
Rescuers pinpoint location of injured walker on Flinders Island using what3words - martyvis
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-13/what3words-used-to-locate-missing-walkers-on-flinders-island/12241352
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Nextgrid
Here we go again. They seem to have taken a bit of a break but looks like they
dusted off the good old propaganda machine again.

For those who don't know, W3W is a proprietary service which maps locations to
a unique 3-word identifier, similar to Plus Codes aka Open Location Codes:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code)

The company behind it is extremely scummy. They provide absolutely no
additional value compared to existing Plus Codes and their only attempt to
profit is heavy PR/marketing (like this article) to encourage adoption, after
which they will presumably be charging lots of money to developers for the
right to do W3W <-> GPS coordinates lookups. Their terms explicitly forbid
reverse-engineering the algorithm and even caching results of past lookups.
They have also used DMCA claims to take down alternative clean-room
implementations even though no copyright was violated; at best it would be a
patent infringement (if it even stands, as some jurisdictions don't recognise
software patents). Seems like their new domain is now available and still
working as of now: [https://whatfreewords.net](https://whatfreewords.net)

The stories around W3W are always the same. Someone gets stranded somewhere,
magically has a fully functional phone with GPS & cell reception, can call
emergency services and open Google Maps but is apparently unable to read back
GPS coordinates or use "send my location" in their messaging app but manages
to click on a link that takes them to the W3W webpage where it displays the
W3W code which they relay back to the emergency responder and get saved.

The problem of course being is that if you have a phone and data connection to
be able to click a link and access W3W, you can also click a link that just
relays your GPS coordinates directly or use your messaging app's location-
sharing feature, or open your maps application and relay the GPS coordinates
manually or even rely on E911 which should absolutely work in these specific
conditions, and thus W3W is absolutely unnecessary and is an extra step and
point of failure.

It's almost like they are paying people to get stranded on purpose in very
controlled and favourable conditions (where both phone and data service is
available) and then to play dumb and unable to use GPS coordinates until W3W
magically comes up and saves the day. Sad.

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martyvis
Location referred to in the story was
[https://what3words.com/murky.founding.spoonfuls](https://what3words.com/murky.founding.spoonfuls)

