I thought I’d simply put this post here in case anyone else had a similar question. Firefox v130 added a weather widget to the new tab page by default (it can be disabled in settings) that sources weather information from Accuweather. I was wondering whether it connected directly to Accuweather to get the information. After some investigation with Firefox’s “Browser Console” tool, it seems like the weather information is proxied through Mozilla’s servers. It probably functions similarly to this feature: Get your local weather forecast from the Firefox address bar | Firefox Help which also specifies that “personally identifiable information” is not shared with 3rd parties.
I feel like a caveman saying this but I haven’t really a need for weather app that could be solved by knowing yesterday’s weather by simple observation and looking out the window right now .
This is probably critical for only some activities, like maybe stargazing with a telescope. But that sort of activity requires pre-planning for at the very least a week ahead and asking for a weather outlook at that length of time ahead seems like impossible.
Do the other forum people have an actual use for weather app other than their “nice to know” factor?
If you live in an apartment building, knowing what temperature it is outside before leaving could be nice since it can be sunny out but quite chilly. Also knowing if its slated to rain later can be good.
Weather can make or break specific plans. If I want to go to an all day outside activity, I’d probably check the weather and cancel if it rains all day. For day to day usage, I don’t really check. Sometimes I check the weather to know if I should dress warmer or colder.
Perhaps there are jobs like farming where this information is more critical?
The pure mobile apps from weather services can be privacy sieves, as the apps are heavily location based so they can throw up notifications telling you it’ll rain in X mins.
Glad to see Mozilla is acting as a proxy in front of us. However, they are probably paying for this data feed which means less money spent on browser features, performance and compatibility.
I can only speak for certain areas of the US, but some local news stations really hype local weather and give it more time on broadcasts than weather really needs. Weather is nearly sensational. But it can be a pretty interesting hobby.
Not exactly on topic anymore, but I think it’s a decent compromise to allow only approximate location for weather apps, which on iOS puts you in an area of about 10 square miles. This means that you can get weather for the right town (or one town over) without handing over your exact movements throughout the day. Of course, you could always turn off location services and manually change the town if you’re relatively stationary.