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Why Bother with What Three Words?

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Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#211

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

There are so many competing systems because the problem of turning two numbers (a coordinate pair) into a string is trivial, so everyone comes up with their own bikeshed.

The individual details of the systems don't really matter. Sure, they each have some small advantage or disadvantage, and you can argue about them for a long time, but in the end, what matters is usage/adoption.

A widespread but suboptimal system is better than a system with better properties that few people know/use, because the differences barely matter.

Unfortunately, there isn't sufficient need for such a system that ordinary people would regularly come into contact with it, and any group of people that does have such a need already found a (proprietary) solution, so it's unlikely we'll get a standard soon unless big players agree on one and aggressively push for it.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#212

Post by rsync »

jccalhoun wrote: post #65

Mostly off topic: I would like a URL shortener that uses a similar system so that instead of giving me small.url/b3DmQ it would be small.url/MouseHatDoor because I will sometimes share a link with my students and there is always one student who can't get it to work because they type it wrong or something. I can send them the link through a course announcement but it is more convenient to put a short url on screen and…

"I can send them the link through a course announcement but it is more convenient to put a short url on screen and have them go there."

I hope you will look at "Oh By Codes":

https://0x.co/

Standard URL shortening (although with no tracking or cookies or javascript) but you can also shorten non-urls.

There's a normal FAQ on the page, but also an "HN FAQ":

https://0x.co/hnfaq.html

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#213

Post by thelittlenag »

mchannon wrote: post #53

W3W suffers horribly from "call for price". You won't catch Google or Amazon making you call and talk to a human being (on GMT time no less) before figuring out if you can afford their service. I'm preparing my own version, truly open source (though with a premium component), with the following improvements over W3W: •Length-optimized. If one character sufficiently describes your location, you don't need to tack on e…

You should check out what we're working on at qalocate.bamsaas.com/whitepapers/. Even an improvement on W3W is still going to be rather limited and only address part of the problem. We're trying to provide solutions for the entire space.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#214

Post by delecti »

mirimir wrote: post #175
delecti wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, W3W is already "spheroid-optimized", in that the named squares are quite close to 10'x10' both at the equator and poles. There are grid "skips" (see one here [1]) every so often to keep all of the squares close to the same size. [1] https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/195696 Also don't discount the benefit of their distribution of the words. If you're using voice input and trying to get somewhere, the system…

WTF? "captain.water.water" => ~90 minutes from Louisville, Kentucky "captains.water.water" => island in the North Atlantic That's crazy. I mean, " . .water" should be a contiguous area. With "*.water.water" a contiguous part of it.

Why? You would lose the ability to disambiguate in the way I described. The words aren't coordinates, they're the result of a hash function.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#215

Post by thelittlenag »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #174
velcrovan wrote: post #7

There is another big problem with W3W that Terence doesn’t mention: it isn’t scalar. From another W3W-criticism blog post ( https://mwfrost.com/space-is-scalar.html ): “An addressing system is successful insofar as it enables us to execute the suite of cognitive tasks that constitute navigation. Associating a destination with its location on the earth is only one of these chores. “If you have a powerful computer in y…

> You can tell the search and rescue team that you’ve twisted your ankle at ringleader.kilt.comedians, but as soon as you’ve moved 3 meters east, you’re at since.duplicates.backswing, and the technologically-enhanced mnemonic crutch has exhausted its usefulness. This represents my disappointment as well. When I initially heard of the system, I thought it was hierarchical; the first word describing some larger chunk,…

Our startup offers a geohash phrase that is hierarchical in nature. You can find the docs at: qalocate.bamsaas.com/whitepapers

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#216

Post by nfg »

TruffleMuffin wrote: post #207
turc1656 wrote: post #195

The author didn't touch upon what I think is the biggest issue with this. I can be pretty damn sure that 51.50799,-0.12803 is really close to 51.51799,-0.12803 and even closer to 51.50800,-0.12803 just by looking at the numbers because they follow a decimal precision style location system. However, I have no idea if mile.crazy.shade is next to mouth.award.bowl or if they are 1,0000 miles apart. If anything, they shou…

This actually has a usage for emergency services. People call and don't know where they are. This app can let the operator send them a text with a link in that they follow and can communicate very effectively the precise location. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47705912

This exact use-case is debunked in article linked.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#217

Post by thelittlenag »

jccalhoun wrote: post #65

Mostly off topic: I would like a URL shortener that uses a similar system so that instead of giving me small.url/b3DmQ it would be small.url/MouseHatDoor because I will sometimes share a link with my students and there is always one student who can't get it to work because they type it wrong or something. I can send them the link through a course announcement but it is more convenient to put a short url on screen and…

You should check out our LNS system. You find the docs at http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/whitepapers

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#218

Post by mchannon »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #204
mchannon wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus Codes have little application outside building addressing. If I tell you I'm at 4CFM+JW, come get me, you're going to be pretty helpless, because I didn't include the city. Want to shift a little to the east? 4CFM+JX works, but 4CFM+JY? Whoops. How about north or south? Maybe there's a way to do that, but I haven't found it yet. How about upping the precision? The size of the square is maybe 4X the W3W grid cell…

> Mine just happens to be a slightly improved approach, and slightly less full of drawbacks than everybody else's. Honest opinion: it is not. Plus codes is the one that has least drawbacks and most advantages.

I have a real problem with people giving dishonest opinions, so good on you.

But seriously, you haven't seen it yet. Ever read Green Eggs and Ham?

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#219

Post by thaumasiotes »

mirimir wrote: post #175
delecti wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, W3W is already "spheroid-optimized", in that the named squares are quite close to 10'x10' both at the equator and poles. There are grid "skips" (see one here [1]) every so often to keep all of the squares close to the same size. [1] https://gis.stackexchange.com/a/195696 Also don't discount the benefit of their distribution of the words. If you're using voice input and trying to get somewhere, the system…

WTF? "captain.water.water" => ~90 minutes from Louisville, Kentucky "captains.water.water" => island in the North Atlantic That's crazy. I mean, " . .water" should be a contiguous area. With "*.water.water" a contiguous part of it.

The non-proximity of W3W locations with similar identifiers is intentional; it's meant as an easy way to perform error checking. The concept is that you state your location, and if you state it wrong, or the other person gets it wrong, the mistake will be obvious because the small change to the identifier results in a location extremely distant from you.

The system pretty explicitly considers all squares equal, without a hierarchy such as you envision. There are no identifiers for larger agglomerations of individual squares.

(And more specifically, where identifiers are hierarchical, you generally have the larger scope first, not last. URLs are a bizarre exception.)

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#220

Post by mchannon »

romwell wrote: post #209
mchannon wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus Codes have little application outside building addressing. If I tell you I'm at 4CFM+JW, come get me, you're going to be pretty helpless, because I didn't include the city. Want to shift a little to the east? 4CFM+JX works, but 4CFM+JY? Whoops. How about north or south? Maybe there's a way to do that, but I haven't found it yet. How about upping the precision? The size of the square is maybe 4X the W3W grid cell…

TL;DR: see [3] for an overview of how plus codes work. ----------------- >Plus Codes have little application outside building addressing. This claim needs some arguing. >If I tell you I'm at 4CFM+JW, come get me, you're going to be pretty helpless, because I didn't include the city. So why would you tell me that? Either include the city, or use a longer plus code that includes the city . Example from the spec[1]: >>N…

>So why would you tell me that? Either include the city, or use a longer plus code that includes the city.

Or I could just use a system that doesn't have that drawback. Plus codes aren't awful. I just find room for improvement.

> This is by design; some symbols were omitted to avoid having words in codes (which, as TFA discusses, can be problematic, e.g. some places might not be happy with codes that have EVIL in them).

So what you're saying is only an open source project could deal with this level of potential offense. I'll agree with that. People who don't like EVIL could add more precision to make EVILGH.

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