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Why Bother with What Three Words?

shkspr.mobi

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Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#261

Post by DoreenMichele »

saikofish wrote: post #257
DoreenMichele wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I was going to try to submit a pull request, but it seems someone requested this already:

https://github.com/BadIdeaFactory/what3emojis/issues/10

Reversable #10

@asteres

asteres opened this issue almost 2 years ago

I don't see a way to lookup an address if I have 3 emoji.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#262

Post by qntty »

asow92 wrote: post #243
qntty wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lots of complains about the world, and only so many hours in the day.

Then call others to the cause. Be constructive. Don't just complain, as that provides no value.

It does provide a value. If people are dissatisfied with something, it gives someone an opportunity to do better. If everyone accepts subpar quality, why bother making something high quality?

Makers need consumers with the ability to appreciate their product. Complaining together with others is a way of sharpening your and others ability to appreciate something good when it comes along.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#263

Post by gexcolo »

yoube wrote: post #252
retroafroman wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 B…

Hey, weird ask, but I am going to be visiting Mongolia in 3 months with a small group of online pals. Want to be friends? My email is on my profile!

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#264

Post by mindcrime »

delfinom wrote: post #246
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 some African country bought into it I think. >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? It's literally a con job designed to create a middleman where one isn't needed. It's the modern libertarian dream.

It's the modern libertarian dream.

There is nothing libertarian about conning people or "creating a middleman where one isn't needed." If you believe that, you have been badly misinformed.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#265

Post by asow92 »

qntty wrote: post #262
asow92 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then call others to the cause. Be constructive. Don't just complain, as that provides no value.

It does provide a value. If people are dissatisfied with something, it gives someone an opportunity to do better. If everyone accepts subpar quality, why bother making something high quality? Makers need consumers with the ability to appreciate their product. Complaining together with others is a way of sharpening your and others ability to appreciate something good when it comes along.

We're both advocating for action here.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#266

Post by lainga »

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

Which are great right up until you cross boundaries. IIRC there's a big boundary in Google's S2 that divides Toronto in half.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#267

Post by foxylad »

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…

Agree with your main issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code solves this quite nicely, and also the OP's issue of W3W being non-free.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#268

Post by talking_panda »

Oh interesting I just got to know about w3w from this post. I agree with the criticisms about it not being an open standard.

But the idea sounds interesting. I won't be using it anytime soon, but I can see it can be useful to Ron Swanson who hides his gold arbitrarily under trees in forest. :)

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#269

Post by notfed »

mirimir wrote: post #90
maxerickson wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many bits do you think it takes to precisely indicate a location on the surface of the earth? If you are using 2 angles, I guess the place to start is with the circumference of the earth, which is 40 million meters. So to get within a meter, you then need to encode your angle with enough precision to indicate a single one of the 40 million possibilities.

Ummm. That's what latitude and longitude are. Angles. Or equivalently, radians. And what's magic about one meter? Latitude and longitude can be arbitrarily precise. But whatever. You want 40 million? Well, 360 degrees / 40 million ~ 10^-5. That's easily handled by "43.63872, -116.24135".

Here's why you'd need three words:

- Circumference of earth = 40,075 km

- Granularity needed = 3 meters

- Number of common words in dictionary (generous) = 60,000

- Number of bits needed for single axis = log((40075 km)/(3 meters))/log(2) = 24 bits

- Number of bits needed for two axis = 48 bits

- Number of bits given by a single word = log(60000)/log(2) = 15.8

- Number of words required for two axis = ceil(48/15.8) = 3

Also, keep in mind, 60,000 words is generous; this many words would probably include lots of archaisms. For comparison, 1password uses 18,000 words in its dictionary. You could probably shave off some bits by getting rid of slices from the north/south poles. You might also save space by ignoring parts of the ocean, but then it starts getting non-trivial.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#270

Post by lenticular »

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…

Exactly my thoughts. The whole concept is just so insanely useless.
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