
Ambient Shipping – a project to allow you to look inside passing cargo ships - dhotson
https://github.com/marcdacosta/ambient-shipping
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new299
Wow... I had no idea this kind of manifest information was publicly available.
I'm kind of unreasonably excited by this.

Using the Enigma datadata I was able to figure find at least one major vendor
another player in my industry uses. That information isn't publicly disclosed
elsewhere. Really interesting stuff.

~~~
gerhardi
What kind of patterns would be interesting to find out in this dataset? A
thought came in to my mind to do some data acrobatics and possibly publish a
dashboard based on this data if I can arrange some extra time.. (didnt check
any possible terms of use for the data yet)

~~~
jrweinb
You can make a microsite that publishes only ridiculous shipping facts such as
(these use actual Enigma data):

"Over 1K+ imports were refused by the FDA in 2013 for containing a 'filthy,
putrid, or decomposed substance'"

or

"Only 23 shipments of McDonalds chicken nuggets came into the US in 2013"

or

"The #1 piece of cargo imported into the U.S. in 2013: empty containers (over
275k of them)"

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bhouston
This could be used for trading I am sure. Proabably already is. Know a
company's expected numbers before they are released by correlating ahipments
over time.

Very very cool. I am reminded of the parking lot analysis from satellite
photos some traders were doing.

~~~
icelancer
>> I am reminded of the parking lot analysis from satellite photos some
traders were doing.

This has been done for years. The smart companies are forging deliveries and
movement to manipulate portfolios.

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unstatusthequo
Great tool for pirates yeah?

~~~
ruytlm
In light of this comment, the sibling comment with the joke link to a space-
sim video game cargo scanner seems fitting; pretty sure in-game piracy is the
primary use of a cargo scanner in that fictional world, and I wouldn't be
surprised if it ended up the same in the real world.

~~~
nannal
Always scan the freighter before you and your catalyst buddies suicide gank.

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En_gr_Student
So is this tool meant as a road-map to literal pirates, so they can know what
to target and when, or is it to let folks know what pirates know, so they can
be taken out by the navies of the world?

Seriously - AIS "provides position, speed, heading and other metadata about
its movements" and Enigma public gives "what the ship contains".

~~~
grkvlt
You could use it as a basis for an AR type 'virtual pirate' game, where you
navigate your pirate vessel around the worlds oceans, trying to track and
board actual ships. You would get points based on the types of cargo they
contain, and success could be determined by statistics on actual piracy,
proximity of naval vessels, public information about the owners previous
responses to attacks etc. With the money you earn from stealing cargo you can
'buy' a better pirate ship, or 'employ' more virtual pirates to increase
success...? Could be a pretty simple Android or iOS app to write?

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emilecantin
I have a marinetraffic.com antenna at home, tried it late last night. The data
I get seems a bit out of date (July), so as I understand it, it's US-only at
the moment.

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caf
This would be pretty great as an AR app that queried a live shipping map like
marinetraffic.com rather than a local SDR for the AIS info.

~~~
deepskyhacker
Nice idea, but scrapping MarineTraffic.com data is against the terms,
according to MarineTraffic.com. They provide a premium API for that. There are
very few real-time AIS data sources that are freely available to the public
unfortunately.

~~~
KGIII
I believe LinkedIn just lost a case for trying to disallow that. I'm not sure
of the morality of it, but it looks like it is legal to do so.

Citation/info: [https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16148250/microsoft-
linked...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/15/16148250/microsoft-linkedin-
third-party-data-access-judge-ruling)

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tyng
What an ingenius way to combine two seemingly 'harmless' datasets to reveal
powerful insights! I'm sure there are many other possible/potential ways to
combine publicly available data, hmmm...

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JosephRedfern
Worth noting that (unless I am mistaken, which I may well be) this probably
only works in the US, since the AMS is a U.S. Customs system.

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gadders
I was hoping for screenshots and an app like Flight Radar :-(

Not that I can see any cargo ships from where I am, but it would be cool.

~~~
ablation
MarineTraffic.com, though without the cargo manifests.

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AlfeG
Would be cool to combine with some AR kit - so that it would be possible to
look to ships and see it's info in realtime )

~~~
betimsl
Start a startup!

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trishmapow2
Knew about AIS but not this level of information, SDR has more and more
interesting uses every day.

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lyime
What' SDR?

~~~
FireBeyond
Software Defined Radio ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-
defined_radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio))

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beardbandit
Readme was a little vague. Found better documentation here: [http://elite-
dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Cargo_Scanner](http://elite-
dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Cargo_Scanner)

~~~
oatmale
This is a link to a cargo scanner for a video game. The op posted a project
that displays the cargo for real ships.

~~~
Karunamon
_whoosh_ would probably not be a very constructive statement here, but I think
that was an intentional humorous post...

