
What3words divides the world into squares, each with a unique three-word address - JonoBB
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49319760
======
mfontani
Oh dear...

* earthquakes and the like _shift locations_ on the crust. The "w3w" address you had for your house isn't at that "w3w" address anymore since that last big quake. Reprint stationery?

* no translation between the English w3w and the Spanish, French, Italian, what-have-you. They're different words altogether. No back and forth.

* It's not open

* if one needs a DATA CONNECTION to find out their current w3w address, they can damn well find the GPS coordinates, too. As a bonus, they don't need a data connection to do that...

See also: [https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-
three-...](https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-words/)

~~~
dtf
I agree with these points, and yet:

 _" Humberside Police also used the system to find a group of foreign
nationals, including a pregnant woman in labour, who were trapped inside a
shipping container at a port.

The port had over 20,000 containers and we knew that we needed to get to them
quickly," said the force's control room supervisor Paul Redshaw.

The group were told to download the app and they were soon found.

There is no doubt in my mind that these incidents could have had very
different outcomes had we not been able to use what3words," Mr Redshaw said."_

The emergency services see something very useful here. Is there a better way
to do it? Lat/Lon numbers just don't cut it.

~~~
Piskvorrr
_If_ that's an actual story and not PR. What I see: a full-metal enclosure AKA
shipping container, and yet a GPS fix is obtained? Pull the other one.

~~~
taneq
Hell, I struggle to even get a cell signal inside one of those things.

------
Freak_NL
Just a proprietary algorithm looking for public problems it can claim to
solve. Oppose it or just ignore it. There are open solutions that do similar
things.

See previous discussions on HN for more background. Their one success story is
how they managed to get the Mongolian postal services to adopt their tool.

Can you imagine someone lost on a mountain side telling the emergency operator
that he is located at 'snake.apple.dimwit' and getting asked to please just
give coordinates or even a rough idea of where you might be in terms of local
names, because the What3Wordsⓒ database is down?

~~~
another-dave
> Oppose it or just ignore it. There are open solutions that do similar
> things.

I think now is the time to oppose it rather than ignore it.

I agree in principle re: open source solutions, but if you're stuck in a
forest in County Durham, as per the article, and the police say "download this
app and give us the 3 words for your location", you can't get into a
discussion about how it would be better to use an open standard and not a
proprietary solution :)

What I mean is, this is already gaining traction so ignoring feels like it
just cedes the ground to it as a closed platform — to me it seems similar to
Facebook et al: early days, you decide to ignore it as a closed platform, but
because of network effects it's now much more difficult to try and get
everyone to move to something like Mastodon.

If police forces and postal services are starting to integrate this into their
workflows, now's the time to try and push the discussion to the open source
alternatives and raise the problems of this — it's disappointing that the BBC
article reads like a press release rather than any attempt at critical
analysis. With pseudo-science they'll do "balanced reporting" and give the
other side but here no counter argument!

------
why-oh-why
How many times is this gonna be posted? It’s basically spam at this point.
Don’t use proprietary solutions to already-freely-solved problems

~~~
mosselman
What free solution is there that does this?

~~~
Piskvorrr
Oh, this is free-as-in-beer all right (at the time of writing). Free-as-in-
speech would be, e.g.,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code)

Or even the venerable Maidenhead Locator, even though it's not well specified
for high location precision.

~~~
mosselman
Thanks, Open Location Code looks like a great solution.

[https://plus.codes/6PJ4CWRW+H3](https://plus.codes/6PJ4CWRW+H3) for anyone
who wants to play around with it.

Although I must say that '6PJ4CWRW+H3' is still harder to communicate than
horse.cow.sheep for example. That is the clever thing about what3words, the
design of the addresses. What I like about Open Location Code is that adjacent
squares have a similar name.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Well, I like how the code can be shorter when using a location (I see "CWRW+H3
Segamat District, Johor, Malaysia") or unambiguous and terse when using the
full code ("6PJ4CWRW+H3").

------
stefco_
Others have pointed out many weaknesses of this product already, but one
seemingly annoying issue is homophones in the context of verbally
communicating your location. They use a 40k word dictionary; surely there are
tons of homophones in there. And there are surely more homophones outside the
dictionary (which would just give an error when queried through their API).

When you call some delivery service and ask them to find you at
course.serial.flower, they could end up querying one of:

    
    
      - coarse.serial.flower
      - course.cereal.flower
      - course.serial.flour
      - coarse.cereal.flower
      - coarse.serial.flour
      - course.cereal.flour
      - coarse.cereal.flour
    

If these homophones are used in the dictionary, the other person will get an
effectively random location on earth. If the homophones are not in the
dictionary, they will get no result from the API.

In practice, you'll either need to be extra careful about specifying locations
this way, or you'll need to provide extra location data like zip/city/etc. as
error-correcting code. But at that point, it seems like you're not much better
off than you would be with conventional addresses or LAT/LON coordinates for
common use cases.

~~~
londons_explore
I think they've filtered most of these, or at least pushed them out of
populated areas and into the middle of oceans.

------
pepper_sauce
The UK already has a well known system of coordinates called the British
National Grid (BNG). You'd be hard pressed to find a map printed in the last
~80 years that doesn't have BNG coordinates in it.

Replacing it with a new proprietary, closed system that can only be accessed
from app is a terrible idea.

------
andylynch
This got me thinking- even though we now have Advanced Mobile Location rolling
out in the EU, UK, and US, it would be a win if your phone could show your
location (grid reference/lat long) when making an emergency call - AML will
pick this up and send it automatically, but this could be a good fallback and
timesaver.

------
reustle
Reposting my comment from the duplicate earlier:

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-...](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!

------
newsbinator
I'm concerned that I selected English (US) as my language, whereas English
(UK) might have a completely different set of words.

Emergency services would have to be using the same flavor of English as the
victim.

------
mruts
Uhh, okay. This is already a solved problem, it’s called GPS. I can see this
would be useful as an address system, but using it for the police to find you?
Doesn’t make much sense.

~~~
Piskvorrr
This _is_ based on GPS. The three words are a hash of the coordinates; this
seems more user-friendly and less error-prone than "14.1234567,50.35466, wait,
no, 50.53466, or is it -50.53466,14.1234567?".

As opposed to e.g. the Maidenhead locator, this has the properties of a hash -
in other words, isn't trivially reversible, and you need the w3w company to
provide you with the location, each and every time ( _jackpot!_ ).

~~~
Freak_NL
> "14.1234567,50.35466, wait, no, 50.53466, or is it -50.53466,14.1234567?".

All of which are fine for someone lost in X mountain range. The operator on
the other side will know whether -50.* or 14.* is latitude or longitude.

Also, you would just read the numbers from your screen, no ambiguity there.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Thank you, thank you. You have demonstrated the flaw perfectly: didn't even
notice the swapped digits, which would send SAR to someplace plausible yet far
away.

~~~
jjeaff
I'm at steeple, bound, force...

People? No steeple ... S as in Sam, steeple.

Was that mound or found?

B as in boy, o as in Oscar, u as in unit....

Ok, steeple, boy, Oscar...

There is a reason the military alphabet exists and all numbers are pronounced
as is (except for the occasional Niner to avoid confusing nine with 5)

------
jlawson
A lot of people seem to be down on this, citing GPS and other traditional
numeric systems.

But I think this is much better for police specifically. For reasons that are
not about data or systems so much as physical practicality.

Consider circumstances like these: A panicked hairdresser lost in the forest.
An old person with progressing dementia; forgot where they were. A kidnapped
child trapped in a room or locked in a car. Anyone in a burning building who
can smell smoke. Try any of these situations when the cellphone is at 5%, or
when the call keeps dropping, or when you can barely hear because it's so
loud, or barely see, or you're drunk, your hand is broken, you're on drugs,
you're dehydrated, you're hypothermic, you're bleeding, you're surrounded by
buzzing insects...

Now think about the physical practicalities of a numbers system like GPS. To
use any numerical system, you're talking about _memorizing_ a string of eight
or ten digits off one app and then reading them into a phone call. Yes, it may
be possible to go on speaker and minimize the call app (if nobody is hunting
you) but lots of people can't figure that out on their best day, much less in
life-threatening situations. You have to be able to memorize it when you're
afraid of death or shivering in the cold outside. Maybe the call gets
disconnected and you have to go back, oh shit I closed the app, what was the
number, oh I mixed up some numbers near the end, oh my god....

Almost anyone can remember three words without trying. A child can do it and
my grandma can do it. Even if you get disconnected, it won't be hard to
remember the words even minutes later. You can't miss a number, you can't
transpose the numbers by accident because if you make a mistake it'll be
obvious since the words aren't adjacent in the grid (for this reason). It's
incredibly practical for the physical and mental constraints of a police
situation, and that's why they use it.

------
FartyMcFarter
Have operators implemented things like Android ELS?

[https://crisisresponse.google/emergencylocationservice/how-i...](https://crisisresponse.google/emergencylocationservice/how-
it-works/)

------
tomhoward
Discussed on HN when launched 5 years ago...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614198)

------
chrischen
So one of the main criticisms is that there is no need for this to be a
proprietary thing rather than an open standard. So, why hasn't someone made an
open DB of 3 words?

~~~
Piskvorrr
Stuff like that exists - Google's Plus Codes, the old and reliable Maidenhead
Locator system, etc. The business model here seems to be "we need to market
the system aggressively (see article) - if we make the system open, we can no
longer profit from it".

In other words, an open system will IMHO languish in obscurity due to lack of
marketing funding.

------
nathanaldensr
This company is still around? Amazing.

