There are like, billions of internet-connected barometers in the world that are not used in weather models. I don’t know if Acme has any of that in mind, but there is plenty of good reason for a weather app to collect data from phones. I know @counters may disagree with me, but I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.
Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?
I haven’t got the app yet, but I plan on it (gotta upgrade iOS first I think). Acme seems to have a lot of ideas I agree with, so, definitely following this.
One more thing. Weather apps have not been “solved”. Not even close. They all suck, there’s billions in untapped opportunity, and a stale existing market of bad solutions. People die all the time from severe weather. There is so much more work to be done in forecast accuracy and communication.
> I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.
Alright, fair point. That could be a reasonable use case.
But judging by their advertised "Community reports" feature, Acme doesn't seem to be doing this. And even if they did, this feature should be opt-in, and their privacy policy should only apply for those users.
> Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?
Have you tried looking out the window? What do you need hyper-local and minute-accurate forecasts for? If you need to know accurate current conditions get a thermometer and barometer. If you want it on your smartphone, then the app could show you live readings from your device, without sending the data anywhere.
Weather forecasts have always been an inexact science, and likely always will be. Our models have gotten better over time, and at this point I think that they're good enough. I only need to know the general temperature and likelihood of certain weather events a few days in advance, at most. If there's a chance of rain, I carry an umbrella just in case. If it's going to be cold, I pack a jacket.
Highly accurate weather prediction doesn't solve any practical problem for the average person. Hyping it up like it does only serves as marketing for companies that want to build a profitable business around it.
After thinking more about this, I don't think smartphones would even be good sources of ambient data that could improve forecasts.
Smartphones are personal computers. They spend most of their time in pockets and controlled indoor environments. This ambient data is of no use to anyone, which is why there's still a market for home weather stations, whose sensors are typically placed outside.
The barometer data is for sure noisy, and must be cleaned and quality controlled. But that is possible to do, has been for 10 years now (there are published papers and demo apps that can do it). For one, rate of change of atmospheric pressure is pretty much the same inside as out, your main challenge for the raw value to be correct is user elevation. That can be corrected in quality control as well.
Plenty of work has been done on this front, and it can be demonstrated that you can assimilate the smartphone pressures into weather models and get some good results. It is hard, of course, and I’m not sure personally how much better the forecasts get.
But it’s absolutely possible.
> Weather forecasts have always been an inexact science
Weather forecasting is anything but "an inexact science." It's extremely exact up to the limitations and assumptions you impose on your model due to resource constraints.
And yes - I assume that this is what you mean by "an inexact science." But still in 2026 I regularly meet people who think that weather forecasting is the same as astrology, completely ignorant of massive amount of physical scientific understanding that goes into it.
> Weather forecasting is anything but "an inexact science." It's extremely exact up to the limitations and assumptions you impose on your model due to resource constraints.
It's "extremely exact" but our models are not good enough. So... inexact?
The reality is that we don't have the technology to model the physical world with extreme accuracy. If we did, we would be able to predict the future, and not just weather events. The world's most powerful supercomputers can model atmospheric conditions pretty well, and they've certainly improved over time, but there are still a lot of variables unaccounted for.
This is why I think that ~90% accuracy for a few days in advance[1] is good enough for most people. A smartphone app won't miraculously make this better, no matter how pretty or "fun" it is.
> It's "extremely exact" but our models are not good enough. So... inexact?
That's not the common way that the phrase "inexact science" is used. All modeling involves approximations at some levels, but you wouldn't turn around and call it "inexact science."
> ... but there are still a lot of variables unaccounted for.
Such as... ?
This is the problem with throwing away colloquialisms like "inexact science." What, specifically, is a "variable" that is unaccounted for that would unlock improved forecast accuracy or to push thresholds closer to the predictability limits?
> This is why I think that ~90% accuracy for a few days in advance[1] is good enough for most people. A smartphone app won't miraculously make this better, no matter how pretty or "fun" it is.
I agree, which is why the other portions of your comment come off poorly.
They sold their last weather app to Apple for like, tens of millions or something. These aren’t some random Apple employees.
Also, it seems a common misunderstanding about some weather apps: yes, most of them just package free data and steal your privacy, but some are really much more than a “weather app”. Some are attempts at building next-generation weather forecast models, which if successful are of course worth billions.
I’ve spent a lot of time building innovative weather apps, most of my career actually. And it’s always shocking to me when people say I’m wasting time or wasting my life or look at me like, “really? You’re dedicating your life to weather apps?!”
No dawg, I’m trying to improve short term forecasts to save life and property from severe events at scale!
I’m not sure what the Acme end goal is, but surely this isn’t just a “weather app”.
> I’m trying [...] to save life and property from severe events at scale
Tell me you work in Silicon Valley without telling me you work in silicon Valley.
Sorry but I couldn't resist. There is something in US startup mentality where you can't just "create an app and make a living", you have to be on a grand mission to save the world. That may be normal out there, but for the rest of the world it just seems... Get back to earth man :-)
Sure, most of us are doing nothing to help people and are using grandiose language to describe reticulating splines. I don’t think that applies to good weather apps though, a lot of people do die because they are unaware of weather events. I would be very unsurprised to learn that any major weather app has directly saved lives. The U.S is a very… weatherful place.
Super cool idea, but I don't seem to be able to type in the text box. Tried Chrome and Firefox, same issue. Something taking focus from the text box as soon as I input anything?
Even more than that, I've seen a lot of people confuse 4 and 4o, probably because 4o sounds like a shorthand for 4.0 which would be the same thing as 4.
Come to think of it, maybe they had a play on 4o being “40”, and o4-mini being “04”, and having to append the “mini” to bring home the message of 04<40
"No Prompting"? Right after they show that the user initiates everything with a prompt? Confusing.
Also what is twin.so if it's not workos.com? The login with google says it will redirect me to workos.com, which I went to and seems like a totally different product.
The title is clickbait though, he admits near the end it is not in fact a perfect replication. I could feel this of course, long before even starting to watch it. Still, upsetting because otherwise it’s an entertaining video.
The main ingredient he is missing is coca leaf. I used to buy Mate de Coca tea from Peru/Boliva no problem. It's a decocanized coca leaf tea. Shame he didn't hunt around or try harder to get it.
He said his first order of decocanised cocoa leaf was seized at the border. I can see that discouraging trying again, esp when he's trying to make something others could reproduce.
He did find a pretty good substitute for the primary cocoa leaf ingredient though. Also, what he made was virtually indistinguishable in the taste tests. One person said that his tasted closer to the 2L of coke than the can of coke did, which suggests the final bit could just be carbonation level of the soda stream.
That was our theory in the office when we taste tested the various cokes. The favorite by far was kosher for Passover coke. At first we thought it was the sugar vs. HFCS, but bottled Mexican coke didn’t fare as well — blind most people thought Coke Zero (which is my favorite coke) was Mexican Coke.
My theory was that the carbonation was perfect and the product was fresher, as the bottler requires rabbinical supervision and they probably make it for a limited run.
There is essentially zero chemical difference whatsoever in sugar vs corn syrup coke. sucrose disassociates in the presence of an acid into glucose+fructose simple sugars. Just being carbonated will disassociate the sucrose.
> sucrose disassociates in the presence of an acid into glucose+fructose simple sugars
Which tastes different from pure fructose. If you want to taste them side by side, you can absolutely tell the difference. (If you've done any endurance sports, you know what I mean.)
Once digested I agree that the health effects are suspect. But tastewise, fructose, sucrose and glucose are distinct.
I'm confused by your reply. GP's point is that they both dissociate into simple sugars, and thus it doesn't matter what the source is. And your response says correctly that sucrose tastes different than both fructose and glucose, but I don't see how this contradicts him. There is (practically) no sucrose left.
Are you perhaps thinking that "high fructose corn syrup" is predominantly fructose? The name is confusing, but it actually means that it is high in fructose relative to normal corn syrup, not that fructose predominates. HFCS is usually pretty close to 50:50 fructose to glucose, just like sucrose is:
How much fructose is in HFCS?
The most common forms of HFCS contain either 42 percent or 55 percent fructose, as described in the Code of Federal Regulations (21 CFR 184.1866), and these are referred to in the industry as HFCS 42 and HFCS 55. The rest of the HFCS is glucose and water. HFCS 42 is mainly used in processed foods, cereals, baked goods, and some beverages. HFCS 55 is used primarily in soft drinks.
I made no assertion about the taste of sugar vs. corn syrup. There are a number of products marketed as "Coke", and those products have different flavor profiles. Some use sucrose, some HFCS. It might be formulation, it might be packaging, freshness or bottling methodology. Maybe they don't tweak formulas for limited run products or in local markets like Mexico. I have no idea.
Even with the standard fountain formulation, there is a different/better flavor at McDonald's because of the standards they apply to each part of the supply chain. In a few weeks, depending on where you live, there will be two liter bottles of coke with a yellow cap. That's kosher for passover -- try it.
Been writing software for like 20 years now and I love it. I am also a fan of AI-assisted coding, but I only just started using Cursor. Gosh I do not like it at all for a simple reason: since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does.
When you write the code, you understand it. When you read the code produced by an agent, you may eventually feel like you understand it, but it's not at the same deep level as if your own brain created it.
I'll keep using new tools, I'll keep writing my own code too. Just venting my frustrations with agentic coding because it's only going to get worse.
Yep. I had a few vibe coded projects that were fairly far along and then things broke. The code was so convoluted and it took me so long to understand that I just opted to rewrite everything from scratch without AI. Sure, it took longer but I understood all of it.
No joke: Maybe that is the current value of vibe coding. It helps you get started with a crappy version. In your experience, which one do think would take longer? (1) Vibe code until it breaks, then you rewrite everything from scratch or (2) Write everything from scratch. I don't vide code (yet?), but I do use LLMs to get ideas about how to solve problems and look at same code, especially when I don't what library function to call.
Yeah I do use it for prototyping when I just want to get some version working, so I'm not knocking that, but it's more so trying to warn pure vibe coders that they won't get far if they don't eventually buckle down and write code themselves, for the LLMs will break the code at some point.
> since I didn't write the code, in order to understand it I have to read it. But gaining understanding that way takes longer than writing it myself does.
I remember reading Joel Spolsky's blog 25 years ago, and he wrote something like: "It is harder to read code than to write code." I was quite young at that stage in my programming journey, but I remember being simultaneously surprised and relieved -- to know that reading code was so damn hard! I kept thinking if I just worked harder at reading code that eventually it would be as easy as writing code.
“Indeed, the ratio of time spent reading versus writing is well over 10 to 1. We are constantly reading old code as part of the effort to write new code. ...[Therefore,] making it easy to read makes it easier to write.”
― Robert C. Martin, Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
Also:
Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?
— Brian Kernighan: The Elements of Programming Style, 2nd edition, chapter 2
In summary: write simple code, it's easy to read and understand - by future you who forgot why you did something and others.
15 years later and still no word from Google if they will use the barometers in Android devices to assimilate surface pressure data. It has been shown that this can improve forecast accuracy. I think IBM may be doing it with their weather apps, but Google/Apple would have dramatically more data available.
Apple even bought Dark Sky, which purported to do this but never released any information - so I doubt they really did do it. And if they did, I doubt Apple continued the practice.
Been waiting a long time to hear Google announce they'll use your barometer to give you a better forecast. Still waiting I guess.
The community has mostly abandoned SPO data. It's extraordinarily difficult to use this data because of social issues like PII and technical ones like QA/QC. But even more importantly, there's very little compelling evidence that the data makes much of any difference whatsoever in real forecasts.
> 15 years later and still no word from Google if they will use the barometers in Android devices to assimilate surface pressure data.
For WeatherNext, the answer is 'no'. The paper (https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.10772) describes in detail what data the model uses, and direct assimilation of user barometric data is not on the list.
Montreal public transit times used to be on some kind of like, 28-hour clock. Bus times after midnight would be labelled 27:30 or something. Suuuper confusing. It sounds so bizarre in fact, that I'm doubting my memory a bit, but I'm certain it was like that (say around 2006 or so).
And it is the right thing to do as otherwise the question to which day a train belongs will be confusing. Just take it %24hours before intersecting trains.
It is also how I personally record time spans. It makes it much easier as you do not need to deal with the case where the start is larger than the end time and you can only have a single date field.
I've seen this in Japan as well. A store that's open from, let's say, 8am to 1am will actually advertise itself as being open from 8am to 25pm. I guess the perception is that it's confusing to have a range where the smaller number comes before the bigger number.
Japanese are used to it because TV shows etc. that have the same issue.
If it airs at 2025-11-24 01:00, people will have an easier time to remember it's at a very late after the 23th's midnight, than a crazy early time on the 24th. Most TV or movie guide will show it as 25:00 on the 23th.
In the case of Japanese, there is 午前・午後 for 12-hour time. e.g. 午後９時に着く (arrive at 9 P.M.). If it's obvious from context, then only the hour is said. e.g. in「明日３時にね」, the flow of the conversation disambiguates the hour (it's also unlikely the speaker means 3 A.M.)
There are also other ways to convey 12-hour time. e.g. 朝６時に起きる (wake up at 6 A.M. / wake up at 6 in the morning).
I think the reason is for Day return tickets ie those where you can go out and come back on the same day. It allows the return to be after midnight which makes sense for example going to a theatre show or pub that shuts at 11pm
They're testing specific things with no need for full orbit, although I think they reach verrrry close to orbital velocity. They want the payload dummies to 'de-orbit' quickly (from a suborbital trajectory). They could easily have gone orbital if they wanted to. I guess we'll see orbital demonstrations after a few splashdowns of v3 stack early next year.
There are like, billions of internet-connected barometers in the world that are not used in weather models. I don’t know if Acme has any of that in mind, but there is plenty of good reason for a weather app to collect data from phones. I know @counters may disagree with me, but I believe there are opportunities to improve short term forecast accuracy using data collected from phones.
Also, pretty much every day, all the apps and all the sites will tell me the incorrect current conditions at my location, much less the forecast. It’s 2026 damnit. Why doesn’t my phone know what the weather is outside right now?
I haven’t got the app yet, but I plan on it (gotta upgrade iOS first I think). Acme seems to have a lot of ideas I agree with, so, definitely following this.
One more thing. Weather apps have not been “solved”. Not even close. They all suck, there’s billions in untapped opportunity, and a stale existing market of bad solutions. People die all the time from severe weather. There is so much more work to be done in forecast accuracy and communication.
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