From the list of words at https://github.com/roberdam/Xaddress/blob/master/en/adj_en.c..., I take it that some locations will be labelled DESPERATE, UNSPEAKABLE, POSTDOCTORAL, OBSTETRICAL, GENEALOGICAL, ASSASSINATING,CORRUPTED, PROGESTERONE, etc. etc., also RUSSIAN, UKRAINIAN, DUTCH, ...etc. Where did that list come from?
Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
141–150 of 205 posts
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#142Wow, this is a much friendlier alternative to what3words / what3fucks!
Few things that I felt could be potential issues:
1) GPS coordinates are great for approximations for areas without clear markers, but in built up urban areas, they don't work so well. As a stranger to a new city, I can fumble around and ask someone, "Excuse, can you help me find 222 Hyde Street?" And they'll hopefully point me in the right direction, and I'll wander wander over until I hit Hyde Street and try heading north and south depending on the numbers.
Secondly, if we hash the geocode, then we lose that sense of relativity. I no longer know if "Pearl" is east or west of "Tiger" and don't know which direction to move in.
In addition, there's still the final mile (or rather 3 meter) issue. When I'm at a particular lat/long, am I at the right spot? Or is my GPS off, or did the person put the pin just slightly off? Using traditionally addressing, when I have a house number, I know it's the right house because it says so on the door.
2) The icons used for error-checking may not be universally known. For example, 83.png is a hat, but for someone unfamiliar with this, it's.. a horn? a bell? I know this was an MVP to show (and it's great!), but it is something to keep in mind.
Ultimately, I think this has potential for the delivery industry (before drivers get replaced by drones/driveless cars, of course). It's already more intuitive than the chiban-style addressing system in Japan [0]. However, similar to that system, we're still reliant on book/web site/app to decode the address. And so here, we're assuming people will readily have access to a smartphone with a reliable GPS.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#143Google's Open Location Code is better. https://github.com/google/open-location-code
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#144IMHO the Maidenhead Locator System [1] solves this problem very nicely. Locations are concise and can be specified with arbitrary precision. And the encoding scheme makes vocal transmission quite robust.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#145I don't see any versioning on this, and that seems like it is something that needs to be implemented ASAP if you actually want any of these addresses to start to be used in the wild. If you make any changes to your word lists (in response to, say, all the comments here that say you should be omitting rude words), your old addresses won't be valid. If someone gives me the address "Afraid Anus" (to pick an example some…
Your Xaddress will work even if we remove the word from the available list, you can try encoding or decoding by hand to understand how it works https://github.com/roberdam/Xaddress/tree/master/by_hand
That's totally true (and I missed that), but it seems to me that the Country/State-specific look-up table is still the unversioned weak point.
What if state or national borders change?
Or how about disputed areas? Which table should I go to to look up words for Kashmir? And is the choice of table an (unintended) political statement?
Let's say I am creating an address in Kashmir. I have the integer coordinates 32,76, so I look up the number in the Indian table and I get 04.
I then hand my address to someone else, who believes Kashmir is Pakistani. He looks up the Pakistani table, which includes the table for Azad Kashmir, and looks up the coordinate for 04, which is 33,73. Oops.
True, "Azad Kashmir" is currently considered to be a distinct region, but it is certainly within the bounds of credible that Pakistan officially renames that area to "Kashmir" alone, in an attempt to bolster their claim on the region.
Then you'd have two distinct areas named Kashmir in your tables, but two different interpretations of the geographical bounds of those regions in the minds of the people in Pakistan and India.
The advantage of some of the other systems is that they are dependent on nothing other than latitude and longitude.
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(Edit: to be clear, I think this is a cool project, and any edge-cases that may be problematic here are much tinier than my original, incorrect concern about word-list versioning.)
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your Xaddress will work even if we remove the word from the available list, you can try encoding or decoding by hand to understand how it works https://github.com/roberdam/Xaddress/tree/master/by_hand
That's totally true (and I missed that), but it seems to me that the Country/State-specific look-up table is still the unversioned weak point. What if state or national borders change? Or how about disputed areas? Which table should I go to to look up words for Kashmir? And is the choice of table an (unintended) political statement? Let's say I am creating an address in Kashmir. I have the integer coordinates 32,76,…
Yes, Xaddress creates 2 kinds of codes, the short one is inmutable and does not depend from geopolitical boundaries, you can check http://ubicate.me for the short code implementation.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
From having worked on addressing in Nairobi, Kenya for the past two years, I can tell you the precision problem is worse than you think actually. You're making the assumption * someone knows how to use a map to a very high degree of precision (not true often) * GPS is accurate enough, and this is a double whammy - on initial assignment of the GPS point (i.e. it's the GPS of their door/gate, not of their living room c…
I am really interested in what you've learned because you obviously know a lot about a problem that's very physical and concreate. What is your approach or what will it be? However, you website is horrible at communicating any of that. I learned 4 billion people don't have addresses. OK great. Now what? "We want to physically connect the world with an address system that works. OkHi is unlocking commerce through enha…
Fair feedback re: comms on website.
The OkHi approach is use your phone number as your universal key to share your address (with obvious privacy controls in place to control who can access it). The address itself is a GPS point + a photo - you can see an example at http://okhi.co/hq (best viewed on mobile - this is a vanity url, but you could very much imagine it eventually being something like okhi.co/+254/700111222).
The OkHi business model (similar to other companies in the space) is to allow consumers to share these addresses peer-to-peer free and charge per-use businesses who work in logistics or need address data (e.g. food delivery, ecommerce, emergency services, banks, postal services). They collect the base address data that users can choose where they live from through our own on-the-ground data collection or smartly crowdsourced data (surprisingly scalable).
Lots of promising progress, though obviously lots of work left to make it global. While it is easier to build a business controling the full stack, over time, the base addressing data could become open-sourced/ user address data stored in a public open db e.g. blockchain. I think the issues folks bring up of open-source benefits are very much in mind as this sort of system is built.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems more easily remembered and therefore easier to accurately share without reliance on technology. 6342 LAY TRANSCENDENT (my location right now) is easier to write down, and comes with a built in typo checker (icon is the earth in this case).
Probably not a good idea to post your address where people can see who you are (you have your keybase details on your profile)
I'd be happy to meet anyone from HackerNews who wanted to drop by. I'm here everyday. It's the Tucows office in Toronto and it's no secret I work here most weekdays.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#149Maybe 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…
From having worked on addressing in Nairobi, Kenya for the past two years, I can tell you the precision problem is worse than you think actually. You're making the assumption * someone knows how to use a map to a very high degree of precision (not true often) * GPS is accurate enough, and this is a double whammy - on initial assignment of the GPS point (i.e. it's the GPS of their door/gate, not of their living room c…
I feel like this a communication and NLP problem, at least in regards to an address being directions to a given location. Like with a picture, an address such as "Next to Sal's general store" would be enough for most mailmen to find the location 100% of the time. Given it does not stand the test of time, but to my understanding this was the system in Ireland for a long time in small disparate communities. In that particular case the instruction would be something like "$COUNTY, $GRANDMOTHERS_NAME's house" in order to reach her grandson.
I guess it depends on usecase. An Amazon drone can't stop and ask for directions. Interesting problem space though.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
From having worked on addressing in Nairobi, Kenya for the past two years, I can tell you the precision problem is worse than you think actually. You're making the assumption * someone knows how to use a map to a very high degree of precision (not true often) * GPS is accurate enough, and this is a double whammy - on initial assignment of the GPS point (i.e. it's the GPS of their door/gate, not of their living room c…
I feel like this a communication and NLP problem, at least in regards to an address being directions to a given location. Like with a picture, an address such as "Next to Sal's general store" would be enough for most mailmen to find the location 100% of the time. Given it does not stand the test of time, but to my understanding this was the system in Ireland for a long time in small disparate communities. In that par…
You'd think "next to Sal's general store" would work, especially given how prevalent that approach is. In fact, through our research, even for folks working the same delivery area day after day, they consistently fail with these sorts of landmarks. I used to say I lived "next to the vegetable stand on XYZ Rd, across from ABC Apartments" - very visible, clear landmarks which turns out most drivers could never use successfully because they usually called me being lost. You could try NLP on it to then lookup in a db like OkHi's, but these text-based directions definitely proved to be suboptimal when consumed by a human drivers such that companies were actively seeking a better way for their deliveries (and, importantly, were even willing to pay).