
The three words that can save your life - anthonysterling
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49319760
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remicmacs
An open-sourced anatidae-based alternative : what3ducks.com

Honestly I'm a bit annoyed by this article because it looks like an ad since
it's a private commercial system.

~~~
IronBacon
Until a few weeks ago I've never heard before of 3words, but they seems to be
online from a very long time.

Another similar geo location system, if I'm not wrong created by Google but
released with a liberal license (Apache) and not patent encumbered, is called
"plus.codes".

Edit: according to Wikipedia they were founded in 2013, don't recall why I
thought they were older...

~~~
remicmacs
That's nice to learn about this alternative.

I haven't worked a lot with geolocation yet. But I'm driven to it because of
my geography background, and I would be mad if every service for that kind of
work was closed and proprietary.

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Someone
Alternatively, give 911 the power to read out your gps location
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_(emergency_telephone_numbe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/112_\(emergency_telephone_number\)#E112),
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location))

Works when you aren’t able to talk (clearly) or when you can’t look at the
screen (injury, screen broken).

Disadvantage: location information will be less precise.

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malikNF
Previous discussions about what3words

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

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17423251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17423251)

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jacknews
if you have internet signal why not just share from google maps to sms?

On second thoughts, how do you even? I know I've done it before, but doing
anything in google maps always takes me 15 minutes of searching howtos - just
awful UI.

oh, you have to drop a pin first, and then share that. It seems like 'share my
current location', without turning on tracking for an hour or whatever, would
be a fairly obvious use-case.

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bsder
So, people have to download an app because the UK emergency system is too
broken to receive the GPS data directly from the phone.

+10 to dispatchers for a clever hack. -100 to governments for an emergency
dispatch system that fails to actually be an emergency dispatch system.

In addition, what3words is copyrighted and patented and doesn't have a
published standard.

~~~
Someone
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location#Histo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location#History):

 _”AML was developed in the United Kingdom by British Telecom, EE Limited, and
HTC as a solution to problematic caller location in emergencies. When a person
in distress calls the emergency services with a smart-phone where AML is
enabled, the telephone automatically activates its location service to
establish its position and sends this information to the emergency services
via an SMS.[3] The services uses either a global navigation satellite system
or WiFi depending on which one is better at the given moment”_

This works, will shortly be required in the EU, but requires changes to your
phone’s software and a change in the law (implicitly sharing your location is
a privacy invasion)

It also still may be less accurate than you putting a marker on the map (but
then, how good are people in distress in placing such a marker?)

------
bristleworm
That's a really cool concept. I like it.

~~~
_nalply
However it seems to be completely under commercial/private control. Source:
read the previous discussions at HN.

