5 ms·

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?

by snug 7y ago

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.
      - danielscrubs 7y ago
        H3 looks awesome I’ve been searching for a solution to that problem for my hobby project! I wouldn’t say that W3W is dumb. I like the idea as a global mnemonic device. But it is a hard sell.
        gloflo 7y ago
        I meant dumb as simple in a technological sense. The idea is quite attractive but there are so many problems with their wordlists and algo that I don't consider it a system worth using, even it was not proprietary and unlawfully patented
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.

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?

by 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.
    - danielscrubs 7y ago
      H3 looks awesome I’ve been searching for a solution to that problem for my hobby project! I wouldn’t say that W3W is dumb. I like the idea as a global mnemonic device. But it is a hard sell.
      - gloflo 7y ago
        I meant dumb as simple in a technological sense. The idea is quite attractive but there are so many problems with their wordlists and algo that I don't consider it a system worth using, even it was not proprietary and unlawfully patented

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.