My Weird Prompts
Daniel Rosehill
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Plus Codes, Geohash, and the Open Addressing Gap
Google's Open Location Code was designed to work completely offline, with no geocoding service and no proprietary database in the middle. Then the consumer interface shipped a shortened form that needs a locality name — and a locality name needs Google. We trace the mechanics of code shortening, the base-20 alphabet built by testing eight billion combinations against words in thirty languages, and why a hundred-metre ambiguity in Zurich is enough to break the whole promise. Then we go looking for the purer version: eleven language ports, a zero-dependency TypeScript library, an offline Garmin watch datafield — and the standalone consumer app that we could not confirm exists. Key sources: • OLC repo README, Apache-2.0, last push 2026-03-30. — https://github.com/google/open-location-code • OLC definition paper (Rinckes & Bunge). — https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/Documentation/Specification/olc_definition.adoc • An Evaluation of Location Encoding Systems. — https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/main/Documentation/Reference/comparison.adoc Episode 5925 — myweirdprompts.com/n/5925 (permanent short link: myweirdprompts.com/428576)
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