Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address

#201

Post by robalfonso » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

roywiggins wrote: post #183

robalfonso wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any position can be determined from x,y,z, you could just tack on the z coordinate - though you'd need to match that locally, accounting for sea level. If you are using latitude and longitude you should stick with the paradigm for height, since floors can be different heights.

But then knowing something is X feet in the air only gives me an approximate floor number- I'd have to guess at the storey height and divide.

No question, I considered that too. But for determining position in 3d space I think its more consistent than having floors. If you get to say the 10th floor with different floor heights the difference could be considerable. Its the problem with whats practicable in daily use and what makes sense from a system perspective.

Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address

#202

Post by theon144 » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

sly010 wrote: post #75

As a sidenote, Australia moves about 7cm north annually [1], so any encoding of GPS location is not flexible enough in the long term. Also only encoding lat/long makes it so you would not be able to address a single floor in a large building. [1] http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36912700

>As a sidenote, Australia moves about 7cm north annually [1], so any encoding of GPS location is not flexible enough in the long term.

In a hundred years, this will be off by 7 meters. I highly doubt that makes a huge difference in addressing a physical building.

>Also only encoding lat/long makes it so you would not be able to address a single floor in a large building.

As is the case with regular physical addresses.

Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address

#203

Post by theon144 » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

aw3c2 wrote: post #107

tener wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the address can be made relative to some landmark which moves in the same direction. This could add an additional word in front of it (for the landmark) but will resolve such issues.

That's a great idea, maybe something like "church street" and a number that denotes a length on that street?

Nice! But what about areas where addresses haven't been proposed yet?

Handing out GPS coordinates is a bit unwieldy, what if we made an algorithm that converted those to words that are easily memorable and can be spoken over the phone?

I think we're onto something!

Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address

#204

Post by dtparr » Thu, Aug 11, 2016, 9:45 PM UTC

camiller wrote: post #198

dtparr wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like it, but how about we add 2 more digits that don't get printed in human readable format on the mail but are used in barcodes to sort/deliver it?

Arguably, if it is just for sorting/delivery we could simply use the last two digits of the "length" portion of the address. That would enable any delivery service to sort the mail within the city block and still have a human readable equivalent in case the barcode becomes unreadable.

I should let this lie as an explained joke is never funny, but I just can't.

USPS - Delivery Point: (1) A single mailbox or other place to which mail is delivered. A street address does not necessarily represent a single delivery point because a street address such as one for an apartment building may have several delivery points. (2) A specific set of digits between 00 and 99 assigned to every address that is combined with the ZIP+4 code to provide a unique identifier for every delivery address. The DP is encoded within the POSTNET or Intelligent Mail barcode.

https://about.usps.com/publications/pub32/pub32_terms.htm

Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address

#205

Post by camiller » Fri, Aug 12, 2016, 1:11 PM UTC

dtparr wrote: post #204

camiller wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably, if it is just for sorting/delivery we could simply use the last two digits of the "length" portion of the address. That would enable any delivery service to sort the mail within the city block and still have a human readable equivalent in case the barcode becomes unreadable.

I should let this lie as an explained joke is never funny, but I just can't. USPS - Delivery Point: (1) A single mailbox or other place to which mail is delivered. A street address does not necessarily represent a single delivery point because a street address such as one for an apartment building may have several delivery points. (2) A specific set of digits between 00 and 99 assigned to every address that is combin…

Interesting, the last/only time I had to write code to determine delivery points was very early in my career (IBM mainframe COBOL) when postnet barcodes were a new thing and it was always just the last two digits of the street address. I see in the current CASS technical guide that a record type H may have multiple delivery point. Learn something new every day. Thanks.

Edit. As an aside, I think current Microsoft word still calculates it that way when you "bookmark" and address and insert a barcode field. At least it doesn't seem to be sending a query out to the USPS.