Brazil's government-run payments system has become dominant

> I'm thinking, maybe controversially, centralized national payment service like this should be government-run based on my experience with Alipay which is a digital payment service in China.

After dealing with many private sector services, I think a lot of things should be government run.

For instance: weather apps. Private sector ones are just a vector to track and sell your location data, and they rely on government data anyway. It'd be much better the government roll out an API and an app that uses it, so you can avoid the private sector altogether.

It's funny but I always had assumed all countries had their own state-owned weather services, until I found out there was no such thing in Germany.

That's exactly why NOAA in the US is under attack. Conservatives see $$$ potential if they privatize it.

I believe in Germany the national weather service in fact rolled out such an app, but was then stopped by a court because this counted as unfair competition with private entities.

That's not true. See https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutscher_Wetterdienst

I'm sure the NOAA is under attack because someone in the administration really wants to launch a new weather app.

Oh well! Good to know! Next time I'll use DWD instead of using those weird apps. Thanks!

i think it more has to do with wanting to cut the deficit in preparation for tax cut extension + NOAA and other science agencies are politically vulnerable in a way that medicare/ss are not

In The Netherlands, weather companies sued the national weather service because their new app was seen as competing with their interests, but they lost the court case (summary proceedings): https://www.rechtspraak.nl/Organisatie-en-contact/Organisati...

> stopped by a court because this counted as unfair competition with private entities

I came across this recently as well. This is one of the most insane aspects of our current zeitgeist.

In a world where VC unicorns and megacorps commonly engage in dumping behavior to coerce market share, public orgs still need to walk on eggshells so they don't outcompete the "uwu smol bean" private sector. Even when they are providing what could be considered a public good or necessity, like weather info. Totally insane.

Granted this is from Trumps first term, but actually yeah. https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/14/politics/noaa-nominee-accuwea...

"Speaking to the The Palm Beach Post at the time, Barry Myers said he supported the weather service returning to its “core mission … which is protecting other people’s lives and property” instead of spending “hundreds of millions of dollars a year, every day, producing forecasts of ‘warm and sunny.’”" Also from the same article: "He told ABC News in May 2005: “We work hard every day competing with other companies and we also have to compete with the government.”"

Theres some more info here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Lee_Myers

No the DWD is not allowed to provide a weather app I believe. Because it would compete with commercial apps. It offers an app which issues weather warnings though.

Windy.com gives you ECMWF. ECMWF has a much stronger model.

DWD is allowed to provide a weather app, but not for free. So they offer it for a nominal one-time fee instead.

In the US, just bookmark the NOAA projection maps and your local zip on weather.gov. you don't need an app.

NOAA is only vulnerable until a rural town gets decimated with no warning by a tornado.

I'm in NZ and actually prefer the Norwegian Govt weather site www.yr.no, which is about as accurate as our local one, easier to use and has no adverts.

In the US your weather app is effectively government run.

Your iPhone skins the government data and makes it pretty. Nobody is selling your location or information. And you can always get the data directly if you want.

100% this. My (BR) state have a weather service¹, it's amazing. What people don't realize, it's that the service isn't just made for normal people see if is gonna rain, it's that the service is fundamental for agriculture and farmers. So they have radars, frosts alerts, specifically tailored to farmers as well.

It's also used to give alerts to electricity companies, etc...

Their weather prediction, it's just way better than any other service.

There's also national service, run by CPTEC/INMET, but they are lacking funding IMO...

[1] https://simepar.br

I just needed to change language to English from below the hamburger menu icon.

Looks useful for Christchurch. Cheers

The app is still available, but to use all features you have to pay a couple of Euros: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.dwd.warnapp...

This is exactly what has been playing out in the Netherlands the past couple of months: the weather institute (KNMI) released their own weather app that is functionally the same (in some cases superior) as the commercial apps that want your consent to track and serve ads.

The commercial parties sued KNMI, even though they use the public data provided by KNMI. Luckily they lost: https://www.dutchnews.nl/2025/02/knmi-weathers-legal-app-sto...

And as a bonus, there was some Streisand Effect when this was in the news, and people have been moving to the KNMI app in droves.

Switzerland has this for weather - government data, projections up to a week in advance. Of course no ads, tons of info ie on PM2.5, pollen, avalanche risk in mountains etc.

> For instance: weather apps. Private sector ones are just a vector to track and sell your location data, and they rely on government data anyway.

Or you do it like we do here in Germany and take the dumbest route you can imagine.

We had a very well working publicly funded weather app from DWD (Deutscher Wetter Dienst). The primarily purpose of this app was to warn from extreme weather conditions, but it also included an ad free (because publicly funded) and rather accurate forecast.

Then a private entity sued claiming that the DWD app also providing weather information is unfair competition for private competitors. The won in court and now the publicly funded DWD app has a paywall for a previously free feature.

> why NOAA in the US is under attack

As far as I know, AccuWeather is the main beneficiary. You can easily find reliable sources about it.

The cause is that NOAA publishes all weather data, calculated models (global coverage), meteostations data (global coverage), and weather radars to the public for free (US only, maybe also Canada, I don't remember). Therefore, many weather companies use such data to do their business and compete directly with AccuWeather. They don't like this.

On the other hand, state weather agencies that calculate global models in many countries don't provide such data for free. Therefore, startups and small companies who work in weather and climate fields use NOAA data and directly compete with AccuWeather or don't pay them for data access.

The weather app doesn't give much money. The main business sells weather and climate data B2B: agro, insurance, logistics, retail, supply chains, advertisement, medical, etc.

Companies whose primary business is weather apps are small, and such areas are highly competitive.

Hey, don't look up what the current admins plan is for NOAA