I think this is a really nice idea, and it seems somewhat more memorizable than a what3words address because it incorporates numbers. Really cool work! The only two complaints I have are 1) as others in this submission have said, is that the list should really be curated, or at least be filtered to remove "bad words", and 2) ideally this algorithm could be tweaked to not require a city to go along with it, so it becomes easier for a place that hasn't been able to designate cities can use it more easily.
Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
71–80 of 205 posts
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#72But why? Forget about the tech. What does this accomplish? What3words is nonsensical for the same reasons- Amazon Prime is not coming to Mongolia anytime soon and it has a lot more to do with little disposable income/economics than logistics.
What3Words, for example, would be a great help to all the Deliveroo drivers that can't find my house because it opens onto an alleyway instead of a road. This is in the UK, mind you, not Mongolia.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#73This is probably a first world problem, but I wouldn't mind something similar for the western world. Some sort of extended zip code that I can just enter on any device in a second and it represents my entire fully and correctly defined location including door number, floor, gps coordinates and crossing streets and if it's left or right side of a one way street, etc. Just a ~12 digit number for every single door (and…
I have long maintained that an extension of the postal service should provide a one-stop-shop for your addresses. I have moved nearly every year since I left for college and I hate having to reset every address on every service I have. I'm sick of it.
http://www.iammoving.com/ :)
This is for the UK. Dunno about elsewhere. Dunno about competitors in the UK.
I remember having this idea in the late 90s (while in London, moving around frequently) and did a net search and found that there was a provider of such a service even back then. Do not know if it the same crowd since way back then.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#74Remember, addresses are very personal. They are reflective; they are metallic and have a magnetic quality; they are outwardly expressive; they have a perceived value; they are understandable; they are historic (having a history)
That's not what this is though.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#75As 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.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#76This is genius! Seems like HN killed it though. The demo is not working anymore, probably rate limits have been hit. Edit: seems to work on the default location but not when I move the maps to Slovenia.
Thanks pingec, it seems to be something with the Google Api, I will check that, in the meanwhile you can try the CLI if you know ruby or try it by hand https://github.com/roberdam/Xaddress/tree/master/by_hand
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have long maintained that an extension of the postal service should provide a one-stop-shop for your addresses. I have moved nearly every year since I left for college and I hate having to reset every address on every service I have. I'm sick of it.
http://www.iammoving.com/ :) This is for the UK. Dunno about elsewhere. Dunno about competitors in the UK. I remember having this idea in the late 90s (while in London, moving around frequently) and did a net search and found that there was a provider of such a service even back then. Do not know if it the same crowd since way back then.
Nice find! I'd love to see something like this in the US. You can get the usps to forward your mail for a year but the thing that would really win me over would be to update my address on the usps, go buy a thing on, say, Amazon, and see at the checkout page that my delivery address AND billing address have been automatically updated.
Of course all of this automated centralization will result in security holes, so that'll suck, especially if the federal government's fallback is the woefully insecure social security number.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#78This is probably a first world problem, but I wouldn't mind something similar for the western world. Some sort of extended zip code that I can just enter on any device in a second and it represents my entire fully and correctly defined location including door number, floor, gps coordinates and crossing streets and if it's left or right side of a one way street, etc. Just a ~12 digit number for every single door (and…
I have long maintained that an extension of the postal service should provide a one-stop-shop for your addresses. I have moved nearly every year since I left for college and I hate having to reset every address on every service I have. I'm sick of it.
Right the USPS should provide a layer of indirection. Give everyone a virtual mailing address, and then they could automatically route your mail to wherever you actually happen to live at the moment.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#79The site doesn't work for me as the Google Map API seems to be broken, Authorization removed or something
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#80Maybe I'm missing something but why does "Pearl" mean 8480 and "Magical" -6129? If that's a hash, I really dislike this, because A: humans can't do hashing in their heads, and B: get one letter wrong and suddenly you don't have the right address. This has also been my big opposition to what3word.
Addresses need to be resilient. If I make a tiny mistake in my address, there should be enough redundant data to help fix the problem. Postal Codes are great for this, because if you get your code wrong, well, it'll probably be one nearby and the delivery service can figure it out. But with hashes? One letter off and you're doomed.