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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

It looks like the key difference between this and what3words is that squares near each other have mostly the same words. With only the last word changing for adjacent squares, and even then they are similar. I can see the motivation for this (you can abbreviate to fewer words for a general area), but alto suspect it is partially about the W3w patent. However it also increases the risk of being slightly wrong with a location, w3w is good for things like emergency rescue as you can’t be slightly wrong.

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"However, security researcher Andrew Tierney demonstrated in 2021 that the What3words algorithm does not sufficiently protect against confusion between nearby locations because it may assign words that are similarly spelled or pronounced, which can limit the value of the system when a precise and unambiguous location is required, like safety-critical applications. Analysis by Tierney showed that close repetitions and the use of plurals occur in physically close locations. The company says that this has a one in 2.5 million chance of occurrence, but Tierney's analysis has highlighted areas where the odds are around 1 in 500."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What3words#Criticism

Why would it increase the risk of being slightly wrong? If anything, it helps to have consistent prefixes because you make it more likely that someone will be able to recognise areas, or know when places are near to other places.

If the system allows it, you can also use fewer words to target a bigger area. For example https://wherewords.id/juniper/detailed/ is an area of Paris, while https://wherewords.id/juniper/detailed/rate/thunder is a specific point in the Gare du Nord. Or if you're standing in Paris, talking to someone else in Paris, you can use context and drop the 'juniper'.

The only real reason I think it can be good to avoid a hierarchy is because having one makes the sensitivity of the word list much more significant. For example, if an entire country has a negative association word like 'stingy' or 'lying' in its first word, that could be a significant problem.

If you really need a checksum, https://wherewords.id/ supports an optional emoji checksum.

The risk comes from mishearing someone. Especially relevant in Europe with all the different accents.

With w3w, Gare Du Nord is sunshine.frame.acted while sunshine.frames.acted is Abu Dhabi and sunshine.frame.actor is in Malaysia.

https://what3words.com/sunshine.frame.acted https://what3words.com/sunshine.frames.acted https://what3words.com/sunshine.frames.actor

While in wherewords.id, changing rate to fate or late or gate still produces Paris, but wrong location.

https://wherewords.id/juniper/detailed/rate/thunder https://wherewords.id/juniper/detailed/fate/thunder https://wherewords.id/juniper/detailed/late/thunder

Having an accurate location is important for emergency services. If you’re on a phone call trying to get an ambulance for someone having a seizure, or reporting a fire, shooting, whatever, it’s important to get the accurate location straight away.

If the call centre person misheard your location, but the code is still in Paris, they will think it’s correct and dispatch to the wrong location. It would take too much time after realising the mistake to get the correct location. So with w3w it is far more obvious when these issues happen as suddenly the map is showing as Middle East or Asia, not Paris!

I don’t think an emoji checksum would help here either. Wink. Was that a tongue wink or smirk or etc.

(Full disclaimer: I don’t see the point in w3w either. It assumes people are prepared in advance to have the app on their phone, otherwise if they need to download it/visit its site they have internet so there are better ways of getting the location)

I still prefer the benefits that come with the hierarchical approach. You can learn where things are, if you're wrong and didn't know it in advance, you're still close to where you need to be, you can get a sense of how far away things are from each other even without looking them up or being online, and you can use context to reduce the amount of information you need to remember / communicate (e.g. say you're communicating 4 locations close to each other, most likely you can do that with 3+4 words with a hierarchical system).

The benefits of a random allocation vanish if you are building an application where Abu Dhabi, Malaysia and Paris are all reasonable answers. The w3w case is particularly bad because their wordlist is enormous and has so many ways you can confuse things.

I still think that a hierarchical system with an optional checkword/digit/emoji is the best solution to situations where you want to be 100% sure you got it right first time, but I accept that maybe the emoji is a bit too cute, and a normal word or number might be better.

I think the endgame for these types of systems doesn't need to assume online usage. It'd be fantastically useful in vehicle GPS systems for example, especially in countries with poor addressing.

There are many word combination switches in close proximity in What3Words too. And if you consider sound-alikes it is worse.

What3Words is very much unsuitable for emergency situations and has been in the media for that several times.

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