to be a bad idea. If a division makes money, the only reason to sell is because you believe the investment in that division can be used to make more money (for less). Getting rid of a profitable entity is usually greed based.

      • BlackSpasmodic@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        It’s corporate-speak that means nothing. The same company “focused on it’s core business” today will buy something unrelated sometime later and say it’s “poised for growth in a growing market”.