Gregory's ServerAbsolutely losing it after discovering what3words took control of the whatfreewords domain by arguing that "three" and "free" are indistinguishable when spoken.
https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/text.jsp?case=D2019-2439
 84 comments
   @CatherineFlick @jonty I'm from the midlands and I don't say "free" for 3, and I don't know anyone else that does. seems to be a weird stereotype, like that we say "hospicle" (it's "hospi'ul", with a glottal stop, not a hard C sound)  @gsuberland @CatherineFlick @jonty some people in London/Essex do pronounce three/free in a similar way, certainly enough to confuse systems like what3words...  @vfrmedia @CatherineFlick @VoronoV @jonty @gsuberland @vfrmedia @gsuberland @CatherineFlick @jonty indeed, here is an otherwise worthy local charity whose name I find absolutely infuriating (which presumably only goes to illustrate my prejudices) https://3food4u.org/  @ninkosan @CatherineFlick @gsuberland @jonty there's a right side?? (😜I get away with it as I'm a Brummie) @gsuberland @CatherineFlick @jonty I wouldn't generalize it to the whole Midlands, but my wife did most of her growing up in Shropshire and she genuinely cannot distinguish the sounds "f" and "th", either when speaking or when listening In case you're not aware, one of the primary issues with what3words is addresses containing words that are indistinguishable from others when spoken: https://w3w.me.ss  @cinebox e911 is specific to the US and Canada. Many other countries don't have this. In Australia there's an app called Emergency Plus ( emergencyplus.com.au ) developed by emergency services and government, which assists with 000 calls by showing on screen your latitude and longitude, your nearest address, and – of course – the What3Words for your location. The app doesn't automatically send this data to authorities when you make a call, you're expected to read it out to them. @cinebox Now of course, the real question is – if phones already have e911 capabilities built in, why don't other countries leverage this existing technology that's already on the phones of all their citizens?  @jonty That's impressively mindless. When I did a short post about w3w it was mainly as an improvement exercise. But I'm thinking of following up on actual problems because these guys think they can outdo the Post Office for crap. https://thenewstack.io/how-a-developer-might-improve-the-geolocation-app-what3words/ @jonty Wowwww. I haven't given W3W another thought since playing with it in a cartography class a few years ago. It seems to have a kill count. @jonty they're all over the life ring stations along the river near me. I can't think of anything worse than phoning up our local emergency services like: Me: "Quick, someone's drowning" * Yes, that's a real w3w address.   @jonty@chaos.social wonder how far it'd have to get before they stopped thinking this was a credible argument. what tree words?  @jonty how far can this be pushed before they recognise the irony? War tree worse  @jonty     @mattgrayyes @jonty Don't get me wrong, WTW is a briliant idea, just like 6 figure grid references and the phonetic alphabet. I just wish they'd see sense and learn the obvious lessons from both. But yeah, hahahahahaha in that respect!   @jonty Yeah I have an involuntary pushback reaction every time I see anyone (usually b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶d̶ sponsored) encouraging others to use that vile litigious shit. https://www.fourkingmaps.co.uk/ is my preferred (open) alternative.  @FXBOY4EVA @jonty Today I learned tampon.piersmorgan.arseclown.goldenshower is just outside Chelsea Hospital. @jonty Plenty of other alternatives such as :- https://fixphrase.com/ are of course available for the less expletively inclined 😉 @jonty An acquaintance of mine designed and built a comparable system to W3W - what3fucks. It worked well and, as you might imagine, was built on a dictionary of profanity. The W3W sent their lawyers into no-sense-of-humour mode. W3W is proprietary. Which is fine. What's *not* cool is when a government adopts that proprietary system for addressing and so it's locked up in so many ways. @mtmail @jonty Yeah, postal codes, particularly the fine-grained ones like ZIP+4 in USA, UK postal codes, Saudi short address, Israel's 7-digit, etc, etc, etc, are often bound up with intellectual property rights. (At least in England, Scotland & Wales there's CodePoint Open, sorry NI, SoL.) Re EIRCODES, I'll just leave it to this thread from the Other Place. Check the replies, too. https://twitter.com/PDverse/status/1280981313550454789?t=otmeGWv7uGypRpkk3ats3Q&s=19 @mtmail @jonty The key difference is that if the government pays to develop a fine-grained postal code system, albeit implemented by a privatised post office or, in the case of Ireland, by Capita, then there's usually some light at the end of the tunnel that the data might be made open on some way, medium term (cf. CodePoint Open). If you relinquish to W3W you are inextricably linked to a global-scale system run by a foreign company - until their patent runs out. @mtmail @jonty Apparently, at least the following are in the W3W web: Kiribati According to Wikipedia, W3W has been losing tens of millions every year. Idea for philanthropist: buy them up, wind up the company and free the patent. @jonty but, on the bright side, can we look forward to hotmale.com finally claiming its oft confused homophone site, hotmail.com?  @jonty It's like the old song, threedom's just another word, for nothing left to lose.   @coldclimate @jonty damnit, the bastards already took that one. https://www.udrpsearch.com/search?query=whattreewords.com&search=domain @SamJSharpe @coldclimate @jonty *Clearly* the site replicating their service should be whatfourwords.tld, with the fourth word being the invariant "bullshit".   @jonty a company called Wart-free Worms that sells to fishermen complained that what3words was putting out was bait  @jonty PSA: excellent video by Andrew Steele challenging the genius of #What3words https://youtu.be/SqK0ciE0rto  @jonty Had not heard of this - but trained in phonetics (and sometimes lip-reader) what THREE words is, to me, at least, Very different to What3words. What has happened since 2020?      @jonty they are the everflowing well for people who want examples of why intellectual property is an obscene concept. |
@jonty wat