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Five months after acquiring The Weather Company, IBM continues to move toward automated forecasting. (credit: IBM)

Until recently, weather forecasting was a fairly straightforward process. Scientists and meteorologists with a government agency developed computer forecast models, collected data about current weather conditions, input that data into their models, and then ran them on government hardware. A TV forecaster would next review the output of these models and give you the weather during the 6 and 10 o’clock news.

But more recently, the private US weather industry, valued at between $3 billion and $6 billion, has gone far beyond this traditional method of forecasting. Because the National Weather Service is federally funded, the agency makes both the basic code of its model, as well as the raw output, available to both research and commercial entities. Companies have taken the government’s models and “added value” for consumer and business customers.

In late January of this year, IBM finalized its acquisition of The Weather Company, buying all of its assets except for The Weather Channel television network. Both IBM and The Weather Company had been working separately with one of the government’s most popular models, the WRF, or Weather Research and Forecasting Model. Developed in the late 1990s, the WRF is tuned to provide more accurate local forecasts rather than predicting conditions across the globe. (Other companies, such as Panasonic, have developed their own global models based upon the government's code).

Behold, the latest in Linux out-of-the-box: Dell's XPS 13 Developer's Edition (2016). (credit: Scott Gilbertson)

Hardware that ships with Linux installed isn't as rare as it used to be. System 76, Purism, ZaReason, and others have been cranking out hardware with Linux pre-installed for quite a while now. But while those of us who use Linux may know these companies, there's only one household name that currently ships laptops with Linux installed—Dell.

Dell's Project Sputnik has been dedicating resources to creating a "just works" experience for Dell Ultrabooks running Ubuntu for nearly four years now. Lead developer Barton George, who leads the effort, and other developers have been writing code where necessary (and contributing that code back upstream) and refining the user experience to a point where everything does indeed just work.

The original Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition had a few rough edges. Since that first device, I sat on the sidelines watching as George and Dell polished off those rough edges and tweaked the hardware options to better meet the needs of developers. Over time, the team expanded the available RAM to 16GB, added a matte screen option (albeit only on the low-end model), and slimmed the dimensions down considerably.

(credit: Verizon)

Verizon ads claiming that FiOS fiber service "is rated #1 in Internet speed" are misleading and should be changed, the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) said this week.

Verizon doesn't actually offer the fastest speeds, but the company justifies the claim based on PC Magazine’s Readers’ Choice Survey. NARB's decision—which came after a complaint filed by Comcast—noted that ranking "was not based on a comparison of objective Internet speed performance and/or a head-to-head comparison of different Internet service providers." Instead, it was based on customers' perceptions.

Verizon ads do note that the #1 claim is based on "customer satisfaction studies," but the board ruled that Verizon's ads made it seem as if the company actually offers the industry's fastest speeds.

Didn't you hear? Collectible card games are all the rage these days, what with Blizzard's Hearthstone sporting over 20 million players, Magic: The Gathering going through some kind of renaissance, and publishers like Bethesda definitely not trying to cash in on the whole thing with games like The Elder Scrolls: Legends. And so at this year's E3 we have yet another entry in the genre from developers CD Projekt Red, a Witcher 3 spin-off called Gwent. The difference is, Gwent is far more than just a collectible card game. This one has an honest-to-god proper storyline. There's even an open-world map to explore.

For the uninitiated, Gwent was originally a collectible card game embedded into the vast world of The Witcher 3. Only, as player data began to trickle in, CD Projekt Red discovered that many players were spending hours roaming inns during quests just to play Gwent. Some even ignored the main game entirely. This was more than enough incentive for the developer to spin Gwent off into its own free-to-play game across PC, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4. And in true CD Projekt Red fashion, it's gone a little overboard in the process.

Instead of just pitching players against each another in one-on-one card battles, Gwent features several single-player campaigns, each of of which has its own unique storyline and lead character, is fully voice acted, and is brought to life via some highly stylised 2D drawings that gently slide across the screen. There's even an overworld map where, in the demo I was shown at least, you control a cute 2D Geralt to explore and find hidden snippets of story, or extra cards to add to your deck. Each campaign is said to last a whopping 10 hours or so too.