What3words: The app that can save your life | Hacker News Reader

What3words: The app that can save your life

bbc.com

11 pointsohjeez8 comments

Is this a paid ad on the BBC? If What3Words was an open database, it would be a decent system. But it's a proprietary database on top of GPS controlled by a company that aggressively uses the DMCA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words#Criticism

The BBC article doesn't explain why this is better than lat/lon other than a quote saying "I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," by the company's founder.

I like this much better than Lat/Lon. Which number comes first? How much precision? Positive/Negative vs North/South or East/West. Coordinates are great, but not for the masses IMO.

All that said, yes this needs to be an open standard if it wants adoption. I really like the idea, so hope it goes in that direction.

maybe this is better? just discovered it myself but it appears to be open: https://plus.codes/

If what3words wants anyone to bother using it they need to make it an open standard. They have very tight control over the trademark and usage of it.

This PR puff piece didn't even address the issue even though the BBC wrote about it a few months ago: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49754820

EDIT: I didn't realize this article is from 2019—a month before the mildly critical article.

more required reading: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20183533

> Supporters of open standards criticise the what3words system for being controlled by a private business and the software for being patented and not freely usable.[26] That similar addresses are purposely far away from each other is also seen by some as a disadvantage. > The company has pursued an assertive policy of issuing copyright claims against individuals and organisations that have hosted or published files of the what3words algorithm or reverse-engineered source code that replicates the service's functionality, such as WhatFreeWords. This has extended to removing comments on social media which refer to unauthorised versions.

From wikipedia. Unfortunately this isn't something you can really ever use in your own code.

Flagged for being obvious content marketing.

BBC's doing advertorials now? Bummer.

2019

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