426: Geohashing
explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
| Geohashing |
 Title text: Saturday is game night |
[edit] Explanation
Geocaching is a sport where you have to find things hidden by other people based on geographical coordinates. Randall has had a similar idea before in 201: Christmas GPS.
Geohashing is a sport created by Randall based on reaching a random location determined by an algorithm that involves the current date, location and Dow opening price.
The algorithm is built in a way that:
- Makes it impossible to plan a meeting in advance (because of the Dow)
- Changes every day
- Gathers people that are nearby (everyone within the same 1°×1° grid square gets the same position)
Originally intended as a joke, there are people which do geohashing regularly. Please see the link to the xkcd wiki above.
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect. If you see a way to improve it, edit it! Thanks. |
[edit] Trivia
In response to comic 353: Python, the Python developers implemented the module antigravity in version 2.7+. This module contains a reference geohashing function.
[edit] Transcript
- Date (example): 2005-05-26
- That date's (or most recent) DOW opening: 10458.68
- [Concatenate, with a hyphen: 2005-05-26-10458.68]
- md5: db9318c2259923d08b672cb305440f97
- [Split it up into two pieces:]
- 0.db9318c2259923d0, 0.8b672cb305440f97
- To decimal: 0.857713..., 0.544544...
- Your location (example): 37.421542, -122.085589
- [Combine integer part of location with fractional part of hash:]
- Destination Coordinates: 37.857713, -122.544544
- Sample Implementation: http://xkcd.com/geohashing/
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