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Why Bother with What Three Words?

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#251

Post by 7952 »

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…

The problem with those kind of numbers is that they are easy to get wrong by a couple of digits. Think about how difficult it can be to read a number over the phone.

And guessing distances seems like a pretty unusual thing to do. Especially as latitude/longitude is a terrible system for that anyway. Small distances are very small numbers and hard to think about.

It is possible to make a spelling mistake in what three words, but the mistake will be readily obvious if you know the general location.

I shared your scepticism until I tried the app. The auto-complete is really slick and it just works. For sending coordinates through a human/speech interface it is just going to be more reliable. For ever other problem use another solution.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#252

Post by yoube »

retroafroman wrote: post #200
DoreenMichele wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, this is a shit system and I can't believe anyone even bothered to create it. Also, I've never heard of it prior to today. Who uses this crap? From what I've read, it gets used by nomadic peoples and people where regular postal addresses have not been established. So, for example, parts of Mongolia. I'm not arguing with you. Just answering your question. I actually favorited your comment. I think it's very…

I remember they pitched Mongolia as a place this would be used, but I fail to see how it actually would be. I haven't been back to Mongolia since this came out, but I would bet good money that no one (besides whatever government entity signed onto (bribed/schmoozed) the project) would use this. English isn't that common among nomads that it would make any sense. Everyone knows the Latin alphabet, but reading and writ…

Not necessarily. While Ulaanbaatar does have street numbers and such, they're not well-known and are basically never used when giving out directions/advertising. It's more like: The "yellow building to the right side of the big department store". Official addresses also rarely use street names, it's more like: Flat #5, Apartment #2, Microdistrict #4, Sukhbaatar District.

So in reality everyone just uses Post Office Boxes for mail, who often just call you and say mail's arrived and charge 400 tugrug.

That said, no-one I know has even heard about what3words, aside from those who read the initial press release. And I'm from Mongolia.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#253

Post by IshKebab »

Anderkent wrote: post #242
glonq wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words do have value, but what W3W takes away from you (money!) has more value.

It's free for everything I need as an end user AFAICT. How does it take away money?

Apparently they charge for API usage. If it became popular you would be paying for it (indirectly).

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#254

Post by michaelt »

dragonwriter wrote: post #151
yorwba wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The formula might not be elegant, but if you have an exact description of tectonic drift, you can absolutely have a code that refers to a fixed location on its plate, rather than to a point on some imaginary sphere. GPS coordinates are just one possible solution, there's no reason to consider equivalent encodings of the same values as the only alternatives.

> The formula might not be elegant, but if you have an exact description of tectonic drift, you can absolutely have a code that refers to a fixed location on its plate, rather than to a point on some imaginary sphere. Sure, but (1) is there a good way to get an exact description of tectonic drift?, And (2) does tectonic drift account for all shifts of surface features (intuitively, it would not necessarily for featur…

Geographers already have a system for recording positions relative to continental plates - in Europe that means ETRS89 [1], North American NAD-83 [2], Australian GDA94 and so on.

Of course, getting all software to support multiple datums might be a complicated matter, as 98% of things like online slippy maps and mobile phone geolocation APIs just use WGS84, the familiar datum used by GPS.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Terrestrial_Reference... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Datum

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#255

Post by interestica »

nfg wrote: post #216
TruffleMuffin wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, the writer's misunderstanding of that use case is explained in the comments. Emergency services don't have sms/mms service. The W3W service would presumably use SMS to get location. (phone sends lat/long coords via sms, gets 3 word response).

SMS tends to be more reliable than a data connection in areas with a poor connection (remote, or interference).

This is doable right now - having some sort of data-to-emergencyservices gateway does not exist.

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-...

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#256

Post by wickedsmile »

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…

Apparently it's used because of the current limitations of the GPS system, it's still not accurate to 5cm.

Although it's not a limitation of the coordinate system, so improving GPS accuracy to mm level resolution will make GPS coordinates obvious

Oh yea house aren't that small but the vertical distance between the floors and individual apartment in the building is.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#257

Post by saikofish »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #184
bradknowles wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's a feature? ;)

I did think about posting my location for all the world to see, knowing that it wouldn't tell anyone anything at all. But then I thought "Maybe I just can't figure it out and other people can." Thus the question. :P

It definitely isn't a feature! We just never got around to putting it in!

I do take pull requests :D

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#258

Post by saikofish »

duiker101 wrote: post #50
jpatokal wrote: post #4

There are plenty of alternatives to W3W, most notably Open Location Codes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code Alternatively, try a W3W parody: https://what3emojis.com/ http://www.what3fucks.com (NSFW text)

what3emojis seems a better idea in the way that at least you are not bound by language. You can describe and remember the emojis as you want. As long as you can convey them precisely.

And when has anyone ever had trouble with that? ;-)

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#259

Post by Anarch157a »

7952 wrote: post #251
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…

The problem with those kind of numbers is that they are easy to get wrong by a couple of digits. Think about how difficult it can be to read a number over the phone. And guessing distances seems like a pretty unusual thing to do. Especially as latitude/longitude is a terrible system for that anyway. Small distances are very small numbers and hard to think about. It is possible to make a spelling mistake in what three…

> Think about how difficult it can be to read a number over the phone.

Same thing is true for words, there are words in my native portuguese that are dificult to tell from each other even in person, imagine by phone. If some one misunderstands a word and it's valid on a combination?

For example (in portuguese), Paca.Tatu.Cotia (Paca.Armadilo.Agouti in english) can be misheard as Maca.Tatu.Quati (Stretcher.Armadilo.Coati in english). What if both combinations are valid, but thousands of km away ?

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#260

Post by dgritsko »

thanatropism wrote: post #239
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 is why you have space filling curves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-order_curve With that you can have a linear ordering of space at each scale. Rounding errors become rounding errors. I remember seeing an implementation of that on npm or some such thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash

Geohashes are really cool, glad to see them mentioned in this thread. If you aren't familiar, you owe it to yourself to read the second Wikipedia article linked by the parent, it's a neat concept.
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