Google "Plus Codes" are being used in India - especially in underserved communities like slums.
https://www.addressingtheunaddressed.org/ . If you want to use this tech + operations expertise in other geographies...just reach out to them. They intend to share their knowhow and expertise.
>The character set for Open Location Code was selected out of over eight billion possibilities, using a word list of 10,000 words from 30 languages. All possible sets were scored on whether they could spell the test words, and the most promising sets evaluated by hand.
>Plus codes can be encoded and decoded offline.
>Plus codes do not depend on any infrastructure, and so are not dependent on any organisation or company for their continued existence or usage.
If it wasn't funded and publicised by Google, I think Plus codes would have disappeared already.
These codes feel quite difficult to remember and less logical than the long/lat that they try to replace;
additionally, the letters are very ambiguous to pronounce in English for a non-native (E and I, J and G).
It feels like it was a quick hack of base64-ish encoding of the long/lat that evolved into a product to get an internal promotion
this is widely in use in the ham radio circle and it works great--if you know phonetic alphabets, it's easily understood over the air, truncation is well-behaved, and so on and so forth.
edit: for SAR you probably need 8 characters not the customary 4/6 character version
that algorithm should be extremely easy to implement with a unit test feasibly testing every single possible coordinate.
Fundamentally this is nothing different than say a base 10 to base 32 conversion as an algorithm and while its possible to mess something like that up if you are amateur enough it would show a huge level of technical incompetence.
Generally its a sign of a company that spends money and thoughts on marketing than on their product.
W3W is a proprietary algorithm that has threatened people who published analyses of their algorithm. They got whatfreewords.org censored for publishing an independent open implementation.
It's also not well designed, as plurals and homophones are not accounted for.
The problem with the site you mentioned is that it was a clear cut case of copyright, trademark, and patent infringement all in one. I think the creator remained anonymous because they knew this.
I agree that it's not well designed and shouldn't be used.
The examples given here seem like the best case of it going wrong, they’re in a different country and UK rescuers know within seconds that they’re wrong.
I think this case further down is much more concerning:
> He found that the algorithm behind W3W often gave similar-sounding words and plural versions of words for locations in close proximity, which could cause confusion.
> So, for example, circle.goal.leader and circle.goal.leaders are less than 1.2 miles (2km) apart along the River Thames.
I wonder if the algorithm could somehow make it so similar sounding words like this aren’t anywhere near each other physically. It’s not as big a problem that leader and leaders sound the same, if you guarantee that only one of them is in the UK or at least within the same city/national park etc.
I wonder if a more efficient system for this kind of use-case would be possible by giving up on "global" positioning.
by relying on context you can lower the area you need to have address combinations for. In practice you would simply repeat the addresses every couple of 1000km or so.
needing help and calling in rescue from the other side of the world while also being unable to say you are in such and such area is presumably not something that happens too often.
In addition, the user knows their own location by virtue of having access to a GPS device - for W3W to work they've used a GPS and it's really just an in-band voice protocol for exchange of location.
It strikes me that W3W will eventually be replaced by the emergency location standards built into mobile which effectively SMS your location to the control centre on starting the call. Then there's little need for voice based W3W exchange - at best it could be a dialogue between caller and call handler to confirm the approximate area and location, and to take details like (for urban environments) if it's an apartment block or house etc. Or off the beaten track, which side of the mountain route they walked up to reach their current location.
Sounds like they need to prune the word list and/or group together possible mispronunciations, misspellings and misreadings. If "correct horse battery" is a location, then "correct hose battery" and "correct house battery" need to be synonyms of the same location, not alternate locations. Either that or remove horse, hose and house from the word list entirely.
I have to mention Geohash because it's easy to spell, licence free, variable precision, what else? Plug: https://demo.mro.name/geohash.cgi
That said, having familiar words in your (local?) alphabet is charming. But for public good it HAS to be public domain (the alphabet + algo, not the service, however).
I always thought that a combination of a geohash-like z order curve over a 15km radius, with an offline gps coordinates list of the 5000 most populated cities on earth would be sufficient to cover 99% of people on earth.
Not sure what's the average number of characters required for a 20m to 100m precision with such method.
It's true that the idea of plus codes of using city names makes a lot of sense.
I once heard a really unique orientation talk about http://www.volksnav.com – based on the idea of polar coordinates like on an imagined clock dial flat on earth centered at your local reference point (e.g. city center) and 12 o'clock = south. Used in one city in Brazil, I think.
Terrible: based on a single language, proprietary, IP owners being assholes, creates problems to the user case it was supposedly designed for, doesn't feature distance computing algorithms, takes even more space in a DB cell than latlong, I can go on for days.
There are really are issues with such a system and you listed some of them, but your recommendation makes me feel like you didn't read beyond the headline.
They need a way to transfer location data by the word of mouth, which is extremely difficult when you're using numbers. With longer numbers, such as a comparatively precise location, you have a high risk of errors on both ends, so searching for a solution makes absolute sense.
Nevertheless, based on the proprietary IP maybe the rescue services should consider building an own solution or evaluating open source alternatives if there are any
Actually, w3w has localized their system for multiple languages. You can select a different language on their website. They have customers in several of the countries speaking those languages.
You can trivially do distance calculation by using their algorithm (which works offline if you use their sdk) to get the coordinates. The DB space is completely irrelevant: this algorithm is intended for humans being able to memorize three words. So, not sure what you are going on about here. Again, they have paying customers that are getting value out of this. Hard to argue with that, which you seem to be attempting here.
I'm not aware of a better solution that is usable by normal people. Good luck communicating a geohash to the emergency services. It's not going to be a thing as much as I like using them. Placekey seems one of their competitors but they don't produce human readable codes and they are US only. In any case, most people don't even know their latitude or longitude to any kind of precision. Coordinates are hard for people.
Regarding the IP, they use a combination of patents (the algorithm) and copyright (the word list) to protect their IP. They built a customer base around this stuff and they are well within their rights to protect their own work, which is what they are doing. IP law is what it is and w3w is simply using that as it was intended (protecting IP). That's just normal behavior for VC funded startups. Try to get some IP through some honest work, protect it, build a business around it. They are not being patent trolls here.
The way I see it, w3w has built their business without edge cases like in this article being a major obstacle to them. You could argue emergency services are important enough that they might want to improve their word list a bit. But still, it's not a basis for dismissing their business model, solution and general right to exist.
IMHO they are a bit over valued at this point and a likely acquisition target for someone so the investors get their bail out. Their current strategy is a long term dead end from the point of view of people adopting this. The proprietary nature of their solution is an obstacle for that. Once patents expire, similar solutions might emerge with different word lists, numbers of words, etc. that are more successful. Alternatively, post acquihire, a visionary company might just use some more liberal licensing to make this a bit more attractive.
I don't envy the team. It's a great idea but falls short once it leaves the lab. Everything gets really dirty in the real world especially during high stress or emergencies.
Moving to four words could really help remove the need for plural and words that sound similar. Accents really do make things tough.
Yeah the general idea is OK, but the practical usage just doesn't pan out unless you remove all plurals, all words that sound similar (including if spoken with different accents), etc etc. Then you end up needing 4-5 words, most with multiple syllables, and you're back to it being just as easy to tell the lat/long or using some other system.
You should envy the team. They've raised tens of millions of dollars for licensing of an algorithm that people RE'd in a day.
Their business now involves lots of bizdev droids and threatening open source implementors with baseless copyright lawsuits. It's nice work if you can get it.
I am surprised they've never tried to introduce some kind of erasure coding or error correction coding. A 4th word from a finite set could act as a "check word" that would detect wrong order of words, mis-spellings of words etc.
I also feel like the solution W3W is trying to deliver is a short term patch until we get emergency SMS location from phones themselves delivered to the control room - having in band spoken location works until you have that, but W3W leaves a lot to be desired. Given it is an app, it might be easier for it to show the user words to read, which are themselves all just NATO phonetic alphabet words to spell their location. You'll get far more redundancy and human error correction over the voice channel using the phonetic alphabet than words.
It wouldn't be as shiny a solution though, and that probably doesn't play into W3W's marketing strategy... Even if it would help save more lives.
One of my favorite atomic tourism sites is near charm files rush (Red Gate Woods, outside Chicago, home to the remains of Chicago Piles 2 and 3), or is it charm file rush (Which is in Brazil), or is it charms file rush, on the border between New Hampshire and Maine?
analogous to hash collision? what4words would reduce it. But you can't stop english language pluralisms (for instance) and if you start to make all plurals synonymous, you reduce the wordcount massively.
None. Any app that can lookup your words can show you the coords.
The only justification is the ease of communication over the phone.
I only don't like that it's proprietary and the company responsible is pretty aggressive about enforcing their rights - there shouldn't be a place for that in public emergency services.
At least wiki brightened my mood : The site has been parodied by others who have created services including What3Emojis[29] using emojis, What3Birds[30] using British birds, What3fucks[31] using swear words and What3Numbers[32] using OpenStreetMap tile identifiers.
There's two scenarios here. Either you're looking up an exact location (either w3w or ll) as the information is required and then communicating it to others, or you're doing that in advance for an area you're familiar with and then memorising it.
In situation A, it's going to be a lot quicker and clearer to communicate w3w than an ll pair (for the same precision a ll pair requires 12-18 digits, plus specificity on +/-).
In situation B it's going to be a lot easier to remember the w3w descriptor, and you still have the same advantage as in situation A.
For spoken communication, w3w's rival is "it's 123 Fake Street, I'm the bloke in the green parka", not ll pairs.
None. Lat longs usability isn't the best (people don't like long numbers). But it's failure mode won't send you to Vietnam when you meant a public park in the UK. even if this system is constrained with simple, short, not confusable words (which would entail shrinking the earth or lowering the resolution) the fact that addresses are randomly assigned extremely reduces it's utility. Can you look at 2 addresses and know immediately where they are in relation to each other? Not the best tool for most map problems.
[+] [-] sandGorgon|4 years ago|reply
https://www.addressingtheunaddressed.org/ . If you want to use this tech + operations expertise in other geographies...just reach out to them. They intend to share their knowhow and expertise.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd3gGspgVGs
Also from what i understand, after the success in Kolkata, this was then used in Native American communities.
P.S. Plus Codes are open source - https://github.com/google/open-location-code And they are well researched.
>The character set for Open Location Code was selected out of over eight billion possibilities, using a word list of 10,000 words from 30 languages. All possible sets were scored on whether they could spell the test words, and the most promising sets evaluated by hand.
>Plus codes can be encoded and decoded offline.
>Plus codes do not depend on any infrastructure, and so are not dependent on any organisation or company for their continued existence or usage.
[+] [-] rvnx|4 years ago|reply
It feels like it was a quick hack of base64-ish encoding of the long/lat that evolved into a product to get an internal promotion
[+] [-] weird-eye-issue|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neolog|4 years ago|reply
https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation...
[+] [-] petepete|4 years ago|reply
Thanks for the link though, hadn't heard of plus codes.
[+] [-] kilroy123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yitchelle|4 years ago|reply
Can't help but feel that this is a bad idea. From writing code, we know that the more code you use, the higher the chance of bug entering the code.
Also felt that the authorities are trying to extend the UK postcode system to the rest of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcodes_in_the_United_Kingdo...
[+] [-] hatsunearu|4 years ago|reply
this is widely in use in the ham radio circle and it works great--if you know phonetic alphabets, it's easily understood over the air, truncation is well-behaved, and so on and so forth.
edit: for SAR you probably need 8 characters not the customary 4/6 character version
[+] [-] cseleborg|4 years ago|reply
> duties.factory.person was located in China
I get Switzerland [1]
> refuse.housework.housebound was in Australia
I get Belarus [2]
> demand.heave.surprise was actually in Canada
I get China [3]
Now that's really confusing. Is that a bug in the system that changes the locations of three-word-codes, or is that (very) poor reporting?
[1] https://what3words.com/duties.factory.person [2] https://what3words.com/refuse.housework.housebound [3] https://what3words.com/demand.heave.surprise
[+] [-] cseleborg|4 years ago|reply
> So, for example, circle.goal.leader and circle.goal.leaders are less than 1.2 miles (2km) apart along the River Thames.
The second one is in South Dakota for me: https://what3words.com/circle.goal.leaders
[+] [-] blkhawk|4 years ago|reply
Fundamentally this is nothing different than say a base 10 to base 32 conversion as an algorithm and while its possible to mess something like that up if you are amateur enough it would show a huge level of technical incompetence.
Generally its a sign of a company that spends money and thoughts on marketing than on their product.
[+] [-] cbo100|4 years ago|reply
Edit: scratch that - it doesn't really lead to this problem does it.
[+] [-] notafraudster|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LorenPechtel|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|4 years ago|reply
It's also not well designed, as plurals and homophones are not accounted for.
Avoid using or promoting this system.
[+] [-] jonatron|4 years ago|reply
I agree that it's not well designed and shouldn't be used.
[+] [-] gfaure|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcintyre1994|4 years ago|reply
I think this case further down is much more concerning:
> He found that the algorithm behind W3W often gave similar-sounding words and plural versions of words for locations in close proximity, which could cause confusion.
> So, for example, circle.goal.leader and circle.goal.leaders are less than 1.2 miles (2km) apart along the River Thames.
I wonder if the algorithm could somehow make it so similar sounding words like this aren’t anywhere near each other physically. It’s not as big a problem that leader and leaders sound the same, if you guarantee that only one of them is in the UK or at least within the same city/national park etc.
[+] [-] gambiting|4 years ago|reply
"So, for example, circle.goal.leader and circle.goal.leaders are less than 1.2 miles (2km) apart along the River Thames."
That's potentially catastrophic, without an easy way to spot the mistake.
[+] [-] stouset|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27058271 - May 2021 (35 comments)
Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27029706 - May 2021 (3 comments)
What3Words: App used by emergency services under scrutiny - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26985759 - April 2021 (14 comments)
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blkhawk|4 years ago|reply
by relying on context you can lower the area you need to have address combinations for. In practice you would simply repeat the addresses every couple of 1000km or so.
needing help and calling in rescue from the other side of the world while also being unable to say you are in such and such area is presumably not something that happens too often.
[+] [-] g_p|4 years ago|reply
It strikes me that W3W will eventually be replaced by the emergency location standards built into mobile which effectively SMS your location to the control centre on starting the call. Then there's little need for voice based W3W exchange - at best it could be a dialogue between caller and call handler to confirm the approximate area and location, and to take details like (for urban environments) if it's an apartment block or house etc. Or off the beaten track, which side of the mountain route they walked up to reach their current location.
[+] [-] tlrobinson|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m12k|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] VBprogrammer|4 years ago|reply
Person: "emm, I'm lost on the Yorkshire Moors...".
Rescuer: "no problem sir, just take advantage of the completely flawless wireless telephony system we have to download this app..."
Person: "ok, it says I'm at correct house battery"
Rescuer: "hmm, I'm showing you at the top of a mountain in Nepal. Let's try that again..."
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mro_name|4 years ago|reply
That said, having familiar words in your (local?) alphabet is charming. But for public good it HAS to be public domain (the alphabet + algo, not the service, however).
[+] [-] jokoon|4 years ago|reply
Not sure what's the average number of characters required for a 20m to 100m precision with such method.
It's true that the idea of plus codes of using city names makes a lot of sense.
[+] [-] mro_name|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcooks|4 years ago|reply
Use numbers.
[+] [-] moooo99|4 years ago|reply
They need a way to transfer location data by the word of mouth, which is extremely difficult when you're using numbers. With longer numbers, such as a comparatively precise location, you have a high risk of errors on both ends, so searching for a solution makes absolute sense.
Nevertheless, based on the proprietary IP maybe the rescue services should consider building an own solution or evaluating open source alternatives if there are any
[+] [-] jokoon|4 years ago|reply
Not sure it's good enough over a crappy phone line...
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|4 years ago|reply
You can trivially do distance calculation by using their algorithm (which works offline if you use their sdk) to get the coordinates. The DB space is completely irrelevant: this algorithm is intended for humans being able to memorize three words. So, not sure what you are going on about here. Again, they have paying customers that are getting value out of this. Hard to argue with that, which you seem to be attempting here.
I'm not aware of a better solution that is usable by normal people. Good luck communicating a geohash to the emergency services. It's not going to be a thing as much as I like using them. Placekey seems one of their competitors but they don't produce human readable codes and they are US only. In any case, most people don't even know their latitude or longitude to any kind of precision. Coordinates are hard for people.
Regarding the IP, they use a combination of patents (the algorithm) and copyright (the word list) to protect their IP. They built a customer base around this stuff and they are well within their rights to protect their own work, which is what they are doing. IP law is what it is and w3w is simply using that as it was intended (protecting IP). That's just normal behavior for VC funded startups. Try to get some IP through some honest work, protect it, build a business around it. They are not being patent trolls here.
The way I see it, w3w has built their business without edge cases like in this article being a major obstacle to them. You could argue emergency services are important enough that they might want to improve their word list a bit. But still, it's not a basis for dismissing their business model, solution and general right to exist.
IMHO they are a bit over valued at this point and a likely acquisition target for someone so the investors get their bail out. Their current strategy is a long term dead end from the point of view of people adopting this. The proprietary nature of their solution is an obstacle for that. Once patents expire, similar solutions might emerge with different word lists, numbers of words, etc. that are more successful. Alternatively, post acquihire, a visionary company might just use some more liberal licensing to make this a bit more attractive.
[+] [-] irjustin|4 years ago|reply
Moving to four words could really help remove the need for plural and words that sound similar. Accents really do make things tough.
[+] [-] sen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneak|4 years ago|reply
Their business now involves lots of bizdev droids and threatening open source implementors with baseless copyright lawsuits. It's nice work if you can get it.
[+] [-] g_p|4 years ago|reply
I also feel like the solution W3W is trying to deliver is a short term patch until we get emergency SMS location from phones themselves delivered to the control room - having in band spoken location works until you have that, but W3W leaves a lot to be desired. Given it is an app, it might be easier for it to show the user words to read, which are themselves all just NATO phonetic alphabet words to spell their location. You'll get far more redundancy and human error correction over the voice channel using the phonetic alphabet than words.
It wouldn't be as shiny a solution though, and that probably doesn't play into W3W's marketing strategy... Even if it would help save more lives.
[+] [-] mdoms|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikewarot|4 years ago|reply
Not a good system.
[+] [-] ggm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parhamn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbo100|4 years ago|reply
The only justification is the ease of communication over the phone.
I only don't like that it's proprietary and the company responsible is pretty aggressive about enforcing their rights - there shouldn't be a place for that in public emergency services.
[+] [-] vincnetas|4 years ago|reply
At least wiki brightened my mood : The site has been parodied by others who have created services including What3Emojis[29] using emojis, What3Birds[30] using British birds, What3fucks[31] using swear words and What3Numbers[32] using OpenStreetMap tile identifiers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words
[+] [-] sellyme|4 years ago|reply
In situation A, it's going to be a lot quicker and clearer to communicate w3w than an ll pair (for the same precision a ll pair requires 12-18 digits, plus specificity on +/-).
In situation B it's going to be a lot easier to remember the w3w descriptor, and you still have the same advantage as in situation A.
For spoken communication, w3w's rival is "it's 123 Fake Street, I'm the bloke in the green parka", not ll pairs.
[+] [-] bhawks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beermonster|4 years ago|reply