[HN Gopher] Japan Post launches 'digital address' system
___________________________________________________________________
Japan Post launches 'digital address' system
Author : jmsflknr
Score : 436 points
Date : 2025-05-28 16:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.japantimes.co.jp)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.japantimes.co.jp)
| halpow wrote:
| Japan is the perfect place for this because their house numbering
| system already _requires_ you to look at a map to find it.
|
| For those unfamiliar with it, numbers are incremented
| progressively around a block as doors are added to it. So the
| door "Block SanChome 4" could be on the opposite side of the
| building from "Block SanChome 6"
| sabellito wrote:
| This won't change. The article starts:
|
| > Japan Post said Monday that it has launched a "digital
| address" system that links seven-digit combinations of numbers
| and letters to physical addresses.
|
| Their proposal is useful when one wants to move addresses.
| elif wrote:
| Also useful for anyone who wants their personal residence
| recorded in less databases
| Freak_NL wrote:
| Doesn't it just give the shop a way to fetch the full
| address from some public API? I don't think you can just
| jot down that number on a box and have it delivered.
|
| > Under the system, users can input these seven-digit codes
| on online shopping websites, and their addresses will
| automatically appear on the sites.
| montroser wrote:
| Yeah but now it's a personal identifier that actually moves
| with you when you move to a different physical address. In
| terms of privacy, that might just be worse.
| pezezin wrote:
| How do you plan to order anything from an online shop
| without the shop knowing your delivery address?
| klausa wrote:
| You put a trusted intermediary (JP Post) that knows the
| address in the middle, and provide the seller with an
| identifier that the intermediary can associate with your
| physical address.
|
| That's already how it works if you buy something trough
| the online marketplaces here - Mercari et. al.
|
| Mercari knows addresses of all counterparties, but the
| label that the seller puts on the package doesn't have
| the destination address, and the label the package has
| when it reaches your door doesn't have the seller's
| address either.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I don't think they're saying that the system is intended to
| replace old addressing but that the new proposed system is
| fine because the old addressing system, like this new one, is
| not very good at providing intuitive physical wayfinding
| anyways.
| pezezin wrote:
| It is even more complex than that: within a neighborhood you
| have "chome", then blocks, then buildings. All three levels are
| numbered chronologically and don't follow any kind of logical
| order. Oh, and streets don't have names. Honestly, I don't know
| how people did before modern navigation systems.
|
| So yeah, this system looks like a godsend, I want to try it as
| soon as possible.
|
| * I don't know if there is a translation for this word.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Indeed - at least now you can enter the property address
| (e.g. a four-digit number followed by a dash and another
| number, as in this small town) into google maps and it'll
| show you where it is. Not long ago it was more like driving
| in the general direction while hanging on the mobile phone
| and trying to agree on a landmark (e.g. a 7/11 or a tower or
| an office building) while trying to find the place. Before
| mobile phones? Well, there's this big big sign in a park near
| the town center, and on that you can find family names on a
| kind of map.. of course that had this assumption that Nobody
| Never Moves. So, no, I don't know how people did this in the
| past.. "Where the Streets Have No Names", the U2 song. I
| wouldn't have imagined, but that's how it is.
| xandrius wrote:
| > Honestly, I don't know how people did before modern
| navigation systems.
|
| The good old: ask a local about it. Nowadays people seems so
| against just stopping a random passerby to ask them a
| question. (obviously not feasible with the huge amount of
| deliveries we do today but back then it would have been
| reserved for the very rich or rare occasions)
| SwtCyber wrote:
| In that context, something like a stable digital address
| actually makes way more sense
| Asooka wrote:
| This is pretty much how we do it in Bulgaria as well, with
| almost all residential apartment buildings having no street
| address, it's just "City region X, building number Y". Online
| maps services are almost unusable for some places because they
| simply do not want to handle any system other than "street name
| + street number".
| nan60 wrote:
| This is really cool. Japanese addresses are longer and more
| complex than most North American/European ones, so this
| especially makes sense there.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Even in the USA, the full 9-digit "Zip + 4" code will often
| identify a specific building. And some really big customers
| (e.g. the IRS) will have their own 5-digit zip code.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Even in the USA, the full 9-digit "Zip + 4" code will often
| identify a specific building._
|
| It can be even more granular than that. ZIP+4+2 is a thing.
| donnachangstein wrote:
| This being Japan, you still have to sign for your digital
| delivery with a rubber ink stamp.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| Probably print a receipt using a fax machine hooked to a pc-
| engine.
| pezezin wrote:
| You misspelled PC-98.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| I wish we had those _hanko_. Signing off on any parcel is
| complete bullshit at the moment. Most delivery drivers neglect
| to ask for one (or that code you are supposed to give them for
| some delivery services), and when they do, you just make some
| arbitrary squiggle on their handheld device -- it 's not like
| you can actually do a faithful reproduction of your signature
| on those, even in 2025, and I certainly can't using my finger
| instead of a pencil or pen.
|
| Yesterday a courier brought a pallet with my new drill press
| costing over EUR500. Signature required, but when I asked he
| told me not to worry, there was no need...
| donnachangstein wrote:
| UPS driver left a $3500 MacBook Pro on my front steps, didn't
| even ring the bell... signature required my ass.
| ghaff wrote:
| Don't know the last time I've been required to sign for
| something. That said, I live in a semi-rural location very
| well off the road.
| ortusdux wrote:
| Most delivery companies enacted signature exemption rules
| for covid and are in no hurry to rescind them. Getting
| signatures takes time, which affects their bottom line.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Protip: Ask for hold at location. Downside, you must drive
| to the facility. Upside, less hassle than if package is
| pirated.
|
| https://www.ups.com/us/en/track/change-delivery
|
| https://www.fedex.com/en-us/shipping/hold-at-location.html
| ghaff wrote:
| I suppose it depends on your assessment of the risk. For
| me, taking an extra 30-45 minutes to pick something up is
| a pretty high bar. I've had a couple mis-deliveries at
| home but it's rare and think I eventually got the items.
| That's versus hundreds of other deliveries.
| ortusdux wrote:
| UPS closed my local facility to the public last month.
| Now I can only drop packages off at third parties for a
| fee, and the nearest hold location is over an hour away.
| ghaff wrote:
| UPS was very unfriendly for consumer dropoffs for ages.
| That changed a bit. But seems to be headed back and I
| _rarely_ get deliveries of Amazon stuff via UPS any
| longer.
| somat wrote:
| Salutes for using the term piracy correctly, well done.
| oniony wrote:
| Ass print?
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Signature required shifts the burden of proof.
|
| If your drill press had been delivered to the wrong person,
| and the sender had chosen insured delivery (which
| automatically requires a signature), it would be easy to
| prove that the signature on file with the transporter did not
| match the actual signature of the recipient (i.e. you)
| (unless a fraudster forged your signature, that is).
|
| Mind you, from what I understand, the seller is legally
| responsible up to the point of delivery in the Netherlands*.
| Therefore, even if your drill press hadn't been sent with
| required signature, the shop would still be responsible in
| case it had been lost (but then the loss would come out of
| their own pocket, rather than that of the transporter).
|
| Disclaimer: not a lawyer.
|
| * Assuming you're from the Netherlands due to your user name.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| All that means is that as the receiving party there is
| absolutely no reason for me to sign anything, or even use
| my actual signature.
|
| Indeed, if the pallet was delivered to the wrong address
| and someone just took it, the burden of proof would lie
| with the selling party. Of course, a reputable transporter
| will make sure the address is right (plus, people generally
| don't act as if they were indeed expecting a pallet
| delivered by lorry).
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| > All that means is that as the receiving party there is
| absolutely no reason for me to sign anything, or even use
| my actual signature.
|
| Yes, but this actually doesn't matter.
|
| The only time when the signature on file is actually
| relevant is when the sender lodges a claim for non-
| delivery. In that case, it could be compared to your
| actual signature.
|
| Conversely, if no claim is lodged, the package must have
| been successfully delivered.
|
| Disclaimer: not a lawyer.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Things have changed in the recent past, and you very rarely
| need your hanko. Maybe for marriage? Nowadays you cab
| register your signature at a bank and use it for any activity
| as well.
| SchemaLoad wrote:
| I bought a Steam Deck off amazon and they sent me a code on
| the day of delivery telling me to only provide this code to
| the delivery person face to face while receiving the parcel.
|
| That seems like the perfect system because if you assume
| Amazon isn't trying to steal from you, the system can prove
| if the parcel was properly delivered or not.
| k33l0r wrote:
| The fundamental problem with deliveries is that you, as the
| recipient, are not the customer.
|
| The merchant pays for thousands of deliveries, but you on the
| receiving end are at best getting a handful.
|
| So the courier is incentivised to offer the best rates to the
| merchant while completely ignoring the requirements or
| preferences of the recipient.
|
| Your only recourse is to complain to the shop, who _might_ do
| something if the volume of complaints is high enough, but
| most likely they'll just pass the buck to the courier...
| dmurray wrote:
| The recipient getting their stuff stolen is a big deal for
| the merchant too, though.
|
| Certainly for an expensive item, the customer may be out
| their time, but they are going to ask for a replacement or
| a refund or do a chargeback, the merchant is generally
| going to have to accede to the request, and the merchant
| ends up being out money.
|
| So if the merchant decides to trade off security for
| delivery cost (by choosing a courier with a slack approach
| to verification), that's their prerogative and they are
| economically incentivized to make the right decision on
| that.
|
| For delivery problems that don't result in a chargeback
| (the courier leaves it somewhere inconvenient, or claims
| you weren't in, etc, but it eventually gets to you) that's
| the situation where it becomes your problem and the
| merchant isn't much empowered or incentivized to fix it.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Agreed about the signing.. that's useless. But at least for
| some shipments with value we have to show an ID (not just any
| ID - I always carry my passport though), back in my home
| country. Just signing is worthless, in particular when that
| implies trying to "write" something on a touch screen using
| your finger.
|
| Here in Japan there's typically this little circle where
| you're supposed to stamp you hanko.. but I just sign my name,
| with a pen, whether the parcel is for me or for my wife. But
| at least the delivery guy will have me read the form to
| verify that it's actually for someone in the household.
|
| Not that I would prefer the hanko.. that idiocy just have to
| go. I can see no safety in the system, it's just a made-up
| stamp after all. It has no place in a modern world. And it's
| on the way out, as far as I understand, but I still hear
| stories about people forgetting the hanko when they go to the
| bank, and despite having passports and other IDs they're
| denied service. And you need to bring that thing everywhere
| for contracts and the like.. and everything has to be done by
| physical presence.
| pndy wrote:
| It's a pain in the ass here with Polish Post with such
| screens - my signature doesn't even resembles one on the
| paper. Private delivery companies just call you to see if
| you're at home; you also have mobile apps and most of the
| time is possible to redirect packages to parcel machines. And
| these spawn like "shrooms after rain", as we say. They cared
| for codes, manual signing during pandemic but now - not
| really.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| If it was modernized a little, I think I would enjoy needing to
| tap a RFID hanko to my phone to sign for digital delivery.
| donnachangstein wrote:
| > tap a RFID hanko
|
| we call those contactless smart cards
| kazinator wrote:
| RFID isn't smart; it's just a little chip that harvests
| energy from being illuminated by a radio wave signal from
| the terminal, and reflects back a code. (Well, that's a
| passive tag; there are self-powered ones also.)
|
| Smart cards contain a considerable embedded system for
| transactional processing; it's quite different from just
| transmitting an ID.
| donnachangstein wrote:
| > RFID isn't smart
|
| Makes it utterly useless as a digital signature then.
| kazinator wrote:
| Correct; an RFID tag cannot hold a cryptographic secret
| and perform a calculation with it to prove that it knows
| the secret, without revealing the secret. It has no
| compute capability. It's just a kind of reflective
| beacon.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| False: RFID is a communications technology that doesn't
| restrict the use of a "smart" processor.
|
| EMV, NFC, and RFID are all related technologies which may
| underlie "tap to pay / sign" features.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment
| rswail wrote:
| Falsely false.
|
| RFID: Radio Frequency Identification: passive powered by
| RF, returns data when powered.
|
| NFC: Near Field Communications, is a protocol for
| communications, built on RFID, includes polling for
| readers and protocols for defined crypto and data
| storage/retrieval.
|
| EMV: Eurocard/Mastercard/Visa standard for the data and
| crypto operations for an EMV chip, extended from physical
| by the use of NFC for contactless payments, primarily by
| replicating the data on the magstripe and adding some
| additional crypto and dynamic elements.
|
| EMV is one standard for how to use an NFC card, there are
| others, primarily used for transit.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Correct. These IC cards [1] do some cryptography, right?
|
| [1] https://aruarian.dance/blog/japan-ic-cards/
| numpad0 wrote:
| That's not correct. Smartcards are any cards with chips,
| RFIDs are any cards/tags with radios. Neither has to do
| with cryptography.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| I've never had to do that. Hand signature or nothing at all.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Nope. Signature works everytime. Don't spread myths.
| perihelions wrote:
| _" We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of
| indirection"_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_theorem_of_softwar...
| isk517 wrote:
| When I read 7-digit my first thought was this seems a bit short
| sighted. Then I saw the the address was going to be a combination
| of letters and numbers. Since this is the English page for The
| Japan Times I'll give them a pass on using the wrong word.
| elif wrote:
| Letters are digits. Just not base 10.
|
| Alphanumeric codes are mathematically speaking a completely
| identical set to base 36 numerics
| lyall wrote:
| FWIW The Japan Times is a fully English language publication,
| so no need to excuse anything based on language ability
| RaoulP wrote:
| I was looking for this comment as I thought 7 digits wasn't
| enough for the 55,000,000+ households in Japan. I missed the
| fact that it's alphanumeric - problem solved.
| frzen wrote:
| This sounds like the Irish Eircode system
|
| 7 characters made up of letters and numbers let you find a
| specific building.
| ProblemFactory wrote:
| This seems more interesting, as it's not a code for a physical
| address but a lookup key for one.
|
| You can update your code to point to a new address when you
| move:
|
| > Their digital addresses will not change even if their
| physical addresses change. Their new addresses will be linked
| to the codes if they submit notices of address changes.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| By letters do they mean Latin/English alphabet, or
| hiragana/katakana characters?
| perihelions wrote:
| Apparently it's Latin,
|
| https://lp.da.pf.japanpost.jp/svg/digitaladdress_img_01_pc.s...
|
| https://lp.da.pf.japanpost.jp/
| card_zero wrote:
| Ooh, the logo is an @ that's also a roadmap.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Roadmap or house?
| card_zero wrote:
| Triple metaphors? I don't like it now, they went too far.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| Isn't it a house (with a roof and a chimney)?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Non-ASCII symbols are kind of non-canonical and don't parse
| well, even today. Japanese developers are deeply aware of that,
| so generated identifiers in Japanese systems are almost always
| either hyphenated numeric or occasionally ASCII alphanumeric.
| Only when said identifier are guaranteed to never need
| programmatic handling, or when the system can have complete
| control of input and output, non-ASCII characters start
| appearing.
| 762236 wrote:
| Everyone's got an address in the world-wide plus-code system, and
| they're used for deliveries in many countries:
| maps.google.com/pluscodes/
| xbryanx wrote:
| How do plus codes handle elevations(floors) or rooms within a
| building? It seems that the Japan Post system allows for this.
| varenc wrote:
| This is a key distinction. Plus codes map to a 14m x 14m
| square area and aren't aware of things like building units or
| elevation.
|
| If you live in a high rise apartment, a plus code does not
| identify you precisely. Sadly to do this you need some
| knowledge of a structure's internals. It makes sense it's
| being done on the national level in Japan.
| chipsa wrote:
| The default +2 plus code is ~14m resolution. But you can
| add more characters to the end to get higher res. 5 more
| gets you down to sub centimeters.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Or even just addresses that are split between multiple
| pluscodes?
|
| For example, a duplex where the front door of each unit is
| adjacent to the other. Even at the 4m resolution, that means
| both units front doors (and thus street addresses) can fall
| into one single pluscode.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > Everyone's got an address in the world-wide plus-code system
|
| Debatable considering it's based on lat/lon only.
|
| > used for deliveries in many countries
|
| Source? Their own website only lists 3 use cases, and only one
| is used for mail delivery, and even that is in Kolkata only.
| constantcrying wrote:
| A location based system can not possibly work on its own. Mail
| is not send to one physical address, it is delivered to a
| specific person.
| ericdiao wrote:
| The ZIP code system in the US CAN somewhat work the same way.
|
| The usual 5 digit ZIP code routes to your Post Office. The longer
| ZIP+4 code routes more detailed locations: a city block, an
| apartment building. The even longer ZIP+6 code goes to something
| called delivery point, which to my understanding is basically a
| single mailbox. The ZIP+6 code is in fact embedded in the bar
| code sprayed onto the mail piece.
| smw wrote:
| Though you might have missed the concept that it follows you if
| you move, I think?
| d-us-vb wrote:
| he said " _somewhat_ work the same way ". For a person who
| doesn't care about whether they have to get a new code when
| they move, the systems are equivalent in their value
| proposition. Thus is the case for most things that "
| _somewhat_ work the same way ".
| chipsa wrote:
| If there was a zip code that was just virtual PO Boxes, it
| could use the existing change of address machinery to slap
| the actual delivery address on when addressed with a virtual
| box. Assuming they used an entire sectional center facility
| for it, you could have 100 zip codes, with 6 digits of unique
| delivery points, so 100 million virtual boxes.
| politelemon wrote:
| > Their digital addresses will not change even if their physical
| addresses change.
|
| This doesn't sound good for privacy or security, though it's a
| nice convenience function.
| Marsymars wrote:
| This idea is _so close_ to being great though. It just needs a
| couple changes:
|
| > Under the system, users can input these seven-digit codes on
| online shopping websites, and their addresses will
| automatically appear on the sites.
|
| 1. The site shouldn't get your address at all. They print the
| code on the package, mail it to Japan Post, and Japan Post
| takes care of delivering it to you.
|
| 2. You should be able to generate new codes arbitrarily.
|
| i.e. A service like Apple's Hide My Email, but for physical
| mail.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| It would be pretty trivial to mark some addresses as private.
| So only the delivery service can resolve it.
|
| My guess is that's already planned, but they don't put all
| details in the first press release.
| maxgashkov wrote:
| Japan Post represents only a portion of shipping providers in
| Japan, for our idea to work others will need the same
| privileged access to the system: Yamato, Sagawa etc.
|
| This will also require to alter the package label on the last
| mile because requiring the courier to scan every package or
| letter before they could even see an apartment number will
| slow things down to a crawl.
| klausa wrote:
| The relabeling to show the actual address is something that
| carriers are already doing for C2C marketplaces and their
| anonymous shipping features already.
| bluehex wrote:
| The "important notes" section on the Japanese page[1] says that
| you can disable / delete an address at any time and create a
| new one. If I used this I would rotate every so often and at a
| minimum for each move. I'm a bit concerned for people that
| don't understand the risks of updating these. Anyone that's
| ever seen this code being able to lookup the person's address
| across moves is scary. I don't feel like this convenience
| warrants the risk of having this feature, personally. It's
| already convenient enough to just limit the input required for
| updating third parties to an alphanumeric code without allowing
| updating the addresses.
|
| [1]: https://lp.da.pf.japanpost.jp/#importantnotes
| brynet wrote:
| > Their [virtual] addresses will not change even if their
| physical addresses change.
|
| So they've added an MMU (Mail Management Unit).
| salynchnew wrote:
| An address addressing system.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| I thought this was something else... my cousin has been living in
| Japan 10+ years in a small town for on the other side of Mt Fuji
| from Tokyo and I went and stayed with him for a couple of weeks.
| Every day (maybe twice? I can't remember) loudspeakers on poles
| around the neighborhood would start playing amateurish
| announcements - some very old man half-asleep reading a list of
| events, news, etc. I was hoping they turned it digital and just
| sent it to your phone. For how peaceful things normally were in
| this town it was disruptive.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| In Okinawa I get music in the morning when kids need to go to
| school as well as random announcements.
|
| Japan has always been weird like that - people are generally
| quiet and respectful of others, but when it comes to trucks
| driving around blaring out political speeches, or a "pay to
| take your large trash" van playing music while driving around
| to advertise its presence, all bets are off.
| numpad0 wrote:
| That thing is an air raid siren. It's broadcast from city or
| town offices, and everyone believes it's for disaster
| mitigation. Sure, but they run complete human in loop system
| readiness tests each day every day. You don't need that level
| of assured reliability for those community announcements.
| mc3301 wrote:
| Those can be anything from daily announcements telling kids to
| get home before dark, testing the emergency announcement
| system, reminding people about today's festival, or asking
| people to be on the look-out for 89-year-old Takahashi-san who
| was last seen at the vegetable stand earlier this morning.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Where I am there's now only some music at 17:00, ideally that
| should announce that it's time to leave work and go home, ffs..
| but as this is Japan, it doesn't seem to serve a purpose -
| people don't go home. That music used to be a siren until a few
| years ago. I like the melody better.
|
| We do get the aforementioned trucks driving around all day
| announcing loudly that they'll take your trash, for payment..
| but it's very rare now. And the pole sellers seem to have
| disappeared entirely. I could use a new pole though.. for
| drying clothes. There has fortunately never been any political
| speech trucks around here. The town is too small I assume.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I was cycling around the Izu Peninsula earlier this year and
| one morning was woken up at 6am by the local ojisan on the PA
| system.
|
| He wanted to tell everyone that tonight on TV there's an
| episode of a show with a scene filmed at the local beach. 6am!
| olelele wrote:
| These systems are also there in case of earthquake or tsunami,
| where people have very short times to act before disaster
| strikes.
| Gothmog69 wrote:
| I've always wanted this
| constantcrying wrote:
| Very cool.
|
| The German Post already has "digital stamps", you buy them online
| and then you just have to write a couple of symbols on the
| envelope.
|
| If you combined these together you would get a letter which can
| be fully paid for and addressed by writing a couple of symbols on
| it, only meaningful to the computer system. In a way this is
| making the physical world quite digital.
| chipsa wrote:
| You can buy digital stamps for the USPS as well. You need to
| accurately put a barcode on the envelope though.
| constantcrying wrote:
| The point of the digital Stamps is that you just need a pen
| and write a couple of letters and symbols.
| nivertech wrote:
| Reminded me of a dot-com era colleague who left to start a
| startup that would notify your friends when your email address
| changed ;)
|
| But this thing sounds like a Rube Goldberg machine. A much
| simpler solution is to have the subscriber log into their account
| and change their address
| OJFord wrote:
| I wonder how it works if you have two addresses. (I suppose one
| possible answer could be that it just doesn't, you register your
| main one, if you want the other you have to enter it in full.)
| kazinator wrote:
| It seems obvious to me that you would just register a digital
| address for each of those two addresses.
| kazinator wrote:
| This is a nice solution for a good chunk snail mail spam.
|
| The next step would be to refuse to route mail other than to a
| digital address.
|
| Next step, allow users to have short-lived, throwaway digital
| addresses which are nest to worthless to harvesters, who have
| mere weeks to act on them.
|
| The post office should conceal the real addresses, not allowing
| outsiders access to the database. You shouldn't have to tell
| someone where you live in order to receive something by mail from
| them.
| tantalor wrote:
| Nice idea but (according to the article) that's not how it
| works:
|
| > Under the system, users can input these seven-digit codes on
| online shopping websites, and their addresses will
| automatically appear on the sites.
|
| So the sites still use the physical address. In fact, the
| postal service itself doesn't even use the code.
|
| The purpose is to simplify form input on websites, which was
| already solved by browser autocomplete.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Browser autocomplete works Really Badly for Japanese
| addresses (no standardized way of inputting addresses,
| including which font to use), so it should solve one major
| problem in Japan. That's different from e.g. my home country.
| Or almost anywhere else, for that matter.
| tantalor wrote:
| TIL, I didn't know the situation was particularly bad in
| Japan.
|
| I suppose the 'digital address' is solving the problem by
| effectively standardizing the input format.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Well Japan's physical address system everywhere except Kyoto is
| complete insanity. Every level get assigned numbers based on
| build order so block 6 can be across town from block 7 for no
| apparent reason.
|
| Feel free to have any addressing system you like; it need not
| be number, street, city, state/province like many western
| countries. But it should at least make some logical sense.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > so block 6 can be across town from block 7 for no apparent
| reason.
|
| The time when they were built is the reason
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I've lived in a town in the US that did the same thing. House
| numbers were assigned based on the order that properties were
| built up or split, so you had a lot of places where you'd
| have several houses in a row that had consecutive numbers,
| and then the next house would have a much higher number. One
| of my neighbors had lived there for decades, his house number
| was in the triple digits. Mine was 5 digits. Neighbor next to
| me was also 5 digits, but several thousand higher than mine
| because his house was built almost a decade after mine.
|
| As a sister post said, the build order is that logical
| reason.
| rtpg wrote:
| there's already an address alias system that things like
| Mercari (think Japanese eBay) has.
|
| You buy something from somebody, they get a QR code and use
| that to get a delivery label. Delivery label doesn't have your
| address on it, only the delivery company knows where it's
| going.
|
| Obviously it doesn't prevent something like "there's an airtag
| in the box" but it does prevent you having to tell the person
| selling you a used copy of Resident Evil 5 where you live.
| voxelghost wrote:
| arrange all people in a graph with distance of how well they
| 'know' each other. Then divide the graph into subnets, and
| implement an addressing scheme akin to IP v4.
|
| Now we can have masked access-list, and block lists.
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| https://www.eircode.ie/
|
| This is Ireland's postal code system. There's a small level of
| privacy built in, specific to an address (many taxi drivers ask
| for this) and 7 digits long. Web forms use it too, so quite
| common in normal life.
|
| Surprisingly the postal service, An Post, don't use the postal
| code as their primary way to direct mail (as far as I understand)
| .
| thephyber wrote:
| When you say "web forms use it", is it built into browsers
| natively, or Irish-based websites add those fields?
|
| Addresses are one of those things that "what programmers
| frequently get wrong about X".
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Irish-based websites add those fields.
|
| https://www.eircode.ie/business/business-overview
| Arnavion wrote:
| See also this CGP Grey video where he talks about post codes /
| zip codes in general and mentions Ireland's system.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5oDtVAYzk
| simplesimon890 wrote:
| He's mostly, but not fully correct when talking about the
| randomness. The first 3 characters match the Dublin postal
| districts. People living in Dublin 12 start with D12. On one
| hand, maybe that's useful but on the other hand, it's a way
| for people to potentially discriminate based on the
| "good/bad" areas of the city.
| coredog64 wrote:
| If I have to give you D12 as my postal district anyhow,
| what is the new mechanism for discrimination?
| arp242 wrote:
| > An Post, don't use the postal code as their primary way to
| direct mail (as far as I understand) .
|
| I'm not sure how the delivery system works exactly, but I think
| they use the eircode? Especially in the countryside there often
| isn't much more than that. At my previous address the street
| doesn't even have a name; but post addressed to "my name, town,
| eircode" got delivered.
|
| Also when the eircode was first introduced it really messed up
| the delivery, which seems to indicate they're using it?
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| They do use it.
|
| Sorry I have it the wrong way round, there was earlier
| confusion which led to the below article and my incorrect
| understanding.
|
| The system uses the eircode and the postman uses the address.
| (It makes sense a person would use the street address.)
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/an-
| post-c...
| phantomathkg wrote:
| Sorry to say this is not the same. According to [0], the
| eircode is tied to the address, which Japan has already
| implemented a 7 digit postal code system. What this new way is
| trying to do instead is you can get a new digital address, in 7
| character alphanumeric character, that uniquely addressed to
| you. So today you maybe in Tokyo, maybe a year later in Osaka.
| The postal code of your address changes, but the digital
| address will still be the same.
|
| [0] https://www.eircode.ie/getting-an-eircode [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_codes_in_Japan
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Currently the eircode is specific to the residence, unlike
| Japans current system.
|
| All that's different with Japans new system is that the code
| will be transferrable whereas Ireland's is not.
| PerilousD wrote:
| So I HOPE you cant mis-type an email address and get it sent to
| someone else. I get so many bank account statements, library book
| and device rental notices, car is ready for pickup, or from
| repair etc notices. ALL APPARENTLY from Bozos who dont know their
| OWN email addresses. On the other hand on the 2nd notice *I
| usually do not get a third) when I tell garages/ car impounds /
| parking spaces to sell the damn thing as Im done with it.
| richardw wrote:
| Almost perfect. Along with mail that follows you, I've always
| wanted a system that lets you grant the right to send you mail,
| that you can hard revoke. Physical and digital. We could call it
| "slightly more complex mail protocol". No more layers of filters,
| just grant and revoke.
| soorya3 wrote:
| If we could use use gps co-ordinate then it would make all the
| life simpler. Imagine how many time you type those address info
| on the forms and not to forget typing mistakes.
| xxpor wrote:
| How do you account for apartment buildings? Include your
| elevation? :)
| crubier wrote:
| I don't know, I feel like "38.57266, -9.19670" is harder to
| remember than "55 bridge street, foobar city, mexico". Maybe
| What3Words would be better: "///obscure.loftily.tasting", but
| it does not give any idea on locality.
| eightys3v3n wrote:
| We could use Google Plus codes instead. They look like
| 3W4J+622 Calgary, Alberta. The digits after the + can be
| added or removed to increase of decrease accuracy. They can
| but need not be also be replaced partially with a locality
| like Calgary, Alberta.
| 9dev wrote:
| Why not an email address that you can add a physical address to
| on the platform of your national postal service? Have parcels
| be sent to the email address, and the postal service resolves
| that at dispatch time to your current address. No hassle when
| moving, no spreading your address everywhere, easy to remember.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| The USPS is currently delivering some mailpieces
| electronically.
|
| When I sign in to Informed Delivery, every month or so the
| USPS sends a postcard advertising their podcast ("Mailin'
| It!")
|
| https://usps-mailin-it.simplecast.com/
|
| This is a virtual postcard, so while I can read it in my
| email or on usps.com, I won't necessarily find a paper copy
| delivered.
|
| It is my understanding that commercial mailings can also use
| this mechanism. I receive some marketing as original JPEG
| quality, rather than being scanned in grayscale.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's more of a URL shortener. Users are assigned 7-digit
| alphanumeric code that macroexpands into full address on
| participating websites as well as on some paper application
| processes. There are few safety checks to prevent abuses, and
| linked address can be changed later when you move.
|
| Many online address forms in Japan uses equivalent of ZIP code to
| do similar already, but the expanded address are as granular as
| ZIP codes - I always fill in the rest of the address, but if I
| think about it, the fractions of users who do religiously verify
| and clarify the addresses must be less than 100%. I suppose this
| code will initially solve that problem with minimal infra changes
| for both users and the PO.
| freetime2 wrote:
| Entering building names can be a bit of a pain. I'm not even
| sure if it's required - according to Wikipedia it looks like
| you can just keep adding dashes until you eventually get to
| room number (e.g. 4-5-10-103) [1]. But a lot of address forms
| ask for it, so I end up entering it anyway.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system
| TheDong wrote:
| The building name is required in many cases because two
| buildings next to each other will often have the same ban-
| chi-go (i.e. 4-5-10 could refer to two apartment buildings
| that were originally on the same lot, both with room 103).
|
| It's exceedingly common, not just some edge-case you see
| every once in a while.
| lmz wrote:
| But if it follows the person unchanged when they move then it's
| effectively a person addressing system / a synthetic ID for a
| person.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I think its more of an ID for a household
| powrhouse wrote:
| Or just a hop of indirection like DNS that lets your "address"
| move with you.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| One thing that wasn't quite clear to me is whether your code is
| what e-commerce companies record, or the expanded address.
|
| Hopefully it's the code, because the benefit of this is that if
| you move, you wouldn't need to update your address with a
| bajillion different companies, just the post office.
| dcsan wrote:
| Interesting. More like a dns than physical address?
| idopmstuff wrote:
| patio11 says you just give e-commerce companies the code:
| https://x.com/patio11/status/1927230790141616578
| Tor3 wrote:
| Quick question - you wrote "There are few safety checks" - did
| you mean "There are a few safety checks"? I'm trying to figure
| out if this is implemented badly or not.
| numpad0 wrote:
| The basic design outlined in "important notice" section on
| brochure page[1] sounds a bit simplistic to be honest - it
| doesn't seem to have a PIN or really advanced checks, more
| towards "we've done our homework" checks, but OTOH, they did
| seem to have done homeworks.
|
| 1: https://lp.da.pf.japanpost.jp/
| henry_bone wrote:
| I had this idea years ago when I was moving house and redirecting
| my post. I'm probably not alone in that. Kudos to Japan Post for
| implementing it.
| SwtCyber wrote:
| Now let's see who outside Japan actually picks it up next.
| Feels like a good fit for places with high renter populations
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Japan Post plans to spend about a decade to promote broad
| adoption of the new system.
|
| The actual feature doesn't seem mind-blowingly useful to me, in
| the era where most of my form fields get populated for me
| automatically anyway. Doesn't seem _bad_ , just I don't see it
| being a life changing thing. I'd hope it does not work as a way
| for the Post to learn a little bit about my shopping habits.
| Probably not. Who knows.
|
| But what I think is cool is a ten-year commitment to any
| computer-based system, which is sadly rare to see these days.
| wesleychen wrote:
| It's very useful if you change addresses often.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I've had some bad experiences with form autocompletion in the
| past which resulted in orders being delayed (this would have
| been a few years ago with 1Password specifically), so I always
| enter address and payment info manually. I assume plenty of
| people use autocompletion all the time without issue, and will
| tell me I'm wrong, but that's just my preference.
|
| So memorizing a 7-digit code to enter address information
| without error seems like a useful feature to me (though
| admittedly not mind-blowingly so).
|
| It could also be useful in other contexts such as sharing an
| address with someone verbally, over LINE, manually entering an
| address into a GPS, etc. Assuming the system actually catches
| on and the codes are universally supported in map apps.
| lucyjojo wrote:
| if the servers keep the number and not the rendered address, it
| would save you ungodly amount of times when you move... (you
| have to go to the city office, register stuff, can take a few
| hours, then to the police to change your car license, then bank
| accounts, takes time too, etc. it's a pain)
| Tor3 wrote:
| As some other comments mentioned, the way addresses are entered
| in web forms in Japan is not standardized. So autofill just
| doesn't work, a lot of the time. It may even _seem_ correct,
| but then this particular site wants the address to be written
| differently.. half-width vs full-width characters, for example
| (and it can be way more complicated than that). It 's so
| complicated to even enter your name that my Japanese wife
| couldn't get it right on a hotel's web form, whatever she
| tried. With her Japanese PC. Had to book by phone, in the end
| (and, as we weren't in Japan at the time, that was a costly
| phone call)
| fvrther wrote:
| Do not underestimate the Japanese on this one, they managed to
| get the MyNumber unified healthcare card adopted in a mere 4
| years, that's FAST.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| The wild thing is we could easily do this with a zip + 4 + 2,
| given each zip + 4 shouldn't route to more than two dozen
| addresses [1]. (Or 8 alphanumeric digits.)
|
| [1] https://www.smarty.com/articles/zip-4-code
| Tor3 wrote:
| That's true, and it would be much easier to remember, but then
| you lose the feature where you move to somewhere else but you
| still use the same code - which is also a function of this
| system (you just update your address once, in that public
| database). And everyone who already have your digital id will
| automatically get your new delivery address, unlike if they
| just have your zip+4+2.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Is this partially because Japan has no street names making
| specific addresses less clear than in most countries?
| Tor3 wrote:
| It's more because entering addresses on web forms can be a
| major problem in Japan, there's no system to it. You have to
| use the correct font (half-width, full-width), and sometimes
| you have to write it twice, and sometimes with different
| characters, and much more. And the other thing this system does
| is that the same code will work when you move somewhere else,
| as long as you re-register your address. Once.
|
| The missing street address used to be a big problem. The postal
| delivery people had (and still have, of course) a way to look
| up your address - which is really just the property number, in
| the area where I live) and find it on a map. Normal people
| couldn't. But now we can enter the property number into e.g.
| google maps, and it'll find the actual location. Which, of
| course, means that you need to be online with your digital
| device. Which I wouldn't be until recently (I've got this
| pocket wifi now), unless I was in a wifi area.
|
| In my home country I can easily find any location just by
| someone telling me the street name and number. No map needed,
| no online presence.. my home address has a property id, known
| by the city, and a street address, for everybody else. Japan is
| like that, just that the street address is missing..
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| > People can obtain digital addresses by registering with Japan
| Post's Yu ID membership service. Their digital addresses will not
| change even if their physical addresses change.
|
| OK, so your social security number is your "digital address", and
| the post office has a database of everyone's current address.
|
| I'm not sure what problem this solves. Shaves seconds off the
| time it takes you to write an address? Better hope they've got
| error correction built in, since normal addresses are fairly
| "fault tolerant" in terms of still being deliverable.
|
| If you move you still need to notify them, although perhaps in
| Japan big brother already knows you've moved.
| waiwai933 wrote:
| But now you only need to notify the post office, rather than
| every company who sends you physical mail.
| evidencetamper wrote:
| > If you move you still need to notify them, although perhaps
| in Japan big brother already knows you've moved.
|
| When we move, we need to register our address change at the
| city hall. In terms of Big Brother, that's a given.
|
| The problem is that we also need to change all bank, bills,
| etc. too. So this replaces the need for mail forwarding, for
| example.
| growlNark wrote:
| > Shaves seconds off the time it takes you to write an address?
|
| Presumably it'd be pretty nice if you lost touch with someone.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Also pretty convenient for sending harassing mail to people
| who'd rather you didn't.
| kalleboo wrote:
| > Shaves seconds off the time it takes you to write an address?
|
| Entering Japanese addresses on Japanese websites can often be a
| PITA, with weird requirements for where to split the address
| sections, fullwidth vs halfwidth, spacing, and even what type
| of dash you use ( vs -). I don't think I've ever had Safari's
| auto-fill be able to do it successfully.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| > I'm not sure what problem this solves
|
| Have you moved addresses before? It is a giant pain to track
| down all the services which send you letter mail and change
| your address with them. With an extra layer of indirection you
| only need to update your address in one place when you move.
| Think of it like DNS for physical addresses.
| powrhouse wrote:
| DNS for IRL addresses. If you move, you only need to change the
| address in one place and all your mail will follow you.
| voxelghost wrote:
| >OK, so your social security number is your "digital address",
| and the post office has a database of everyone's current
| address.'
|
| No, not really, Yu-ID is not the same as the My-ID (akin to
| social security number). So you wont have to reveal your social
| security to your taxi driver etc. if that was what you worried
| about.
|
| >If you move you still need to notify them, although perhaps in
| Japan big brother already knows you've moved.
|
| Yes you would have to change the physical address for your Yu-
| ID, but you don't need to tell all your acquaintances to update
| their greeting-card address list ( they can still send to the
| same Yu-ID)
|
| Another case might be that you are temporarily living at a
| 'summer-residence' , or that work takes you to a new locations
| for months at the time.
| sollniss wrote:
| >So you wont have to reveal your social security to your taxi
| driver etc. if that was what you worried about.
|
| Yea, but now this taxi driver will forever know where I live.
| Thanks, but no thanks.
| voxelghost wrote:
| So will he if you give him your ordinary address? It's good
| to be careful of these things, but I think you are being a
| little bit paranoid.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| Reminds me of that old joke: Drunk man hails a cab, gets
| in.
|
| "Where to?" asks the driver.
|
| "Home!" says the man.
|
| "Well, where do you live?"
|
| "None of your business!"
| maxgashkov wrote:
| It solves an issue of Japanese addressing system being a total
| mess. There is basically a wild wild west when it comes to the
| address part on most of the ecommerce sites in Japan: some
| offer address auto-complete via zip code, some don't; some
| require a building name, some don't; and the address itself may
| be written down in different ways. Having a source of truth in
| a form of a provider which has vested interest in keeping the
| address uniformly correct on entry is god sent here.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| > Shaves seconds off the time it takes you to write an address?
|
| More like minutes. Address input in Japan is a colossal pain in
| the ass. You have some sites that only allow half-width
| characters (e.g., kita), some that only allow full width
| (kita), some that require you to write your address twice and
| once in romaji, which can be half width (kita) or full width
| (kita), some require you to write it in hiragana instead,
| sometimes numbers need to be full width(123 vs 123), sometimes
| addresses have random unicode symbols like or III (yes, Roman
| numerals are common in addresses) or 8 which may or may not be
| recognized, and more. There's no standardization in addresses
| at all and no street names, so every building gets some
| bizarre-ass name unique to it and the names sound like the
| title of a JRPG. You might even get stuff like ~
| THEhi:tuku:PALACEmonako:Dream II~
|
| And the fun thing: every site has its own input standards, and
| no, they don't tell you what the error was. Most simply say
| "You can't submit. There's something wrong on this page." Some
| let you hit the send button, fail, and make you input
| everything all over again.
|
| Having a code to input an address saves users loads of time and
| stress, assuming web developers implement it.
| latentsea wrote:
| It often doesn't compute for people when I tell them that
| even Japanese people can't read Japanese. Once you've
| experienced crap like this it really makes you appreciate it
| on a deeper level. Addresses and place names in general are a
| near unusable cluster fuck that somehow everyone just manages
| to put up with.
| rester324 wrote:
| Without knowing anything about the technical details, this sounds
| like a new type of URN to me
| Aziell wrote:
| I actually really like this idea. It's genuinely convenient. The
| worst part of moving is updating your address everywhere, and
| even after doing it, you still worry something got missed. But
| after reading the details, I'm a bit hesitant. The idea of the
| code staying the same even if the address changes sounds great.
| But if it still relies on people manually updating their info,
| isn't it pretty easy for things to go wrong if someone forgets?
| sarreph wrote:
| > isn't it pretty easy for things to go wrong if someone
| forgets?
|
| What do you imagine going wrong? In my mind, if I had a digital
| address code, one of the first things I would do after moving
| would be to update it. Plus, the article alludes to
| functionality that displays (+ confirms) the physical address
| anyway...
| Aziell wrote:
| Yeah, you're probably right. Maybe I'm just overthinking it.
| It's just that when people get busy, even the simplest things
| can slip through. If the system had some kind of reminder or
| could sync automatically, that would make it perfect.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| then your mail will be sent to the wrong place. just like
| if you forgot to update your default shipping address on
| amazon, after moving, for example.
|
| the government can't save you from being forgetful. :) But
| it CAN make the process easier. This looks great and as an
| american i'm jealous! A single place to update my address
| would be amazing.
| davchana wrote:
| Since years I have yearned that USPS lets you rent a PO Box.
| Maybe divide the country in 5 to 10 parts, and allocate a
| special zip code for these. The po box is nothing but just a
| forwarding address. You as a user control its final destination
| in usps.com account. It is like a link shortener.
|
| Somebody sends a letter to that address. Regular mail system
| forwards it to machines. There, machines stick a yellow or some
| color strip on it with its actual destination, then it comes to
| you. You could move and simply update usps.com address.
| presentation wrote:
| I think in some ways this is better, because I trust the USPS
| to not actually reveal the true address behind the PO Box. So
| you can still use the "link shortener" but behind a privacy
| wall.
|
| Sure, maybe you can't use this for taxi rides, but that's a
| small price to pay.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "isn't it pretty easy for things to go wrong if someone
| forgets?"
|
| I believe it would be translate to your actual real address if
| you order package at ordering process
| itpcc wrote:
| Thailand have also tried to do Digital ID[0] thing since 2022[1].
| Yet, we still have to do it in an traditional way anyway since
| its service is so limited.
|
| Ref:
|
| [0]
| https://www.thailandpost.co.th/un/article_detail/article/11/...
| [1] https://workpointtoday.com/digital-post-id/
| presentation wrote:
| On the actual site for these digital addresses [1], they mention
| some risks and countermeasures - translated: >
| Risks and Countermeasures When Using the Service > 1.
| Obtaining a Digital Address involves the following risks. Please
| use the service after understanding them. > a. If a
| third party learns your Digital Address, they may be able to
| determine the corresponding address. > b. Randomly
| entering a Digital Address may display the corresponding address.
| > 2. Our company anticipates the above risks and has prepared the
| following mechanisms as countermeasures. > a. Digital
| addresses can be deleted immediately, and the linkage between
| addresses and digital addresses can be disabled. Note that even
| if deleted once, a new digital address can be reacquired.
| > b. The system has mechanisms to detect and prevent abnormal
| searches, such as a large number of searches in a short period of
| time. > c. Even in the unlikely event of a personal
| information leak, our system is designed with leakage risks in
| mind to prevent personal identification. Digital address data is
| managed in a separate database from personal information such as
| email addresses and phone numbers, as shown below.
|
| 1a. is the primary concern for me, and while I can disassociate
| my identity from a digital address, that would defeat the purpose
| of using digital addresses to e.g. handle the case when moving.
| Sounds like they don't have a real answer to this security issue
| besides just accepting it.
|
| [1] https://lp.da.pf.japanpost.jp
| fvrther wrote:
| I just tried it and if you suspect it leaked you can delete it
| immediately and get a new one in 10mn
| presentation wrote:
| Yeah, but if a major point of convenience is that the
| underlying address can be changed without changing your
| digital address code, then that's lost every time you cycle
| it. Without that then this is an extremely minor convenience
| IMO.
| presentation wrote:
| If it were me, I would design it more this way after thinking
| about it a bit: 1. Japan Post lets you register
| your address to your Japan Post Account. 2. No static
| short code is created for your address. 3. Japan Post
| provides an API (like OAuth) for allowing you to persistently
| share your address location with a third party, say Rakuten, or
| Kuroneko Takkyubin, or something. 4. Once you've linked
| it to those services, they can use this API to get your address
| at any point in time. 5. You can unlink services whenever
| you want to revoke access, without changing any code. 6.
| No way to request an address for a Japan Post account without
| permission granted. 7. To handle cases like taxis, Japan
| Post can work with providers like GO Taxi, S.Ride, DiDi, etc.
| to do an authenticated one-time address share via NFC using the
| Japan Post App with the digital consoles already present in
| almost all taxis in major cities (no help for old taxis in the
| inaka, but that's a tradeoff). a. or alternatively,
| persistently link your GO Taxi, S.Ride, etc. accounts to Japan
| Post for the same purpose. b. and also potentially
| allowing to do such a key exchange with NFCs on smartphones or
| a standalone device, but probably taxi operators wouldn't be
| motivated enough to actually do that.
|
| That way you just need to trust Japan Post and you can still
| get a decent amount of the convenience of address sharing.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| "1a. is the primary concern for me, and while I can
| disassociate my identity from a digital address, that would
| defeat the purpose of using digital addresses"
|
| Yeah but you would still have better option than not being able
| to do that I think this is just move the security debt
| elsewhere which is bad/good it depends on theirs ends
| presentation wrote:
| I don't agree with that - it spreads complexity all over
| without much of a benefit. You get the privacy downside of
| digital addresses having this "stalker" effect, and in turn
| everyone has to not only work to add support for these
| digital address codes, but they also need to make their
| systems robust to digital addresses being revoked, which they
| probably wouldn't.
|
| In the status quo, it is clear you need to update addresses
| if you move; even if you don't, because you have to file a
| Zhuan Ju Jie , Japan Post knows they need to redirect mail to
| your new address anyway; and you don't have the privacy
| worries.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| well that why they can change,disable,multiple (?) address
| tho???
|
| I can see something like this 1 address for work, 1 for
| house, 1 for vacation house etc
| gregjw wrote:
| As someone who recently moved to Japan, I'm so happy this is a
| thing. Their addressing system is a little painful.
| presentation wrote:
| As someone who has lived in Japan for the better part of a
| decade, I am not as excited; at some point I just got used to
| it and can't recall feeling any pain from it for many years at
| this point. There are other things that are much more painful
| than this.
| fvrther wrote:
| Hello, I live in Japan, the thing they don't tell in the article
| is the Japan Post Digital Address can be tied to the MyNumber
| system.
|
| It's an official ID card you're required to update by law every
| time you move, and they plan to link the address of both systems.
| Meaning every time you update you address on your ID it will
| automatically propagate everywhere.
|
| In Japan the MyNumber system is live since a few years and a
| single card can already be used:
|
| * As driving license
|
| * As a unified heath insurance card
|
| * As a unified way to retrieve prescribed medications, lab
| results, vaccinations..
|
| * For doing the taxes and receive pension
|
| * As a foreigner residence card (very soon)
|
| * For digital signing of official papers (as a way to replace the
| Hanko stamp culture, it's working but not yet widely used)
|
| The digital ministry is also expected to unveil an Apple Wallet
| integration in a few months to avoid having to carry the card.
| whydoineedthis wrote:
| So, like, a public ss# tied to an address.
| fvrther wrote:
| Exactly, but I'm not familiar with the American SS# system
| honestly
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Its just a number assigned to every American person usually
| at birth nowadays. It is assigned the the Social Security
| Administration. It was designed as a Social Security
| account number, but is also used as a Tax Identification
| Number by the IRS. And a lot of places treat it like it is
| some super secret password, but it is just a number, and it
| is a number that everyone wants, and everyone and their
| dog- including multiple government agencies- has made
| publicly available, so now everyone and their dog and their
| dogs cousins dog has access to them, so it makes absolutely
| no sense why anyone would treat them as secret.
| RaoulP wrote:
| Thanks for the context!
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Is there a public-privete keypair associated with the MyNumber
| ID?
| fvrther wrote:
| It's a PKI system, your card holds two certificate, one for
| authenticating that you unlock with a 4 number PIN and one
| for digital signing that you unlock using a 10 char password.
| It also has Sony's FeLiCa standard for NFC reading. You can
| also tie your own generated certificate to it but it seems
| quite complex and expensive to do so.
| mcoliver wrote:
| Call me crazy but I want this for my digital profile. Let me
| register and login to apps and websites with an id that is a
| pointer to my profile where I can update my emails, phones,
| addresses, profile photo, website, etc.. of course the question
| is who is the owner of that service. Self host, block chain,
| public company, non profit, government. Tradeoffs with all of
| them.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Under the system, users can input these seven-digit codes on
| online shopping websites, and their addresses will automatically
| appear on the sites.
|
| Why not just let people mail to that code, and the post office
| then looks up the actual address? That'd also avoid any issues
| with leaking personal information.
| brody_hamer wrote:
| Easier to roll out this way would be my guess?
|
| With your approach, the burden is on the post office to update
| their handling process.
|
| With the implemented approach, nothing changes about the postal
| process, and the burden of work is shifted to the sender, who
| must look up the code for the recipient's current address.
| xyst wrote:
| Imagine inputting: "IiIIil" but meant to input "IiIIi1"
|
| Oops now my package is going to Joe Blow on the other side of
| the country.
|
| That's probably why.
| saulpw wrote:
| 25^7 is 6 billion, and there are fewer than 200m people in
| Japan. That's enough for one character to essentially be
| error correction.
| voxelghost wrote:
| 25^6=244,140,625 - I think I have seen estimates of
| 100,000,000 addressable entities in the Japan postal
| address system (a bit half of them being households, the
| rest companies,public buildings, various organizations and
| so on )
| saulpw wrote:
| TFA says "seven-digit combinations of numbers and
| letters".
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| If my password manager has an option to not use similar
| looking characters when generating a password, it should be
| trivial to do the same for this system.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Given that this is Japan, they probably just mean digits 0-9,
| which are quite often rendered that way rather than Yi to
| Jiu .
| nine_k wrote:
| > _Their digital addresses will not change even if their
| physical addresses change._
|
| Apparently he new system works a bit like DNS: the physical
| location may change, but the symbolic name stays. The
| resolution is done at the order time, not at the delivery time.
|
| I suppose it's because the numerous e-commerce sites already
| support the physical address system. With the post office
| resolving the 7-character symbolic address to a physical
| address requires approximately zero changes in their existing
| systems, it's just an extra API call on the frontend. Support
| for direct use of the 7-character address would require serious
| changes.
|
| Also, the 7-character address resolved to a physical address
| right before the customer's eyes works as an extra sanity
| check, and should limit the number of orders to a wrong
| address.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Also there is an existing system of 7 numeral post codes that
| autopopulate Prefecture, City, District - leaving you to
| enter Area # (Ding Mu ), Block #, House #.
|
| If they amend this to make it alphanumeric and then
| autopopulate this last three datums - it fits very neatly
| into the existing scheme.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Support for direct use of the 7-character address would
| require serious changes.
|
| No, it doesn't. You can just format that 7-character address
| like a valid address, essentially like:
|
| Fan Hao 0123456,Ri Ben
|
| Fill any extra fields with placeholders or 0s as necessary.
|
| The most you'll have to change is to maybe skip validation
| for those if you have address validation.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _skip validation_
|
| Here's whence real problems would begin.
| crusty wrote:
| Maybe they will, but this seems to be separate in that if it
| resolves the physical address from the code during the checkout
| process like a DNS call, it isn't reliant on actually shipping
| with Japan post and even if it does, it now has the physical
| address, so why not use that.
|
| One thing about the long physical address is that it adds a bit
| of redundancy. Misspelled or wrong name... still arrives.
| Misspelled street or city... might still arrive. I'm guessing 1
| number off on that code and it's wrong. For the example in the
| story, a customer inputs the number, three store makes the call
| to Japan post and renders the physical address to the customer
| so they can verify before committing.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Surely they won't be so incompetent the specifications won't
| include a correction code and mandatory checking of it ?
| coel wrote:
| The address would need to be looked up in some cases due to
| different delivery costs and time estimates.
| ChocolateGod wrote:
| I'm sure having a publicly available API that shows the
| region a code is in would be fine as long as the courier
| honours pricing based on that information.
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| This sounds like cross-shipping, where you ship to a
| distribution centre which then ships to the final destination.
| My guess is that this is more expensive and slower for a lot of
| cases (this is typically cheaper for extremely high volumes or
| cross-continental shipping).
|
| Shops with which I've worked will have several different
| carriers pick up packages during the week. Some pickups are for
| city-local packages, where others are cross-province packages.
| Finally, lots of packages are delivered from the shop directly
| by motorbike. The logistics are quite different for each, and
| they use different providers depending on situation.
|
| Shipping everything to one location that redistributes would
| explode in both costs and complexity.
| grishka wrote:
| I imagine things would get complicated if private courier
| companies start getting involved
| xyst wrote:
| What does this solve? Are Japanese addresses that complex? Does
| the population of Japan move around quite frequently thus the
| need for some static identifier?
|
| I don't see any particular upside at this point. It suffers from
| "weak enumeration" and possibly make stalking much easier.
|
| (( sure govt will try to limit queries but there are many ways
| around it. Govt will spend millions over the next few years
| playing cat and mouse while ))
| slackr wrote:
| Addresses in the Netherlands (much smaller country, I know) all
| work like this out of the box. People write their return
| addresses on envelopes that way too, like: 1234AB,56 (where
| 1234AB is a postal code for up to 15 or so addresses, and 56 is
| the house number)
| dingaling wrote:
| I once tested the UK system like that by sending an envelope to
| myself with just house number and postcode. It worked
| perfectly, yet convention remains to laboriously write
| redundant information every time.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| The Irish are even better:
| https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-
| news/donegal-p...
| culi wrote:
| the redundancy improves reliability. Ink runs, mail gets wet,
| some small degree ambiguity will likely always exist, etc
| Hamuko wrote:
| Recipient name, Street address + number, Postcode doesn't
| sound that laborously redundant, unless your conventions have
| something more. Gives a larger area where the mail should go,
| a precise area where your mail should go (that you can
| compare to the larger area for mismatches) and who should be
| able to open the mail.
| Digit-Al wrote:
| Well bully for you. For those of us who live in flats it's
| not so simple. If you were to put e.g. flat 8 and my postcode
| there are about 4 or 5 choices so you're probably not going
| to get your mail.
| eloisant wrote:
| That's not the same, the system Japan is launching is a code
| for your address that doesn't change even if you move. It's not
| a direct mapping to a physical address, it's a DB where you can
| change which code points to what address.
|
| Anyway, Japan has about 50 prefectures, I don't think any one
| of them being bigger than the Netherlands (maybe Hokkaido) so
| they could have a similar system by adding 2 digits at the
| beginning of the code.
| chipsa wrote:
| Theoretically, you can just print a DPBC and a name on a USPS
| delivered mail, and it'll get delivered. The DPBC has the
| ZIP+4, and delivery point encoded. The delivery point is the
| actual mailbox used (some addresses have multiple delivery
| points, such as apartments).
| ggm wrote:
| Australian postcodes cover thousands. British Postcodes can be
| unique to a household.
|
| Japanese postal addresses can be very unlike western addresses.
| The major unit chome then a sub, then sometimes an offset from a
| landmark or "street behind"
|
| I've had late night taxi drives from stations have to check in at
| a Lawson to find the doorway.
|
| Edinburgh has its own notation for which door on a stairwell
| which sometimes (if the gods will it) aligns to postal registry
| and council and utility billing. When it doesn't things get
| complicated. Glasgow, Dundee and Aberdeen all have their own
| variants of this stairwell door identifying notation as I
| understand it.
|
| Dutch addresses putting the number after the street name can
| confuse people.
| pepa65 wrote:
| Number after the streetname seems to be a more general European
| thing.
| Macha wrote:
| > Dutch addresses putting the number after the street name can
| confuse people.
|
| This one causes me problems _all the time_. My address is like:
| 12 XYZ Lane, XYZ Road, Town Name
| Postcode
|
| 12 XYZ Road, Town Name is also an address that exists, and is
| in the same vicinity as me so will get routed to the same
| delivery driver, but is not my address.
|
| So often enough, when continental European companies insist on
| a structured address, they will then render it back out as some
| variation of: XYZ Lane 12 XYZ
| Road Town Name Postcode
|
| And the delivery driver just looks for the number as the start
| of the address, presumably because they're used to scanning
| past recipient names and business names, and instead delivers
| my package to 12 XYZ Road.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| This is a good start. I have a registered code, I can update it
| whenever I move house, online ordering becomes easier, great.
|
| As people have indicated in thread already, the current
| implementation is easy: a website frontend just needs to be able
| to resolve it to the physical address.
|
| I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait, I'll
| do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I order
| something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move house, the
| delivery "follows me" to my new location.
|
| Going further, I might want to specify my home address as the
| default, but for items under 2kg delivered 8am to 5pm on
| weekdays, please deliver to my place of business. If I'm in
| hospital for a prolonged stay, I may want to redirect to a friend
| or family member.
|
| I actually expect some of the rapid delivery networks to get a
| bit more like this - I predicted with friends about 5 years ago
| at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker on
| the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else in the
| street), will get a notification that its outside for the next 30
| minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup
| site. Imagine if there was dynamic routing so that the parcel
| just "finds me" if I'm at work, or a bar after work... obviously
| I might want choices and options and so on, but I think the idea
| of parcels just going to where you sleep, whether you are there
| or not, is going to look quaint in 30 years time.
|
| [edit: there's also a nice bit of privacy going on here the later
| the lookup happens - if nobody at the e-commerce site knows where
| I actually live, that information can't be leaked]
| luis_cho wrote:
| For me the privacy part of site not knowing we're I live would
| be great.
|
| I could also black list entities from delivering spam.
| hbarka wrote:
| My mailbox is full of junk mail and it's hard to make them
| stop. It's not even addressed to me, just the mailbox
| location. The design pattern to "unsubscribe" or block the
| junk sender is also useless. Surely there must be a strong
| political lobby in the US who don't want to prevent junk
| mail. It's so wasteful and ridiculous (literally tons of
| paper) and I've resigned to this fact of life in my country.
| powvans wrote:
| Marketing mail is a significant (maybe 25%) portion of the
| USPS revenue and very profitable. They have a strong
| disincentive to reduce the stream of junk mail going to
| your home.
| saati wrote:
| What stops them from sending the spam to the same code?
| SwtCyber wrote:
| Not having your address passed around 3rd-party sellers is a
| win on its own
| chgs wrote:
| But they could look up your physical address and store and
| sell that easily as storing and selling your delivery address
| now.
| lmm wrote:
| The third-party seller never gets your address. They hand
| the package over to the delivery company with a code, the
| delivery company is the only one who knows what that code
| means. Japanese delivery companies already offer this
| service, since a lot of people don't like to publish their
| address.
| dooglius wrote:
| This seems worse for that though, now they can track you
| better when you move and correlate with your identity better.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| > I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait,
| I'll do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I
| order something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move
| house, the delivery "follows me" to my new location.
|
| Around here the Post already knows how to do this (I assume
| it's similar elsewhere), it's also used for government-related
| matters. But I guess other carriers do not.
|
| I expect the overall results to be negative soon enough though
| : consider the issues USians have to endure with how (ab)used
| is their Social Security Number.
| eloisant wrote:
| It's funny how you have a Social Security Number used for
| everything except provide you with actual social security.
| miki123211 wrote:
| Poland adopted parcel lockers on a massive scale, and they
| mostly solve that problem. It's such a good idea; I'm really
| surprised other countries haven't followed suit.
|
| They're absolutely everywhere. Your tiny village might not have
| a grocery store, a school or an ATM, but it probably has a
| locker. Where my parents live (a village of ~2000 people), they
| have three. The vast majority of people have at least one in
| walking distance.
|
| Before they became so popular, we used to do sign-on-delivery,
| leaving mail on your doorstep didn't become a thing here until
| covid. This made mail much harder to steal, but required you
| either to have somebody who would stay home all day, or to hunt
| down which neighbor got your package for you.
| guerby wrote:
| Yes I agree with you, I don't understand why parcel lockers
| are not completely replacing delivery.
|
| I saw on youtube that China has "open stores" where you go
| pick on shelf your parcel, all controlled via camera and face
| recognition.
|
| In my country France the number of parcel lockers is going up
| but there's often sellers who don't propose them, or have
| some restrictions.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| The amazon lockers work fairly well (and I often use them
| when traveling to avoid the headache of trying to ship
| something to a hotel.) But I have to say, I don't really
| understand why you feel they're game changing. You mention
| that parcel lockers "mostly solve that problem", but I don't
| really see how they solve any problems in the GP comment. For
| example, I don't see how they solve the problem of "I want to
| order something that will arrive in 6 months but I might move
| between now and then". (won't your package just go to a
| locker that's possibly very far away from you now?) It feels
| to me like the main problem lockers solve is preventing mail
| theft.
| jakub_g wrote:
| The lockers in Poland can be used for both receiving and
| sending items. It's a massive QoL improvement in many ways
| over old school:
|
| - you can receive things while you're not at home, don't
| have to carefully plan to be there for the courier (who
| then misses initial date and you need to do it again next
| day). It works 24/7 so you can pick up your stuff in the
| middle of the night if it's more convenient. You have 48hrs
| to pick up.
|
| - you can send things, also 24/7, so no need to go to a
| blessed place between 9am and 5pm during week and queue.
| You can send your item Sunday evening, no problem
|
| - the costs are also very reasonable. I sent a parcel from
| Poland to France for 7EUR this month.
|
| - you don't actually need to print anything nor even write
| the address. The courier opens the box, and they print a
| sticker with destination address.
|
| - I believe it increases throughput because the courier
| doesn't have to stop at 100 places per day, they stop at
| lockers and unload N packages at once in every locker.
| Higher throughput -> shorter delivery times and lower costs
| rawicki wrote:
| I'm familiar with postal services both in Poland and Japan
| and I like the Japanese solution even more - most of the new
| buildings have package lockers operated by the building owner
| and independent from the delivery service. Everyone could put
| the packages there and my building would notify me about a
| waiting package when I entered.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| I am not going to repeat the existing comments, instead I
| will point out something obvious.
|
| Parcel lockers are only really good for small and light
| items.
|
| The moment you get into heavy or bulky or both then parcel
| lockers are a waste of time.
|
| Who wants to go to a parcel locker and haul a 16kg package
| back home ?
|
| Or if you have multiple deliveries, who wants to go to a
| parcel locker and haul 10 boxes home ?
|
| I think this new Japanese "follow-me" system is genuinely a
| much better idea. Parcel lockers are yesteday's technology in
| comparison.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| How does the "follow-me" solve heavy delivery?
|
| Heavy deliveries will always be a problem. It existing
| doesn't invalidate usefulness of things that solve light
| delivery.
| devilbunny wrote:
| _Really_ heavy deliveries will be. A system that lets you
| specify a certain weight cutoff for location to deliver
| might be useful, but even then sheer quantities can be an
| issue.
|
| I get anything valuable coming from a major delivery
| service (DHL, FedEx, UPS, US Postal Service) sent to my
| office. They're already stopping there (it's a hospital
| with plenty of doctors' offices in their attached tower,
| lots of stuff is delivered daily), someone can sign for
| it and lock it up. I have a key to get into my office
| whenever I need to, and if it's during the day I can
| borrow a cart or a dolly/hand truck to take it to my car.
| Can usually rustle up a spare cart even in the off hours.
| Done it for almost 20 years.
|
| If it's a TV or something else large (appliances,
| furniture, etc.), it's going to be a custom delivery
| anyway, so I'll pick a time that I know I'll be home.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Parcel lockers are yesteday's technology in comparison.
|
| They're still wonderful for small deliveries, which are
| maybe 95% of everything I order. You can even redirect them
| or reschedule them easily, since a lot of it is based on
| web based systems that you can access with the code they
| send you and additional verification.
|
| I actually had my computer case ship to a pickup point
| instead of a locker near me, so I could just go there when
| I had free time after work and haul it back to my apartment
| in the city (was like a 10-15 minute walk). It ended up
| being cheaper than getting it delivered to my door and was
| functionally identical to a package locker, just with a
| person verifying the code and giving me the larger item. It
| seems like some of those locations are in convenience
| stores, others in gas stations over here, a bit more
| relaxed than traditional delivery, for which I have to be
| present at a time I don't know exactly.
|
| For the big items (such as a ladder, or a lawnmower or
| something for the countryside, or new fridge or stove for
| the apartment), there is still courier delivery, which
| brings it to your door, or can help you carry it upstairs
| if needed, though obviously more expensive and not worth it
| for anything but the bigger items.
|
| I think all of those methods compliment each other nicely.
| No reason to scoff at one method if it helps others be more
| efficient: split up the load, less awkward logistics of the
| courier needing to talk with each individual recipient to
| make sure they'll be there in like 15 minutes after the
| call, but instead being able to take a lot of the less
| expensive small packages and just put them in the locker
| and letting the people sort the rest out themselves,
| handling a bunch of those packages in one go.
|
| I even shipped my old GPU to some friends across the EU
| with DPD and the process was similarly simple - I just
| prepped the order online, put the info sheet on the package
| and put it in the package machine. They received the GPU a
| few days later. Fewer queues than a postal office.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker
| on the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else
| in the street), will get a notification that its outside for
| the next 30 minutes
|
| I'm reminded of the Taipei refuse trucks that play Fur Elise to
| remind you that it's the five-minute window in which you can
| put your bins in the street.
|
| I'm not very optimistic about delivery improving, because it's
| a three-sided market. You don't get to choose which courier the
| sender uses, but you're really their customer.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| > You (and everyone else in the street), will get a
| notification that its outside for the next 30 minutes - miss
| it, and it'll go get delivered to a nearby pickup site.
|
| That sounds terrible from just about every perspective. What
| about people who work during that 30 minutes? Or who have
| mobility concerns? What about a parent who's young child just
| fell asleep? Should they all have to go to the pickup site? And
| let's not kid ourselves, it's not going to be nearby.
| Especially if you live in a rural area. And how do you open the
| locker when you get there? Do you need another app that tracks
| your every movement? No thank you, please just leave the
| package at my door.
| hx8 wrote:
| > No thank you, please just leave the package at my door.
|
| With where I live now, yes. I've had a previous address with
| about a 15% package-theft rate within the first 2 hours of
| package delivery. In this situation I started to use lockers
| instead of straight to home.
|
| I think this type of delivery system (mobile lockers to
| stationary lockers) would be a hit in areas with high levels
| of package theft.
| lokar wrote:
| Or the police could deal with package theft.
| r00f wrote:
| I am not sure about your particular area, but all those
| concerns have been solved for me. If I get package in my
| local mailbox (which is always nearby), I get a key to the
| delivery box dropped into my mail box. If the package doesnt
| fit there, I get message like "box 5 code 123456" if it is at
| self pickup site, or I go to the post office - which are both
| 5 minutes drive, but for box of such size I would need to
| drive even to my local mailbox.
|
| I will prefer any of those options over my package having to
| sit in the rain or on the snow.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I'm familiar with apartments and trailer parks, and from
| experience I can tell you it's a worse system than just
| delivering door to door.
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| I tend to agree. As I understand it it's the final mile
| that balloons the cost and in my view a neighborhood
| collections box is just a micro-optimization. Same with
| mass dropoff box truck. You're already driving a vehicle
| with my package nearby just deliver it at that point.
|
| What I want is cheaper shipping if they drop it off at a
| post office or something. For example on Amazon I see it
| as an option but only ever as a "carbon-reduction" vs
| just delivering to my front door. I know it's cheaper -
| pass on those savings to me.
| meatmanek wrote:
| The irony is that in many cases, it'd take less carbon
| for them to deliver to your front door than it would for
| you to get to the post office -- if they're already
| delivering to someone else near you, their extra distance
| traveled might be a block or so (or 0 if they were going
| to drive past your house anyway).
|
| For delivery-to-post-office to be more carbon-efficient
| than them delivering to your house, the inequality
| (additional distance you need to travel to get to post
| office / your mpg) < (additional distance they need to
| travel to get to your house / their mpg) must be true. If
| you were gonna drive past the post office anyway, or your
| vehicle is significantly more efficient than their
| delivery van, then it might pencil out. If you're making
| an extra trip, it probably doesn't make sense.
| tester756 wrote:
| >And how do you open the locker when you get there? Do you
| need another app that tracks your every movement?
|
| You enter the code from sms, that's it.
| sojsurf wrote:
| > I think there is value though in carriers saying "no, wait,
| I'll do the lookup when I am ready to deliver!", because then I
| order something today with a 3-month lead time and if I move
| house, the delivery "follows me" to my new location.
|
| The downside for carriers is that costs are unpredictable. Will
| they be shipping it a few miles or to the other side of the
| country?
|
| The downside for the person ordering is that there is a race
| condition that makes it difficult for you to know where the
| thing will get delivered to. Perhaps you changed your location
| two days ago, and you are expecting a piece of furniture
| sometime soon. Did the furniture delivery process kick off
| before or after you changed your address?
| tester756 wrote:
| >I actually expect some of the rapid delivery networks to get a
| bit more like this - I predicted with friends about 5 years ago
| at some point your Amazon delivery is going to be in a locker
| on the back of a self-driving vehicle. You (and everyone else
| in the street), will get a notification that its outside for
| the next 30 minutes - miss it, and it'll go get delivered to a
| nearby pickup site. Imagine if there was dynamic routing so
| that the parcel just "finds me" if I'm at work, or a bar after
| work... obviously I might want choices and options and so on,
| but I think the idea of parcels just going to where you sleep,
| whether you are there or not, is going to look quaint in 30
| years time.
|
| Inpost - logistics startup in Poland managed to put lockers
| everywhere and you just receive sms when the parcel is there
| and you have 48h to pick it up
|
| You can go whenever you want - simple and effective as hell
|
| They disrupted delivery industry
| lyall wrote:
| Good opportunity to repost this gem: "Parsing the Infamous
| Japanese Postal CSV" https://www.dampfkraft.com/posuto.html
|
| HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25023673
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| Lately I this idea for email. It would work like a twitter handle
| for the user but similarly to domains and dns under the hood.
| Then you just use this handle to register and receive email
| communication. If you change email provider or get locked out for
| some reason you can just update the email the handle points to.
| pineaux wrote:
| I actually think they missed a chance here. They could have
| made the code in such a way that it anonymizes the receiver.
| Only japan post would know where this person lives.
| maaaaattttt wrote:
| I believe so too. The API they provide doesn't need to
| respond with the exact address until an approved carrier
| makes an identified request. The availability of that API
| needs to be perfect though!
| Ringz wrote:
| I do this since a long time. I don't use my real email postbox
| address. I just use email addresses from my own domain server
| ,,catch all" to the real email postbox.
|
| If I ever change my email provider I just have to change the
| catch all rule.
| ktzar wrote:
| funnily something similar exists in the UK since the post-WWII
| postcode change. Addresses can be "minimised" to 10 characters,
| or less. Obviously there's no way to change the real destination
| once something has been sent
|
| https://vlad.website/most-minimal-uk-address/
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| IBAN for home addresses. Yawn.
|
| Nothing beats the What Three Words system and would be much more
| fun if not routeable at scale.
|
| https://what3words.com/
| lqet wrote:
| 7 digits can be written much faster than 3 words, and (most)
| digits are free of any unintended association. Also, the 7
| digits may contain the house number. You cannot reliably use
| what3words for a delivery address, because the house on the
| square may have several house numbers. I also don't like the
| commercialism behind what3words.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I've been wondering about something like this for years. Good
| idea. Why does everyone I order from have my address?
| tr33house wrote:
| When I was in college, I'd come up with a similar concept for
| creating addresses for the developing world. For those that don't
| know, most of the world actually doesn't have any address and the
| governments have no plans in place to solve this.
|
| Basically have a third party DNS like company and all it would do
| would be digital addressing. Since we would also deliver the
| mail, there was the added benefit of not sharing your actual
| address, temporarily sharing it, having alternatives based on
| day, kind etc and potentially just sharing your phone number as
| your address etc etc
|
| Looking back, this would've been a great company but one that
| almost no investor would fund
| postexitus wrote:
| Completely different benefit proposal, but doesn't what3words
| kind of do this?
| GJim wrote:
| Giving your _lat and long_ solves this, without recourse to
| proprietary systems, similar sounding words or requiring a
| proficiency in the English language.
|
| What 3 words is pants.
| postexitus wrote:
| The problem with lat/long at this resolution is -> Too many
| numbers. Get one wrong and you are somewhere else.
| what3words identifies the correct problem, provides a
| solution, but I agree that it has its flaws. I wish some
| independent org can come up with a better standard that
| addresses those.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| I have never understood this. You build a house somewhere,
| develop your existence, etc.. Surely you have a way of telling
| others where you live? Simply give your place a name, if there
| are multiple buildings there, give them numbers, et voila you
| have an address. Why isn't this what is happening? Isn't this
| what happened everywhere where there are addresses? We don't
| have street names and numbers, because a central number
| authority chose to assign them, we have them because humans
| give things names in order to refer to them. So whenever
| someone is claiming that there are people living without an
| address, I find that incomprehensible.
| postexitus wrote:
| how will people (i.e. postal service) find this address if
| there is no central authority?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Look at the street sign, like they did it everywhere else?
| postexitus wrote:
| And which street would that be?
| 1718627440 wrote:
| Huh?
|
| People live somewhere that doesn't have a name yet. They
| are going to name it anyways since they talk to others (I
| live near the new bridge). Eventually someone is hanging
| up a sign "new-bridge-street" and the name standardizes
| so bypassers will get to know the name also.
|
| Isn't that how street names came into existence
| everywhere?
| SwtCyber wrote:
| This actually sounds like a pretty clever middle ground between
| privacy and convenience. Curious to see how well it's received in
| Japan
| Nullabillity wrote:
| This reminds me a lot of Sweden's SPAR.[0] Everyone has a
| personal ID number, the ministry of tax (Skatteverket) maintains
| a database of everyone's contact information (name, address, etc;
| Folkbokforingen), which "anyone" can query at a trivial price.[1]
|
| A decent amount of stores do, though certainly not all.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.statenspersonadressregister.se/master/start/engl...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.statenspersonadressregister.se/master/start/vaar...
| WhyNotHugo wrote:
| Sounds interesting, although quite confusing. Then again, I find
| most thing Japanese confusing, so that's likely cultural bias.
| I'm curious to hear how this develops and what we can learn from
| this experiment.
|
| > Their digital addresses will not change even if their physical
| addresses change.
|
| This is really weird. What happens when two roommates move to
| different addresses and a third stays behind?
| boredemployee wrote:
| I think as with everything digital, you need to keep your
| information updated
| jjice wrote:
| My thought was that this is per person (I could very well be
| wrong) and each would have their own digital address, having
| all of them point to the same place initially and then the two
| could update when they move and the roommate staying behind
| would leave theirs.
| mofosyne wrote:
| Hopefully it has at least a checksum
| donatj wrote:
| I was really hopeful this would do something to _address_ Japans
| convoluted address system, anything really, sort of like Open
| Location Code is trying but with the backing of the post office.
|
| If you don't know the storied _history_ of an area in Japan it
| can be nearly impossible to find an address manually. You give
| someone your address in Japan, they have to either use the
| internet or ask people in the area to help you find it. Most are
| not based on streets, they are based on smaller and smaller named
| subdivisions of a given area.
|
| Alas no, this is the exact opposite of Open Location Code and
| requires an internet connection to look up. We should be working
| on something that allows you to find an address on foot without
| an internet connection!
|
| Japanese addresses are a problem this makes no attempt to fix.
| Just baffling to me.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_addressing_system
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Any problem in computer science can be solved by having one more
| level of redirection.
|
| Seems like it's applicable to some of physical world problems as
| well.
| ajb wrote:
| I always wondered whether you could do this just by pointing a
| URL at a page with your address and printing the URL on the
| envelope. I suspect it would work with royal mail in the UK
| although with a delay (and they may get annoyed if too many
| people did it).
|
| TBH I think that would be better than a centralised DB.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-05-29 23:01 UTC)