Exactly one year ago, on 30th December 2024, I laid the foundation of FediMeteo.

I took a VM, installed FreeBSD, and set up the first jail to support Italy. The goal was to create a tool for my own use, support a few countries, and announce it.

Unexpectedly, the enthusiasm was incredible. That pushed me to keep going, support more countries and cities, and turn it into what it is today.

FediMeteo now supports 38 countries and 2,937 cities, with more than 7,700 followers in the Fediverse alone, not counting the many people who follow via RSS feeds or visit the web pages.

If you are curious to read the story and some technical details, you can find it here:
it-notes.dragas.net/2025/02/26…

Today is also Tuesday, a #ThankYouTuesday, so I want to say thanks to:

* OpenMeteo - @openmeteo - for providing accurate, high quality data, without which FediMeteo would be far less useful

* @grunfink - creator of snac, who made all of this possible using very few resources, on a 4 euro per month VM

* FreeBSD, which thanks to the efficiency of the OS and its jail implementation made it possible to run this service in a stable and efficient way with minimal effort

* FediFollows - @FediFollows - that periodically spreads the word about cities, countries, and the enthusiasm around the project

*All of you*, who suggested, encouraged, corrected, and celebrated this project

And forward toward supporting more countries and other interesting features already in the works.

Happy birthday, FediMeteo! 🎉

#FediMeteo #HappyBirthday #Meteo #Weather #FreeBSD #snac #snac2 #OpenMeteo #Fediverse

Imagine that it's 1925 and I am a clever, experienced mechanical engineer. I look around at the "tech" world of the time and notice some disturbing things:

- the rising power of literally fascist CEOs like Henry Ford
- What began as an inefficient, quirky novelty toy for rich people, the automobile, has become "normal" and started to dominate public space
- rising levels of fossil pollution
- the rising monopoly power of Oil companies
- dangerous levels of stock-market speculation
- brutal exploitation of people and environmental destruction in mining and rubber producing (mostly colonial) regions
- the use of debt to get less wealthy consumers to buy cars
- scores of innocent pedestrians injured or killed by automobiles
- urban planning that increasingly favors more expensive cars over other users of the streets
- declining sense of importance of shared forms of transportation like trolleys and trains

As an engineer, I look at all those rising issues and then I say:

"What we need is an Open Source Model-T Ford with some slightly better safety features."

In retrospect, that would seem like a pretty inadequate response.