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Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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).

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.

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.

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

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