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A comment on Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amounts’ of location data. Parent comment

Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by maccard on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @06:22PM (#31588896)
Can you tell whether it's going to be raining in 30 minutes? Can you tell whether it's going to be 10 or 22 degrees later today when you're up at 7am?

I definitely can't do either, and ive been wrong enough times to know that

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by johncoltrane on Thursday June 02, 2022 @02:24AM (#31592017)
I distinctly remember a time when all we had was tomorrow's forecast on TV after the evening news and/or today's forecast on the radio before the morning shower. And before that, it was mostly looking at the sky and listening to our intuition.

We were _fine_.

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by maccard on Thursday June 02, 2022 @05:29AM (#31592990)
Im not going to claim that everyone needs live access forecasts all the time but to claim that there is no benefit to having live access to forecasts is just silly. Sure you were fine, but that doesn't mean that what we have now isn't better.

> 's forecast on TV after the evening news and/or today's forecast on the radio before the morning shower

I don't know about you but I certainly don't want to watch the news or listen to the news and traffic reports to get the weather. I'm _very_ glad we've moved past that

> And before that, it was mostly looking at the sky and listening to our intuition.

Really, your argument is that things were fine before we had instruments so we don't need them?

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by kingaillas on Thursday June 02, 2022 @11:58AM (#31596472)
>I distinctly remember a time when all we had was

Sure, and I remember a time before internet (widely available public access) and smart phones. We were also fine.

Which doesn't mean these advances (including forecasts) aren't useful.

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by brewdad on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @10:58PM (#31590786)
Well no, but the daily forecast gives me a good enough approximation. If I know the temp in the AM when I get up and I know the forecasted high, I can get a pretty good guess of what midday temps will be. If a massive front is moving through that will lead to significant changes, well the forecast will capture that too in wind and precipitation forecasts.

As for the next 30 minutes, I have tried AccuWeather and DarkSky. Both get the timing wrong about as often as they get it right for my location.

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Re:Tim Hortons app violated laws in collection of ‘vast amou... by maccard on Thursday June 02, 2022 @05:24AM (#31592965)
Those daily forecasts are highly localised though. I live in a city with half a million people that has its own little microclimate because we're surrounded by large hills on 2 sides and ocean on the other two. A general forecast for even 20 miles around us would almost certainly be wrong.

> As for the next 30 minutes, I have tried AccuWeather and DarkSky. Both get the timing wrong about as often as they get it right for my location.

Anecdotally here the met office is right far more often than it's not.

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