I feel like I only hear about What3Words in the context of someone saying that it isn’t very good, and so normally I would not have given it more press… but apparently some people actually are using it.
I do use it. It’s easier to record the entry point for an unmapped driveway in a w3w format than it is to be sure the address is a) correct and b) causes the mapping software to put you on a road with access to your destination.
Nothing as fun as going to a new place only to see it across the forest because the GPS thought that random road was the best chance of getting to that address.
Sure there are problems. But it’s a better solution than a lot of other things.
Fair enough. Using it “one-off” is of course completely different from building your service/business around it or making it a (critical) part. It is very clearly a trap.
These arent passwords, I don’t think being able to memorise your location is particularly useful, if you are speaking a location over the telephone, a short alpha-numeric code can be spoken using the phonetic alphabet. In contrast 3 words will have multiple ways to misspell them and while you could use a phonetic alphabet, theres going to be a lot more characters to spell out. Mapcode also works better for people who don’t speak english.
The author isn’t, the whatfreewords author is – https://twitter.com/AaronToponce/status/1389163266417430533
Based on their thread, they did work with cybergibbons in the context of sharing the whatfreewords source code (whatfreewords being a clone of W3W basically), but cybergibbons isn’t the one being attacked by W3W now.
I’m the one who was threatened by the what3words legal firm. For clarification, I did not write the WhatFreeWords software, only had a copy from 2 years ago when the developers reverse engineered what3words. It was my willingness to share WhatFreeWords with other developers that landed me in legal hot water.
I was just another researcher among a team uncovering the safety and security claims of what3words. Andrew “Cybergibbons” Tierney is the one leading the charge in the research, and has done the overwhelming amount of work. I just joined on board to help, because I have the technical chops to help do the research.
I feel like I only hear about What3Words in the context of someone saying that it isn’t very good, and so normally I would not have given it more press… but apparently some people actually are using it.
See also the followup posts:
There are also legal problems. For sure W3W is not something I would ever ever use: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words
Oh yeah, I had completely forgotten about that nonsense. It’s like they wanted to make it as unusable as possible.
I do use it. It’s easier to record the entry point for an unmapped driveway in a w3w format than it is to be sure the address is a) correct and b) causes the mapping software to put you on a road with access to your destination.
Nothing as fun as going to a new place only to see it across the forest because the GPS thought that random road was the best chance of getting to that address.
Sure there are problems. But it’s a better solution than a lot of other things.
Fair enough. Using it “one-off” is of course completely different from building your service/business around it or making it a (critical) part. It is very clearly a trap.
Thanks for sharing, I had been on the fence until reading that wiki doc.
Mapcode is free, open source and works worldwide https://www.mapcode.com/about
And are also harder to memorize for much of the population when compared with spoken words
These arent passwords, I don’t think being able to memorise your location is particularly useful, if you are speaking a location over the telephone, a short alpha-numeric code can be spoken using the phonetic alphabet. In contrast 3 words will have multiple ways to misspell them and while you could use a phonetic alphabet, theres going to be a lot more characters to spell out. Mapcode also works better for people who don’t speak english.
Memorizing YOUR location isn’t helpful, since it changes.
But a long driveway entrance?
Author is being threatened: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210430/22510246716/what3words-sends-ridiculous-legal-threat-to-security-researcher-over-open-source-alternative.shtml
The author isn’t, the whatfreewords author is – https://twitter.com/AaronToponce/status/1389163266417430533 Based on their thread, they did work with cybergibbons in the context of sharing the whatfreewords source code (whatfreewords being a clone of W3W basically), but cybergibbons isn’t the one being attacked by W3W now.
I’m the one who was threatened by the what3words legal firm. For clarification, I did not write the WhatFreeWords software, only had a copy from 2 years ago when the developers reverse engineered what3words. It was my willingness to share WhatFreeWords with other developers that landed me in legal hot water.
I was just another researcher among a team uncovering the safety and security claims of what3words. Andrew “Cybergibbons” Tierney is the one leading the charge in the research, and has done the overwhelming amount of work. I just joined on board to help, because I have the technical chops to help do the research.
I don’t think cybergibbons has been threatened.
Correct. Andrew was not threatened, it was me because I was willing to share the 2019 WhatFreeWords software with other researchers.