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Posted by surprisetalk 2 days ago

Shipmap.org(www.shipmap.org)
746 points | 113 commentspage 2
eps 2 days ago|
It appears to cover only the year 2012.
cjs_ac 2 days ago||
Live data is shown here: https://www.marinetraffic.com/
sib 2 days ago|||
This is very cool.

Some years ago I was on a small (12-passenger) boat doing an 11-day photography tour in the Svalbard archipelago. One evening, we were at 82' north latitude and I was on the bridge talking to the captain. He said, "we might be the northernmost people on the planet, aside from naval subs" - looking at this map, it's possible he was right.

onionisafruit 2 days ago||||
sort of a floatradar24
Fnoord 2 days ago|||
OSINT tooling to figure the shadowfleet?
NicuCalcea 2 days ago|||
It was made in 2016, I think. The company that made it also made Flourish, which you can use to pretty much recreate it if you have the data: https://flourish.studio/blog/animated-point-map/
elicash 2 days ago||
Yeah my first thought was to view what changed, if anything, during peak COVID or the later issues.

This is still wonderful.

dhosek 2 days ago||
I was thinking the same.
ltrg 1 day ago||
A similar but much more up-to-date and interactive version of this can be accessed via the Global Fishing Watch map: https://globalfishingwatch.org/map

Turn on the `Vessel presence` layer, which displays a vector-tiled view of all vessels up to a few days ago, not just fishing boats.

And something from my own blog which may be of interest: https://blog.datadesk.eco/p/sky-lapse-in-two-tone

qrush 2 days ago||
One of my favorite youtube channels right now is What's Going On With Shipping, hosted by a former merchant mariner. Here's a 101 primer if you are learning too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5FR6_6kpG8

abujazar 1 day ago||
Fascinating, but the dataset is obviously incomplete – there's barely any traffic in Europe until mid april. January-march looks as if there's been a zombie apocalypse.
sqircles 1 day ago||
My son loves trains. There are a couple of state parks near me that have tracks running through them and I once tried to find something like this / flight tracker for trains and learned their security / obfuscation around that seems to be on the same level of submarines? Why?
jonp888 1 day ago||
The British rail system releases as open data(JSON over AMQP) all train movements down to indidvidual signal blocks You can view some of the the live maps here: https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps, but this is unique as far as I know.

I don't think it's really down to super-tight security as such, rather that there's no reason to release the data publically.

Ships and airplanes broadcast data because it's useful for collision avoidance and tracking. The international maritime and aerospace system is far too complicated and large that you could ever build a private network of every ship or plane operator sharing encrypted data, or that one company could set up receivers for the tracking data worldwide. A closed system wouldn't work.

Rail is both physically and legally a finite closed space. The network operator knows definitively where every train in their network is because they have sensors in the tracks. The network is responsible for preventing collisions, not the individual trains. They have contracts with every company which operates on their tracks and if these need their internal data they can get it. So there's simply no good reason why trains should be publically broadcasting their information, or why network operators would want to expose all their internal data.

And against the no positives there are negative sides - apart from a couple of famous cases I've not heard of it in Europe, but stealing from cargo trains seems to be big business in the US: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-17/los-ange...

In the UK the open tracking data also brought complaints from freight companies who feared competitors would use it to analyse their movements, figure out which traffic flows were the most profitable and use it for commercial advantage.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1 day ago||
Probably because it's easier to rob a traveling train than a traveling ship.
small_scombrus 1 day ago||
Also, if you're a plane or a boat it's really important everyone knows where you are for general safety / rescue reasons. On a (consolidated and decently organised) railroad the railway operators can take care of all of that.
jason_s 1 day ago||
TIL about the Welland Canal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welland_Canal
mgaunard 1 day ago||
Malaysia to South Africa is an interesting one, why is this route so prevalent?
herbturbo 2 days ago||
Used this when I moved internationally. Cool to watch your stuff moving around the world!
dewey 2 days ago|
It seems like this only covers data from 2012, so probably one of the other live websites like marinetraffic?
hermitcrab 2 days ago||
Interesting that there is very little shipping traffic around Greenland, considering that is supposed to be so strategic.
Alupis 2 days ago||
It's strategic from a military perspective, not economic perspective.

Very little of anything actually goes on in Greenland. It has a population of less than 57,000 and a GDP of less than $5B. The US maintains significant military presence, including airbases, missile launch and intercept capabilities, and ensures the US controls the North Atlantic, instead of Russia.

aebtebeten 2 days ago||
with apologies to https://xkcd.com/149/ : "national security make me a sandwich"
missedthecue 2 days ago|
Burning bunker fuel releases a lot of sulfur emissions and comparatively less carbon. SO2 has a strong cooling effect on the climate, both through directly reflecting incoming sunlight and by acting as cloud condensation nuclei. This increases the formation of reflective clouds.
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