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A comment on Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries. Parent comment

Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by buttcoinslol on Sunday October 29, 2017 @03:25PM (#15580897)
what3words is a large hash table mapping 3x3m squares of land with the key being a unique three word phrase and the value being the 3x3 grid square. That's really all it is. Oh, by the way, if the service goes down, everything grinds to a halt because there is no backup analog system (maps, etc).

It's a solution searching for a problem, and existing mail and building addressing schemes are far superior to it.

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Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by dorfsmay on Sunday October 29, 2017 @04:23PM (#15581201)
So it'd be easy for everybody to contribute their address and GPS coordinates to an open database. Eventually it'd be usable enough that most people wouldn't need to access the paid for DB.
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Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by lxmorj on Sunday October 29, 2017 @03:31PM (#15580923)
It's easy for humans to memorize, though I don't know exactly what that's worth...
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Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by buttcoinslol on Sunday October 29, 2017 @03:33PM (#15580936)
When all you need now is '123 Fake St, 12345' to get a map of a location and directions to it on your phone, not much. You can locate '123 Fake St, 12345' without a phone, so it wins.
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Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by xtreme on Sunday October 29, 2017 @04:24PM (#15581216)
As others have pointed out, lots of places in underdeveloped countries don't have street names and numbers.
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Re:Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3word... by buttcoinslol on Sunday October 29, 2017 @05:26PM (#15581496)
As others have pointed out, and I quote, "a proprietary system from a for-profit company should not be used as the basis for addressing in any country."
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