5 ms·

I had never heard of this until I read the criticism, maybe this is some kind of corollary to the Streisand Effect. Also, it looks right up there with Swatch I

by vr46 8y ago

I had never heard of this until I read the criticism, maybe this is some kind of corollary to the Streisand Effect. Also, it looks right up there with Swatch Internet Time.

duxup 8y ago
I thought of Swatch Internet Time too ... Swatch Internet Time was pretty silly, although I appreciated it for that. This other thing seems more opportunistic / financially motivated / kinda scummy too. I also wonder about the Streisand Effect here, never heard of it until now. This almost seems like standards geek / nerd bait...
mirimir 8y ago
I have a hard time believing that W3W isn't an early April Fools joke. I mean, seriously? And why three words? You only need two, unless you're coding altitude. And damn, you already have two numbers (angles) with arbitrary precision. And how does one calculate great-circle distances using their silly words?
- NikkiA 8y ago
  The 3 words are because 2 words doesn't give you enough bits of enumerated data. The words aren't to be thought of as X,Y,Z, they're just 3 blobs of bits, where each word represents something like a 0-200,000 range or something.
  - mirimir 8y ago
    Huh? Maybe not two short words. But clearly, two numbers can be represented by two words.
    - teach 8y ago
      Are you talking about existing English words? I'm not sure there are enough longer words for this to be possible, depending on the range of numbers being encoded.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        No, I wasn't. Sorry, I just don't get the point. Implementing a bunch of proprietary location-encoding schemes is just insane. I do see the profit motive, obviously. But I can only hope that people will avoid using stuff like this. Maybe if it were totally open-source. And if it were implemented by some recognized international entity. Maybe some part of the UN.
    - maxerickson 8y ago
      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.
      - mirimir 8y ago
        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".
        maxerickson 8y ago
        Yes, it seemed you were arguing those two numbers could easily be encoded using existing words. If you want to make gibberish word like objects it's probably possible.
        mirimir 8y ago
        But what's the point of that? If they were always the same two (or three) words, fine. But if there are multiple such encoding systems, any set of three words (foo.bar.baz) is ambiguous. Because it depends on the system being used. So sure, someone might remember "foo.bar.baz". But "foo.bar.baz" in W3W might be in SF. But in Hanoi by some other system. And then we get to the need to pay W3W to generate those codes. That's crazy bullshit.
        maxerickson 8y ago
        Yes, W3W is stupid, but each address is a pointer to lots o bits.
        NikkiA 8y ago
        TBF The maidenhead system (which is a worldwide standard) IS, IMO fairly easy to remember. And because it's pairs are increasing in area, I can state that I live in IO93 and it narrows it to: https://www.karhukoti.com/maidenhead-grid-square-locator/?grid=IO93 https://www.karhukoti.com/maidenhead-grid-square-locator/?gr... or I could give the next 2 characters to narrow it to a 1km x 1km (roughly) area that covers my town, or the 2 letters and 2 numbers that give a small area that pinpoints 2-3 houses on my street. It's not really any more complex or hard to remember than a standard postal code or zip code.
aschneid 8y ago
The only reason I had heard of it was because my car has it built into the navigation system. So, I can enter a W3W coordinate and my car will appropriately route me. It's supposedly beneficial when trying to locate a particular person. They can just send you their W3W, the car can read it off the SMS, and automatically provide routing. I have not used the capability, but explored it when I first got the car since I had never heard of W3W.

by vr46 8y ago

I had never heard of this until I read the criticism, maybe this is some kind of corollary to the Streisand Effect. Also, it looks right up there with Swatch Internet Time.

duxup 8y ago

I thought of Swatch Internet Time too ... Swatch Internet Time was pretty silly, although I appreciated it for that. This other thing seems more opportunistic / financially motivated / kinda scummy too. I also wonder about the Streisand Effect here, never heard of it until now. This almost seems like standards geek / nerd bait...

mirimir 8y ago

I have a hard time believing that W3W isn't an early April Fools joke. I mean, seriously? And why three words? You only need two, unless you're coding altitude. And damn, you already have two numbers (angles) with arbitrary precision. And how does one calculate great-circle distances using their silly words?

NikkiA 8y ago
The 3 words are because 2 words doesn't give you enough bits of enumerated data. The words aren't to be thought of as X,Y,Z, they're just 3 blobs of bits, where each word represents something like a 0-200,000 range or something.
- mirimir 8y ago
  Huh? Maybe not two short words. But clearly, two numbers can be represented by two words.
  - teach 8y ago
    Are you talking about existing English words? I'm not sure there are enough longer words for this to be possible, depending on the range of numbers being encoded.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      No, I wasn't. Sorry, I just don't get the point. Implementing a bunch of proprietary location-encoding schemes is just insane. I do see the profit motive, obviously. But I can only hope that people will avoid using stuff like this. Maybe if it were totally open-source. And if it were implemented by some recognized international entity. Maybe some part of the UN.
  - maxerickson 8y ago
    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.
    - mirimir 8y ago
      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".
      - maxerickson 8y ago
        Yes, it seemed you were arguing those two numbers could easily be encoded using existing words. If you want to make gibberish word like objects it's probably possible.
        mirimir 8y ago
        But what's the point of that? If they were always the same two (or three) words, fine. But if there are multiple such encoding systems, any set of three words (foo.bar.baz) is ambiguous. Because it depends on the system being used. So sure, someone might remember "foo.bar.baz". But "foo.bar.baz" in W3W might be in SF. But in Hanoi by some other system. And then we get to the need to pay W3W to generate those codes. That's crazy bullshit.
        maxerickson 8y ago
        Yes, W3W is stupid, but each address is a pointer to lots o bits.
        NikkiA 8y ago
        TBF The maidenhead system (which is a worldwide standard) IS, IMO fairly easy to remember. And because it's pairs are increasing in area, I can state that I live in IO93 and it narrows it to: https://www.karhukoti.com/maidenhead-grid-square-locator/?grid=IO93 https://www.karhukoti.com/maidenhead-grid-square-locator/?gr... or I could give the next 2 characters to narrow it to a 1km x 1km (roughly) area that covers my town, or the 2 letters and 2 numbers that give a small area that pinpoints 2-3 houses on my street. It's not really any more complex or hard to remember than a standard postal code or zip code.

aschneid 8y ago

The only reason I had heard of it was because my car has it built into the navigation system. So, I can enter a W3W coordinate and my car will appropriately route me. It's supposedly beneficial when trying to locate a particular person. They can just send you their W3W, the car can read it off the SMS, and automatically provide routing. I have not used the capability, but explored it when I first got the car since I had never heard of W3W.