from Hacker News

Calculating Oil Storage Tank Occupancy with Help of Satellite Imagery

by marklit on 6/15/25, 5:30 PM with 13 comments

• by addaon on 6/17/25, 7:39 PM

  Seeing people use a spreadsheet as an image measuring tool does sort of explain why there’s a group of people who seem to find so much more value in current AI than I do… if you’re using the wrong tool for the job already, a bad replacement for doing it right might still be an improvement from where you are, I suppose.

• by fnands on 6/18/25, 10:18 AM

  I've heard this story so many times, and I really want to know if anyone is actually using this technique to actually make decisions, or is it just basically the "hello world" of satellite data analysis (along with identifying aeroplanes)?

  The company that famously touted they were doing it, Orbital Insights [1], almost went bankrupt, and were sold for cents on the dollar [2]

  I'm in the EO industry, and it's a use case you hear a lot, but I am not sure anyone is actually doing this profitably.

  [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/gv-backed-orbital-insights-i... [2] https://jackpoulson.substack.com/p/exclusive-google-backed-i...

• by jduckles on 6/17/25, 8:07 PM

  Did this with grain bins in the 2010s to estimate total on-farm storage capacity available in a few states.

• by hkchad on 6/17/25, 7:11 PM

  Saw this headline and thought, HA been doing this for YEARS, yea, need to add a (2017) to the headline...

• by Simulacra on 6/18/25, 5:17 PM

  I read that during the Cold War, the CIA employed people they euphemistically referred to as "cratologists", who could look at satellite images of crates and shipping containers, and tell you what's in them.

• by exabrial on 6/17/25, 7:16 PM

  ok so like the lid moves up and down on those? How does it seal? How does it keep from tipping sideways or jamming on the walls? fascinating