291–300 of 336 posts
They proposed cuteness like this:
Default Brand Name (short for "default cell server brand name"): the special brand name, such as "mercury," "venus," "earth," "moon," "mars," that denotes the default GeoRegistry for a planet. Other cell server brand names always refer to the planet Earth.
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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.
If one of the words is slightly wrong, then you want it to be obvious.
If the Kentucky emergency operator adds an extra s they will see that it can’t be right. With the contiguous numbering the ambulance would be close, but probably still unable to find you.
See page 23 of the patent: https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/docs2/pct/WO2014170646/p...
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Because, from what you've described, it sounds like your system will look like base64-encoded coordinates. Ie 39.022874, 21.913384 will be IJASDO, which isn't as easy to memorize as W3W.
Not base64, but similar. I think "IJASDO" would be way easier to memorize than person.guards.gangs (I will definitely give W3W credit for picking unintentioned yet humorous word combos), particularly if English wasn't my first language. If you disagree with this logic, explain to me why automobiles' license plates should use W3W-style. ("idiot-driver-honk"). Wait, was that first one persons.guards.gangs? persons.guar…
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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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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…
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
It explains how to easily search for "points no more than X km from Y" in a DB query without having to actually calculate distances.
I agree with the author that using W3W for locating people in trouble is ludicrous, yet it appears to be real: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47705912
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I wish we would make it possible in the US to use an email address as an address for purposes of things like having a bank account and pick up things like debit cards in person from any branch of that bank if you are traveling, homeless, whatever. I rarely get any important physical mail these days. But I still run into issues over address problems (ironically, more now that I am back in housing than I ever did while…
I wonder if this will be the future of the USPS Online Mailing thing where you get pictures of your mail... Just register with an email, things are autoscanned and sent to you with a PGP key you provide.
What you will get is a web application you get to sign into to actually get your mail, and you will receive a notification mail in your regular email inbox stating that you have received mail (but not from whom, or what the subject is, because that is privacy sensitive information), so that you know that you should go and get it yourself via the web application.
This is what every digital 'inbox' that isn't email has done thus far. This is in fact exactly what the Dutch government has done with their digital inbox which is intended to replace physical letters from services like the revenue service and municipalities. Thankfully that monstrosity is optional (for now).
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…
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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, witho…