[HN Gopher] An Evaluation of Location Encoding Systems (2018)
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An Evaluation of Location Encoding Systems (2018)
Author : Tomte
Score : 34 points
Date : 2021-03-12 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| mro_name wrote:
| isn't that https://xkcd.com/927/
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I'm actually a fan of plus codes and I wish they were more
| commonly used. I'm not much of a fan of Google (to say the least)
| but when something useful gets made it is useful no matter who
| made it.
|
| I am skeptical that _all_ the considerations for the design are
| practical and that no business case benefitting Google was
| considered, seeing their track record on this. But so far I
| cannot find anything indicating that this is the case.
|
| I do wish more projects would use plus codes more evidently. They
| are searchable in OSM, but do not display prominently when
| looking at a location. Even in Google Maps, it is hit or miss
| whether you'll get a plus code when viewing a location.
|
| These are _not_ a replacement for GPS coordinates, but they serve
| a good purpose. GPS coordinates mark a specific point on the
| earth 's surface, whereas plus codes mark a _place_ ,
| irrespective of size and shape. They are both very useful and I
| think both should be universally adopted.
| anticristi wrote:
| > Cheap GPS devices have existed for at least 14 years [etrex],
| and yet latitude and longitude coordinates are still not widely
| used by people to specify locations.
|
| Well, I have to switch from Google Maps to OSM every time I want
| a GPS coordinate. So yes, they are not used, but not because they
| are difficult to use per se, but because Google is pushing their
| own agenda on PlusCodes and passive-aggressively discourage GPS
| coordinates.
| kingnothing wrote:
| What do you mean by this? You can click anywhere on Google Maps
| to see the lat long coordinates, and you can also enter a lat
| long pair in the search box to go to that location.
| phkahler wrote:
| I'd like a subset of IPv6 to be geographic lat/lon coordinates
| for non mobile use. No routing tables necessary and easy to
| filter by location.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Having read through this, I think its a ciol project, but i am
| not clear how its usefull to represent an area.
|
| So there are two comparable projects, S2 library and ubers H3,
| both of them represent areas but the codes are not memorable. In
| each case, if you want to represent usefull area, say a park, you
| are going to have to combine multiple smaller cells to make up
| that shape. Thats not going to be memorable to a human. So i am
| not clear why a memorable system would ever need to represent an
| area.
| bebop wrote:
| I agree that the memorability of an address is important. One
| thing I would argue with is that you would not use something
| like a geo-hash to describe a shape. You would use the
| centroid, or some geographically relevant part of the shape to
| describe the location (point) of the place.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It's just one way of representing the uncertainty of the
| encoding. I think it's sensible to say 'the code covers this
| area' vs 'the code is for this point and you can't represent
| nearby points'.
| bane wrote:
| It would be interesting to include MGRS and UTM systems in this.
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