
Kubernetes at What3words - mtmail
https://medium.com/@what3words/kubernetes-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-container-7bafa24d16e9
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reustle
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-words/)

> 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!

~~~
atonse
Oh geez I didn't know any of this. We have planned to explore using this tool
for one of our products. This effectively kills it.

~~~
snug
Plus codes seem to be a much better solution
[https://plus.codes/](https://plus.codes/)

Kinda curious why you would be using something like this?

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ProblemFactory
There are a few more open specification Geohash algorithms out there as well.

What's silly about W3W is that their entire "proprietary algorithm" is going
to be the same as all of these, except with /usr/share/dict/words instead of
A-Z0-9 as the alphabet.

The only reason they need Kubernetes clusters on AWS is to keep their word
list secret, every open-spec code can run offline.

~~~
atonse
I don't understand how they thought this business model would ever work.

Have they patented the idea of using english words to encode numbers? Because
I've seen patterns of 2-3 english words used in the past to communicate things
like keys and confirmation codes.

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gloflo
Lobbying and bribery. Check out who is using them, its quite unnatural.

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JeremyBanks
How is this worthless scam still in business?

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beering
Moreover, how do they have so much code that they need k8s? Isn't their
product just a proprietary function that converts lat/lon to three words and
vice versa?

~~~
warp_factor
I agree and I'm always surprised to see how complex the backend of very simple
businesses are.

I'm always amazed to find 10 Infra engineers and 15 backend engineers to
maintain a very simple webApp for example.

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alexandercrohde
100%. This could be done entirely in JS on the client in probably < 5k
characters.

~~~
warp_factor
Not sure if you are being sarcastic but they still need to keep their
algorithm secret so client side wouldn't work.

