A Critical Analysis of the What3Words Geocoding Algorithm(arxiv.org)
arxiv.org
A Critical Analysis of the What3Words Geocoding Algorithm
https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.16025
153 comments
I can understand overlooking homophones, but plurals was just stupid.
Someone came up with a clever idea, and clearly they had some math/cipher skills. But w3w clearly had no linguists on staff. Even Wordle did a better job filtering their word list.
Though with some of the words being so lengthy and linguistically complex, they would have been better moving to a four word system and assuring simpler words that was better filtered.
Someone came up with a clever idea, and clearly they had some math/cipher skills. But w3w clearly had no linguists on staff. Even Wordle did a better job filtering their word list.
Though with some of the words being so lengthy and linguistically complex, they would have been better moving to a four word system and assuring simpler words that was better filtered.
Interesting that the researchers didn’t analyze W3W directly because it would violate their ToS, but instead constructed their own word list. I would think that this sort of criticism of a technology used by the government (for emergency services) would be acceptable, similar to “fair use” in the US.
Edit: it looks like the list itself is not even available, they would have had to reverse-engineer the app, so using a synthetic list makes more sense.
Edit: it looks like the list itself is not even available, they would have had to reverse-engineer the app, so using a synthetic list makes more sense.
There's a reverse engineering of What3Words from a few years ago floating around out there called "What Free Words". It includes what claims to be their word list. I imagine the researcher is familiar with this but has chosen not to include it in their research.
(W3W is very aggressive about pursuing possibly spurious IP claims to remove any trace of What Free Words. In the past, even mentioning it in a comment like this is enough to attract a DMCA complaint.)
(W3W is very aggressive about pursuing possibly spurious IP claims to remove any trace of What Free Words. In the past, even mentioning it in a comment like this is enough to attract a DMCA complaint.)
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It's interesting because I'm fairly sure that work has already been done. Even without criticising the geocoding itself, the fact that there are singlular/plural pairs in the word list along with easily-confusable homophones says a lot about the product.
It looks like a security researcher has looked into it and was threatened with legal action for releasing his source code.
https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su...
https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/30/what3words-legal-threat-wh...
Edit: initially I said “sued”, which was inaccurate. And the repo included the proprietary word list, not just code.
https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su...
https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/30/what3words-legal-threat-wh...
Edit: initially I said “sued”, which was inaccurate. And the repo included the proprietary word list, not just code.
Your own previous comment doesn't match this take: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21218385
Ah, you got me! I didn’t realize from reading the TechCrunch article that the repo contained the actual word list, I stand by my original opinion that the takedown was legally valid.
Based on what law? You can't copyright mere facts like a list of words.
You can copyright lists of words if their selection or arrangement amounts to creative work. I mean, a poem is a list of words. A list of words that have been picked because they have a certain length or because, when combined with other lists, they produce a memorable, unique combination may (and I guess does in practice) amount to a copyrightable creation.
If creative effort was involved in curating that list, sure you can.
A book is just a list of words.
A book is just a list of words.
You can't copyright the GPS coordinates of cities, because those are facts. The data would be the same whether you compiled it or not, and it would be absurd to grant someone a monopoly on that data.
If you compile a word list yourself, you've created something that doesn't describe the factual state of the world; you've created something new.
FWIW, before the debacle, even the (apparent) author of it appears to have admitted that it flaunted copyright:
> FWIW, I have reverse-engineered the what3words address decoding algorithm. If anyone else with the luxury of flaunting patents and copyrights is curious, check out the demo at https://cardinalhood.github.io/what3words/. It’s written in JS, and runs in browsers and Node.js.
https://blog.ldodds.com/2016/06/14/what-3-words-jog-on-mate/
If you compile a word list yourself, you've created something that doesn't describe the factual state of the world; you've created something new.
FWIW, before the debacle, even the (apparent) author of it appears to have admitted that it flaunted copyright:
> FWIW, I have reverse-engineered the what3words address decoding algorithm. If anyone else with the luxury of flaunting patents and copyrights is curious, check out the demo at https://cardinalhood.github.io/what3words/. It’s written in JS, and runs in browsers and Node.js.
https://blog.ldodds.com/2016/06/14/what-3-words-jog-on-mate/
Whether or not a collection of facts can be subject to copyright varies across jurisdiction - in the US you can't copyright the phone book, while the EU has a specific concept of database rights. What's critical in the US case is whether there's any creative expression in the collection of facts or whether it's effectively mechanical, and whether the w3w wordlist would be protected under that would seem like an interesting case.
I believe it's patent infringement. You should never give all the secrets of your patented device away, just the concept to secure the patent.
Well, threatened with legal action and wasn't up for fighting it. It didn't get as far as him being sued, and while I can't blame him in the slightest for that choice, I would have been absolutely fascinated if it did go to court. A compatible reimplementation of something that's being sold to emergency services being slapped down because it's compatible sounds like the sort of thing useful precedent could have come out of.
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It's worth noting that some huge limitations/risks of W3W are there because of the flaws in their word list choice, so if you're analyzing a different wordlist, you explicitly aren't looking at a big source of problems.
I volunteered in SAR for five years, and the topic of W3W would occasionally come up.
For me, it’s just already damn hard to make sure you can hear numbers correctly over the radio. In marginal conditions, it’s a hell of a lot easier to use numbers (and requires less time due to not having to repeat or ask for clarification).
Do I really want to be trying to say “arrows.midst.senses” over a handheld radio?
For me, it’s just already damn hard to make sure you can hear numbers correctly over the radio. In marginal conditions, it’s a hell of a lot easier to use numbers (and requires less time due to not having to repeat or ask for clarification).
Do I really want to be trying to say “arrows.midst.senses” over a handheld radio?
Especially since "arrows.midst.senses" and "arrow.midst.senses" are two different locations, and if you mishear it as "arrows.midst.sends", that's yet another different valid location.
Really, there's all the research done (since the invention of early radio?) on what makes a phonetic alphabet or phonetic code usable in noisy conditions, and instead W3W effectively plants a field of rakes in front of blindfolded people.
Really, there's all the research done (since the invention of early radio?) on what makes a phonetic alphabet or phonetic code usable in noisy conditions, and instead W3W effectively plants a field of rakes in front of blindfolded people.
Or worse, "arrows.midst.senses" and "arrows.mist.senses"
Arrows.missed.census
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Very similar experience, decade in volunteer SAR with a lot of police and fire overlap.
I hold exactly the same opinion as you, however what is very telling us that the police and fire services love it. I think that's because of the accessibility of the system rather than the underlying algorithm or communication.
I am also coming to see w3w locations written more and more as a more accessible alternative to coordinates, especially in land sales and forestry situations.
I do particularly hate that government services and agencies are becoming reliant on a commercially licensed pattern. It does not tick the sustainability tickbox for me.
I hate it as much as I love it.
I hold exactly the same opinion as you, however what is very telling us that the police and fire services love it. I think that's because of the accessibility of the system rather than the underlying algorithm or communication.
I am also coming to see w3w locations written more and more as a more accessible alternative to coordinates, especially in land sales and forestry situations.
I do particularly hate that government services and agencies are becoming reliant on a commercially licensed pattern. It does not tick the sustainability tickbox for me.
I hate it as much as I love it.
SAR = Search and Rescue
poor implementation aside, the format has its advantages over numerical coordinates
besides the greater public awareness of w3w amongst certain demographics compared to coordinates, they may be harder to hear, but it's much easier to read out three words correctly than it is 16-18 numbers
the thing with words is that they're easy to hear in context, but take them out of context and they're often indecipherable
perhaps a system that gives each square a coherent-sounding sentence could be tried, although I'm sure that would have its difficulties too
besides the greater public awareness of w3w amongst certain demographics compared to coordinates, they may be harder to hear, but it's much easier to read out three words correctly than it is 16-18 numbers
the thing with words is that they're easy to hear in context, but take them out of context and they're often indecipherable
perhaps a system that gives each square a coherent-sounding sentence could be tried, although I'm sure that would have its difficulties too
Yeah, to avoid that confusion, it won't be three words when spoken.
"arrows.midst.senses"
Will become "Alpha, romeo, romeo, oscar, whiskey, sierra. Mike, india, delta, sierra, tango. Sierra, echo, november, sierra, echo, sierra".
"arrows.midst.senses"
Will become "Alpha, romeo, romeo, oscar, whiskey, sierra. Mike, india, delta, sierra, tango. Sierra, echo, november, sierra, echo, sierra".
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Coherence is unfortunately a subjective matter, as in the phrase “too.much.butter” which is syntactically valid but has no comprehensible meaning.
I enjoyed this
The fifth decimal of a GPS coordinate resolves down to 1.1 meter.
Ten numbers doesn’t sound much more difficult than three words to me.
Ten numbers doesn’t sound much more difficult than three words to me.
12.34567N 89.01234W is 14 digits, 2 points, and 2 signs or letters.
Earth is about 2^49 square meters. If you want precision of ~8 square meters, you're going to need to convey 46 bits of information (or use an optimization that gives less resolution over oceans, etc, but that's only going to be a small win-- a bit or two).
46/3.3 = 14 digits, but the latitude/longitude coding is a little less efficient because it's not uniform. A plus code does it in 11 characters (not including the plus) worth each 4.32 bits =~ 47.5 bits.
Earth is about 2^49 square meters. If you want precision of ~8 square meters, you're going to need to convey 46 bits of information (or use an optimization that gives less resolution over oceans, etc, but that's only going to be a small win-- a bit or two).
46/3.3 = 14 digits, but the latitude/longitude coding is a little less efficient because it's not uniform. A plus code does it in 11 characters (not including the plus) worth each 4.32 bits =~ 47.5 bits.
if Earth sqm = 2^49:
to address a single metre, we'd need 49 bits.
log_10(2^49) = 14.75 so we'd need 15 spoken decimal digits for 1 sqm. for 8m do log_10(2^47)
> if Earth sqm = 2^49: to address a single metre, we'd need 49 bits.
Yes-- that's why I said it was 46 bits for an 8 square meter area (because this is about the size of area you care about for this problem-- W3W is 9 square meters).
> for 8m do log_10(2^47)
No, because 2^3 = 8, so one does log_10(2^(49-3)) and gets 13.8. 46 / 3.3 =~ 13.9 works because 1/log_10(2) =~ 3.3.
Yes-- that's why I said it was 46 bits for an 8 square meter area (because this is about the size of area you care about for this problem-- W3W is 9 square meters).
> for 8m do log_10(2^47)
No, because 2^3 = 8, so one does log_10(2^(49-3)) and gets 13.8. 46 / 3.3 =~ 13.9 works because 1/log_10(2) =~ 3.3.
I'd say that's not so different from using IP addresses instead of DNS - generally not too popular (and that's for IPv4...)
Why are you not sending text messages to each other if it is so hard to understand? You can have plenty of error correction to make sure the message always is correctly received.
If they are in a situation in which they can send W3W coordinates by text message, then they are in a situation in which they can send ordinary numerical coordinates by text message.
I don't care what they use. I am stating they are using the wrong protocol if there is a chance to introduce errors when sending a message.
And I'm implying that there are situations where they cannot take the luxury of communicating by text with the extreme care required not to make the slightest typo in W3W.
https://w3w.me.ss/ collects examples of bad experiences with W3W. It is linked in the paper.
It really makes no sense to use it for emergency calls. 999/911 can already access your location by GPS.
I think the issue is that other less emergency numbers can't (like 101). That's why they tell you to hang up and call 999 rather than transferring you.
But I don't know why they just don't add more numbers to the "allowed to geolocate you" list. Or even build in a "send my location" button in phone calls. You wouldn't even need to modify the phone system - it could send DTFM tones.
I think the issue is that other less emergency numbers can't (like 101). That's why they tell you to hang up and call 999 rather than transferring you.
But I don't know why they just don't add more numbers to the "allowed to geolocate you" list. Or even build in a "send my location" button in phone calls. You wouldn't even need to modify the phone system - it could send DTFM tones.
Really GPS on the device or just tower trangulation data? Is there information availae on how this works?
In Austria emergency services can not access GPS directly afaik.
I spoke with someone supplying 911 dispatch systems and they said the data is available instantly from triangulation data and it is extremely accurate
Really GPS, but it may not be as universal as I thought. This 2016 article says it is launching only on Android and only in the UK and Estonia.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/google-now-automatically-provi...
https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/google-now-automatically-provi...
Note that GPS can be often unreliable or not precise enough. For example, it would be pretty useful to specify correct side of river/road/railway. Arriving at wrong side may result in needing to do very long detour.
> Note that GPS can be often unreliable or not precise enough.
But the W3W app identifies your position by GPS, meaning it is subject to the same general reliability problem via inheritance. Yes, it displays a map as well, so you can identify that you need to quote a different square, but in an emergency situation I'd posit that people are more likely to just read off the words and not really take in the displayed map. And the same solution works for GPS alone anyway – if you are reading your position using a phone app it is likely displaying an approximate map also.
But the W3W app identifies your position by GPS, meaning it is subject to the same general reliability problem via inheritance. Yes, it displays a map as well, so you can identify that you need to quote a different square, but in an emergency situation I'd posit that people are more likely to just read off the words and not really take in the displayed map. And the same solution works for GPS alone anyway – if you are reading your position using a phone app it is likely displaying an approximate map also.
I am not claiming that 3 words is solving that problem, only that "forward GPS from phone" does not solve it.
You will need reporter to describe location.
You will need reporter to describe location.
In French and (potentially other languages), I can add another criticism on top of the paper, some the words used in the dictionary are so obscure that a native speaker would not know them. They probably generated them randomly from a dictionary instead of asking native speakers.
The whole project has then no real purpose if you have to spell unknown words.
The whole project has then no real purpose if you have to spell unknown words.
It also doesn't work well with agglutinative languages like Korean. The wordlist contains a lot of word sets only differentiated by postpositions (e.g. 기쁜 delightful vs. 기쁨 delight).
Plus Codes are way better because they are open source. S2 is kind of analogous (also from Google), but 64-bit integers. I wonder if someone will ever come up with an Emoji encoding for GPS, regional flags might facilitate everything. It's just a random idea.
I don't like how Plus Codes uses city names for relative ones. The result is longer than the full code. I also don't like how it uses the plus, it is hard to represent larger areas. I would have put the "+" at the beginning and use dots as separator, although I guess could look like phone number.
> What3Words has grown rapidly in popularity over the past few years and is used in logistical applications worldwide, including by emergency services
It has? It is?
I've known about it for many years and even seen billboards by them, yet never seen it used in practice.
It has? It is?
I've known about it for many years and even seen billboards by them, yet never seen it used in practice.
It has certainly picked up popularity, or at least use, in certain outdoor communities. I've noticed running events are increasingly noting the W3W address of their registration and start locations for instance, and associations related to emergency services have allowed themselves to be linked to the app (https://www.airambulancesuk.org/news-knowexactlyewhere/ for instance).
I thought I'd seen adverts from official emergency bodies mentioning W3W, but a quick search finds nothing mentioning the fact that call-centres have the facility available that isn't directly from W3W, a straight copy from one of their press releases, or a discussion about the system's deficiencies (i.e. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56901363), so that might be me having not been cynical enough to identify an astroturf campaign!
I thought I'd seen adverts from official emergency bodies mentioning W3W, but a quick search finds nothing mentioning the fact that call-centres have the facility available that isn't directly from W3W, a straight copy from one of their press releases, or a discussion about the system's deficiencies (i.e. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56901363), so that might be me having not been cynical enough to identify an astroturf campaign!
We used it at a remote forestry work camp a year or so ago
It was great for the supervisor to just tell everyone 3 words to remember instead of UTC or LATLONG coordinates which I for one probably would not have remembered in an emergency
You can kind of shop around for an easy set to remember too if you get a weird set of words you can most likely just take the grid box next to you
I’m sure it’s not perfect but it was very convenient for our particular use case
It was great for the supervisor to just tell everyone 3 words to remember instead of UTC or LATLONG coordinates which I for one probably would not have remembered in an emergency
You can kind of shop around for an easy set to remember too if you get a weird set of words you can most likely just take the grid box next to you
I’m sure it’s not perfect but it was very convenient for our particular use case
Especially when you can easily send your exact GPS location if you make an emergency call with your smartphone.
Note that GPS can be often unreliable or not precise enough. For example, it would be pretty useful to specify correct side of river/road/railway. Arriving at wrong side may result in needing to do very long detour.
And how do you get those 3 words?
Don't you need GPS to get the coordinates to translate them to three words?
Don't you need GPS to get the coordinates to translate them to three words?
I am not claiming that 3 words is solving that problem, only that "forward GPS from phone" does not solve it.
You will need reporter to describe location.
You will need reporter to describe location.
True, but no pure coordinate encoding system is going to help there. You need the user to be able to read a map of some sort to:
1. first verify that the position reading is accurate at all
2. adjust the reading appropriately
3. note any further navigation issues that could be important to people trying to head towards them (even with a 100% accurate position that could be a problem).
The selling point of W3W is neither accuracy nor precision, but the claim that it reduces transcription errors that might send rescuers off in the wrong direction – for instance the difference between OSMAP references 680287 and 680278 putting you on the wrong side of the river with a few mile trip in either direction to get to the other side due to where crossing points are (there are no doubt better examples than this, I arbitrarily picked an example close by where I often run). This claim is disputed by a number of people some of whom make a good case (for instance https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56901363) and the fact that W3W has often chosen to respond to criticism with legal slaps instead of technical explanations suggests to me that the criticism is right.
1. first verify that the position reading is accurate at all
2. adjust the reading appropriately
3. note any further navigation issues that could be important to people trying to head towards them (even with a 100% accurate position that could be a problem).
The selling point of W3W is neither accuracy nor precision, but the claim that it reduces transcription errors that might send rescuers off in the wrong direction – for instance the difference between OSMAP references 680287 and 680278 putting you on the wrong side of the river with a few mile trip in either direction to get to the other side due to where crossing points are (there are no doubt better examples than this, I arbitrarily picked an example close by where I often run). This claim is disputed by a number of people some of whom make a good case (for instance https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56901363) and the fact that W3W has often chosen to respond to criticism with legal slaps instead of technical explanations suggests to me that the criticism is right.
Seems like a great opportunity for a new alternative system.
Preferably with an error correcting code built in. Homophones shouldn't really matter, if you mess it up, the ECC could just fix it.
Go with 4 words instead of 3.
Take Diceware, treat the words as a base 7775 number, convert to binary, you get 50 bits.
You could do some fancy reshuffling, reorder the words by similarity(Start with the first, then repeatedly pick the one with the smallest edit distance), and do the conversion to an integer such that any one word swapped to a close neighbor only produces a small change.
My math knowledge is too limited to do this myself unless there's something to copy and paste or a brute force hack, but couldn't you do that by treating each word as a digit in 7775-ary gray code?
Any one word being off to a nearby word, would then just give you an error in the low order bits of the latitude.
Then you protect those bits with a hamming code, and have an overall 2 or 3 but checksum for everything, so at least some of the easy to make mistakes will be corrected, and most will probably be detected.
Reliability could probably be better than reading off coordinates, still faster, with only one extra word.
Plus the words themselves already have redundancy in them, if you make a typo, autocorrect can fix it, and if it gets the wrong one, the correction will likely catch it or flag the issue.
Preferably with an error correcting code built in. Homophones shouldn't really matter, if you mess it up, the ECC could just fix it.
Go with 4 words instead of 3.
Take Diceware, treat the words as a base 7775 number, convert to binary, you get 50 bits.
You could do some fancy reshuffling, reorder the words by similarity(Start with the first, then repeatedly pick the one with the smallest edit distance), and do the conversion to an integer such that any one word swapped to a close neighbor only produces a small change.
My math knowledge is too limited to do this myself unless there's something to copy and paste or a brute force hack, but couldn't you do that by treating each word as a digit in 7775-ary gray code?
Any one word being off to a nearby word, would then just give you an error in the low order bits of the latitude.
Then you protect those bits with a hamming code, and have an overall 2 or 3 but checksum for everything, so at least some of the easy to make mistakes will be corrected, and most will probably be detected.
Reliability could probably be better than reading off coordinates, still faster, with only one extra word.
Plus the words themselves already have redundancy in them, if you make a typo, autocorrect can fix it, and if it gets the wrong one, the correction will likely catch it or flag the issue.
I built a location to words system for fun a little while ago. https://Wherewords.id
I concluded something similar to you and went to 4 words. I spent the most time on the wordlist. I used the Google s2 library to split the world into a hierarchy of points.
I even did an emoji checksum too although these days I'd probably do that differently. I really like the idea of an ECC actually, I might have a look at doing that, although it would remove the hierarchical nature that I like with the current system. Because it's hierarchical, people who know the context can skip initial words. Like two people in the 'decorate' region https://wherewords.id/decorate could just use the last three of the four words, or to indicate a number of locations near each other, you could just provide one location and then the other positions with just one or two words.
I concluded something similar to you and went to 4 words. I spent the most time on the wordlist. I used the Google s2 library to split the world into a hierarchy of points.
I even did an emoji checksum too although these days I'd probably do that differently. I really like the idea of an ECC actually, I might have a look at doing that, although it would remove the hierarchical nature that I like with the current system. Because it's hierarchical, people who know the context can skip initial words. Like two people in the 'decorate' region https://wherewords.id/decorate could just use the last three of the four words, or to indicate a number of locations near each other, you could just provide one location and then the other positions with just one or two words.
That's amazing!!
The heirarchal thing is really cool.
I think ECC probably wouldn't get you much unless you reordered words by similarity and did the grey code thing, otherwise, most words would change a lot of bits at once if you mixed them up.
But with grey code reordering you might not need any ECC because single words changing to similar words might just put you off by a few meters, degrading gracefully in a way that doesn't matter most of the time. Or at the very least you might only need to protect the last few bits.
Maybe there is an ordering that puts words likely to be mixed up next to each other, but still feels like it has variety, enough to where you'd notice the difference between adjacent locations most of the time?
Or maybe word confusion isn't actually the type of error that's most relevant? Accidentally using data meant for a a different region might be a bigger problem.
The heirarchal thing is really cool.
I think ECC probably wouldn't get you much unless you reordered words by similarity and did the grey code thing, otherwise, most words would change a lot of bits at once if you mixed them up.
But with grey code reordering you might not need any ECC because single words changing to similar words might just put you off by a few meters, degrading gracefully in a way that doesn't matter most of the time. Or at the very least you might only need to protect the last few bits.
Maybe there is an ordering that puts words likely to be mixed up next to each other, but still feels like it has variety, enough to where you'd notice the difference between adjacent locations most of the time?
Or maybe word confusion isn't actually the type of error that's most relevant? Accidentally using data meant for a a different region might be a bigger problem.
Thinking about it, one word of the nato alphabet gives you 4 bits, so you could have a check word out of the nato alphabet that contained a parity bit for each of your words. It wouldn't let you correct any errors, but it's a single, easy word that would give you a good chance of spotting errors in the other words. That's probably how I'd do it.
The problem with error correcting codes is that they typically need quite a lot more bits transmitted, and I'm trying to keep the number of words manageable without needing a huge wordlist. Of course if I could get a 65k wordlist I was happy with that'd be fine, but that seems very unlikely given how hard it was to get a good 4096 word wordlist.
The problem with error correcting codes is that they typically need quite a lot more bits transmitted, and I'm trying to keep the number of words manageable without needing a huge wordlist. Of course if I could get a 65k wordlist I was happy with that'd be fine, but that seems very unlikely given how hard it was to get a good 4096 word wordlist.
Having a separate wordlist does seem like a pretty good plan, but if there's only a single bit per word, then you only have 50% chance of catching a single word swap, as opposed to something like a 4 bit CRC which should catch close to 15 out of 16 errors.
Based on your idea, I implemented a 3 bit CRC last night.
Since my word list is 4096 words, each word represents 12 bits. This means that if I use a 3 bit crc, each word can check 4 other words.
Since my word list is 4096 words, each word represents 12 bits. This means that if I use a 3 bit crc, each word can check 4 other words.
{ words: [ 'beg', 'notably', 'renew', 'curious' ], crc: [ 'joy' ] }
{ words: [ 'beg', 'notably', 'able', 'curious' ], crc: [ 'joy' ] }
[ '100', '000', '011', '000' ] 100000010000
[ true, true, false, true ]
Good luck bypassing their patents.
Is it really "geocoding" what they provide and is the 3 words code an "address equivalent"?
Wikipedia says geocoding is:
the process of taking a text-based description of a location, such as an address or the name of a place, and returning geographic coordinates, frequently latitude/longitude pair, to identify a location on the Earth's surface.
In my opinion the 3 words are already geographic codes and not something like an address. It sounds like nit-pick but it shows the big problem of how they advertise that their service is a solution to vagueness of an address. Because if you have a phone with GPS available (or a similar device) you don't need "geocoding" because you already have the precise latitude/longitude pair. And if you do not have a device with GPS you'll also have a problem getting the 3 words.
Wikipedia says geocoding is:
the process of taking a text-based description of a location, such as an address or the name of a place, and returning geographic coordinates, frequently latitude/longitude pair, to identify a location on the Earth's surface.
In my opinion the 3 words are already geographic codes and not something like an address. It sounds like nit-pick but it shows the big problem of how they advertise that their service is a solution to vagueness of an address. Because if you have a phone with GPS available (or a similar device) you don't need "geocoding" because you already have the precise latitude/longitude pair. And if you do not have a device with GPS you'll also have a problem getting the 3 words.
Studied GIS for 8 years in university and I still cannot understand the use case for W3W. It removes information with little benefit.
If you have a position using a CRS you’ve got lots of information about where it is relative to other positions in the same CRS. If you have a street address, you have hierarchical information of that location, and yea you can geocode it if you want to exchange topology for position.
If you have a W3W you’ve got a memorable hash that tells you nothing at all until you geocode it. Making a W3W really feels like the opposite of geocoding.
Or consider it like this:
A coordinate pair tells you in some unit (degrees, metres, etc) where something is relative to other coordinates (or the datum).
An address tells you where things are topologically: “it’s inside this city. Along this street. Beside these other addresses.” (Usually…)
What does a W3W tell you?
And let me guess… to get any information out of a W3W you must use their proprietary system. If that’s the case, what an absolutely moronic system to use.
If you have a position using a CRS you’ve got lots of information about where it is relative to other positions in the same CRS. If you have a street address, you have hierarchical information of that location, and yea you can geocode it if you want to exchange topology for position.
If you have a W3W you’ve got a memorable hash that tells you nothing at all until you geocode it. Making a W3W really feels like the opposite of geocoding.
Or consider it like this:
A coordinate pair tells you in some unit (degrees, metres, etc) where something is relative to other coordinates (or the datum).
An address tells you where things are topologically: “it’s inside this city. Along this street. Beside these other addresses.” (Usually…)
What does a W3W tell you?
And let me guess… to get any information out of a W3W you must use their proprietary system. If that’s the case, what an absolutely moronic system to use.
W3W's use case is to trick governments into adopting their service, then collect payments forever more on what should be free, non-proprietary addressing infrastructure.
It’s not a perfect system clearly but we used the 3-word code when I worked in forestry because everyone needed to memorize some kind of coordinates for emergencies requiring evacuation from our camp but nobody had a GPS or a map just an old beat up sat phone kept in the glove box
The words we had were pretty good ones something like banana-sink-trampoline I don’t remember now but using UTC or lat-long would definitely have been harder to memorize
If you get a bad set of three words it’s not so hard to choose a neighbouring set if I remember the grid was pretty fine grained I think our foreman “shopped around” for a nice easy set somewhere on the nearby logging road reasonably close to us
The words we had were pretty good ones something like banana-sink-trampoline I don’t remember now but using UTC or lat-long would definitely have been harder to memorize
If you get a bad set of three words it’s not so hard to choose a neighbouring set if I remember the grid was pretty fine grained I think our foreman “shopped around” for a nice easy set somewhere on the nearby logging road reasonably close to us
Instead of memorizing some set of words, have a proper emergency plan with a named set of locations. Militaries do this all the time.
This basically replaces “okay so this is evacuation point Alfa” with “okay so this is evacuation point carrots-bacon-ovens”
In either case you still must consult an additional source if you need it translated to a coordinate system. And if you mix up “oven” with “ovens” you might end up evacuating to the other side of the planet.
This basically replaces “okay so this is evacuation point Alfa” with “okay so this is evacuation point carrots-bacon-ovens”
In either case you still must consult an additional source if you need it translated to a coordinate system. And if you mix up “oven” with “ovens” you might end up evacuating to the other side of the planet.
the 3 words aren’t for us they are exclusively for the search and rescue team who we talk to when buddy breaks his spine and needs an airlift
And you can avoid the ovens vs oven problem by just picking a coordinate with good simple words the helicopter is fine to find you within a few hundred meters of your camp
This system has been used extensively in remote resource extraction because humans in the pressure of an emergency can recall words and phrases better than numbers
It works pretty well for this use case
And you can avoid the ovens vs oven problem by just picking a coordinate with good simple words the helicopter is fine to find you within a few hundred meters of your camp
This system has been used extensively in remote resource extraction because humans in the pressure of an emergency can recall words and phrases better than numbers
It works pretty well for this use case
>What does a W3W tell you?
I'll bite. Using it as intended, both as a service and a physical coordinator (via 3 text chars), reveals a location with 3mx3m bounded precision. No other options exist that provide a solution to "where's the thing" without losing this key precision boundary.
I'll bite. Using it as intended, both as a service and a physical coordinator (via 3 text chars), reveals a location with 3mx3m bounded precision. No other options exist that provide a solution to "where's the thing" without losing this key precision boundary.
It’s a memorable hash, yes. But you can’t reason about anything else using the hash alone, and being slightly off can easily send you to the other side of the planet.
For more on this, and why I think we shouldn't advocate for W3W, see: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-... for theoretical reasons and https://w3w.me.ss/ for some practical examples.
https://plus.codes seems much better, but sadly it uses random characters instead of words, which is much harder for humans to remember ( https://xkcd.com/936/ ), so I don't think it will ever catch on.
That's pretty sad in my opinion, is the whole concept of using words to encode a location now owned by w3w? The implementation seems trivial
https://plus.codes seems much better, but sadly it uses random characters instead of words, which is much harder for humans to remember ( https://xkcd.com/936/ ), so I don't think it will ever catch on.
That's pretty sad in my opinion, is the whole concept of using words to encode a location now owned by w3w? The implementation seems trivial
> is the whole concept of using words to encode a location now owned by w3w?
Essentially, yes. There are patents involved, and W3W are rather litigious so if you have a competing idea/implementation that doesn't infringe be prepared to expensively defend that position.
That hasn't stopped some good parody versions existing though, perhaps the best known being https://www.fourkingmaps.co.uk/ [reporting in from hoes.abortion.cumshot.dope!]
Essentially, yes. There are patents involved, and W3W are rather litigious so if you have a competing idea/implementation that doesn't infringe be prepared to expensively defend that position.
That hasn't stopped some good parody versions existing though, perhaps the best known being https://www.fourkingmaps.co.uk/ [reporting in from hoes.abortion.cumshot.dope!]
> sadly it uses random characters instead of words
It was explicitly designed in that way [1]. It does make harder to remember, but I think the memorizability constrains other goals too much.
[1] https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation...
It was explicitly designed in that way [1]. It does make harder to remember, but I think the memorizability constrains other goals too much.
[1] https://github.com/google/open-location-code/wiki/Evaluation...
This seems like a missing UX feature. Give the NATO (or regional) phonetic alphabet for the code, have a synthetic voice saying those characters, and maybe have an audio modem.
>it uses random characters instead of words, which is much harder for humans to remember
Do we really need to remember them, instead of just writing them down?
Do we really need to remember them, instead of just writing them down?
What I dislike of plus.codes is that they have replaced GPS coordinates on google maps. GPS coordinates are multiplatform where only Google maps seems to be able to decode those fancy codes
Pluscode is a trademark. The actual standard is called "open location code" and is unrestricted - https://github.com/google/open-location-code/
I get both latlng and plus codes when selecting a location on the android games client.
Plus codes are an open standard, osmand at least also supports them.
Plus codes are an open standard, osmand at least also supports them.
So the problem is not Google maps but the other proprietary app. Thanks for the heads up
Is there any contiguous system available that doesn't have issues at edges? Sure lnglats are tedious, especially crossing the 180th, but at least you know that -180=180 and -179~=179. Memorability useful but not necessary?
I’m pretty certain W3W are not now profitable and never will be. They’ve raised a ridiculous sum for a service which does not appear to be much-in demand.
The whole business was about trying to seek rent on the whole concept of addresses. I'm glad to see it not working out, though it would've been better if all the people involved had enough morals not to pursue such an idea in the first place.
in a different world, they might pivot to a wikimedia-like "open maps foundation", open-source everything while riding the wave of a huge amount of [new-to-them] good will, fat 501c3 donations and much smarter people than them helping fix their algorithm.
This is such a pointless product anyway. Every smartphone on the market can share its precise location in a machine-readable format with any other smartphone on the market. They even do it automatically when calling an emergency service. Why would you ever want to transmit a location by reading a string to someone?
>in a machine-readable format
You're missing the point. The w3w coordinate system is designed to be readable by humans. The massive increasing adoption of this system should be a large hint that it is useful.
You're missing the point. The w3w coordinate system is designed to be readable by humans. The massive increasing adoption of this system should be a large hint that it is useful.
Oddly enough W3W fails to go far enough in the direction of being friendly to humans. Hence all the many criticisms of it as a solution.
If you are out of cell service and talking to search and rescue via a satellite phone
This is the use case I’ve seen 3words applied most often
This is the use case I’ve seen 3words applied most often
Generally, I would say standard addresses are better, because streets are already a form of information compression, since you always indicate a position on a street, you almost never indicate a position in the middle on a forest of a field.
Streets are already transforming 2D information on a 1D line, a bit like a hilbert curve.
GPS has a military use because the military go off-road, but citizens really don't (99.999% of the time).
So yeah, it's another one of those case where software engineers are trying to solve a problem where there was no problem in the first place, because they don't like dealing with standard addresses.
If you want to share a GPS coordinate, just use geohash, and use NATO alphabet if you need to share it orally.
Streets are already transforming 2D information on a 1D line, a bit like a hilbert curve.
GPS has a military use because the military go off-road, but citizens really don't (99.999% of the time).
So yeah, it's another one of those case where software engineers are trying to solve a problem where there was no problem in the first place, because they don't like dealing with standard addresses.
If you want to share a GPS coordinate, just use geohash, and use NATO alphabet if you need to share it orally.
Adresses are anything but standard, many words can easily sound alike, and in some places that address couldn’t be properly spoken by a someone not familiar with the language. That’s when there even are adresses for your location. Many places simply don’t have one.
As for gps coordinates, they are rather long and enunciating long sequences of characters can be quite tedious as anyone who has ever had to deal with game cd keys could tell.
That, and most people don’t know NATO alphabet.
So I’d, on the contrary, say a geohash-ish approache relying on a dictionary of carefully chosen hard to confuse and easy to enunciate words has its merits.
But the optimal solution to me would be "press here to send your exact location".
As for gps coordinates, they are rather long and enunciating long sequences of characters can be quite tedious as anyone who has ever had to deal with game cd keys could tell.
That, and most people don’t know NATO alphabet.
So I’d, on the contrary, say a geohash-ish approache relying on a dictionary of carefully chosen hard to confuse and easy to enunciate words has its merits.
But the optimal solution to me would be "press here to send your exact location".
> Generally, I would say standard addresses are better, because streets are already a form of information compression, since you always indicate a position on a street, you almost never indicate a position in the middle on a forest of a field.
> GPS has a military use because the military go off-road, but citizens really don't (99.999% of the time)
This is true for most of the world but not true for a lot of Africa - which does not have a real address system and relies on describing where a person lives and then doing a pin drop (websites will just accept pin drop).
> GPS has a military use because the military go off-road, but citizens really don't (99.999% of the time)
This is true for most of the world but not true for a lot of Africa - which does not have a real address system and relies on describing where a person lives and then doing a pin drop (websites will just accept pin drop).
Sure, but this still mean western society should encode streets, not coordinates
Sure we should for most use cases, but I think your original post ignores where that approach doesn’t work.
I’m not a fan of W3W, but it’s pitch is generally to fill in the gaps where addresses don’t work, not to replace addresses entirely.
I’m not a fan of W3W, but it’s pitch is generally to fill in the gaps where addresses don’t work, not to replace addresses entirely.
I used to live in a European city where many streets of a given neighbourhood belonged to the same lexical field. If somebody lived in "Falcon" street, you could go to their neighbourhood without knowing the exact street. There were neighbourhoods about birds, doctors, journalists, and IDK what else. I do not know why people do not do that more often.
Roads that have consecutive numbers are also useful.
These w3w words can be useful for logistics but they seem to be useless for human beings.
Roads that have consecutive numbers are also useful.
These w3w words can be useful for logistics but they seem to be useless for human beings.
I live in such a lexical area, and you'd be surprised how often we have to explain to DPD 'no, it says <X> Court, not <X> Street, not <X> Rise, those are other addresses and we don't live there, what is printed on the label? Oh, it's '<X> Court'? How surprising'
in my hometown, there's a whole set of streets (<X> Avenue, Drive, Place) that got built in the 90s with <X> being the surname of the chair of the council planning committee at the time, who was about to retire (ie the person who grants permission to build those houses). You almost have to admire the blatantness of the grift.
> GPS has a military use because the military go off-road, but citizens really don't (99.999% of the time).
Lots of people do go off-road as a hobby. It's still probably something like 90% or more, but alternatives to addresses do have some utility. W3W happens to be an extremely bad solution to somewhat legitimate problem.
Lots of people do go off-road as a hobby. It's still probably something like 90% or more, but alternatives to addresses do have some utility. W3W happens to be an extremely bad solution to somewhat legitimate problem.
[deleted]
Hi, I am the author of this article, it's interesting to see it being discussed here. A few points:
It's definitely possible to reverse engineer the word list and other aspects of the w3w system. However I also want to make my anysis code public and I don't want to deal with w3w's lawyers.
w3w make the basic claim that 1. similar addresses are far away from each other and 2. this makes mistakes obvious.
1 isn't true because they use a very naive randomization method. This was described before in an excellent blog post https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/what3words-the-algorithm... I added some equations in my work. In the worst case you end up with a run of addresses like
twice.over.x word.again.y repeat.phrase.z ...
And maybe 10km away another run like
twice.over.a word.again.b repeat.phrase.c ...
Only one word is different, which obviously makes it much easier to confuse addresses.
The other point is that around 25% of addresses (probably more) could be confused with 4 or more others. In that case, the AutoSuggest feature may not suggest the address you meant, and if it doesn't, there's not much you can do, since this is the only form of error correction available in w3w.
w3w is quite popular here in the UK and I can see the appeal, it is more fun to shout out green.apple.regret than some alphanumeric string. But given the above problems (which i am sure w3w know about) that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to trust an app like this with matters of life and death.
It's definitely possible to reverse engineer the word list and other aspects of the w3w system. However I also want to make my anysis code public and I don't want to deal with w3w's lawyers.
w3w make the basic claim that 1. similar addresses are far away from each other and 2. this makes mistakes obvious.
1 isn't true because they use a very naive randomization method. This was described before in an excellent blog post https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/what3words-the-algorithm... I added some equations in my work. In the worst case you end up with a run of addresses like
twice.over.x word.again.y repeat.phrase.z ...
And maybe 10km away another run like
twice.over.a word.again.b repeat.phrase.c ...
Only one word is different, which obviously makes it much easier to confuse addresses.
The other point is that around 25% of addresses (probably more) could be confused with 4 or more others. In that case, the AutoSuggest feature may not suggest the address you meant, and if it doesn't, there's not much you can do, since this is the only form of error correction available in w3w.
w3w is quite popular here in the UK and I can see the appeal, it is more fun to shout out green.apple.regret than some alphanumeric string. But given the above problems (which i am sure w3w know about) that doesn't seem like a good enough reason to trust an app like this with matters of life and death.
I was surprised by the claims of the "ease" of sending your GPS coordinates. I had no idea how to do this before this post. I dug around a bit to see what I had missed.
Some apps make this easier than others, with Google Maps still a mystery. In an emergency, or if I really needed a try location, I'd feel more comfortable with the dirt-simple nature of w3w then remembering how to find the lat/long and copying or saying all the digits (there are a lot of them!)
Apple Maps surprised me by being the easiest. It shows lat/long under the "My Location" pane which appears when I tap the blue dot. They make it easy to copy /paste.
Google Maps on iOS replaces that with a "Plus code". I can't find where my lat/long is in this thing, and gave up. (Hints and Spoilers welcome!)
Over the years, I have tried other map apps which I pulled up to see how they handled lat/long:
* Maps.me acts similarly to Apple Maps, tap the blue dot.
* Here We Go maps makes you drop a pin at your location, but then displays lat/long. Magic Earth has same problem/approach. Who would remember how to do that in a rush?
* Organic Maps over engineered this one: tap the blue arrow and lat/long appears, but when you tap it to copy, it changes to a new format each time (no commas, an alph-numeric I don't know, a url, a UTM, an MGRS, and then back to lat/long). Turns out you can press and hold to get a copy menu.
* Google Earth displays the lat/long right on the screen... But it's not copyable.
W3w may have implementation problems, but it does a great start on simplifying the answer to a verbal "where are you?". The rest of these, esp Google Maps, just aren't quite there yet.
Some apps make this easier than others, with Google Maps still a mystery. In an emergency, or if I really needed a try location, I'd feel more comfortable with the dirt-simple nature of w3w then remembering how to find the lat/long and copying or saying all the digits (there are a lot of them!)
Apple Maps surprised me by being the easiest. It shows lat/long under the "My Location" pane which appears when I tap the blue dot. They make it easy to copy /paste.
Google Maps on iOS replaces that with a "Plus code". I can't find where my lat/long is in this thing, and gave up. (Hints and Spoilers welcome!)
Over the years, I have tried other map apps which I pulled up to see how they handled lat/long:
* Maps.me acts similarly to Apple Maps, tap the blue dot.
* Here We Go maps makes you drop a pin at your location, but then displays lat/long. Magic Earth has same problem/approach. Who would remember how to do that in a rush?
* Organic Maps over engineered this one: tap the blue arrow and lat/long appears, but when you tap it to copy, it changes to a new format each time (no commas, an alph-numeric I don't know, a url, a UTM, an MGRS, and then back to lat/long). Turns out you can press and hold to get a copy menu.
* Google Earth displays the lat/long right on the screen... But it's not copyable.
W3w may have implementation problems, but it does a great start on simplifying the answer to a verbal "where are you?". The rest of these, esp Google Maps, just aren't quite there yet.
Google Maps pushes Plus Codes instead, they appear for every location:
https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/
But normal co-ords also appear for me when I long tap anywhere
https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/
But normal co-ords also appear for me when I long tap anywhere
It's a disappointing experience, isn't it? You can only get a raw lat/long if Maps can't generate an address. If it does, you're out of luck for lat/long -- it's gone from the UI as far as I can see.
Actually, it does in fact "show" lat/long in the Search field. But there is no way to copy it to the clipboard! The field is replaced with the resolved address as soon you touch the field in any way. You have to, and I can't believe I'm saying this, either screenshot or use a pen to write it down.
Got it. You have to press and hold to get to the "non-Google" standard info. Thanks for the pointer!
My last two (android) phones showed a screen that included my current coordinates whenever I call any emergency number. I would say putting your phone on speaker and reading out the numbers that are right there on the screen could be considered "easy".
I think What3Words is in principle a nice idea, but it could have been implemented much better. I am thinking of the following:
- have a fixed pattern, e.g. adjective.adjective.noun.
- create groups of words and put them in hierarchies. E.g. noun->animal->predator
- cover the world with a one-dimensional Hilbert curve
- Increment the noun along the curve. When all nouns are exhausted, start with the first noun again and increment the adjective in the middle, a.s.o. (analog to how incrementing a number with several digits works).
With this approach, the location purple.flying.tiger would be next to purple.flying.lion.
- have a fixed pattern, e.g. adjective.adjective.noun.
- create groups of words and put them in hierarchies. E.g. noun->animal->predator
- cover the world with a one-dimensional Hilbert curve
- Increment the noun along the curve. When all nouns are exhausted, start with the first noun again and increment the adjective in the middle, a.s.o. (analog to how incrementing a number with several digits works).
With this approach, the location purple.flying.tiger would be next to purple.flying.lion.
I spent a few minutes exploring a similar. Using the EFF wordlist (7776 words designed to be unambiguous)[1] you should be able to get down to about 100m^2 blocks (good enough for SAR), the BIP39 word list (2048) is a bit too resolution, but is a lot easier to pronounce, maybe worth some encoding shenanigans to get it to work).
For my POC, I also used a simple 1D hilbert curve. Running a simulation and plotting the words, you actually get pretty decent resolution, and it's even alphabetical by distance. Output from simple demo w/ BIP39 (math might not be correct): https://ibb.co/MnmcRFk but you can see that the word order actually make sense (although "winner" and "winter" are too phonetically similar, but still, gets the point across).
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/new-wordlists-random-p...
For my POC, I also used a simple 1D hilbert curve. Running a simulation and plotting the words, you actually get pretty decent resolution, and it's even alphabetical by distance. Output from simple demo w/ BIP39 (math might not be correct): https://ibb.co/MnmcRFk but you can see that the word order actually make sense (although "winner" and "winter" are too phonetically similar, but still, gets the point across).
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/new-wordlists-random-p...
That's specifically problematic: what was their location again? Uhm, it was purple flying something.. some kind of big cat.. lion or tiger..
Large conceptual distance between close physical locations is a feature not a bug.
Large conceptual distance between close physical locations is a feature not a bug.
It is not like that by design. Remember, this is backed by VCs that already put in a lot of money and in some future will want to make a lot of money.
The 3 words idea is patented and the basic idea is to have a drm protected database that is needed to find the actual location. The play the long game. Ultimately selling access to the database will make them money.
The 3 words idea is patented and the basic idea is to have a drm protected database that is needed to find the actual location. The play the long game. Ultimately selling access to the database will make them money.
You should check out https://www.qalocate.com/solutions/geohashphrase/
I don't really understand the need for W3W in most cases, at least in Europe.
Can someone come up with something convincing?
Can someone come up with something convincing?
The most convincing use case (for plus codes, not w3w but same logic) I've seen is that it can be used instead of an address in slums and similar places where addresses aren't available/practical
The problem is that it's useless without a phone but if you have access to a phone then a gps location is better, unless you have to remember it or put it in by hand
The problem is that it's useless without a phone but if you have access to a phone then a gps location is better, unless you have to remember it or put it in by hand
There's a counterpoint in another comment, [0] that it works poorly if you can't clearly hear each word. Plain old longitude and latitude numbers perform better in that regard.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37359790
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37359790
> unless you have to remember it or put it in by hand
Or spell it out while in distress.
But it seems w3w fits best in the "interesting but ultimately bad idea" bin.
Or spell it out while in distress.
But it seems w3w fits best in the "interesting but ultimately bad idea" bin.
The UK has had a bunch of news stories about using the app, as it "could save your life". For example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-49319760
But if you need internet access anyway I'm sure that GPS would be a better thing to use, and there are also stories about the use being questioned for accuracy reasons:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57156797
Really though I think it's a cute hack to use such a small number of words to define points - but as a closed source, and sue-happy company, there's really nothign to recommend it. Sure the average Joe might not be familiar with reading/writing GPS coordinates, but over a phone I'm sure an emergency dispatcher could walk them through it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-49319760
But if you need internet access anyway I'm sure that GPS would be a better thing to use, and there are also stories about the use being questioned for accuracy reasons:
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57156797
Really though I think it's a cute hack to use such a small number of words to define points - but as a closed source, and sue-happy company, there's really nothign to recommend it. Sure the average Joe might not be familiar with reading/writing GPS coordinates, but over a phone I'm sure an emergency dispatcher could walk them through it.
I have doubts the first story is true because telling a lost victim with unknown bandwidth and battery level to download a ~130MB (!) app just to get their location is completely irresponsible and people should be fired for this if it actually happened.
These read like the weekly Apple watch ~~adverts~~ "technology news articles" on reddit, it keeps saving people's lives and receives thousands of upvotes.
I'll try my best attempt at a steel man: It can be a useful way to convey location information via language (spoken or written word), when there isn't a direct digital connection between sources. That's genuinely a non-negligible use case.
So if you see an advertisement for a restaurant at giant.purple.monkey, you can get there. Or maybe you're coordinating plans on a non-smartphone call. Or you could put the location on flyers (a QR code could work, but lots of people hate those). Or you're dictating a location to a smart assistant (Mercedes-Benz did a partnership, and AFAIK the in-car assistant accepts W3W locations; I don't know for sure though, I use android auto in mine; disclaimer: I work at MB).
In practice there are problems with plurals, homophones, and other similar pronunciations (did he say heavy.monkey.dress (near SF) or heavy.monkeys.dress (near LA)). I think realistically W3W is almost never the best option, but I do quite like the idea. Maybe if they did a better job filtering words to avoid collisions, and made it 4 words? I imagine it could actually be a pretty memorable way to describe a location if it were something like adjective.noun.adjective.noun, and with fewer near-collisions in the library (heavy/heady).
So if you see an advertisement for a restaurant at giant.purple.monkey, you can get there. Or maybe you're coordinating plans on a non-smartphone call. Or you could put the location on flyers (a QR code could work, but lots of people hate those). Or you're dictating a location to a smart assistant (Mercedes-Benz did a partnership, and AFAIK the in-car assistant accepts W3W locations; I don't know for sure though, I use android auto in mine; disclaimer: I work at MB).
In practice there are problems with plurals, homophones, and other similar pronunciations (did he say heavy.monkey.dress (near SF) or heavy.monkeys.dress (near LA)). I think realistically W3W is almost never the best option, but I do quite like the idea. Maybe if they did a better job filtering words to avoid collisions, and made it 4 words? I imagine it could actually be a pretty memorable way to describe a location if it were something like adjective.noun.adjective.noun, and with fewer near-collisions in the library (heavy/heady).
I've read about some Native American tribes using Plus Codes as street addresses for homes on their reservations for the purpose of issuing IDs so their residents can vote.[0] They had not previously numbered their homes and the bureaucracy to register the home numbers might cause voters to miss the election deadline.
[0] https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/10/06/some-native-americans...
[0] https://www.sltrib.com/news/2019/10/06/some-native-americans...
Part of the reason, or at least a reason for a gap in the market that this could establish itself in, was that some countries who had built there own (quasi-)equivalents were similarly protective of their "intellectual property" and trying to charge for or just being awkward when providing geolocation data.
https://longair.net/blog/2021/08/23/open-data-gb-postcode-un...
https://longair.net/blog/2021/08/23/open-data-gb-postcode-un...
I'm from NZ which has logical addressing. Trying to find some random business on some random shed, down some random lane in the middle of nowhere in the UK can be quite the challenge - post codes don't help and "turn left at the white post, go down the lane till you get to a crow that's staring south, then drive up past the.... " directions are terrible. What3Words has been great for finding those places that use it... easier than writing down a GPS co-ordinate.
The UK is a special case in that we have quite narrowly defined postcodes, each of them restricted to a small area. So if you manage to get there you're not far to wherever you want to go.
In any case, do people really need to write down coordinates these days. It's probably all copy-paste or just click a link.
I have just noticed that the Google Maps app now gives you the Plus Code of any location.
In any case, do people really need to write down coordinates these days. It's probably all copy-paste or just click a link.
I have just noticed that the Google Maps app now gives you the Plus Code of any location.
Why not plus codes? At least that's an open standard that won't get rug-pulled.
Money (for w3w)
For everyone else: No.
For everyone else: No.
It’s very lucrative for a few investors and public funds never run out.
Yep. I was (and to some extent still am) part of a startup that found a better alternative to W3W. Our solution is the geohash phrase, which you can find a discussion of here: https://www.qalocate.com/solutions/geohashphrase/
The only major thing W3W has going for it is a very, very good marketing department.
The only major thing W3W has going for it is a very, very good marketing department.
Will there be a free, open source system for resolving a geohash phrase into a location? The #1 problem with What3Words is its proprietary rent-seeking business.
Your link has ambiguous answers to "open source" and "free".
Your link has ambiguous answers to "open source" and "free".
The answer is yes, with the unfortunate qualifier that, for at least what we've put together, it won't be soon. The startup has been on pause for most of the last two years due to lack of traction. I don't have the time, money, or energy to devote to moving our current work, which is very rough and very much half-baked, into a useful state for motivated folks.
That said, if someone else were to pick the idea up and move it forward on their own in the OSS space, then we'd (very likely) support that.
That said, if someone else were to pick the idea up and move it forward on their own in the OSS space, then we'd (very likely) support that.
Publishing this from the UK is rather risky given What3Words have a tendency to engage in SLAPPs on anyone who pulls back the curtain on their product
No, it isn’t risky in the least. The analysis makes no use of proprietary data and illustrates potential problems which arise from choices made in the algorithm’s design in an abstract way, using a different word list from the claimed proprietary one that W3W use. The legal threat in question was made because W3W claimed that Andrew Toponce was linking to a product which used their allegedly proprietary word list in a series of tweets. Please don’t make unfounded fear-mongering comments about academic research – they cumulatively have the same effect as the threats you claim to be drawing attention to.
I feel like we could just boil this down to a math problem? Classic lat long uses, what? 10 decimal digits? Grouped into 2 sets of 5? Switching to base 26 can only really eliminate 1 digit from each set. That alone should make it pretty clear we aren’t going to make it much simpler. I suppose you could encode the whole thing as one set of 10 digits and maybe represent that as 7 alphanumeric characters, but now to share it over the phone you have to know a phonetic alphabet. Nah, let’s stick to numbers…
If you're working with three words I don't see why base 26 would be relevant, I think you'd be looking at n^3 where n is the size of the set of words that you're considering. So wouldn't you just, split the 2-sphere into N squares of a certain size, and then each square has (lat,long) associated with it, and then you pick n so that n^3 > N and come up with a mapping between your N (lat, long) points and your set of n^3 three word sentences?
I guess I wasn’t specifically trying to use 3 words but more just demonstrate that 10 decimal digits is about as simple as it gets in terms of clearly being able to communicate with that much precision over a low quality connection.
It seems to me that you're demonstrating that What3Words doesn't provide precise coordinates on the globe to 3 decimal places. This is not surprising, given that they don't intend to do that, they chop the globe up into squares and provide less precision with easier human readability.
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It's a very British startup that clearly has some connection to the government and is trying to lobby their way into NHS etc.
The one single reason, no need to look any futher, for why it shouldn't be used by public services is because it's a private for profit operation. A simple concept that might have been useful, but is closed, so it won't be.
It is for-profit, but they have yet to turn a profit. Their financial situation is a disaster. 10s of millions of £ burned, with very little income. Look for yourself: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...
£31m loss in FY22.
Cybergibbons has also done a very good critique on how unsafe it is. See here: https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su...
They are also very litigious towards people that call them out.
£31m loss in FY22.
Cybergibbons has also done a very good critique on how unsafe it is. See here: https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su...
They are also very litigious towards people that call them out.
All the more reason to not use it as they may turn to some way of aggressive monetization to fix that.
> they may turn to some way of aggressive monetization to fix that
That's the plan all along. The end-game is to become the ultimate rent-seeker on the whole concept of addresses, so that any device capable of looking up or resolving an address is obligated to pay rent to them.
That's the plan all along. The end-game is to become the ultimate rent-seeker on the whole concept of addresses, so that any device capable of looking up or resolving an address is obligated to pay rent to them.
> 10s of millions of £ burned
Sounds like it's been a great "success" for the people who did the burning.
Sounds like it's been a great "success" for the people who did the burning.
Or more specifically, private company having monopoly on addressing - with any decoding/encoding between location and mnemonic format - controlled solely by them is not acceptable.
"The algorithm is patented in several countries, preventing anyone from implementing a compatible algorithm or developing anything like it as a competing standard. Notably the patent is not restricted to schemes which use three words, so a hypothetical "what4words" would potentially also violate the patent.
The wordlist necessary for encoding/decoding what3words locations is copyrighted, and is stored in an encrypted form in the what3words mobile apps (so decrypting the wordlist would likely trigger "anti-circumvention" laws such as DMCA §1201)."
(from https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words )
"The algorithm is patented in several countries, preventing anyone from implementing a compatible algorithm or developing anything like it as a competing standard. Notably the patent is not restricted to schemes which use three words, so a hypothetical "what4words" would potentially also violate the patent.
The wordlist necessary for encoding/decoding what3words locations is copyrighted, and is stored in an encrypted form in the what3words mobile apps (so decrypting the wordlist would likely trigger "anti-circumvention" laws such as DMCA §1201)."
(from https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words )
And, to my understanding, the concept is patented, so nobody else can make an open version of it. So yes, the concept is kept from being useful through the power of the state.
I really don't like patents.
I really don't like patents.
IANAL - but (in most countries) you can’t patent a concept or an idea - only specific implementations of an idea (I.e. a physical invention) - software patents and business-process patents notwithstanding.
But that doesn’t stop companies (especially those with a weak technical moat) from abusing the system.
But that doesn’t stop companies (especially those with a weak technical moat) from abusing the system.
"You can’t patent a concept or an idea" also doesn't prevent patent offices from granting patents on concepts and ideas.
IMO, if we are to have patents at all, the patent offices should be robust, well-funded systems which make sure that no patent that's not genuinely a novel implementation of an idea gets granted. In reality, it seems like patent offices more or less accept anything that's written in dense enough lawyerese, and it's up to the legal system to slowly invalidate the bad patents after they've done a ton of harm.
The fault here doesn't lie with the companies, but with the whole patent system where governments are way too quick to give out a state-backed monopoly of an idea. I find the whole practice despicable.
Here's the What3Words patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/CA2909524A1/en
The first claim of the patent is:
IMO, if we are to have patents at all, the patent offices should be robust, well-funded systems which make sure that no patent that's not genuinely a novel implementation of an idea gets granted. In reality, it seems like patent offices more or less accept anything that's written in dense enough lawyerese, and it's up to the legal system to slowly invalidate the bad patents after they've done a ton of harm.
The fault here doesn't lie with the companies, but with the whole patent system where governments are way too quick to give out a state-backed monopoly of an idea. I find the whole practice despicable.
Here's the What3Words patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/CA2909524A1/en
The first claim of the patent is:
> 1. A computer implemented method of producing a location identifier comprising:
> receiving at a processor geographical coordinates of a location;
> at said processor performing the steps of:
> converting the geographical coordinates into a single unique value n;
> converting the single unique value n into a unique group of a plurality of
> values; and converting the plurality of values into an equal plurality of
> respective words; and making the plurality of words available as a location
> identifier.
Patents are a great idea, and essential to technological progress. It's a bargain you make with the state: in return for publishing complete details on your idea, you get a twenty-year monopoly on use of the idea. You get value for your research, and the public gets full access to the idea after twenty years.
Patents as currently implemented are a problem. Too many are granted for too-vague ideas; patent trolls buy those vague ideas and then milk them for rent; companies game the system to get far more than the specified twenty years of exclusivity.
So, it's a mixed bag.
Patents as currently implemented are a problem. Too many are granted for too-vague ideas; patent trolls buy those vague ideas and then milk them for rent; companies game the system to get far more than the specified twenty years of exclusivity.
So, it's a mixed bag.
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What3Words – The Algorithm https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/what3words-the-algorithm...
Why What3Words is not suitable for safety critical applications https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su...