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What3words, the GPS app that can find anyone anywhere

theguardian.com

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Re: What3words, the GPS app that can find anyone anywhere

#21

Post by lifthrasiir »

Findus23 wrote: post #17
lifthrasiir wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover it is absolutely not locality sensitive, rendering the whole system into a proprietary hashing algorithm. Probably the localization is pretty much the only element I agree to be good to have, but I believe it's likely that some word pairs are in the same synset for some languages, even though I'm not really in a position to evaluate its wordlists.

I'm not sure I understand their idea of localization. The center of Vienna is "decays.jump.graver" (if those are simple words is questionable). But when I switch to German the same block becomes "fahrende.hügeligen.ansprüche" (driving, hilly, demands). So the words I get by default are again just random strings for someone who doesn't speak German) And even someone who speaks German may get the inflection of the word…

You are correct, it's a horrible implementation of an otherwise good idea.

Personally I want a public domain list of 2^k distinct words of distinct and unambiguous enough meanings, that are then translated to many other languages and evaluated for the same criteria (in reality, such system will be required to begin with as many languages as possible). My best guess is that k=10 is possible with a lot of efforts.

Re: What3words, the GPS app that can find anyone anywhere

#22

Post by seszett »

Findus23 wrote: post #17
lifthrasiir wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moreover it is absolutely not locality sensitive, rendering the whole system into a proprietary hashing algorithm. Probably the localization is pretty much the only element I agree to be good to have, but I believe it's likely that some word pairs are in the same synset for some languages, even though I'm not really in a position to evaluate its wordlists.

I'm not sure I understand their idea of localization. The center of Vienna is "decays.jump.graver" (if those are simple words is questionable). But when I switch to German the same block becomes "fahrende.hügeligen.ansprüche" (driving, hilly, demands). So the words I get by default are again just random strings for someone who doesn't speak German) And even someone who speaks German may get the inflection of the word…

> And worst of all, all those permutations exist and map to other locations somewhere on earth.

To be honest they did give a thought about this, as apparently close sounding words are supposed to map to places that are far apart.

It makes sense, as you should at least know if you're looking for a place in Austria or Burkina-Faso, but it also means that if you heard the words wrong then you depend on their algorithm to find a slightly different-sounding address that is the one you were looking for, instead of a more intuitive system where you could just around because if it sounded the same then it should be closer.

And since the word list is proprietary, you really entirely depend on them. Their website shows three different suggestions, the one you typed and two close sounding ones.

Tough luck if you typed "duper.listons.égalisons" and the actual address was "duper.listons.égalisation", you won't get it in the suggestions.

Re: What3words, the GPS app that can find anyone anywhere

#23

Post by seszett »

realusername wrote: post #10
lozenge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note the simple words are assigned to populated areas. In the ocean it might give you "overripe.thoroughbreds.salads".

In French, on their map demo which centers the map in Paris, it's already pretty bad. I honestly have no idea what some of the words mean. Edit: A few examples taken randomly of mostly unused words in French (require a dictionary for a good 90% of native speakers): Volute, redise, dépiler, rapière, ânier, putatif, toison. All of that is in the center of Paris, and it took me 5 mins to find them, there's probably hund…

I have no idea how they chose their words, you will get things like the words you listed, say "ânier" which is apparently a donkey-driver, or "chatière" (a cat flap) but their dictionary doesn't even include just "âne" or "chat" (donkey and cat respectively) which are words anyone would know.

This is completely absurd.

Re: What3words, the GPS app that can find anyone anywhere

#24

Post by BrandoElFollito »

onion2k wrote: post #14
realusername wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In French, on their map demo which centers the map in Paris, it's already pretty bad. I honestly have no idea what some of the words mean. Edit: A few examples taken randomly of mostly unused words in French (require a dictionary for a good 90% of native speakers): Volute, redise, dépiler, rapière, ânier, putatif, toison. All of that is in the center of Paris, and it took me 5 mins to find them, there's probably hund…

I honestly have no idea what some of the words mean. Do you need to? If you don't speak the appropriate language you won't know the meaning of the words for any place. That doesn't make it any less useful so long as you can pronounce them.

I French this is extremely important.

For one we have plenty of homphones. Is it saut, seau, sôt sceau ?

Then if you do not know a word, say châtière, it can become chattière.

So only homophonically unique words and well known ones should be used

Re: What3words, the GPS app that can find anyone anywhere

#25

Post by eliaspro »

"plus codes" [1] are a far better approach:

- no language involved, only ASCII chars and + signs

- open source algorithm to derive location codes

- works completely offline, as codes are generated on-the-fly

- no central DB of statically defined keywords needed

- no dependency on a company which might go bankrupt at some point or change licensing terms at will

W3W looks to me more like a strategic sell-out - implementing an already existing idea, hype it up, cooperate with some big brands (e.g. Daimler/Mercedes-Benz [2]), sell it for profit…

[1] https://plus.codes/

[2] https://blog.daimler.com/en/2018/03/28/what3words-mercedes-b...

Re: What3words, the GPS app that can find anyone anywhere

#26

Post by UncensoredR »

I think this is a great idea and it sounds remarkably like what DNS servers do for IP addresses. Could we modify DNS servers to provide this information (and potentially better localize it--like how country TLDs are controlled by given countries)? I think could also be very helpful for kids or the elderly in the US--they could remember a phrase much easier than their full address.
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