Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 145 posts

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#111

Post by FireBeyond »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #58
C1sc0cat wrote: post #11

Why would you allow a mobile phone with its spark hazard any where near an oil refinery.

Probably because no one has ever actually documented sparks caused by mobile phone RF emissions, at least any in current use. That was essentially a bunch of pseudoscientific FUD. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fuelish-pleasures/ Power switches with mechanical contacts on older phones might be a different story, but again, there's no smoking gun (or flaming refinery) that points to this having ever been an issue.

My thought was that it was always older style cellphones with detachable batteries, and careless user dropping phone, detaching battery, and -that- caused a spark, not RF emissions.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#112

Post by AznHisoka »

tantalor wrote: post #108
AznHisoka wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But these guys wouldnt be broadcasting this to everyone - just the people who were idiotic enough to look at the spoofed data. They are conducting acts (albeit crazy ones) in a private setting. Technically, thats really what they are doing, and it would be hard to prove otherwise.

How can you claim privacy if the scam depends on being observed?

They are being spied upon by having their location data sold be carriers. They did not sell their location themselves. For all intents and purposes, they are conducting acts in a private setting that is being violated upon.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#113

Post by audiometry »

Satellite companies also track shale drilling rigs. There are a few 'stages' in the lifecycle of drilling rig, with a focus on "DUP" rigs -- drilled but uncompleted -- which can be brought online on short notice(). The various stages of development require crews of different experience or expertise. I was told that some/a company is able figure out the phone numbers of crews accustomed to (I think) bringing DUP wells fully online. Then they are able to monitor as they move around the permian or bakken and assess how many wells are brought online. I'm not sure that they know phone number (333)2920-2920 is Frank Jones the Expert, but they do know that the arrival of (333)2920-2920 and a cluster of other numbers is associated with a DUP well turning on production shortly after.

()I'm not very familiar with the shale fracking process, so don't jump on me for technical inaccuracy.

Also there are many tongue-in-cheek or naive comments about refineries feigning problems, or knowledge of refinery issues being licenses to print money in futures. It's not even close.

Many of the important refineries in the US are monitored 24/7 by third party companies (eg. Genscape) who stare at refineries with thermal cameras. These immediately notice potential problems, as flaring occurs, or some unit dramatically changes temp (gets hotter or cooler), updating subscribers in moments. There are similar services that scrape all the public-warning systems that refineries must use to inform residents when they have emissions or problems.

Finally, while no doubt there are times when refinery upsets (particularly for major gasoline-producing refineries) occur there is an immediate, clear, exploitable move in futures markets [in fact recently], there are also many times when that knowledge would have been swamped by some other force. *I recall reading a few months ago that someone analysed a literal insider traders' trade history and realized they weren't able to exploit to nearly the level you'd expect. It just turns out that markets are absurdly complicated.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#114

Post by mlevental »

jedberg wrote: post #94
rando444 wrote: post #85

A clever person could defeat this entire system in a day. If you look at the graph, currently we're talking about a fluctuation of about 7 devices. All you'd have to do is set up a handful of devices (or emulate them and spoof the GPS).. download some sketchy apps, or look for apps that have ties to this company, to bump the location information up. Then turn the devices on or off, so that there's never any change. I…

If you're the oil company you probably don't care one bit if a trader is making money on the price of oil, because it isn't coming out of the oil companies profits. It's coming from other traders.

if that were true they would just publicize their production numbers

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#115

Post by hammock »

DontGiveTwoFlux wrote: post #89
darkpuma wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read an argument (maybe here on HN, I'm not sure) that if insider trading were legal, Enron wouldn't have taken anybody by surprise. I'm not sure I buy the argument that it should consequently be legal, but it's an interesting idea.

On the other hand, consider how rare the Enron case seems to be. Since it's implosion, how many other companies were based on total fraud? Theranos is all that comes to mind and it wasn't even public. It seems like the system mostly prevents massive Enron style fraud.

Tyco, WorldCom, Healthsouth, Adelphia, Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bernie Madoff... Shall I go on?

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#116

Post by drozycki »

I think many people will agree with me that this kind of data collection is creepy and unfortunate, but if it's the world we live in then we should try to use it for good. I'm struggling to think of a way that a non or for-profit could use aggregate data to predict events in a way that would generally be considered a net positive to society. Does anything come to mind?

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#117

Post by maxerickson »

EpicEng wrote: post #73
maxerickson wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I just expect that acceptance of X is correlated with acceptance of Y. (and really, much of the time, acceptance is the wrong word. Indifference or something like that often fits better)

Which also doesn't hold. I'm willing to invest my money, but I'm not sticking it into penny stocks. Your reasoning ignores any sort of reasonable boundary people have wrt risk.

That's not what correlated means.

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#118

Post by EpicEng »

maxerickson wrote: post #117
EpicEng wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which also doesn't hold. I'm willing to invest my money, but I'm not sticking it into penny stocks. Your reasoning ignores any sort of reasonable boundary people have wrt risk.

That's not what correlated means.

You're right. Correlated does not mean "people who have historically take risks will take any risk regardless of the danger."

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#119

Post by dustindiamond »

AznHisoka wrote: post #21
blantonl wrote: post #4

How are they gathering this data? Are they placing detection equipment at/near the target locations to monitor for cell phone signatures in the vicinity, or are they gathering from mobile apps who resell location data to aggregation firms?

Google “Thasos Group”. They are one of the big providers

Do you know what the pricing is like?

I assume there is a geofencing API call that returns a bunch of GUIDs and another that takes a GUID and gives a location with last time seen?

Re: Oil traders are watching workers’ phones to spot problems at refineries

#120

Post by maxerickson »

EpicEng wrote: post #118
maxerickson wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what correlated means.

You're right. Correlated does not mean "people who have historically take risks will take any risk regardless of the danger."

Which shouldn't have quote because it wasn't what I said, and isn't even a fair reading of what I said.

Correlated implies a statistical relationship, ruling out phrases like "will take any risk regardless" and requiring phrases more like "may tend to" and such.

And then I even said that I "expect" the correlation, so it's probably reasonable to read the usage as more conversational than scientific.

Post reply on HN