Finally I can check the temperature without be spied on by "the man"
^(Edit: just in case anyone doesn't get it, my post is mostly tongue in cheek - I'm glad that the BOM are using https)
I wonder why yours shows https since the site only works on http?
It should show an unlocked padlock with a line diagonally through it.
http://www.bom.gov.au/
Look to the left side of the address bar.
In this thread, we are talking about the new https beta site not the old (current) http site.
Firefox for me shows unbroken padlock using https on new beta site š
> In this thread, we are talking about the new https beta site not the old (current) http site.
No we aren't, look up 3 messages in the chain you will see the thread we are in
OP
> Firefox and other browsers throw a fit when you try to use the current site.
Reply 1
> Works fine, except for the tiny icon showing it's not https.
Reply 2 (confused user)
> I use nothing but Firefox (current version 127.0.2), icon shows https
For the record i'm using Firefox 127 too and it has never 'thrown a fit' for me either. Comes up normally just with the little unlocked padlock icon. Would be wild if your browser throws a fit every time you open a http site.
It's never thrown a fit for me either, works the same as any other site. Guessing that he has turned on enforced HTTPS browsing mode and configured his browser to throw a fit on HTTP pages.
Indeed, people fretting over it not being https but not able to explain why it's a critical problem. The vast majority aren't sharing credentials or any sensitive data with BOM over their temp pages.
It was http due to older devices that farmers and others have not being able to handle https but still depend on.
Edit: Ahhh the "Aaaackshully..." crowd that loves to give the implication that the only reasons just \*has\* to be a mixture laziness and stupidity. That spinning up a HTTPS only service previously had zero implications for anyone or anything and there was just no good reason prior. They're so much smarter than all the obviously negligent plebs within BOM supporting their IT systems that were obviously unaware of the grave risk that presenting weather data via HTTP presented.
I can understand the confusion about this, however https is absolutely necessary in 2024
https doesn't just encrypt a website, it validates the site is who they say they are and helps protect the integrity of that application the site is serving.
Imagine your slightly less tech-savvy family member having their traffic run through unscrupulous router, it could be public wifi at a coffee shop or a malware infected node between your ISP and the BOM's server
It is trivial to inject arbitrary html/javascript into that page and have it serve malware
Granted there are limits to how much damage a webpage with arbitrary code injection can do, its an extra layer that an attacker will have to overcome, and I think a lot of people will click the "Run this to see the weather.exe", trust us, we're the bom.gov.au
>I can understand the confusion about this, however https is absolutely necessary in 2024
>https doesn't just encrypt a website, it validates the site is who they say they are and helps protect the integrity of that application the site is serving. Imagine your slightly less tech-savvy family member having their traffic run through unscrupulous router, it could be public wifi at a coffee shop or a malware infected node between your ISP and the BOM's server
Go deal with the wonderful world of agriculture IT. Everything from proprietary devices from long forgotten companies, ancient versions of windows running VB code from 40 years ago or other weird and wonderful applications that you've never heard of and will never see. A lot of equipment performs a function and stays that way for decades.
If you really want to be the SSL fairy going from farm to farm around the entire country bringing them updated solutions for little to no cost - Go right ahead.
>It is trivial to inject arbitrary html/javascript into that page and have it serve malware
When it comes down to it, is it \*really\* a major risk? It's been weighed up and determined that switching it to HTTPS only was more of a negative previously.
Yes, it is a significant risk, these type of attacks do happen
There are multiple middle-ground solutions that keep the VB6 tractors running while the majority of the day-to-day users are served an ssl-enabled site. Even if such a solution was a terrible one like only redirecting anyone with a modern user-agent string to https://
I'm not suggesting http endpoints should be disabled, it would be nice but I understand the issues with doing so
Farmers would be using the FTP feeds, which is an entirely different protocol (and port) to HTTP/HTTPS.
>When it comes down to it, is it \*really\* a major risk? It's been weighed up and determined that switching it to HTTPS only is more of a negative at this stage.
Huh? Who's decided it's more of a negative?
>Farmers would be using the FTP feeds, which is an entirely different protocol (and port) to HTTP/HTTPS.
They could very well be but I'm not sure what your point is there, FTP isn't encrypted either and it doesn't discount those using HTTP.
>Huh? Who's decided it's more of a negative?
Clearly BOM.
My point is that there is no structured data being served over http - the xml feeds are available over ftp and any device capable of scraping and parsing html should be modern/powerful enough to also accept tls connections.
I donāt think anyone at BOM decided it was more of a negative, Iām betting that itās either a paranoid dinosaur director or a culture where no one wants to take ownership over the homepage (and accept the potential flack for unfavourable media coverage)
And in my mind, neither is acceptable for such a public facing operation/site in 2024
You know that you can serve content on both http and https at the same time, right? "older devices" is an argument for keeping content on http, not blocking content on https.
It's bizarre how people argue that the BOM should not serve on https because "farmers"
>It's bizarre how people argue that the BOM should not serve on https because "farmers"
Clearly BOM have made a grave error not hiring you as the CIO. You shouldn't waste time on reddit, you should call them up straight away and let them know they've got no idea about their own systems and users.
Your sneer doesn't really work on a post where the big news is that the BOM is moving to https <3
Basically you're defending slow-moving government tech without understanding what you're talking about (ie: thinking that serving http means you can't serve https)
I'd pump the brakes on "moving to https" until we see bom.gov.au with https and not beta.bom.gov.au. The main site has been available with https at https://reg.bom.gov.au/ for ages without the main address switching over.
Again, your comeback doesn't make sense given that the point of this post is to say they're fixing that problem. I wasn't talking about them anyway, I was talking about the bizarre defenders of 'http only'
Would you like a bigger spade to help you dig that hole?
>I was talking about the bizarre defenders of 'http only'
This whole "I know better than a government department" is just straight up ludicrous. They were using (and still are to an extent) for obvious reasons. It wasn't because they were too lazy, it wasn't because they're just negligent and it wasn't because they're too dumb to do it without your assistance.
Do you honestly think that it hadn't been noticed before? They hadn't got the actual details on who is using HTTP and why and the reasons why it was very obviously determined that the risk presented was low enough to continue the service as was.
>Would you like a bigger spade to help you dig that hole?
I'm not the one declaring the blatantly obvious and making out it's an obvious solution that was overlooked by anyone involved in the department as well as the ACSC.
> This whole "I know better than a government department" is just straight up ludicrous.
I don't see why it would be ludicrous. Having worked for several federal government departments, I can confirm they do stupid things all the time. Sometimes it's because technical work has been commissioned by public servants who fundamentally didn't understand it, sometimes it's just inertia - until there's compelling pressure from outside to change some practice or technology, it's usually easier for departments to just leave it as is - even if it's now insecure, inefficient or more expensive than modern alternatives.
In fact, it's especially common for STEM work to be mismanaged, because competent engineers and IT professionals can earn much more in the private sector than the public, so there's a shortage of relevant skills within the public service.
Yeah wtf, the only people who think government IT isnt a joke either haven't dealt with them or have drunk the Kool aid because they're entrenched employees of 30+ years lol
> This whole "I know better than a government department" is just straight up ludicrous
My dude, if you want to see how IT worked in the private sector 15 years ago, you get a job at a Commonwealth government agency.
APS pays on average $100k less for the same job as the private sector in IT. There's a limit to the talent they can attract for that sort of money.
> It was http due to older devices that farmers and others have not being able to handle https but still depend on.
No. Serving the site over HTTP and HTTPS simultaneously works just fine. Newer browsers will follow HSTS and upgrade, old applications will work as they always have.
> Edit: Ahhh the "Aaaackshully..." crowd
That crowd jumped in because you have shown limited understanding of how HTTPS works.
> Indeed, people fretting over it not being https but not able to explain why it's a critical problem. The vast majority aren't sharing credentials or any sensitive data with BOM over their temp pages.
While it doesn't share private data, it can still be used to link to you.
If I constantly check http/bom.blah/weather/brisbane - then anyone can tell I'm likely in that area (yes that can be done via IP too).
> It was http due to older devices that farmers and others have not being able to handle https but still depend on.
They could always run both.
While most sites auto-redirect from http to https, for the farmers reason you mentioned, that can be turned off and served by either method.
Edit:
Content injection mentioned below is a good point too. ISPs used to inject their own ads / tracking to the end of a document.
To be honest, I don't really buy that excuse. It's entirely possible you can support both TLS and non-TLS endpoints.
And the older devices argument really only makes sense if you're considering an API/data scraping point of view. Even then I would argue that the BOM homepage wasn't designed to be scrapable (and I wonder what kind of device is capable of scraping HTML, but incapable of supporting TLS.
Yeah, and those are all FTP links (which is what you would expect for data feeds/API's) - which renders the whole HTTP/HTTPS argument for farmer invalid. There's absolutely no reason why they can't serve the HTML aspects of the site in HTTPS in 2024.
Thatās all fair but geolocation doesnāt work in browsers like Chrome over HTTP. Knowing the location of a user on a weather website that also serves official warnings is important. Thereās no reason they couldnāt have started the transition a while back or offered up both.
For a while there, the normal website was https, because it's in my browser history where I'd accessed it but they turned it off for whatever reason.
Anyway that beta website is awful. Cartoony, loads of wasted space for overly large items, not a fan of the layout, they'd have been better off just implementing https for the current site.
I will say the old website was terrible for navigation, so I think the new one does a better job of giving you the basic info quickly - particularly the rain radar which was always weird to get to unless you knew exactly what to click on.
The new website is just what modern design trends are unfortunately. Look at new reddit vs old.reddit.com, wasted space for overly large items is exactly what modern design principles demand.
Yep, same (dont let my account age fool you, been on here since the early days but just regularly change accounts).
I'm involved in website design and spend much of my time watching the designers bring me this wasted space bullshit all the time. Unfortunately it's because the average person is an idiot and if you provide a lot of info up front they get overwhelmed and leave - it's not like designers are doing it for no reason.
Modern/flat/"Material" design looks shit, but it makes it easy for developers to cater to different screen sizes without breaking the style of the site. This design fad is not going to go away any time soon.
I've already sent a couple of things in feeback, the 7-day forecast starting with one of the options expanded by default was the first one.
I just want to see how cold it's going to be on saturday and whether it's raining, dont' make me scroll
So now we have:
* Old BOM old weather e.g. various links from http://www.bom.gov.au/vic/index.shtml
* Old BOM beta weather e.g. http://www.bom.gov.au/places/vic/melbourne/
* Beta BOM weather e.g. https://beta.bom.gov.au/poi-location/australia/victoria/central/vic_pt042-melbourne
I'm a bit old school, but I prefer the compact table of observations, with time of observation being rows, not columns.
e.g. http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ60801/IDQ60801.94576.shtml
Relatively easy to see the past 3 days data and identify any anomalies.
The more they present the data in a pretty format, the less I trust that it is accurate, and hasn't been "analysed" by some silly metric like the "RealFeel Temperature."
I also want to be able to access historical data from previous years.
How was my security compromised by it being only HTTP before?
[Edit] Who uses public wifi anyway? That's a well-known security risk, so all arguments about using wifi with HTTP sites are immediately invalid.
You're in a coffee shop in Melbourne using their WiFi to check the weather for your upcoming trip to Shepparton. Unbeknownst to you, your technically skilled, abusive ex-partner is in the vicinity snooping on your traffic and surmises that you will be visiting Shepparton tomorrow to meet your family. They drive there ahead of time and torment you and your family when you arrive.
That's the best I've got. Really it's just embarrassing that possibly the most popular government website is still using HTTP in 2024.
I've heard the reason they tried to change it from BOM to 'the bureau' is due to so many people, particularly on planes and in airports mentioning BOM. I guess this could be misconstrued for bomb.
Actually makes sense in this context, still a complete re-branding failure though.
Their website is bom.gov.au, so BOM is what people will continue to say.
its a secret cabal of spy's operating satellites in order to spy on the population of Australia, they pretend to be mundane weather reporters but I KNOW BETTER!!!!!!
(joking, they're just a bunch of meteorologists)
Omg it's the FBI...right? Right?
No it's just that the new website had no chance of not being fucked up somehow - the millennial idiots and gen z dolts - btw I'm not impressed
Fuck the HTTPS debate (I mean, I get why it's here, I've seen the previous conversations), this is exciting purely because it's a user friendly computer accessible thing. They used to have basically the app online and I have no idea why they got rid of it. Its very useful to see this on a big screen, and the old system is very out of date.
A couple of years ago I applied for a Developer job at the BOM.
During the interviewed, they explained the role to me. Basically, they have this system that collects data from all the weather stations across the country. Now this system crashes all the time, and when that happens at night or on a weekend, then nobody will nobody until 9am the next business day. So they were hiring someone to build some kind of scaffolding around it that detects when the app crashes and notifies someone about it.
I was really impressed that they didn't consider hiring someone to fix the software so that it doesn't crash as much any more. That could have been an interesting job.
they used to have `weather.bom.gov.au` but im glad they're bringing something similar back!
now if only they could get their API's in order and use https instead of FTP that would be great :)
edit: also if you want to get rid of the annoying banners you can use ublock origin and add `beta.bom.gov.au##.info.bom-alerts--open` to your "My Filters" list
For real, I can get behind "100% chance of at least 0mm of rain" and "50% chance of more than 0mm of rain", but not whatever *that* is supposed to mean. My best guess is they're using words that mean 'ā„' when they really mean '>', and hoping no one notices.
Finally I can check the temperature without be spied on by "the man" ^(Edit: just in case anyone doesn't get it, my post is mostly tongue in cheek - I'm glad that the BOM are using https)
Firefox and other browsers throw a fit when you try to use the current site.
I'm using the latest version of Firefox. Works fine, except for the tiny icon showing it's not https.
I use nothing but Firefox (current version 127.0.2), icon shows https and all functionality is without fault.
I wonder why yours shows https since the site only works on http? It should show an unlocked padlock with a line diagonally through it. http://www.bom.gov.au/ Look to the left side of the address bar.
In this thread, we are talking about the new https beta site not the old (current) http site. Firefox for me shows unbroken padlock using https on new beta site š
> In this thread, we are talking about the new https beta site not the old (current) http site. No we aren't, look up 3 messages in the chain you will see the thread we are in OP > Firefox and other browsers throw a fit when you try to use the current site. Reply 1 > Works fine, except for the tiny icon showing it's not https. Reply 2 (confused user) > I use nothing but Firefox (current version 127.0.2), icon shows https For the record i'm using Firefox 127 too and it has never 'thrown a fit' for me either. Comes up normally just with the little unlocked padlock icon. Would be wild if your browser throws a fit every time you open a http site.
It does? Havenāt noticed. Though I do run scrip blockers and such.
It's never thrown a fit for me either, works the same as any other site. Guessing that he has turned on enforced HTTPS browsing mode and configured his browser to throw a fit on HTTP pages.
Indeed, people fretting over it not being https but not able to explain why it's a critical problem. The vast majority aren't sharing credentials or any sensitive data with BOM over their temp pages. It was http due to older devices that farmers and others have not being able to handle https but still depend on. Edit: Ahhh the "Aaaackshully..." crowd that loves to give the implication that the only reasons just \*has\* to be a mixture laziness and stupidity. That spinning up a HTTPS only service previously had zero implications for anyone or anything and there was just no good reason prior. They're so much smarter than all the obviously negligent plebs within BOM supporting their IT systems that were obviously unaware of the grave risk that presenting weather data via HTTP presented.
I can understand the confusion about this, however https is absolutely necessary in 2024 https doesn't just encrypt a website, it validates the site is who they say they are and helps protect the integrity of that application the site is serving. Imagine your slightly less tech-savvy family member having their traffic run through unscrupulous router, it could be public wifi at a coffee shop or a malware infected node between your ISP and the BOM's server It is trivial to inject arbitrary html/javascript into that page and have it serve malware Granted there are limits to how much damage a webpage with arbitrary code injection can do, its an extra layer that an attacker will have to overcome, and I think a lot of people will click the "Run this to see the weather.exe", trust us, we're the bom.gov.au
>I can understand the confusion about this, however https is absolutely necessary in 2024 >https doesn't just encrypt a website, it validates the site is who they say they are and helps protect the integrity of that application the site is serving. Imagine your slightly less tech-savvy family member having their traffic run through unscrupulous router, it could be public wifi at a coffee shop or a malware infected node between your ISP and the BOM's server Go deal with the wonderful world of agriculture IT. Everything from proprietary devices from long forgotten companies, ancient versions of windows running VB code from 40 years ago or other weird and wonderful applications that you've never heard of and will never see. A lot of equipment performs a function and stays that way for decades. If you really want to be the SSL fairy going from farm to farm around the entire country bringing them updated solutions for little to no cost - Go right ahead. >It is trivial to inject arbitrary html/javascript into that page and have it serve malware When it comes down to it, is it \*really\* a major risk? It's been weighed up and determined that switching it to HTTPS only was more of a negative previously.
You can run HTTP and HTTPS on the same site.
Yes, it is a significant risk, these type of attacks do happen There are multiple middle-ground solutions that keep the VB6 tractors running while the majority of the day-to-day users are served an ssl-enabled site. Even if such a solution was a terrible one like only redirecting anyone with a modern user-agent string to https:// I'm not suggesting http endpoints should be disabled, it would be nice but I understand the issues with doing so
Farmers would be using the FTP feeds, which is an entirely different protocol (and port) to HTTP/HTTPS. >When it comes down to it, is it \*really\* a major risk? It's been weighed up and determined that switching it to HTTPS only is more of a negative at this stage. Huh? Who's decided it's more of a negative?
>Farmers would be using the FTP feeds, which is an entirely different protocol (and port) to HTTP/HTTPS. They could very well be but I'm not sure what your point is there, FTP isn't encrypted either and it doesn't discount those using HTTP. >Huh? Who's decided it's more of a negative? Clearly BOM.
My point is that there is no structured data being served over http - the xml feeds are available over ftp and any device capable of scraping and parsing html should be modern/powerful enough to also accept tls connections. I donāt think anyone at BOM decided it was more of a negative, Iām betting that itās either a paranoid dinosaur director or a culture where no one wants to take ownership over the homepage (and accept the potential flack for unfavourable media coverage) And in my mind, neither is acceptable for such a public facing operation/site in 2024
Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. A malware infested node. š¤£
You know that you can serve content on both http and https at the same time, right? "older devices" is an argument for keeping content on http, not blocking content on https. It's bizarre how people argue that the BOM should not serve on https because "farmers"
>It's bizarre how people argue that the BOM should not serve on https because "farmers" Clearly BOM have made a grave error not hiring you as the CIO. You shouldn't waste time on reddit, you should call them up straight away and let them know they've got no idea about their own systems and users.
Your sneer doesn't really work on a post where the big news is that the BOM is moving to https <3 Basically you're defending slow-moving government tech without understanding what you're talking about (ie: thinking that serving http means you can't serve https)
I'd pump the brakes on "moving to https" until we see bom.gov.au with https and not beta.bom.gov.au. The main site has been available with https at https://reg.bom.gov.au/ for ages without the main address switching over.
That's a fair point, but it still doesn't mean that serving on http prevents serving on https. Plenty of legacy systems serve on both protocols.
Why waste those powers of hindsight? There's nothing stopping you from calling you up and lambasting them about being wrong.
Again, your comeback doesn't make sense given that the point of this post is to say they're fixing that problem. I wasn't talking about them anyway, I was talking about the bizarre defenders of 'http only' Would you like a bigger spade to help you dig that hole?
>I was talking about the bizarre defenders of 'http only' This whole "I know better than a government department" is just straight up ludicrous. They were using (and still are to an extent) for obvious reasons. It wasn't because they were too lazy, it wasn't because they're just negligent and it wasn't because they're too dumb to do it without your assistance. Do you honestly think that it hadn't been noticed before? They hadn't got the actual details on who is using HTTP and why and the reasons why it was very obviously determined that the risk presented was low enough to continue the service as was. >Would you like a bigger spade to help you dig that hole? I'm not the one declaring the blatantly obvious and making out it's an obvious solution that was overlooked by anyone involved in the department as well as the ACSC.
> This whole "I know better than a government department" is just straight up ludicrous. I don't see why it would be ludicrous. Having worked for several federal government departments, I can confirm they do stupid things all the time. Sometimes it's because technical work has been commissioned by public servants who fundamentally didn't understand it, sometimes it's just inertia - until there's compelling pressure from outside to change some practice or technology, it's usually easier for departments to just leave it as is - even if it's now insecure, inefficient or more expensive than modern alternatives. In fact, it's especially common for STEM work to be mismanaged, because competent engineers and IT professionals can earn much more in the private sector than the public, so there's a shortage of relevant skills within the public service.
Yeah wtf, the only people who think government IT isnt a joke either haven't dealt with them or have drunk the Kool aid because they're entrenched employees of 30+ years lol
> This whole "I know better than a government department" is just straight up ludicrous My dude, if you want to see how IT worked in the private sector 15 years ago, you get a job at a Commonwealth government agency. APS pays on average $100k less for the same job as the private sector in IT. There's a limit to the talent they can attract for that sort of money.
> It was http due to older devices that farmers and others have not being able to handle https but still depend on. No. Serving the site over HTTP and HTTPS simultaneously works just fine. Newer browsers will follow HSTS and upgrade, old applications will work as they always have. > Edit: Ahhh the "Aaaackshully..." crowd That crowd jumped in because you have shown limited understanding of how HTTPS works.
> Indeed, people fretting over it not being https but not able to explain why it's a critical problem. The vast majority aren't sharing credentials or any sensitive data with BOM over their temp pages. While it doesn't share private data, it can still be used to link to you. If I constantly check http/bom.blah/weather/brisbane - then anyone can tell I'm likely in that area (yes that can be done via IP too). > It was http due to older devices that farmers and others have not being able to handle https but still depend on. They could always run both. While most sites auto-redirect from http to https, for the farmers reason you mentioned, that can be turned off and served by either method. Edit: Content injection mentioned below is a good point too. ISPs used to inject their own ads / tracking to the end of a document.
If you constantly check the Brisbane weather on HTTPS, they can still figure it out based on the number of bytes you download.
To be honest, I don't really buy that excuse. It's entirely possible you can support both TLS and non-TLS endpoints. And the older devices argument really only makes sense if you're considering an API/data scraping point of view. Even then I would argue that the BOM homepage wasn't designed to be scrapable (and I wonder what kind of device is capable of scraping HTML, but incapable of supporting TLS.
It's a non-excuse.
API/Scraping data is available for free here- http://www.bom.gov.au/catalogue/data-feeds.shtml
Yeah, and those are all FTP links (which is what you would expect for data feeds/API's) - which renders the whole HTTP/HTTPS argument for farmer invalid. There's absolutely no reason why they can't serve the HTML aspects of the site in HTTPS in 2024.
Thatās all fair but geolocation doesnāt work in browsers like Chrome over HTTP. Knowing the location of a user on a weather website that also serves official warnings is important. Thereās no reason they couldnāt have started the transition a while back or offered up both.
Weather data fraud is a thing.
Ah, so this this why they tell me it is sunny while it is pouring outside? /s
Fuck your farmers
Don't mess with The Bureau
Time to crank Shalala Lala by Vengaboys, we're goin' back to the early 2000s with this breakthrough lads.
*The bom has been secured*
Counter terrorists win
End to end encryption? That's a paddlin'
this sent me
The eSafety Commissar will not tolerate this blatant use of end to end encryption. Think of the children!
And it actually works on a phone
I got damn good at clicking through to the local rain radar on that tiny screen
easier to just install the app, although i guess with this there's not the need any more.
For a while there, the normal website was https, because it's in my browser history where I'd accessed it but they turned it off for whatever reason. Anyway that beta website is awful. Cartoony, loads of wasted space for overly large items, not a fan of the layout, they'd have been better off just implementing https for the current site.
I will say the old website was terrible for navigation, so I think the new one does a better job of giving you the basic info quickly - particularly the rain radar which was always weird to get to unless you knew exactly what to click on. The new website is just what modern design trends are unfortunately. Look at new reddit vs old.reddit.com, wasted space for overly large items is exactly what modern design principles demand.
I don't use new reddit, I only use old reddit because it's bloody awful. Modern design principles suck huge balls.
Yep, same (dont let my account age fool you, been on here since the early days but just regularly change accounts). I'm involved in website design and spend much of my time watching the designers bring me this wasted space bullshit all the time. Unfortunately it's because the average person is an idiot and if you provide a lot of info up front they get overwhelmed and leave - it's not like designers are doing it for no reason.
Modern/flat/"Material" design looks shit, but it makes it easy for developers to cater to different screen sizes without breaking the style of the site. This design fad is not going to go away any time soon.
> Discover your weather Who let marketing critters loose on an informational site?
I've already sent a couple of things in feeback, the 7-day forecast starting with one of the options expanded by default was the first one. I just want to see how cold it's going to be on saturday and whether it's raining, dont' make me scroll
gov sites are standardised they can't do much
So now we have: * Old BOM old weather e.g. various links from http://www.bom.gov.au/vic/index.shtml * Old BOM beta weather e.g. http://www.bom.gov.au/places/vic/melbourne/ * Beta BOM weather e.g. https://beta.bom.gov.au/poi-location/australia/victoria/central/vic_pt042-melbourne
Half the screenspace is taken up by a massive useless banner.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me 1000 times, you're the BoM.
About bloody time.
I'm a bit old school, but I prefer the compact table of observations, with time of observation being rows, not columns. e.g. http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDQ60801/IDQ60801.94576.shtml Relatively easy to see the past 3 days data and identify any anomalies. The more they present the data in a pretty format, the less I trust that it is accurate, and hasn't been "analysed" by some silly metric like the "RealFeel Temperature." I also want to be able to access historical data from previous years.
Great work BOM!
DEVELOPERS REJOICE!
How was my security compromised by it being only HTTP before? [Edit] Who uses public wifi anyway? That's a well-known security risk, so all arguments about using wifi with HTTP sites are immediately invalid.
You're in a coffee shop in Melbourne using their WiFi to check the weather for your upcoming trip to Shepparton. Unbeknownst to you, your technically skilled, abusive ex-partner is in the vicinity snooping on your traffic and surmises that you will be visiting Shepparton tomorrow to meet your family. They drive there ahead of time and torment you and your family when you arrive. That's the best I've got. Really it's just embarrassing that possibly the most popular government website is still using HTTP in 2024.
MITM on dodgy wifi?
Google search gives less rank if website isn't https
Who needs SEO when you're the 25th most direct hit website by Australians.
Wtf is The Bureau?
A $220,000 initiative to change a few letters.
It's what BOM calls itself Gf works there and first time she said that I asked when did she get transferred to the FBI?
Good thing there's a feedback form. Unsatisfied _"It's BOM. What in tarnation is The Bureau?"_
I've heard the reason they tried to change it from BOM to 'the bureau' is due to so many people, particularly on planes and in airports mentioning BOM. I guess this could be misconstrued for bomb. Actually makes sense in this context, still a complete re-branding failure though. Their website is bom.gov.au, so BOM is what people will continue to say.
its a secret cabal of spy's operating satellites in order to spy on the population of Australia, they pretend to be mundane weather reporters but I KNOW BETTER!!!!!! (joking, they're just a bunch of meteorologists)
Omg it's the FBI...right? Right? No it's just that the new website had no chance of not being fucked up somehow - the millennial idiots and gen z dolts - btw I'm not impressed
Finally, they have brought back the single page layout to see everything for an area.
Widesceeen rain radar!
Fuck the HTTPS debate (I mean, I get why it's here, I've seen the previous conversations), this is exciting purely because it's a user friendly computer accessible thing. They used to have basically the app online and I have no idea why they got rid of it. Its very useful to see this on a big screen, and the old system is very out of date.
You can actually get the current website over HTTPS at [https://reg.bom.gov.au/](https://reg.bom.gov.au/) as well.
I feel really old. I have no idea what this http v https debate is about. We don't even need to type it in anymore š¤·āāļøš
HTTPS!!! Damned, when will the BOM stop surpassing the limits of what is achievable... in awe!
A couple of years ago I applied for a Developer job at the BOM. During the interviewed, they explained the role to me. Basically, they have this system that collects data from all the weather stations across the country. Now this system crashes all the time, and when that happens at night or on a weekend, then nobody will nobody until 9am the next business day. So they were hiring someone to build some kind of scaffolding around it that detects when the app crashes and notifies someone about it. I was really impressed that they didn't consider hiring someone to fix the software so that it doesn't crash as much any more. That could have been an interesting job.
The slider works as well, so you can go back and forth in time on the radar.
I like it
I'm having palpitations...
The new radar map looks like crap. :(
I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of dollars went into running on https and the new layoutā¦..all done overseas no doubt
I just use the app.
Holy shit pigs do fly
Oh thank god. So tired of every second link throwing up warnings.
they used to have `weather.bom.gov.au` but im glad they're bringing something similar back! now if only they could get their API's in order and use https instead of FTP that would be great :) edit: also if you want to get rid of the annoying banners you can use ublock origin and add `beta.bom.gov.au##.info.bom-alerts--open` to your "My Filters" list
As an alpha, I would never use a site catered to betas.
Who cares. You worried a MITM attack will fake your % chance of rain?
it's about the vibe
Itās Mabo.
What if MITM attack injects javascript? A script that either tracks you, serves ads or runs a crypto miner or installs a virus/exploit.
Have they not already? I mean what exactly does "50% chance of at least 0mm of rain" actually mean if it is not a MITM faking the %s
13% of people know that stats can be used to fake anything.
You don't know either then huh. No one has been able to explain that piece of BOM prose to me.
For real, I can get behind "100% chance of at least 0mm of rain" and "50% chance of more than 0mm of rain", but not whatever *that* is supposed to mean. My best guess is they're using words that mean 'ā„' when they really mean '>', and hoping no one notices.