Kinda all of the above. It did evolve into a scientific(-adjacent) thing, if that makes sense. My boyfriend’s parents have all of them sitting on a dedicated shelf. Interesting to read through.
They definitely leaned into being a cultural artifact. Jokes, anecdotes, stories, how-tos, homeopathic recipes for things like cough syrups, etc. They all look kinda the same so either brand consistency or to keep the nostalgia factor.
Their sun/moon/eclipse is rooted in real math foundations but their “proprietary” weather forecast model was developed when the publication began in 1792.
It’s like 30% hard astronomical data, 30% proprietary models that they’ve been using for generations and 40% storytelling.
edit for context on scientific side:
WRT forecast modeling, the publication claims ~80% accuracy [1] but it’s been found to come out to about ~50%+ under scrutiny [2]
They have to predict the weather for the year in a book that has to go through the publishing and distribution process ahead of time.
My local weather news has all the benefits of real time data and weather models yet I think their accuracy rate is just as poor when it comes to producing the 7 day outlook. It’s common to hear a forecast for rain/cold front/etc in 7 day outlook that just never materializes. Also the timing of the event if it does arrive is almost always off by a day or two. Often they have the whole town worried about something that’s definitely happening Friday, they talk about it all week, everyone is preparing, little league games getting rescheduled, etc. then only hours beforehand it’s well looks like maybe Sunday. Then Sunday comes and instead of inches of rain, it’s a sprinkle.
I’m not even trying to be critical of weather reporting, I get that it’s a crapshoot but doing it a year+ ahead of time and getting similar results/accuracy is actually quite impressive.
I didn't study too much meteorology in undergrad, but one thing impressed upon us is that any forecast beyond maybe 3 days is basically guesswork.
I think what might be getting observed here is that when forecasting that many days out, the local data becomes so unimportant to the model's outcome that the model is just reflecting historical climate trends. Which kind of makes both the same kind of model. Ie. when forecasting tomorrow, the current temperature and pressure data really makes a difference. But once pushed to 7 days, those data essentially become a proxy for typical weather at that time of year, possibly down-weighted by a lot.
I just woke up and I feel like I'm doing a very poor job trying to describe this.
I think you are describing it pretty well, and I've noticed the same thing. The farther into the future the forecast goes, the higher the probability is that it will look like the historical average.
One thing that I've found to help a lot is to go to weather.gov and look at the "forecast discussion". Often it will help to understand what types of uncertainties exist within the forecast.
It isn't unusual to see notes that make it really clear that 24-48 hour variations are expected, or that massive differences will exist based upon hard to predict variables. "Hey we think it will rain heavily as far south as X, but actually it might end up staying north of Y in which case X will stay dry"
It is easy to see how hard it can be even if the forecast itself turns out to be fairly accurate at a high level.
That depends on what you care about. Will it rain at a specific date/time - getting that for tomorrow is hard, much less a year. However you can often predict if this will be a wet or dry year with reasonable accuracy and that is important information (farmers plant different seeds). I doubt their model is very good at this, but science can do well enough.
Even if we had perfect information at one instant in time, modeling a chaotic system going into the future becomes increasingly difficult.
We have far from perfect information and very flawed models too.
Interestingly, there seems to be some success with AI models that almost completely skip the science and jump straight to pattern recognition. It's interesting to think of modern 10-day weather forecasting going back to its old almanac roots.
> My local weather news has all the benefits of real time data and weather models yet I think their accuracy rate is just as poor when it comes to producing the 7 day outlook.
Where is your local source getting their forecast from?
> A seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather about 80 percent of the time and a five-day forecast can accurately predict the weather approximately 90 percent of the time. However, a 10-day—or longer—forecast is only right about half the time.
There are also 'technicalities': I'm in Toronto, Canada, which is 40km east-to-east and 20km from the lake to the northern border. If rain hits the western half (around 427/Sherway/Etobicoke) but not the eastern half (Scarborough bluffs), is a "it will rain" forecast correct for the city? Some will perceive it as yes and some as no.
They don’t have to predict the weather for a year. They choose to do something which cannot be done. Certainly not with any known technique, and probably not even in theory.
If I predict that the weather in my location on November 7, 2076 will be moderately cool and sunny (as it is today), I have a pretty good chance of being correct. I wouldn’t find it impressive, though.
This comment appears to confuse the Farmers' Almanac (published since 1818) with the Old Farmer's Almanac (published since 1792). It's really unclear which one you're talking about.
Artificial intelligence chip startup Groq Inc. raised $750 million at a post-funding valuation of $6.9 billion, highlighting investor interest in companies seeking to alleviate a shortage of chips and computing power for AI workloads.
The round was led by Disruptive, with “significant investment” from Blackrock Inc., Neuberger Berman Group LLC and Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, as well as existing investors including Samsung Electronics Co., Cisco Systems Inc., D1 and Altimeter. Participants also included a “large US-based West Coast mutual fund,” Groq said in a statement.
The company will use the funds to expand its data-center capacity, including new locations this year and next, according to Jonathan Ross, chief executive officer. Groq plans to announce its first Asia-Pacific location this year, he said.
Nvidia Corp., which dominates the market for processors that train AI models, is trying to keep a large lead in the market for inference — running models once they have been developed. Startups including Groq and companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google are developing their own rival chips and in some cases selling computing services that use them.
“We’ve had customers come to us asking for more capacity than we can satisfy at the moment,” Ross said in an interview.
Groq, which sells chips and data-center computing power fueled by its processors, operates 13 facilities in the US, Canada, Europe and the Middle East. The company powers some of the Saudi AI company Humain’s services, including the newly released Humain chat product, according to Ross. Groq also supported the release of OpenAI’s GPT-OSS model in Saudi Arabia.
The company has expanded its capacity by more than 10% in the last month and all of that is already in use, Ross said. He declined to say how much capacity the company has in total.
The funding round was originally closed at about $600 million. Groq asked investors to reopen it for additional participants. Details of that deal were reported earlier by Bloomberg and the Information.
The Information reported in July that Groq had slashed more than $1 billion from its revenue projections for 2025. A person familiar with the matter said Groq expected the revenue that was trimmed from its projections this year to be realized in 2026, Bloomberg reported in July. Ross declined to comment on sales.
There is a silly scene in a movie called ‘Liar Liar’ that I used to love as a kid about the importance of not delaying a visit; the underlying plot is that Fletcher (Jim Carrey) is unable to is lie following his son making a birthday wish.
Fletcher:
Your honor, would the court be willing to grant me a short bathroom break?
Judge:
Can't it wait?
Fletcher:
Yes it can. But I've heard that if you hold it you could damage the prostate gland, making it very difficult to get an erection, or even become aroused!
Judge:
Is that true?
Fletcher:
It has to be!
Judge:
In that case I'd better take a quick break myself.
Absent broader regulation, we all know that apps like Tea depend HEAVILY on user trust. However, I am a bit concerned users either won't fully grasp the severity of this breach or won't care enough and end up sticking with the app regardless.
A somewhat embarrassing but relevant example: my friends and I used Grindr for years (many still do), and we remained loyal despite the company's terrible track record with user data, privacy, and security as there simply wasn't (and still isn't) a viable alternative offering the same service at the expected level.
It appears Tea saw a pretty large pop in discussion across social channels over the last few days so I'm pretty hopeful this will lend itself to widespread discussion where the users can understand just how poorly this reflects on the company and determine if they want to stick around or jump ship.
I work both cybersec + fun/research, LOVE this resource and lucky to have come across it here. Subscribed via email & looking forward to RSS. Thanks for sharing it here!
Thanks so much, that really means a lot! I'm actively upgrading the feed right now: more vendors, faster signal (closer to real-time), and smarter triage to cut through the noise.
I’m also shaping a Pro tier and would love your input. Some of the things I’m working on:
I was ~8(ish) when my parents took me to their last World Series. Now, I'm a fan fueled by nostalgia and a deeply ingrained belief that 'THIS is the year they will go ALL the way!'
They used to be connected; it was split in ~2017(ish) with the Canadian division having been bought while the US stores closed all locations. Doug Putman bought it in 2021 and I saw an article about 3 or 4 months ago that Putman took on ~$120M in debt financing to scale out the org.
I work as a server on weekends to stay sane and for....some reason, corporate had the grand idea that automated cleaning robots (it's like a roomba but a bit taller) going around would improve the guest experience.
Our floors aren't ever really filled with trash though! We're one of those 2010s-era brewpubs so it's a large, open space but these things are so awkward to navigate around and I wish so much that they would send them to the basement.
Sorry for being nosy, is it about fighting loneliness? If that's the case, is it effective / something you'd recommend?
I've been thinking about it for myself, and I worry that the physical exaustion, coping with nasty customers and lack of deep relationships on the job would make any benefit moot.
Mostly to get a few miles of steps in, honestly. Throughout high-school, undergrad and grad school I worked as a server and it's just become something that helps me stay sane (and I love the food we serve tbh).
For what it's worth, working as a server can be really helpful for loneliness though - at virtually every place I've worked, the coworkers become very close and good friends as we all commiserate together throughout the shift haha
Serving did help me a ton with getting comfortable speaking in large groups of people; was a huge benefit - being able to strike up a conversation with just about anyone, build rapport and make a connection has been infinitely helpful in my personal and professional life.
I'm sure there is a better way to frame this but when I approach a table of guests I kind of pull from a "rolodex of personalities" to instantly make them comfortable and build rapport (since it's kind of awkward on the guest side, too, if that makes sense) - it's like having hundreds of small, genuine conversations a day. Some tables can be toxic but they are quickly forgotten by another group who are incredibly fun to wait on.
Definitely recommend trying it out at a non-corporate location if you have one! I work at a Rock Bottom which is a definitely a corporate owned brand but it's a lot less suffocating than a chain like Applebees, Olive Garden or others in that vein. A local place will give you a lot of agency and autonomy on how to manage your tables - the owner at the Mexican restaurant I worked at would walk up to your table and tell them to 'get the hell out' if they were being hostile towards you
Got the same sentiment from the article - I think the value-case that is being implied is Ohanian and Rose leading the platform; not entirely sold on that pitch but interested to see what ends up happening with it.
They definitely leaned into being a cultural artifact. Jokes, anecdotes, stories, how-tos, homeopathic recipes for things like cough syrups, etc. They all look kinda the same so either brand consistency or to keep the nostalgia factor.
Their sun/moon/eclipse is rooted in real math foundations but their “proprietary” weather forecast model was developed when the publication began in 1792.
It’s like 30% hard astronomical data, 30% proprietary models that they’ve been using for generations and 40% storytelling.
edit for context on scientific side:
WRT forecast modeling, the publication claims ~80% accuracy [1] but it’s been found to come out to about ~50%+ under scrutiny [2]
[1] https://www.almanac.com/2026-old-farmers-almanac
[2] https://climate.colostate.edu/blog/index.php/2024/08/23/shou...