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Yes, this really demonstrates how this system doesn't live up to its promise. As someone previously involved in a SAR team I find the growing expectations on W3W very frustrating. It's like watching a slow train wreck. Ambulance and police services here are rolling it out in a kind of shadow-IT form way too rapidly. The largest problem I have with it by far though is pegging all these organisations to a reliance on a tech startup and a closed license.

that algorithm should be extremely easy to implement with a unit test feasibly testing every single possible coordinate.

Fundamentally this is nothing different than say a base 10 to base 32 conversion as an algorithm and while its possible to mess something like that up if you are amateur enough it would show a huge level of technical incompetence.

Generally its a sign of a company that spends money and thoughts on marketing than on their product.

Is it possible the reporters were using a different localisation of w3w, and translated the words before giving them to the rescuers?

Edit: scratch that - it doesn't really lead to this problem does it.

Many years ago me and some friends were geocaching late Into the evening.

Around midnight, we called it quits after standing in the middle of a major highway holdings a large metal plate with mag mount on it.

Hooked up to a gps that only displays lat long.

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