
What3Words submitting takedown requests against Tweets [pdf] - edent
https://www.owenboswarva.com/misc/W3W_Twitter_20191007.pdf
======
kerkeslager
I can understand why someone would want to run WhatFreeWords if What3Words is
already a standard: it's dumb to pay for 238-lines-of-Python-as-a-service. The
added latency alone is ridiculous.

My question is, why would anyone commit to What3Words as a standard? There are
much simpler ways to map geographic data to three-word combinations.

One obvious way, dividing things up into rough "squares" of approximately even
size, has the added benefit that shared or alphabetically proximal words would
indicate geographical proximity: with What3Words, wounds.client.face is feet
away from to jumped.storm.nest, but hundreds of miles from wounds.client.fact.

If you don't think that's useful, then perhaps it's useful to use one of the
other word lists which are on many computers, to share space, such as the PGP
Word List[1] or the word list from RFC 1760[2]. One of the touted benefits of
What3Words is that it is algorithmic and therefore doesn't require a large
mapping file, so it's appropriate for systems where storage comes at a
premium. Yet they used a more complicated algorithm and didn't reuse an
existing word list?

It seems like their algorithm design was basically driven to try to make it
hard to reverse engineer, and it didn't even achieve that. The only reason I
can see why this became anything resembling a standard is that some people
_really want_ to pay for services.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list)

[2] [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1760](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1760)

~~~
Nextgrid
W3W is a nasty rent-seeking operation. They have invented a flawed solution
looking for a problem and are using lots and lots of dubious PR to try and get
it mainstream so they can then start charging for the use of their stupid
algorithm.

Their PR attempts are absolutely pathetic but sadly seem to work on the
masses. Their most frequent angle is someone contacting emergency services but
somehow can't figure out his location, and W3W comes along and magically saves
the day. The problem is that if I need a phone app & GPS signal to figure out
my W3W, why can't I just use the GPS coordinates directly?

~~~
kerkeslager
While I agree that W3W is a nasty rent-seeking operation, I do think that in
broad strokes the location-as-words concept could be useful.

> The problem is that if I need a phone app & GPS signal to figure out my W3W,
> why can't I just use the GPS coordinates directly?

Think about verbal/handwritten transmission and mental/handwritten storage.
It's not easy to transcribe "41.022755, -73.913102" or remember it.
"medium.axed.hobby" is much easier. Copy/paste doesn't always work well on
phones, and doesn't work at all across devices.

~~~
Nextgrid
There are other open standards such as Plus Codes, but I actually disagree
that (what it looks like to me) a hash-based system (which is more or less
what W3W is) is better than a numeric system like GPS coordinates.

41, -73 (removed all decimals from your example location) still gives me the
general location that it's somewhere in New York. My understanding is that
removing a word from W3W completely invalidates it as it's like a hash.

Incomplete GPS coordinates can be augmented by other information. W3W doesn't
look like it can, if your phone cuts out before you said the last word of your
W3W to the emergency dispatcher you're screwed. If your phone cuts out before
you said the last few decimals of the GPS coordinates the dispatcher still has
a chance of finding you.

~~~
mathw
The purpose of W3W not having nearby locations have similar words is because
of transmission errors. They're pushing it in the UK at the moment having got
several emergency services on board, and in that context if you say to, say,
Norfolk Police call handlers that you're at bamboo cheese elephant and that
shows up as somewhere in the middle of the Pacific they know they got a
transmission error pretty much instantly and can ask for clarification.
Although it'd be nice maybe to have soundalike tools in the search so it can
say "hang on maybe they meant this place".

Two conflicting needs really - as it stands, W3W is incredibly good for simple
transmission by voice, but it's awful for giving you clues to geographic
proximity.

~~~
kerkeslager
I wrote a short Python script which cross-references the W3W word list with a
homophones list[1], and found this:

    
    
        census,senses
        choral,coral
        clairvoyance,clairvoyants
        collard,collared
        confectionary,confectionery
        disburse,disperse
        epic,epoch
        equivalence,equivalents
        hurdle,hurtle
        incidence,incidents
        incite,insight
        incompetence,incompetents
        independence,independents
        innocence,innocents
        instance,instants
        intense,intents
        lightening,lightning
        ordinance,ordnance
        overdo,overdue
        parse,pass
        pokey,poky
        precedence,precedents,presidents
        purest,purist
        recede,reseed
        sari,sorry
        senses,census
        variance,variants
        verses,versus
    

Those aren't sound-alikes, they're straight-up homophones. If we cross-
referenced against a list which contained sound-alikes, I'm sure we'd end up
with a much larger list of collisions.

EDIT: This is the script:

    
    
        with open('word_data.txt') as f:
            words = set(l.strip() for l in f.readlines())
    
        with open('homophones.txt') as f:
            for l in f.readlines():
                l = l.strip()
                homophone_group = (h.strip('*') for h in l.split())
                filtered_homophone_group = tuple(h for h in homophone_group if h in words)
                if len(filtered_homophone_group) > 1:
                    print(','.join(filtered_homophone_group))
    

The `strip('*')` bit is needed because my copy/paste into homophones.txt
pulled in some asterices(sp?) and I didn't want to go through and fix them
manually.

[1] [http://homophonelist.com/homophones-
list/](http://homophonelist.com/homophones-list/)

------
russellbeattie
If you're issuing takedown notices and threatening litigation over IP that can
be completely contained in a 2MB JavaScript file, you've got serious problems
as a company. They're obviously a one-trick-pony that's on their last legs...
This is the only thing we'll hear about them until a small notice somewhere in
a year or so that they've gone bankrupt.

------
dsl
Here is the context:
[https://twitter.com/owenboswarva/status/1173127802717114368](https://twitter.com/owenboswarva/status/1173127802717114368)

TL;DR: A UK based startup "invented" a way to represent a lat/lng with three
words. They patented it. Someone created whatfreewords.org, a clean room
reimplementation and open sourced it. W3W's lawyers appears to be going to
great lengths to ensure nobody finds out that it exists.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I see the whatfreewords web api is down, I was wondering if their re-
implementation actually manages to map the same words to coordinates - I
assume not, which seems... problematic. Then w3w one.nice.spot would be in one
place on the globe, but the same three words would map to a different place
with whatfreewords. I could imagine some users being confused.

~~~
whatfreewords
It maps to the same spots, otherwise it would be pointless.

You can use the live demo (using the JS library) at
[https://whatfreewords.org/demo/](https://whatfreewords.org/demo/)

The API is down because our new generously-provided hosting does not support
executing arbitrary code on the server. Without this provider the site would
have been taken down again already, so we are grateful for what we've got.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
That makes sense, I see that the two implementations do agree on coordinates
for the same words, which is very slick. I am trying to imagine how reverse-
engineering would make that possible? I suppose it means that W3W used some
known word list, and in patterns that could be pulled out of their results?

------
NelsonMinar
I got one of these takedown notices. It's totally inappropriate, but I'm not
going to waste time fighting it. The maddening thing is I didn't even link to
the code; I linked to their FAQ, the document that explains why their clean
room implementation is non-infringing.
[https://whatfreewords.org/faq.html](https://whatfreewords.org/faq.html)

They're abusing the DMCA to shut down discussion.

------
jraph
Thanks, I did not know about this alternative to W3W.

It's nice when people produce free ads for a competing service, though doing
it using DMCA takedowns is a bit weird. Be sure not to delete directions of
people using your concept on Twitter, it would make it a bit dangerous to use!

~~~
philpem
I'm amazed that in what, nearly twenty years (maybe more), people are still
learning about the Streisand Effect first-hand.

------
jones1618
What3Words is free to use for individuals. People complaining of "rent-
seeking" must believe that every SAAS should be free. Even if you think that
the amount of code and effort involved was less than Google search or Bitcoin,
why shouldn't they derive revenue from their good and useful idea?

------
mixedCase
To any HN moderator, could you share the reason why whatfreewords' comment in
this thread is [dead]?

~~~
whatfreewords
Probably just because we're connecting over Tor.

------
breakingcups
Jeez, What3Words is such a scummy company.

~~~
jfengel
I'm really sorry to hear that, though it was kind of obvious given the way
they were trying to monetize it.

If they had open-sourced it and tried to make some money off of being
associated with it, the idea could perhaps have taken off. It's a reasonably
clever and catchy idea, but not nearly valuable enough to make real money off
of. It's exactly the kind of thing Google throws out for free to see if it
catches on.

~~~
juliansimioni
I'm not sure if you're referring to it, but Google actually DID throw out
something very similar for free: Plus Codes
([https://plus.codes/](https://plus.codes/))

There are still problems with the idea of large tech companies deciding on an
addressing system for the whole world (the entire concept of tech colonialism,
for example), but Plus Codes are an undeniably better implementation and also
freely usable.

