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Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

ishormuzopenyet.com

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Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#151

Post by creatonez »

kzrdude wrote: post #149
creatonez wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public satellite imagery is heavily censored these days.

Tangential, but I was wondering if it's maybe related: why doesn't google maps and google earth want to show satellite images of the ocean? It just overlays those areas with blue color.

Part of it is just because the ocean is difficult to photograph. The parts of coastline that do have ocean surface imagery have crazy artifacting from the sun reflection, and the color is inconsistent from constantly changing sediment and algae levels.

By not providing imagery of the ocean surface, it also gets to display ocean floor topography data it wouldn't otherwise get to show without having to add another mode.

I assume another reason is that it reduces the total size of the imagery, which would have been a plus on the 2001 computers that Google Earth was originally developed on.

I believe you can get this imagery from other sources (aside from things that are government-censored), but you face the same problem Google did in how to stitch it together without it being a patchwork of different moments in time.

Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#153

Post by michaelt »

zeofig wrote: post #124
tomtomtom777 wrote: post #78

This is a nice overview, but please remove the PolyMarket indicator. It is an obscene prediction mechanism as it creates horrible financial incentives to a war situation. Its degenerate effects have been featured here before. [1] Let's not condone "measurements" that are effectively ways for people to gain money on important political decisions, affecting the lives of many people. (1) https://news.ycombinator.com/ite…

I agree polymarket is "bad", but it's also highly relevant and should absolutely be included in this web page.

> it's also highly relevant

Polymarket has $5 million of wagers on "Strait of Hormuz traffic returns to normal by end of April?"

The toll Iran charges for safe passage is $2 million per ship, and at current prices such a ship would be carrying about $200 million of oil. Oh, and we live in a world where a single billionaire will happily spend $200 million to influence politics.

The polymarket number merely shows that nobody's paid to make it higher or lower yet.

Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#154

Post by foxglacier »

foresterre wrote: post #71

According to the Financial Times (1), the straight is "open" but Iran is extorting fees for passing ships. > "Iran will demand that shipping companies pay tolls in cryptocurrency for oil tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, as it seeks to retain control over passage through the key waterway during the two-week ceasefire." If they really will start doing so for all shipping, that would be odd since the straig…

Iran hasn't ratified it and is not a party to that agreement. You can't really fault a country for not complying with an extraterritorial law made by and for other countries.

Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#156

Post by watwut »

nodesocket wrote: post #122
auntienomen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with prediction markets is fundamentally that they're unregulated. Modern equities and futures markets are highly evolved and rather carefully regulated systems. We've spent centuries learning what the failure modes are and how to guard against them. It's never perfect, it's never going to be perfect -- it's fundamentally a voting system -- but in general, we get liquidity and price discovery at a relativ…

Agree 100% that prediction markets are the wild-wild-west with no insider trading protections, pump and dump, and no oversight. It’s perverting the wisdom of the crowd and efficient market thesis.

>It’s perverting the wisdom of the crowd and efficient market thesis.

I mean, looking at futures and stocks now, I dont believe in those anymore anyway.

Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#157

Post by baq »

anonfunction wrote: post #53
Jeremy1026 wrote: post #52

The data being ~4 days delayed does kind of make this less useful. It is a nice concept and cool to see the historical data though. Just think the domain and the large "NO" doesn't really fit with the lack of current data.

Totally agree, I put some text and tried to make it clear. My first intention was to find some live ship tracking API and see how many ships cross the strait, but they were all hundreds of dollars a month, and behind enterprise contact forms.

You need to send an analyst there with binoculars, a box of cigars and $15k in cash to get realtime trustworthy data

Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#158

Post by baq »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #150
elSidCampeador wrote: post #57

I believe NASA / EU provide daily satellite imagery for free (which is of relatively high quality too). I wonder if there's a way to take that data, and training some kind of image recognition model that figures out "movement" or something to the same end? Would be cool to see

The ESA (Sentinel) data is somewhat delayed and has a low revisit period (AFAIK 6 days, although you might get lucky and get more due to overlap the further away from the equator you get) and low resolution. The Sentinel-1 data (SAR, synthetic aperture radar) might be somewhat useful for this as ships should be more easily identifiable on it and you don't have to worry about cloud cover, but probably still less usefu…

AIS over there is jammed and spoofed. Nobody wants to get bombed and certain Greek and Chinese owners run the strait dark with their crews apparently very happy about the danger pay.

Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#159

Post by golem14 »

baq wrote: post #157
anonfunction wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree, I put some text and tried to make it clear. My first intention was to find some live ship tracking API and see how many ships cross the strait, but they were all hundreds of dollars a month, and behind enterprise contact forms.

You need to send an analyst there with binoculars, a box of cigars and $15k in cash to get realtime trustworthy data

Do these ships not use transponders? E.g., in the US you can use a SDR dongle and a RPI to read local updates. The straight isn't very wide.

Seems cheaper than the cigars and cash.

Re: Show HN: Is Hormuz open yet?

#160

Post by dewey »

golem14 wrote: post #159
baq wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to send an analyst there with binoculars, a box of cigars and $15k in cash to get realtime trustworthy data

Do these ships not use transponders? E.g., in the US you can use a SDR dongle and a RPI to read local updates. The straight isn't very wide. Seems cheaper than the cigars and cash.

Transponders get turned off all the time, especially if you don't want to be targeted.
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