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Comment by ortusdux | Hacker News Reader

Several groups have 'solved' this issue by making more human readable coordinate systems. IIRC, What3Words kicked things off, but there were licensing and regional issues that slowed adoption. I personally like Google's free and open source Plus Codes. You can vary the precision by adding more digits to the location:

"The precision of a plus code is indicated by the number of digits after the "+" sign.

Two digits after the plus sign is an area roughly 13.7 by 13.7 meters; Three digits after the plus sign is an area roughly 2.7 by 3.5 meters; Four digits after the plus sign is an area roughly 0.5 by 0.8 meters."

https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/learn/

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It's worth reminding any readers that what3words is a horrible coordinate system for human usage due to its unreliability. The key flaw is the choice of words that are easily confused by humans such as including both the singular and plural of the same word (e.g. likely.stage.sock and likely.stages.sock are on the opposite sides of a river) which are easily mixed up both when spoken/heard and when remembered/repeated, and also many words which sound similar e.g. 'innocence' and 'innocents', 'wants' and 'once', etc.

Of course, it's not an issue when copy-pasting, but then you might as well copy Lat/Lon or URLs, the spoken usage is the main benefit for this concept; so if your use case does need a system like what3words, it has to be something other than the 'original' what3words.

We have this in the real world, too, where Knoxville developers name everything on their Tanasi property Tanasi Ln and Ct and Rd, with Tanasi Ave on the other side of the lake from Tanasi Dr. (Or Phoenix, where mixing up 70th St and Ave is a bad day.)

In the southwest suburbs of Chicago, it's possible to live at the corner of 85th and 85th.

https://goo.gl/maps/bghkvYUNyLWP1rfV7

> In the southwest suburbs of Chicago, it's possible to live at the corner of 85th and 85th.

What's so weird about that? Isn't that super common in any city with a grid of numbered streets?

Typically grids use numbers in one direction and names in the other direction.

> Typically grids use numbers in one direction and names in the other direction.

Some might, but that's far from universal. It's also pretty common to have one axis be numbered "avenues" and the other be numbered "streets." E.g. New York

2nd St and 2nd Ave: https://goo.gl/maps/uyGSvTh9CAyG7Sf27

3rd St and 3rd Ave: https://goo.gl/maps/j8AG9yWJFULWrS3z6

5th St and 5th Ave: https://goo.gl/maps/puBaXRHJNMQVfUSZA

Also true of my not-so-famous hometown.

And then there's Minneapolis, which has four 2nd Sts and four 2nd Aves: N, S, NE, and SE. Although once you figure out it's a tilted quadrant system it's not too bad. While there's (up to) four "2nd and 2nd" intersections, both streets at the intersection have the same direction, telling you what quadrant it's in.

Oh god, I forgot about that system. D.C. does it too. For New Yorkers, who typically identify corners by their cardinals, “I’m on the NW corner of X and Y” in D.C. gets parsed as X and Y NW, which regularly prompts hilarity.

Don't forget the streets in Northeast (Nordeast?) named after Presidents, arranged in order of their presidency.

I would find it more logical to use different numbers for the two directions. Odd vs even, names vs numbers, whatever number was free.

That’s not unusual in places with numbered streets. Seinfeld had a joke about 1st and 1st.

Queens, New York, has a whole system for how roads are numbered as a result of merging dozens of onetime towns into one boroughwide system, with lots of exceptions and weird cases like the “Beach (nth) Streets” in the Rockaways. https://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/15/nyregion/meet-me-at-60th-...

In Hyde Park, Chicago, you can live on the corner of Hyde Park Blvd and Hyde Park Blvd.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/3jCGRN1HtB1JEPvE7?g_st=ic

I had trouble getting mail at one house as 4200 NE/NW/SE/SW 15th were all valid addresses.

My first time driving in Atlanta, I got lost. I went into a convenience store and asked the woman working there where "Peachtree" was and she just laughed and laughed and laughed.

https://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/the-so...

Atlanta was actually the third example I was thinking of.

> It's worth reminding any readers that what3words is a horrible coordinate system for human usage due to its unreliability. The key flaw is the choice of words that are easily confused by humans such as including both the singular and plural of the same word (e.g. likely.stage.sock and likely.stages.sock are on the opposite sides of a river) which are easily mixed up both when spoken/heard and when remembered/repeated, and also many words which sound similar e.g. 'innocence' and 'innocents', 'wants' and 'once', etc.

This is already an issue that is easily resolvable: Instead of 3 words, use 4 or 5 words from BIP 39's far less ambiguous list of 2048 words.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english...

Based on what3word's claim of 75 trillion squares, 5 words are needed to cover all of those squares:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words#:~:text=a%20grid%20...

log(75_000_000_000_000) / log(2048) ~= 4.19 < 5

If i18n is a requirement, the development of translation tables would be needed. BIP39 already has that for 8 other languages, but there's still a lot of other languages that could be added in.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/tree/master/bip-0039

I'm guessing that it can't be resolved due to legacy reasons, but that's just all the more reason for an open service to take over what3words' job. There's also the debate of length-vs-ambiguity, but the scenarios where the addition of 1 or 2 words will make a major difference are few & far between.

MGRS military grid reference system works the same way, more digits more precision.

There's a mil-sci-fi novel (forgot name, can't google) where some artillery officer thinks its funny to be a dick and give out ten digit grids "because he can" whereas normal humans mostly use 8 digit grids (like you'd use in a 9-line). I thought that book reference was funny because I'd give out ten digits for the LOLs when I was in the Army. Everyone who gets access to Y or M-code DGPS for the first time has to be a joker LOL.

8 digits is good enough to park a car, 10 digits is good enough to specify an individual theater seat (roughly)

GPS is like TV where most people consider it magic and don't care how it works, but if you're of a technical bent there's an infinitely deep rabbit hole to dive into.

Civilian L1+L2+DGPS is like that now. I can specify my left footprint differently from my right footprint and the difference is meaningful.

I actually almost have a working version of a replacement for what3words/Xaddress/etc that solves every gripe I know of.

Format is: (1-1024) WORD WORD WORD with a relatively short wordlist (8k words). Maps to ~1 square meter and plurals/singular words represent the same value. Completely open source to everyone.

My gripe with pluscodes is memorizability. Number and 3 words from a short list should be pretty easy to remember and write down. Either way, my replacement can easily map to plus codes/lat lon/google maps/openstreetmap. I'm super excited about it.

I'll probably post here when it's closer to done.

Plus codes are now nearly a decade old.

I always thought they were a cool idea, but has anybody actually started using them as part of everyday life? Not as a novelty extra, but actually a main productivity flow for anything?

Seems like usually when people need to send an exact location short-term then send a pin from Google/Apple Maps. While reference works use traditional lat/lon.

It did always seem to me that they'd work well as a kind of foundation for postal codes, in places without regular addresses -- exactly what you seem to be suggesting here. But has any country or municipality done so?

Probably just send a google map short url (assume you have network access). I found it's easier to just ask people that have difficulty to describe where are them to send gps location via IMs instead.

It'a wild that technology evolves so much in 20 years that having difficulty to recognize the location is non-issue when travelling as long as you have phone on your hand.

They were on my mind because I used them last week while arguing with a FedEx rep about an 'undeliverable' address in Amsterdam.

The formal address system for the destination was just the name of the road and the warehouse number.

FedEx refused to attempt to redeliver without a more specific address, so I read the Plus code over the phone and that seemed to work.

It was very confusing as typing either the address or code into google maps brought up the same result, so I don't know why the code worked any better.

It was also very frustrating as my shipment was headed to warehouse 5, and warehouse 25, 1km down the same road with the same type of address was an official FedEx ship location.

Wow, that's very cool FedEx would accept a Plus code over the phone. I never would have guessed that. Thanks for that info, this is the first time I've heard it being legitimately used "in the wild".

I'm guessing that in this case maybe the address was missing from a proprietary address database used by FedEx -- in Google Maps but FedEx couldn't access it. I actually find it somewhat mystifying just how frequently companies that rely on accurate addresses (FedEx, Uber, etc.) have shoddy data -- and not just it not being kept up-to-date, but it actually regressing.

It's not uncommon for drivers to mark packages as undeliverable when they run out of time on their route.

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