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You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

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AsleepInYorkshire
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You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244410

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » August 15th, 2019, 7:15 am

The three words that can save your life
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49319760
Police have urged everyone to download a smartphone app they say has already saved several lives. What is it and how does it work?

AiY

AleisterCrowley
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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244431

Postby AleisterCrowley » August 15th, 2019, 9:52 am

You need a phone with GPS I guess, but it doesn't need a mobile signal to locate you.
It makes me wonder how the group in the shipping container got a GPS fix...or made a mobile call for that matter

Are they going to have this available in stand-alone GPS units?

Rhyd6
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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244570

Postby Rhyd6 » August 15th, 2019, 5:39 pm

Thanks AIY, app downloaded and message passed on to rest of family and friends.

R6

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244623

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » August 15th, 2019, 9:20 pm

AleisterCrowley wrote:You need a phone with GPS I guess, but it doesn't need a mobile signal to locate you.
It makes me wonder how the group in the shipping container got a GPS fix...or made a mobile call for that matter

Are they going to have this available in stand-alone GPS units?


Hmmm ... I wonder if it could actually work in reverse on Satnavs?

If everyone's Satnav told a CPU where they were it could possibly show where to avoid congestion?

Probably best not to overthink it though - I think the Brits tolerate congestion in the same way they do queues :lol:

AiY

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244647

Postby XFool » August 15th, 2019, 10:55 pm

Sigh!

This was all sorted out yonks ago with Mapcodes invented originally inside TomTom. Every few years somebody gets an award or is praised for reinventing the wheel. I've lost count of the number of times this particular example of a 'breakthrough' has been gushed over! OK, it may be a 'good idea', but what's new?

Sadly Mapcodes have never caught on and now even TomTom does not promote them - if it ever did. I still use them with my SatNav, if only they had been widely adopted and became the global standard. But then, in this area, there are already so many 'innovative standards' etc.

https://www.mapcode.com

swill453
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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244652

Postby swill453 » August 15th, 2019, 11:08 pm

AsleepInYorkshire wrote:If everyone's Satnav told a CPU where they were it could possibly show where to avoid congestion?

It's already being done, with Google and others.

Scott.

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244653

Postby UncleEbenezer » August 15th, 2019, 11:13 pm

I heard the BBC promoting this a few years back: a rather offbeat play on the entropy of the dictionary. Someone thinks words are somehow 'easier' than maps or geography.

I'll stick with grid references that at least follow a comprehensible mathematical pattern. Like Lat/Long or OS grid.

didds
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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244658

Postby didds » August 15th, 2019, 11:41 pm

but of course people are more likely to remember

engine,doors,club

than they are

38.8977° N, 77.0365° W

didds

AleisterCrowley
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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244659

Postby AleisterCrowley » August 15th, 2019, 11:45 pm

People in general aren't good at grid refs. Add a noisy radio channel and stress, and 'GRID 513296 174629 is a lot more difficult than "fragrant.wombat.turd"

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244660

Postby UncleEbenezer » August 15th, 2019, 11:55 pm

AleisterCrowley wrote:People in general aren't good at grid refs. Add a noisy radio channel and stress, and 'GRID 513296 174629 is a lot more difficult than "fragrant.wombat.turd"

GPS - and therefore smartphones - do all the work with grid references for you. And routinely communicate them to other computing devices without resorting to speech.
None of that works any better for playing with silly gimmicks on top of it.

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244663

Postby XFool » August 16th, 2019, 12:33 am

UncleEbenezer wrote:GPS - and therefore smartphones - do all the work with grid references for you. And routinely communicate them to other computing devices without resorting to speech.
None of that works any better for playing with silly gimmicks on top of it.

Which is why e.g. Mapcodes are no longer being used much, since position via GPS coordinates are transferred 'over the air'.

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244689

Postby Watis » August 16th, 2019, 9:12 am

AleisterCrowley wrote:People in general aren't good at grid refs. Add a noisy radio channel and stress, and 'GRID 513296 174629 is a lot more difficult than "fragrant.wombat.turd"


Hey - now everybody will know where I live!

Watis

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244767

Postby sunnyjoe » August 16th, 2019, 12:48 pm

I wonder how they map a grid of 3m squares onto the globe?

With a dictionary of 40,000 words that's 64,000,000,000,000 combinations enough for 576 million km^2 compared with the Earth's surface area of 510 million km^2

With so many combinations, I wonder if picking a W3W location as a password would be secure?

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244770

Postby swill453 » August 16th, 2019, 12:58 pm

sunnyjoe wrote:I wonder how they map a grid of 3m squares onto the globe?

The FAQs about the concept are here https://support.what3words.com/en/colle ... t-platform

Scott.

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244785

Postby Gaggsy » August 16th, 2019, 1:41 pm

sunnyjoe wrote:I wonder how they map a grid of 3m squares onto the globe?

With a dictionary of 40,000 words that's 64,000,000,000,000 combinations enough for 576 million km^2 compared with the Earth's surface area of 510 million km^2

With so many combinations, I wonder if picking a W3W location as a password would be secure?

You mean something like Correct Horse Battery Staple?
https://xkcd.com/936/ XKCD did it years ago - I still remembered the phrase to be able to google it. I wouldn't have remembered it was comic 936. What does that tell you? I use the principle to remember my Lastpass password.

Image

UncleEbenezer
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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244798

Postby UncleEbenezer » August 16th, 2019, 2:19 pm

Gaggsy wrote:You mean something like Correct Horse Battery Staple?

We can all remember Correct Horse Battery Staple after seeing it a few times. It's not inherently memorable, but the fact that it's presenting an idea makes it memorable.

As with the fragrant wombat manure, we're talking about one phrase. With a few more of them you rapidly confuse the fragrant horse with the correct wombat.

As for three words, the dictionary also lacks the syntax, grammar and semantics that make memorable phrases. Fragrant wombat manure conjures an image, but what about diapason bilious upon?

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244817

Postby sunnyjoe » August 16th, 2019, 3:36 pm

Gaggsy wrote:
sunnyjoe wrote:I wonder how they map a grid of 3m squares onto the globe?

With a dictionary of 40,000 words that's 64,000,000,000,000 combinations enough for 576 million km^2 compared with the Earth's surface area of 510 million km^2

With so many combinations, I wonder if picking a W3W location as a password would be secure?

You mean something like Correct Horse Battery Staple?
https://xkcd.com/936/ XKCD did it years ago - I still remembered the phrase to be able to google it. I wouldn't have remembered it was comic 936. What does that tell you? I use the principle to remember my Lastpass password.

Image


So 64 trillion W3W combinations is 46 bits of entropy (to use xkcd's phrase) which should take a long time to crack using brute force

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244835

Postby didds » August 16th, 2019, 4:34 pm

excellent post.

of course when whe nis forced to use

* upper case letters
* digits
* other characters

"correcthorsebatterystaple" isn't acceptable....

but "P4ssw0rd!" is !

didds

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244871

Postby AF62 » August 16th, 2019, 6:53 pm

didds wrote:but of course people are more likely to remember

engine,doors,club

than they are

38.8977° N, 77.0365° W

didds


Unfortunately the flaw in the system is that is someone mis-remembers the words slightly, so engine, windows, club, then where on earth is that - the next block over, 100 miles away, 1000?

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Re: You can't get lost with this App - What3Words

#244887

Postby mc2fool » August 16th, 2019, 7:37 pm

AF62 wrote:
didds wrote:but of course people are more likely to remember

engine,doors,club

than they are

38.8977° N, 77.0365° W

didds

Unfortunately the flaw in the system is that is someone mis-remembers the words slightly, so engine, windows, club, then where on earth is that - the next block over, 100 miles away, 1000?

Nowhere near so close!

engine.doors.club - Rockford, Illinois, USA
engine.windows.club - Jining, Shandong Sheng, China

But if you forget the doors/windows are plural....

engine.door.club - Broadview Heights, Ohio, USA ... only 400ish miles from engine.doors.club, but ...
engine.window.club - Highmore, South Dakota, USA ... a long way from China!

And if you get the order wrong...

engine.club.doors - Clayton, Bradford, UK
engine.club.windows - Hamadān, Iran


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