Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mjevans | Hacker News Reader

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I would love for a universal address like...

(Earth) GPS (Elevation, meters, postfixed) (Unit # or Label) E.G.

N47°26'39.4" W122°18'03.8" Departures Road Bay 20

A (random) place at the major airport nearest to me (as a not DOX example). Also note now the North / West have been moved to prefix the GPS scalar elements, as the biggest shift in direction.

Contrast:

    SEA Seattle International Airport
    Departures Road Bay 20
    SeaTac WA 98158

For street signs I'd expect MAJOR intersections to get big labels that include the full address, with the most geographically major components (the ones that barely ever change in a city) the smallest.

    small: N47°
    large: 26'39.4"
    small: W122°
    large: 18'03.8"

N47°26'39.4" W122°18'03.8" Departures Road Bay 20

N47°26'30.0" W122°17'57.5" Departures Road Bay 2

Google's Map also has 'plus codes' CPR2+J7 SeaTac, Washington https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ and https://github.com/google/open-location-code Which seems like a compelling variation for encoding the GPS value.

The algorithm is described here: https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/Docum... Key notes: Normalize the GPS coords to +/- values (+/-90 and 180), then add 90 or 180 respectively to create an unsigned index along the range. The 10 largest steps are pairs of 0-19 encoding interleaved, while after that it's single step with the remaining fractional parts of Latitude * 2.5e7 (extract mod 5, *4), Long * 8.192e6 (extract mod 4) for each character after the 10th. The specification page does a FAR better job explaining things, but if link rot happens hopefully the summary here is sufficient.

In the United States your address is uniquely identified by an 11 digit number. This is your zip code, the +4 extension, and the last 2 digits of your house number.

If you live on 123 Main Street, Schenectady, NY 12345-6789, then your address can be uniquely represented by 12345678923.

The post office also uses this system for sorting. That way the mail in the truck is in the correct order automatically.

My boil the ocean dream revolves around the idea that addresses are inherently hierarchical but we present them in this screwball mixed format.

the address should be(I will admit your address mixes a few level so my example may be incorrect)

/USA/98158/WA/SeaTac/Departures Road/bay 20/SEA Seattle International Airport

I always store a description with each one.

/country/zip code/city/street/bay/address

Or you could go full ldap

/country=USA/zip=98158/state=WA/city=SeaTac/street=Departures Road/bay=20/address=SEA Seattle International Airport

but I hate the way that looks.

And actually on topic, in many Utah cities the street address are sort of like that 500 south, 3000 west, etc. their reference point is the center of the known universe... the morman tabernacle naturally.

At least for USPS address specification the syntax is roughly:

* The lowest line is the most coarse and sufficient to route to a major sorting facility.

* There's an implicit United States of America line under that, but International mail also uses the lowest line as major routing. (I guess customs I/O comes after that, and then it hits the foreign carrier if handing off.)

* Physical location for a traditional address is the next 'line or two' above that. Usefully for a human holding a thing on a street (after sorting) the numeric address is first on that line set. Then the other bits of the address follow, usually a road designation or some zone thing; this line is little-endien first.

* A building and/or person name are the top, often one line, sometimes two.

This is probably why PlusCodes retains a short human friendly string specification for a major local marker. Like a city or major municipal facility that's unlikely to move over time. Effectively it's the same as that last line or two of USPS addresses. The + mark in the syntax is similar to a numeric decimal point, while also clearly breaking the major and minor flow elements.

It would be useful in some contexts but I wouldn't want to abandon street names and house numbers for it since they do make things easier when giving directions (something like "Take a left at N47°26'39.4 W122°18'03.8" would get out of hand quickly, especially over the phone) and it'd be strange to display something that long on the outside of your house instead of a 3-4 digits.

It may have changed, but last time I was there, most of Ireland outside of Dublin had no addresses, just coordinates. Navigating wasn't too hard though, streets have numbers, and directions were usually a "turn left at road 1310, etc.".

It also helps that most of Ireland is pretty rural.

For historical interest, you may wish to consult the (cold war era) Usenet practice of giving "icbmto:" coordinates.

And then an earthquake moves the location 4 meters east.

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