> If there's any silver lining to COVID, it's QR codes being normalized

I'm not sure if I would call this a "silver lining". In parts of Europe (I noticed it especially in Germany and Austria) they were normalized to a point were a lot of non-techsavvy people now think "QR codes" are kind of synonym to successful "digitalisation".

It's now even more painful to watch misguided attempts to digitalize shitty (business/administrative...) processes. QR codes just feel like the poor man's blockchain.