

Dark Sky has a new owner - achariam
http://blog.forecast.io/dark-sky-has-a-new-owner/

======
dewitt
There's a chance that the audience here hasn't yet seen
[http://forecast.io](http://forecast.io) or the Dark Sky app.

This is a shame. They are radically better weather experiences than any you've
seen before. Go check them out now.

~~~
learnstats2
They are radically better at very-short-term forecasting: I use forecast.io
frequently for knowing when to take the dog for a walk etc.

I don't find them an improvement for medium-term or longer-term forecasting,
and I continue to use other sources for these cases.

Good luck Dark Sky, keep improving :)

~~~
HCIdivision17
Very much so. I would use it to time to the minute when to leave on my
motorcycle to avoid rain, but it's less accurate a couple days out. But it
seems it usually fails pessimistic, which is just what I want to be prepared.
(And frankly, with a name like Dark Sky, it's just what I would expect!)

~~~
learnstats2
I thought it was well-known that consumer weather forecasting is almost always
pessimistic.

Forecasting sun when it rains generates complaints; the other way around, not
so much.

Personally, I prefer it when they give percentages (which I assume are still
pessimistic). The Met Office appears to forecast "rain" on a "30%" chance of
precipitation.

~~~
HCIdivision17
Consider me one of the 10k learning that today :) It certainly makes sense to
do so, but I had doubted it simply because of the many times people would
argue with me about how "it wouldn't be that bad/cold/rainy". I assumed one
should plan for the worst, but many liked to be reminded of bright days ahead.

YMMV and different strokes and all that.

------
rwhitman
Dark Sky has been letting me down in some pretty grandiose ways over the last
few months, to the point where my wife sees my unbroken faith in it as a kind
of running joke.

The "Are they going to fuck things up?" section at the bottom of their post
certainly sheds some light on why the reliability has dropped off of late.

For whatever reason where I live in Brooklyn is completely unreliable. If the
problem is scaling, I guess it would makes sense that they're choking on the
volume of users in the NYC region

Glad to see that instead of selling to the weather channel or something
they're continuing to put engineering muscle behind it. Dark Sky & Forecast.io
are just awesome and I really want to see these guys succeed.

~~~
slacka
I gave Dark Sky an honest shot for a few weeks, but their reliability was
atrocious. Could you please explain what is responsible for your "unbroken
faith"? Is there something about the idea, app, or people that I'm missing
here?

~~~
rwhitman
Dark Sky when it worked was almost magic - it could predict precipitation to
the minute. An alert would go off and you'd know you have 5 minutes to seek
shelter before the rain started.. it was freakishly accurate.

The developers are an indie app store success story as well. Started the
project on Kickstarter with a new way to present hyper-local weather data down
to the minute, in an industry dominated by a few big players and conventional
hourly forecasts based on region. Based somewhere in upstate NY if I recall
too

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chipotle_coyote
This is fascinating from a startup funding point of view, especially the
rather bracing bluntness in the last paragraph ("Are they going to fuck things
up?").

~~~
thegrossman
Heh, the check's already in the bank. What can they do to us now? (Just
kidding. I actually ran the post by them and they had no issues at all -- I'm
honestly not sure what I would have done if they did have a problem with it).

~~~
shawn-butler
Sent an email before I realized you comment here.

"This team of several dozen engineers, scientists, and wackos have helped
farmers figure out when to fertilize and plant crops"

What was this ag project of theirs that you mention in your blog post? I can't
find anything. Sounds pretty interesting.

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demetris
I love forecast.io and I was happy when I finally found a good Android
forecast.io app, Weather Timeline:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samruston.weather)

Three things I’d like to comment on after reading the post:

1\. The post title confuses me: Looking at the content of the post, I
understand that Dark Sky has a new co-owner rather than a new owner.

2\. I enjoyed the openness and directness of the last paragraph.

3\. I did not enjoy the language at a couple of places. :-)

Congratulations and best wishes for the future of the company, its services
and its apps!

------
Contraptor
The service engine I've been building to power
[http://www.ifweather.com](http://www.ifweather.com) is powered by their API.
I'm not sure I would have picked their API originally had I known the company
was run by just two guys, but I am very pleased with the API so far. I'm happy
to hear that the API is "going to be a big priority for us going forward".
Many best wishes and best of luck to Adam and Jay as this new sunrise for your
business begins.

~~~
kamakazizuru
just had a look at your site. Why would I use this over a simple IFTTT alert?

~~~
Contraptor
You might use this instead of a simple IFTTT alert exactly because IFTTT is so
simple. In other words, ifWeather.com is designed to be more of a weather
alert management console for people that would like to setup and manage
multiple alerts for multiple locations. I think that we in the technology
industry forget that for so many other industries the weather really matters,
and not just the weather where you or your phone are.

A couple examples: \- a surprising percentage of people that have signed up so
far are photographers that want to be alerted to ideal forecast conditions for
several locations. \- My wife is a hydro-geologist, so a lot of her sampling
needs to be done after specific weather conditions. Her sample locations are
spread all over a large region and it's a real pain for her to check weather
conditions for so many locations daily.

Thanks for checking out the site.

------
yanowitz
I love the app but I've found the data feed can sometimes be spotty (maybe
this is just in Chicago)? For example, it's snowing outside right now and Dark
Sky shows no precipitation for the next hour. Yahoo Weather correctly showed
it was snowing (and showed it was likely to continue for several hours, so I
parked in the garage).

It would be useful to have some insight into the underlying data, it's
freshness, and an easy way to report inaccuracy (I've sent support emails but
they've gone unanswered -- I assume the support load is enormous for a small
team).

~~~
jwoldan
I've found the near term forecast a bit flaky in New York as well, though I've
always imagined the city to be particularly unpredictable. I still use it
regularly, but I hope they'll devote some of their new resources to
improvements to the core forecast algorithm.

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andrea_s
I've been using their APIs in the past, they're definitely the most developer-
friendly forecast service that I know of. It's good to see their hard work is
paying off!

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mrfusion
I love this app. The only issue I've been noticing lately is it's been
predicting snow when it's really rain. I wonder what could be causing that.

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k-mcgrady
Congrats on the deal. I've been using Dark Sky for about a year and it
compliments the longer term Weather iOS app fantastically. I can't tell you
how many times I've been about to go for a walk only to check the app and see
a heavy 10 min shower starting in a few minutes. It's great being able to
delay a few minutes and not get soaked!

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nandhp
Since the server seems to be too busy:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.forecast.io%2Fdark-
sky-has-a-new-owner%2F)

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lisbakke
We built [http://weatherornot.io](http://weatherornot.io) on top of the
forecast.io API and these guys do awesome work.

Adam, Jay, thanks a lot for the quick support and the high quality API. You
guys are doing awesome work! Keep it up.

~~~
DiabloD3
Why not for Android too? This looks like the kind of weather app I'd start
recommending to other people... problem is, all my other people are Androids.

~~~
lisbakke
Hey! Yeah, unfortunately it's just me writing code and it's enough work
keeping up/improving the iOS version.

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ar_turnbull
Would love to see Dark Sky in Canada. Hopefully the new owners make that a
priority :-)

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lor3
As a user of their great API I have asked myself (strangely very recently)
what would I do if forecast.io ever disappeared... Hopefully with this change
I'm less to have to find out.

Please keep the API up and running! And congratulations!

~~~
thegrossman
The API is going to be a big priority for us going forward. We have some new
development planned on that front, and AI will be able to help us out
tremendously.

------
jarrettch
This is great news. forecast.io is often the 2nd thing I check when I wake up,
after checking email/texts.

Hopefully with more devs and support, an Android version of the app will be in
the works!

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seeingfurther
BEST WEATHER APP HANDS DOWN!

Yes, I needed all caps there because I'm shouting.

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CaseFlatline
Congrats on the news! I was one of the kickstarter contributors and love the
service. Best wishes to your future growth. It's amazing to see a KS campaign
blossom.

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xal
Please come to Canada.

~~~
Polyphonie
Yes, please.

------
smeyer
I've long been a big fan of the app, and I also quite liked this post. Thanks
for all the lovely weather predictions so far and congrats on the deal!

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gajeam
This post makes me like them even more, which I didn't know was possible. Love
the _Are they going to fuck things up?_ section

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stevebot
heh I love their openness and I also love their app and API. From a consumer
perspective, I'm happy for them and hope they don't go away anytime soon.

And in case you're not aware their hourly feed has kick ass data that is
amazingly accurate.

