Weather

Theo has just explained over in csam

For those using NetSurf or something else that doesn’t do the fancy-dancey Google Groups:

The hosting company managed to brick hundreds of servers with a bad firmware update. They say they have shipped in new hardware and are replacing machines, but this is taking time.

The IP address of riscos.info seems to point to Yomura Corp, Atlanta (!?) which has an interesting URL of http://www.manta.com/ which tells me that due to GDPR it cannot provide me any content because I have cookie restrictions (typical American outfit failing to understand what the GDPR is). They also seem to call themselves “Delimiter Corporation” which has one Google review, awarding them one star (and reading the review, I think that’s generous).

Suffice to say, the amount of FAIL involved in bricking hundreds of servers is absolutely gob smacking. While it is undoubtedly annoying for the riscos.info guys, I can’t help but feel that a company pushing out a firmware update¹ to their servers obviously without testing it first deserves the pain they get. While it would have been extra work for them, it would have made sense to first test on a sacrificial machine to ensure it all works as expected, and then upgrade the machines in manageable batches – tens, twenties, whatever. So if problems arise, it can be better contained. When your service is to provide (paid) hosting for other people, you do not push out an update to everything² and then go “uh, oops”³ when everything ends up “bricked”.
Seriously… is this hosting company run by teenagers or something? In fact, scratch that, a teenager would do it better.
<facepalm>
<facedesk>
<facechair>
<facewall>
<facefloor> ⁴

¹ What’s the betting this was something to do with Spectre/Meltdown?

² Should never have gotten to such a state. <trump>Never ever. Ever. Ever-ever. Ever.</trump>

³ I’m sure the actual words were stronger; I’m sure their customer’s words were stronger yet.

⁴ <facebook> ? ☺

The IP address of riscos.info seems to point to Yomura Corp, Atlanta (!?) which has an interesting URL of http://www.manta.com/ which tells me that due to GDPR it cannot provide me any content because I have cookie restrictions (typical American outfit failing to understand what the GDPR is).

The content on that site seems to all be around marketing services (“Manta helps millions of small businesses get found by more customers.”) and I don’t see any sort of hosting on there.

Later Pi2 and Pi3 are ARMv8 where SWP has been completely retired. And some other stuff, but it’s the SWP that we felt.

This is the problem with the self-serving illusion of an OS in permanent development.

There absolutely has to be an updated FPEmulator providing SWP and any other missing instructions. Otherwise, what is the OS for? Building the OS?

There is a example of this being done on Adrian’s web site

‘DivEmulator’

http://sendiri.co.uk/

The ‘Relocatable Module Linker’

- a released version would be nice :-)

(can Textile use diff colours)

There absolutely has to be an updated FPEmulator providing SWP and any other missing instructions. Otherwise, what is the OS for?

Would that solution have worked for the ARMv7 changes, or the RGB vs BGR changes, or the 32-bit changes at ARMv5? Or would it just have worked in this one specific case, which has been the least disruptive of all of the hardware changes so far?

Steve, are you seriously suggesting that programs that use SWP don’t need to be supported because RGB/BGR?

I’m staggered by your logic.

Steve’s logic seems to be “the OS cannot hide all hardware changes from the applications” citing examples from the past (of which RGB vs. BGR is one of the “newer hardware does it differently” things). With unlimited manpower and if severe performance limitations are accepted, this logic is wrong, but back in the real world, it seems to be sane to just update those few applications.

I would be interested if, technically, SWP can be sensibly emulated anyway without discarding its inherent mutex characteristics.

At the end of the day, it is depressing that we (as in “the RISC OS community”) have not successfully established a packaging and update concept that is used by the vast majority of developers and users. The “Unixlib SWP problem” would have been a non-problem.

Steve, are you seriously suggesting that programs that use SWP don’t need to be supported because RGB/BGR?

I’m questioning your question of “Otherwise, what is the OS for?” in the context. The loss of SWP affected a small number of applications, most of which were based on UnixLib. By the time ARMv8 came along, pretty much anything that was still around was being maintained actively because of ARMv5 and ARMv7, and changes like RGB/BGR.

Emulating SWP might be nice, but I wonder about its priority compared to other things.

I’m staggered by your logic.

Given that this is such an easy fix, and one that you’re clearly very invested in, I presume that you’ve already supplied the necessary changes to ROOL for consideration?

Now the underlying problem is clear (although not solved),
Weather can be downloaded from: https://scheelpj.home.xs4all.nl/Weather-2.zip
and wget can be opbtained via: http://riscos.openpandora.org/Diverses/Temp/wget_1.19.4.zip

is there anyone who could leave me a comment about my program, please?

is there anyone who could leave me a comment about my program, please?

There is not much to say really, it works and works well.

The 24hour graph does significantly benefit from SpecialFX, but I am sure there is a reason SpecialFX is not on my machines, I just can’t remember why.

It took me a moment to work out what the vertical axes on the 24hour were about.

It’s fine.

P.S. That was with Titanium OS5.25, RPi3B+ OS5.24 and OS4.39 VRPC Windows 10.

I have uploaded a RPi3 compatible make 4.1

Very odd. I managed to compile what I wanted with it, but when dynamic linking did not work with the result I realized that I had omitted a small but vital phrase in various parts of the makefile: namely -Wl, -E to tell the resulting ELF file to retain symbols for linking. But then, when I tried to recompile, the machine just hung.

Apologies: my RISC OS machine is an Rpi3, not an Rpi3B+.

It took me a moment to work out what the vertical axes on the 24hour were about.

You’re right, it needs a bit of explanation which I’ll put in the Help-files. “In fact there are tree graphs. The red scale is for temperature and feels like temperature. The scale goes from -50 via the red horizontal line to +50 degrees Celsius. The black scale is for wind speed and gust and goes from 0 to 100 kmh. And it shows the chanche of precipitation in %.”

Thank you very much, David.

When I try to enter my location (Socorro) Weather-2
finds it in BBC Weather (gives my location as “Socorro United States”) then gives an error window: “String too long (19, in line 613)”

Pi0, RO 5.24, internet up and running, looking at the BBC Weather report in firefox on Pi3 next computer over.

Mmm, have try Socorro after I look at the Berlin weather…
First attempt “location not found”, second successfully…

Pi3 Pi-Top, 5.25, slow UMTS mobile connection

Socorro did fail as described last night but it is OK this morning. (That location was good on Safari on the iMac.)

BBC Weather answers a request by sending a file. The format is always the same, so I build a parser to extract the data from it. Yesterday the request ‘Socorro’ resulted in a file with a different format. The parser lost it’s track resulting in the ‘String too long’. It seems to be an incident, but in the next version of Weather I will build a brake and a message with the suggestion to try again later.

Thank you, Willard.

Yes, it works fine now… Thank YOU! I knew this town was a Black Hole but I didn’t realize it could reach out and corrupt data about itself! :-)

Anyway, neat little app.

Very nice indeed although I personally prefer the amazing flexibility of
http://wttr.in/:help

While it can be viewed via browser a simple script will download a png into your root directory using wget.
For some reason I haven’t been able to achieve the same result with !Nettle/cURL.

P.S.: not wanting to knock your efforts of course! More of a suggestion that maybe other sources beyond the BBC‘s offerings might add further flexibility to !weather.

https://github.com/chubin/wttr.in

http://wttr.in/:help

Brilliant! ASCII art weather symbols FTW! ☺️

And showed up some non-uniformity in the supposedly monospaced font in Chrome.

More of a suggestion

I did look at other sources. For some you need an API key, the data of others was very complex or didn”t cover the whole world. And of course the question: why would I choose for a gloomy black screen with too simple graphics and missing the fun to design and program it myself? No, the real contribution, Patric, would be a proper translation of the Help file in French. Can you do that for me, please?

I’d prefer to avoid insulting the French (again). German however I could do and luckily they’re almost impossible to insult as long as you don’t set their cars on fire.

Thanks for the offer, Patric, but I did the English, Dutch and German translations myself already. I had a lot of help from Raik, I don’t see why you would insult him or set his car on fire. My hobby is programming in the Wimp.

Raik’s a top bloke, even built my RO Lapdock. Wouldn’t dream of insulting him! Not really into setting cars on fire either although that used to be a thing in Berlin. Personally I’m more into sailing myself, hence the interest in weather forecasting. Actually I did consider writing one myself (based on the Sager Weathercaster algorithm) but unfortunately my skills weren’t quite up to the task.

Glad you say that about Raik!

Sager Weathercaster sounds very interesting, will have a closer look the next days. Thanks for the tip.

Today at about 5 o’clock the Brunel team will finish in Scheveningen. Dutch design, just like Weather:-))