reminds me of http://what3words.com/
Yes, which he clearly links on his github readme. He says it is a commercial version with a patented algorithm.
Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
151–160 of 205 posts
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#152Wow, 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 direct…
I completely agree with your thoughts: this is impressive when you don't think about directions from humans for humans but once you toss that wrench in it falls flat. Perhaps they could make improvements to handle directions.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#153My current location is 5308 AFRAID ANUS. Might be best to exclude ANUS from the word list.
Mine is SUPERMAN KRYPTON which I rather like. I could also go with EMERGENCY REBEL, DOUGLAS PHOTOS (I live in an area with lots of Douglas trees), CATATONIC TYRANNOSAURUS, etc.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#154Maybe 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…
That sounds pretty cool!
Unfortunately, your website is terrible. There is no information about what it is or how it works without watching a video, and I'm not willing to do that.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#155My biggest problem with this sort of schema (and the similar ones other people have mentioned in this thread) is that it doesn't solve any of the difficult problems an addressing system needs to solve.
At best, it's just a "maybe easier to remember than GPS coordinates" system -- but remembering GPS coordinates with this level of precision is not really an insurmountable problem. I know its hard to remember, but up until a decade or so ago, people used to remember dozens of phone numbers, which requires a similar level of memorization.
It doesn't make addresses any easier to find than GPS coordinates -- you pretty much need a GPS. It doesn't necessarily guarantee unique addresses -- you get a different address if you pick different points on the same building or property.
It doesn't encode any routing information. So you're a delivery company asked to deliver a package to 123 Wascally Wabbit. You can convert that to a GPS coordinate easily enough, sure. But then what? Which delivery truck do you put the package on out of which delivery center? You can easily compute which delivery center is physically closest to an address, but that doesn't tell you if there is a natural feature like a river or mountain between the two points. On the other hand, USPS addresses encode the routing information -- the third line is the name of the post office that the delivery vehicle for that address departs from.
It doesn't encode any navigation information. How do you get to the address once you're in the general area? Which road gets you there? If you're a helicopter or a drone or a crow, you can just fly straight to the GPS coordinates, sure. But if you're walking or driving, as most people will be, you've just re-invented the sport of orienteering. This is the problem 911 emergency addresses were intended to solve -- you have a street name and a number for every address, so if you need to find an address in a hurry, you just navigate to the street (which is an easy amount of local knowledge to learn), and then you have a linear ordering of addresses so that you know when you've passed the address you're looking for.
It doesn't encode any service area type information. You want to order a pizza -- does the parlor deliver to 123 Wascally Wabbit? You don't know, and neither do they. You call 911 for a fire truck or ambulance -- are you served by the Newtown fire department, or the Newburgh fire department? Again, your emergency services need to plot your address on a map and then figure out whose region you're in. They can't just say, "Oh, you're in Plymouth, a suburb of Newburgh," and route your call appropriately.
(Essentially) saying "just use (masked) GPS coordinates" may technically assign addresses to all of those billions of places which aren't on named roads in recognized municipalities, but it doesn't solve it usefully.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that was the case we might run into naming collisions if there are multiple cities with the same street names. It would be best if we namespace it to the city as well. So we would have something like { "street": "Church Street", "length": "5", "city": "Church City" } all of course packaged in JSON.
Well-structured data like this is better encapsulated in XML: 5 Church City ]]> Isn't that much more legible and understandable? (I hate XML. So much. This shouldn't be a valid document in any language.)
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well-structured data like this is better encapsulated in XML: 5 Church City ]]> Isn't that much more legible and understandable? (I hate XML. So much. This shouldn't be a valid document in any language.)
Why not both? https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SS9H2Y_7.5.0/com...
Just think, there were even multiple versions of JSONx so someone somewhere had to be using it.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#158Maybe 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…
Just moved to Nairobi (actually, Tigoni on the way to Limuru, where I have no postal address). Pretty sure I saw your team at iHub last week when I was hosting the Mozilla Science Lab. I'd love to connect - gonna email but also please feel free to reach out to me using details in profile (same goes for anyone else in the area).
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
So to check whether the address is valid I need to use a smartphone app. If I cannot do it online and only after someone gives me the address I will know it is broken, but will not know what is the correct address.
Bingo, error detection is functionally distinct from error recovery. In this context, error detection helps prevent some misdeliveries, but can't help ensure additional correct deliveries in the face of error. By analogy, ECC memory can typically detect two bit errors but can only correct single bit errors. That's because the functionality used to detect two bit errors in ECC memory is insufficient to recover both bi…
The concept of an avatar doesn't translate across cultures. And the visual hash isn't an "avatar" as typically used on the internet. Furthermore, the images may be incomprehensible in some cultures.
Keeping a minimal edit distance between code words in the corpus would enable error detection and correction without the burden of sending another piece of info.
Re: Show HN: Give 7B people an instant physical address
#160Address in South Austin, TX: "Grounded Bastard 1780"
