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Re:What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for ... by Closi on Monday May 03, 2021 @01:58AM (#27022058)
> Because developing nations really want to use a 3rd party app with a 'proprietary naming convention' to help them map and develop their land.

Amazingly this is a big problem that is worth solving. Many countries in Africa don’t have a developed address system with named roads and for the purpose of mail will either use a pin-drop (which can go wrong when described over the phone) or will just write a description (third house down the alley next to the pharmacy) which is very hard to sort and deliver.

An example of a country with this issue is Kenya.

Re:What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for ... by hamilyon2 on Monday May 03, 2021 @02:41AM (#27022297)
I don’t see Kenyan or any other African nation language for that matter in their supported languages list.

As other people noted it is hard to compete with universality of lat/Lon pair.

Re:What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for ... by ouchjars on Monday May 03, 2021 @03:51AM (#27022625)
Swahili, which they do support, is the national language of Kenya and a lingua franca in the region. They also have Amharic (Ethiopia), Xhosa and Zulu (South Africa).

I agree that supporting a finite set of languages isn't accessible enough, though.

Re:What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for ... by mparkms on Monday May 03, 2021 @03:50AM (#27022622)
"Kenyan" is not a language. I see Swahili in the list of languages, which along with English is one of the lingua franca of Kenya.
Re:What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for ... by Closi on Monday May 03, 2021 @06:21AM (#27023350)
> As other people noted it is hard to compete with universality of lat/Lon pair.

In order to get sufficient accuracy, you need to state lat/long to 6 decimal points, meaning the full number is c16 numbers long. It’s certainly not particularly user friendly.

I’m also not entirely sure what is meant by universality - it’s certainly not commonly used (who knows their own lat/long off by heart?) or commonly used for the location of houses or addresses in most of the world (try sending mail by writing a lat/long on it and popping it through the mail). In terms of things that compete with the ‘universality’ of lat/long - the main thing is address/postcode (although it depends on the use case). You can write my address on a postcard and put it in any post box and it will get to my house - that’s the real universal standard.

Re:What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for ... by TheCoelacanth on Monday May 03, 2021 @02:37PM (#27028962)
Are people who can't afford to name their roads really going to pay a premium for a slight usability improvement over plain GPS coordinates?
Re:What3Words sends legal threat to security researcher for ... by Closi on Tuesday May 04, 2021 @10:38AM (#27038067)
Apparently yes - See Djibouti-post.

Lat/Long's are actually pretty horrible to work with from a post/logistics perspective. There is a reason why nowhere in the world actually writes the lat/long on their mail!