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Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

A real popular one would be QR codes. They were initially created to track manufacturing processes in the automotive industry. And you know how it is these days...

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QR codes are amazing and yet untapped, in my opinion. They're like barcodes but:

- amount of data can vary from small to large - error correction

They don't have to just hold URLs and can contain raw information that custom programs can read. I love their use in it for virtual currencies as public/private addresses b/c it simplifies them for users. Venmo also picked it up not too long ago to easily pay/request to people you may not have friended which is useful for street vendors.

Someone posted an example here about contact tracing and how it just leads to a web form to fill details in. Ideally, if we had our shit together, there can be some standard contact tracing format for QR and use programs to scan the data in to auto fill and submit your details to.

My wife said to me yesterday "How do I use a QR Code?". Keep in mind, she's a civil engineer and one of the smartest people I know.

I said "In what context?" because really, I didn't know either. "I have to scan this QR code if I go to my office. It's apparently posted at the door, and will let them know I've been there, for contact tracing."

After a lot of playing around, we finally found out her phone's camera could automatically read QR codes. When we did, the QR code in question was a URL to a website with a form, requiring her to enter all her information.

Not a fan of QR codes.

It sounds like you aren't a fan of the way this QR code was used.

I went to a restaurant the other day and it had one of those Coke Freestyle soda machines. There was a QR code on the screen which I scanned with my phone. This opened a website with drink choices. I put my cup under the dispenser and pushed the Barq's Root Beer button on the website on my phone which dispensed the drink from the machine.

I was impressed.

Wouldn’t pressing a button on a machine be easier?

Normally I would completely agree, but perhaps in covid times it can prevent people from leaving germs on the buttons??

You’re right.

It seems the perfect COVID-19 option. Completely touchless and fast. I was playing with a DMV kiosk and it took about half a second to recognize a key press.

That’s a fair point!

To me, this seems like a much more fragile and convoluted process than just having the buttons be on the machine itself. For one thing, the machine becomes unusable if there's any disruption to the network (wifi outage, dns issues, server maintenance, etc).

I wonder what the security implications of this would be. Did the QR code connect your phone to the machine locally, or is there some menu out there for every freestyle coke machine on the open internet?

If it's the latter I'd wager there's probably a way to remotely create a huuuge mess at some random five guys location.

When I tested one of these machines out 2 months ago, a new QR code was generated each time the machine timed out to the home page. At this point, the old QR code and even the loaded webpage became useless.

This means you can’t save the URL, leave the restaurant, then use it to control the machine later.

In Denver, I've seen many restaurants that have eliminated their physical menu and switched to a QR Code at the table that brings you to their menu online. Not as nice, but definitely useful in these times.

This one has been relevant for the last 10 years: https://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/

I feel like QR codes failed as a general UI tool. I get annoyed whenever I have to deal with one. They wee HUGE about 10 years ago. Now, not so much.

I don’t know about other places, but they’re getting a lot of use in NYC right now as a method for viewing restaurant menus for outdoor dining.

Here (Austin) it’s used in movie theaters that had seat food ordering and I gotta say thee execution is flawless now that the camera has a built in QR.

I think if QR could start over again and have support from the camera without the user needing to figure an app to use/get etc. things might have been different.

They also inspired similar usage for looking up a profile/resource in Snapchat, Spotify, Venmo, etc.

Same in Germany. Also for payment with WeChat in China.

It is big for payments in India too.

I agreed with this take until 2020 and subsequent shutdowns of varying levels occurred in my U.S. state (Oregon) due to Covid-19. There are several eateries in my city utilizing them to great effect for menus and ordering as they have pivoted to outdoor and no-touch dining. And now that I have finally embraced them on this level, I notice and use them more: flyers around town, links to video tutorials on products I have purchased, local printed media, etc.

That depends on where you are. Here every billboard and its cousin have a QR code. So does the beer at the local gas station.

In Paris, most restaurants I visited recently have now done away with paper menus due to COVID and instead have QR codes on each table for the menus.

Also Japan, being one of the earliest adopters, is still big on QR codes.

And of course anything involving mobile and cryptocurrency transactions. And mobile payments in most of South and South East Asia.

How so? They are effectively a `<link/>` IRL. I would say the UX is pretty good. I don't know how much easier it can get than pulling out your camera then taking a picture using the camera app.

Their use has exploded since Covid in dense cities: I regularly have to use them to fill out pre-screening forms for facilities ("do you have symptoms X or have been in contact..."), see restaurant menus, pay bills (receipt at a restaurant has a QR code printed on the bottom, link to an online checkout on your phone, so you don't have to handle the POS machine), etc.

I love QR codes, mostly because they are in-app now, and not restricted to one app or one company. The convenience is too good.

I find them pretty easy to deal with now, they used to be annoying when you needed a specific app to scan them though.

Apple is coming out with it's own version soon that should be popular (at least with iOS people):

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/05/18/ios-14-leak-apple-qr-co...

Really? I think they are quite a success, especially for making payments easy, for example

I really like Apple's implementation of an animated secure QR code [1] for migrating data from one device to another. It looks like undulating point cloud, and it has no formal name (but is described in 2 Apple patents as an "invisible optical label")

[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/301563/what-is-the...

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