[HN Gopher] What3Words rescue incident
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       What3Words rescue incident
        
       Author : bartkappenburg
       Score  : 20 points
       Date   : 2021-04-26 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | floatingatoll wrote:
       | "My concerns" needs a supporting link, OP.
        
         | m-p-3 wrote:
         | https://keswickmrt.org.uk/rescue/base-brown-9/
        
       | djohnston wrote:
       | There's no info here, which isn't surprising given that it's a
       | twitter thread. Is the issue that the GPS was coarse in a remote
       | location, so what3words give them the wrong 3 words? The fidelity
       | of that app is just limited by the underlying signal right?
        
       | mxmilkiib wrote:
       | Off by one character.
       | 
       | Is there an free/open software solution? One that is or could end
       | up being a second best, if W3W is primary?
       | 
       | If so, does it suffer the same problem? Of very similar words
       | that are likely to be misheard/misspelt being close enough IRL
       | that it could be mistaken to be real.
        
         | growse wrote:
         | Google open-sourced pluscodes, which seems like a decent open
         | alternative: https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/
        
         | alwayshumans wrote:
         | What3words is a clever bit of research that should never have
         | been spun into a company.
         | 
         | It's just an implementation of a discrete global grid.
         | 
         | I don't think it is live anymore but there used to be a parody
         | called What3fucks, you can probably guess what type of words it
         | used
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-26 23:02 UTC)