If you are a US tax payer, it's important to realize that:
1. The federal government has already invested hundred of millions of dollars and millions of person years of scientific effort to collect all the valuable data that NOAA, CDC, NIH, the National Weather Service, etc. have collected, curated, and analyzed
2. The DOGE-ies and their ilk are flushing that all down the toilet -- all your investment will now be lost, or at least inaccessible to you or anyone else who might do something useful with it.
Excerpts from Project 2025. Godspeed, America. We’re all toast, and while we can compliant all we want about it, are we really doing anything to stop it?
> The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
> 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).
> This industry's mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful func-tions. It should be broken up and downsized.
> NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.
> Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather.
> Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.
> 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 its forecasting operations.
I can't speak for others but in my experience, NOAA gave me the most accurate weather for my area, and it wasn't even close. If they take the site down I hope they at least keep the API's up so folks here can build frontends
I am related to people who voted for it, and none of them are what I'd call enthusiastic. But they are not smart enough to imagine a way out of their little boxes.
I can't even imagine what the rationale would be for doing this:
>The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is poised to eliminate most websites tied to its research division under plans for the cancellation of a cloud web services contract, a move that could snarl operations at several labs.
If Bloomberg is correct, it seems that the contract was cancelled prior to developing (and testing and announcing to the public etc.) any replacement.
>A contract for the services across NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — has been targeted for “early termination,” according to internal documents seen by Bloomberg News. As a result, almost all external websites reliant on Amazon, Google and WordPress services are poised to vanish early Saturday morning in Washington, wiping the bulk of the unit’s work, which includes climate and environmental science research, from public view.
Many Americans rely upon NOAA Research communications, both businesses and individual citizens. This worries me, not because I think that Trump is a fascist or because of my political views, but rather, because it suggests a lack of competent government leadership. NOAA Research is still doing its work, but we won't be able to access it anymore? I'm not a Bloomberg subscriber, so what I quoted was all I could read about it. I hope there's more info, e.g. about what the replacement delivery system to the public, will be...
> NOAA Research is still doing its work, but we won't be able to access it anymore?
You are not thinking far ahead enough. This is just the first step.
Step 1: these Amazon and Google cloud contracts are extraneous; let's cancel. The public can always find an alternate way of getting the research data.
Step 2: the number of times such research data is accessed has drastically decreased, suggesting that the public has not found them useful; let's cancel the research projects.
Step 3: these researchers aren't doing any research any more; they don't seem to have any work output; let's fire them for cause.
We'll likely never know for sure, since they will just claim that the goal is to save money. There's even a grain of truth to it: AWS and GCP are the most expensive offerings in that class. Of course, if the goal was actually to save money -- then first off, Wordpress wouldn't be getting cut. Also, the plan would be to migrate to more cost effective alternatives (of which there are several), not to just turn the thing off.
Firstly, they want to dismantle the government piece by piece and sell it off to the highest bidder, privatizing it. Secondly, anything they view as contrary to their world view, despite of (or regardless of) scientific evidence stating otherwise. Eg: they believe anything to do with climate change is completely bogus and don't believe there's any value in studying it, or hiding it's results for the benefit of their friends in the oil/gas industries.
I would like to add context for others that this was explicitly laid out in the "Project 2025" agenda. Accuweather was cited as an example, and Accuweather responded saying they do not agree with the agenda: https://www.accuweather.com/en/press/accuweather-does-not-su...
You're referring to the Space Weather Prediction Research Center website, yes? I just checked the Newsroom for NOAA SWPC. There was nothing mentioned. I also visited their social media at https://x.com/nwsswpc and https://www.facebook.com/NWSSWPC/ Nothing there either; so far, so good.
The purpose is to enrich a few at the cost of the many. They will privatize the services we need to live, increasing the net cost of everything. They're destroying the American dream.
I remember when the USA government spaceweather websites and FTP sites went away in the early 2010s. It was terrible. They replaced them with the current javascript monstrosities and hid the raw directories. It made automating mirroring of space weather resources much harder.
So that people like you (ingrates, from an administrative perspective) can stop paying the government to provide basic services and instead become habitually reliant on a paid alternative service.
Since the headline is positively wrong, and the article paywalled here's what this actually is about:
NOAA uses cloud providers including AWS and GCP to host a bunch of services and sites under its "research division". The contracts under which these hosting arrangements are provided are to be terminated shortly. At that point those services and web sites will go offline.
afaics it's nothing to do with the actual weather service data feeds.
My job requires pulling large data dumps produced by research from a national lab from public S3 buckets. TB's of data.
This research is publicly funded, the data produced is public data, and it enables an entire ecosystem of business activity. imho, this is a good use of public funding and research, and hosting it in S3 buckets is a good solution that makes huge quantities of data easily accessible to people who would use this.
I don't use NOAA data, but this has chilling effects for my business (is my national lab next?). There is nothing "efficient" about forcing agencies to get rid of data and service hosting that works well at scale.
(If DOGE was actually about increasing efficiency of digital services like it's pre-rename/pre-takeover US Digital Services agency was actually doing, we'd be building a TB or PB-scale S3 alternative for government agencies to use, but we all know that's not the constructive efficiency they're doing here)
The headline is "US Weather Agency Websites Set to Vanish with Contract Cuts". Are you seeing a different version than I am? Your complaints don't make sense otherwise.
> NOAA uses cloud providers including AWS and GCP to host a bunch of services and sites under its "research division". The contracts under which these hosting arrangements are provided are to be terminated shortly. At that point those services and web sites will go offline.
The headline says that sites are going to go down because of contracts being cut. That seems like an accurate summary of this paragraph.
> it's nothing to do with the actual weather service data feeds
The headline doesn't say anything about data feeds.
Funny I was looking for some data from NOAA a few months ago and I ended up giving up. Their website has become a mess.
I remember doing the same a few decades ago it was pretty straightforward, if I remember correctly there was a well organised anonymous FTP server and you would connect and transfer what you needed.
So why not seeing this as an opportunity to go back to a simple, cheap and effective system? how hard can it be to serve those data with HTTP on a web server?
Funny. NOAA spent 2015-now moving all their weather servers off premises and moving from HTML and static images with maybe a bit of client side javascript to entirely web application remote hosted monstrosities that all require javascript to even see. If they'd just stuck with what worked instead of chasing the shiny glimmer of modern web dev they wouldn't be in this exact situation. No doubt they'd be being attacked a different way. But I still miss the old sites that were actually websites. My bet is that the lingering ones like https://forecast.weather.gov/ will be the only remaining after these political attacks.
[+] [-] pmags|11 months ago|reply
1. The federal government has already invested hundred of millions of dollars and millions of person years of scientific effort to collect all the valuable data that NOAA, CDC, NIH, the National Weather Service, etc. have collected, curated, and analyzed
2. The DOGE-ies and their ilk are flushing that all down the toilet -- all your investment will now be lost, or at least inaccessible to you or anyone else who might do something useful with it.
[+] [-] financetechbro|11 months ago|reply
> The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.
> 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).
> This industry's mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable. That is not to say NOAA is useless, but its current organization corrupts its useful func-tions. It should be broken up and downsized.
> NOAA today boasts that it is a provider of environmental information services, a provider of environmental stewardship services, and a leader in applied scientific research. Each of these functions could be provided commercially, likely at lower cost and higher quality.
> Focus the NWS on Commercial Operations. Each day, Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by local radio stations and colleges that are produced not by the NWS, but by private companies such as AccuWeather.
> Studies have found that the forecasts and warnings provided by the private companies are more reliable than those provided by the NWS.
> 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 its forecasting operations.
[+] [-] _fat_santa|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|11 months ago|reply
The false promise of privatization.
[+] [-] kristopolous|11 months ago|reply
It's an absolute death cult.
[+] [-] damnesian|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] SkyeCA|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ryandvm|11 months ago|reply
https://registry.opendata.aws/noaa-nexrad/
[+] [-] feraloink|11 months ago|reply
>The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency is poised to eliminate most websites tied to its research division under plans for the cancellation of a cloud web services contract, a move that could snarl operations at several labs.
If Bloomberg is correct, it seems that the contract was cancelled prior to developing (and testing and announcing to the public etc.) any replacement.
>A contract for the services across NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research — known as NOAA Research — has been targeted for “early termination,” according to internal documents seen by Bloomberg News. As a result, almost all external websites reliant on Amazon, Google and WordPress services are poised to vanish early Saturday morning in Washington, wiping the bulk of the unit’s work, which includes climate and environmental science research, from public view.
Many Americans rely upon NOAA Research communications, both businesses and individual citizens. This worries me, not because I think that Trump is a fascist or because of my political views, but rather, because it suggests a lack of competent government leadership. NOAA Research is still doing its work, but we won't be able to access it anymore? I'm not a Bloomberg subscriber, so what I quoted was all I could read about it. I hope there's more info, e.g. about what the replacement delivery system to the public, will be...
[+] [-] kccqzy|11 months ago|reply
You are not thinking far ahead enough. This is just the first step.
Step 1: these Amazon and Google cloud contracts are extraneous; let's cancel. The public can always find an alternate way of getting the research data.
Step 2: the number of times such research data is accessed has drastically decreased, suggesting that the public has not found them useful; let's cancel the research projects.
Step 3: these researchers aren't doing any research any more; they don't seem to have any work output; let's fire them for cause.
[+] [-] fabian2k|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mooreds|11 months ago|reply
https://archive.is/VRQZO
[+] [-] amalcon|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] pogue|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] damnesian|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] flyingmonkeyair|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 9283409232|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] lynndotpy|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] sooperserieous|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] palmotea|11 months ago|reply
If you run their archiving appliance right now, it just archives stuff from the game Roblox.
[+] [-] Kye|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] cantrecallmypwd|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] insane_dreamer|11 months ago|reply
The less you track climate change, the less pressure there is to do anything about climate change.
[+] [-] katelynsills|11 months ago|reply
@nikrdc, if this is you, why are you doing something so destructive and stupid?
[+] [-] walls|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] totalkikedeath|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] caoduoclieu|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] tmshapland|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ck2|11 months ago|reply
Why is the country being destroyed like this?
It will cost ten times more than it saves, it's just chaos on purpose
[+] [-] feraloink|11 months ago|reply
NOAA Office of Space Weather Observations news https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/news-events/search-news?combine=... didn't list any changes either. I hope you don't lose access on Saturday morning.
[+] [-] josefritzishere|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] superkuh|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] alabastervlog|11 months ago|reply
Long story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law#Ri...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Ailes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heritage_Foundation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_tax_cuts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Cuts_and_Jobs_Act
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_terror#Costs
That's a start.
And a rise to dominance of populist conspiratorial thinking. ContraPoints had a good intro video about it recently.
[+] [-] bigyabai|11 months ago|reply
So that people like you (ingrates, from an administrative perspective) can stop paying the government to provide basic services and instead become habitually reliant on a paid alternative service.
[+] [-] caoduoclieu|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] caoduoclieu|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] devwastaken|11 months ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dboreham|11 months ago|reply
NOAA uses cloud providers including AWS and GCP to host a bunch of services and sites under its "research division". The contracts under which these hosting arrangements are provided are to be terminated shortly. At that point those services and web sites will go offline.
afaics it's nothing to do with the actual weather service data feeds.
[+] [-] floatrock|11 months ago|reply
This research is publicly funded, the data produced is public data, and it enables an entire ecosystem of business activity. imho, this is a good use of public funding and research, and hosting it in S3 buckets is a good solution that makes huge quantities of data easily accessible to people who would use this.
I don't use NOAA data, but this has chilling effects for my business (is my national lab next?). There is nothing "efficient" about forcing agencies to get rid of data and service hosting that works well at scale.
(If DOGE was actually about increasing efficiency of digital services like it's pre-rename/pre-takeover US Digital Services agency was actually doing, we'd be building a TB or PB-scale S3 alternative for government agencies to use, but we all know that's not the constructive efficiency they're doing here)
[+] [-] rimunroe|11 months ago|reply
The headline is "US Weather Agency Websites Set to Vanish with Contract Cuts". Are you seeing a different version than I am? Your complaints don't make sense otherwise.
> NOAA uses cloud providers including AWS and GCP to host a bunch of services and sites under its "research division". The contracts under which these hosting arrangements are provided are to be terminated shortly. At that point those services and web sites will go offline.
The headline says that sites are going to go down because of contracts being cut. That seems like an accurate summary of this paragraph.
> it's nothing to do with the actual weather service data feeds
The headline doesn't say anything about data feeds.
[+] [-] financetechbro|11 months ago|reply
Edit: typo
[+] [-] sunshine-o|11 months ago|reply
Funny I was looking for some data from NOAA a few months ago and I ended up giving up. Their website has become a mess.
I remember doing the same a few decades ago it was pretty straightforward, if I remember correctly there was a well organised anonymous FTP server and you would connect and transfer what you needed.
So why not seeing this as an opportunity to go back to a simple, cheap and effective system? how hard can it be to serve those data with HTTP on a web server?
[+] [-] NoImmatureAdHom|11 months ago|reply
If they were paying reasonable, open-market rates to Amazon and Google, this could be a tragedy.
If they were getting fucked, it could be a reasonable response to sloth and indifference on the part of our civil service.
Has anyone bothered to check, or is this all just wailing and gnashing along party lines?
[+] [-] chneu|11 months ago|reply
The next reason is a war on science/intellect.
That's it. Stop trying to rationalize what they're doing as anything other than "smart people and science bad".
[+] [-] walls|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] superkuh|11 months ago|reply
[+] [-] Telemakhos|11 months ago|reply
I'm going to think about that sentence for the rest of the day.