3 ms·
I love the idea of geohashing systems, but brevity is the wrong goal IMO. Systems like what3words.com (while they have their own problems with openness), follow
by teeray 3y ago
I love the idea of geohashing systems, but brevity is the wrong goal IMO. Systems like what3words.com (while they have their own problems with openness), follow the CorrectHorseBatteryStaple [0] model—they’re longer, but more memorable because they tap into your imagination. A string like “u4uyegiu” is maybe more appealing than two floating point numbers, but lacks just as much in memorability and ease of communication.
[0] https://xkcd.com/936/ https://xkcd.com/936/
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y agoWhat3Words is garbage from craven rent seeking sscammers. You can design a very similar system using the S2 projection and EFF word lists to address any point on earth with 2m resolution using 4 words. W3W's entire business model is to make the mapping opaque so that you have to pay them money for lookups. Even worse, it means they intentionally destroyed any hierarchical locality in support of this. That's ducking absurd. This idea can be an RFC anyone can implement for free. Even more craven is they successfully suckered a number of emergency services on paying for W3W.
- nemo1618 3y agoIt's funny to see an xkcd reference here, because xkcd is what I immediately thought of when I saw "Geohash:" https://xkcd.com/426/ https://xkcd.com/426/
- ClassyJacket 3y agoSame. I used to actually do this back in 2009, and I actually encountered other people doing it in the wild. Closest thing to Pokemon Go from that era.