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Reminder that you should avoid what3words. Still unfortunate that some governments fell into using them. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-

Reminder that you should avoid what3words. Still unfortunate that some governments fell into using them. https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-words/ https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-... > The algorithm used to generate the words is proprietary. You are not allowed to see it. You cannot find out your location without asking W3W for permission. > If you want permission, you have to agree to some pretty long terms and conditions. And understand their privacy policy. Oh, and an API agreement. And then make sure you don't infringe their patents. > You cannot store locations. You have to let them analyse the locations you look up. Want to use more than 10,000 addresses? Contact them for prices!

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19511917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19511917
atonse 7y ago
Oh geez I didn't know any of this. We have planned to explore using this tool for one of our products. This effectively kills it.
- snug 7y ago
  Plus codes seem to be a much better solution https://plus.codes/ https://plus.codes/ Kinda curious why you would be using something like this?
  - atonse 7y ago
    We're looking for a global addressing system that can span cities and states (not necessarily countries), and for one that doesn't depend on lat/lon (because that has inherent error margins in it). It should be global and consistent so we can build tools on top of it, rather than have to learn each country's addressing system. Also these coordinates would be used by our system internally as identifiers, but the users would just see the artifacts that matter to them, like roads etc.
    - gloflo 7y ago
      > doesn't depend on lat/lon (because that has inherent error margins in it). What do you mean by that?
      - atonse 7y ago
        To map a particular point (like a house) with latitude and longitude, you have to be accurate to 5 or 6 decimal points. If you have the right data, then yes you absolutely can map this. But if you're taking, say a telemetry point from a truck moving across the city and trying to map it to an address, there's going to be some drift in that number. And you're going to use that coordinate to say "what's the nearest house to this" – but due to that potential drift, you might match with a different house. This is not life or death stuff. But then it becomes harder to "cluster" points together to say "all these datapoint correspond to this house". Having a slightly larger grid system allows you to say "anything in this 100sq foot square will be associated with this house" which allows you to have some margin of error, while still being able to address individual addresses. So then instead of -72.883322, 38.128312 being treated differently from -72.883320, 38.128317, they all cluster around one "square" which makes it easy to just group them. But What3Words is trying to give each of those "squares" a unique english word identifier, whereas other coordinate systems probably just use alphanumeric codes. I didn't know their algorithm was proprietary. That's bullshit because there is no "algorithm" per se – it's just mapping numbers to word lists. That's it. But that's marketing.
        gloflo 7y ago
        You are making point (location) in polygon (building) queries anyways, if I understood you correctly. GNSS can be off, there is not much you can do about this for free. Any other location-description will be the same. You cannot fix GNSS accuracy by using different representation of location. If you just want to snap your coordinates to a grid, check s2 or h3 or just make your own grid in your country's authorative coordinate system or even snap your coordinates to a lower precision. W3W is really dumb.
        7y ago
  - ProblemFactory 7y ago
    There are a few more open specification Geohash algorithms out there as well. What's silly about W3W is that their entire "proprietary algorithm" is going to be the same as all of these, except with /usr/share/dict/words instead of A-Z0-9 as the alphabet. The only reason they need Kubernetes clusters on AWS is to keep their word list secret, every open-spec code can run offline.
    - atonse 7y ago
      I don't understand how they thought this business model would ever work. Have they patented the idea of using english words to encode numbers? Because I've seen patterns of 2-3 english words used in the past to communicate things like keys and confirmation codes.
      - gloflo 7y ago
        Lobbying and bribery. Check out who is using them, its quite unnatural.
lostphilosopher 7y ago
You're doing the Lord's work reustle. Really irked that they bill themselves as a solution in the public safety (emergency response) space while objectively being detrimental in that domain. There are better services out there.

DyslexicAtheist 7y ago

recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19511917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19511917

atonse 7y ago

Oh geez I didn't know any of this. We have planned to explore using this tool for one of our products. This effectively kills it.

snug 7y ago
Plus codes seem to be a much better solution https://plus.codes/ https://plus.codes/ Kinda curious why you would be using something like this?
- atonse 7y ago
  We're looking for a global addressing system that can span cities and states (not necessarily countries), and for one that doesn't depend on lat/lon (because that has inherent error margins in it). It should be global and consistent so we can build tools on top of it, rather than have to learn each country's addressing system. Also these coordinates would be used by our system internally as identifiers, but the users would just see the artifacts that matter to them, like roads etc.
  - gloflo 7y ago
    > doesn't depend on lat/lon (because that has inherent error margins in it). What do you mean by that?
    - atonse 7y ago
      To map a particular point (like a house) with latitude and longitude, you have to be accurate to 5 or 6 decimal points. If you have the right data, then yes you absolutely can map this. But if you're taking, say a telemetry point from a truck moving across the city and trying to map it to an address, there's going to be some drift in that number. And you're going to use that coordinate to say "what's the nearest house to this" – but due to that potential drift, you might match with a different house. This is not life or death stuff. But then it becomes harder to "cluster" points together to say "all these datapoint correspond to this house". Having a slightly larger grid system allows you to say "anything in this 100sq foot square will be associated with this house" which allows you to have some margin of error, while still being able to address individual addresses. So then instead of -72.883322, 38.128312 being treated differently from -72.883320, 38.128317, they all cluster around one "square" which makes it easy to just group them. But What3Words is trying to give each of those "squares" a unique english word identifier, whereas other coordinate systems probably just use alphanumeric codes. I didn't know their algorithm was proprietary. That's bullshit because there is no "algorithm" per se – it's just mapping numbers to word lists. That's it. But that's marketing.
      - gloflo 7y ago
        You are making point (location) in polygon (building) queries anyways, if I understood you correctly. GNSS can be off, there is not much you can do about this for free. Any other location-description will be the same. You cannot fix GNSS accuracy by using different representation of location. If you just want to snap your coordinates to a grid, check s2 or h3 or just make your own grid in your country's authorative coordinate system or even snap your coordinates to a lower precision. W3W is really dumb.
        7y ago
- ProblemFactory 7y ago
  There are a few more open specification Geohash algorithms out there as well. What's silly about W3W is that their entire "proprietary algorithm" is going to be the same as all of these, except with /usr/share/dict/words instead of A-Z0-9 as the alphabet. The only reason they need Kubernetes clusters on AWS is to keep their word list secret, every open-spec code can run offline.
  - atonse 7y ago
    I don't understand how they thought this business model would ever work. Have they patented the idea of using english words to encode numbers? Because I've seen patterns of 2-3 english words used in the past to communicate things like keys and confirmation codes.
    - gloflo 7y ago
      Lobbying and bribery. Check out who is using them, its quite unnatural.

lostphilosopher 7y ago

You're doing the Lord's work reustle. Really irked that they bill themselves as a solution in the public safety (emergency response) space while objectively being detrimental in that domain. There are better services out there.