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Comment by tsukikage | Hacker News Reader

> presumably they'll have some paper menus

Increasingly commonly, that's a "nope". If I don't have an internet-connected device capable of dealing with a QR code about my person, eating out is no longer for me. Perhaps it's time to go back to the old people's home, the nurse has been searching for hours.

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If QR is the only option, I make the server tell me what's on the menu.

I'm an old guy with bad eyes I'm not going to try to read your menu on a 5" phone screen in a dim restaurant.

I too make the server tell me what's on the menu, because I grew up in the 8th century BCE when literacy hadn't yet overtaken the strong oral chanting tradition of preserving and transmitting information, and I believe that the written word is a debasement of human intellect.

If there’s no written menu available what’s the other option?

Genuinely asking: wouldn’t a phone be _better_ for you?

Reading a _paper_ menu in a dim room is a miserable experience, but you can zoom in as much as you want on a phone, and you control the brightness of it, and don’t have to angle the piece of paper to catch as much light as possible?

I have astigmatism and reflected light is a lot better than direct light. Reading on a phone or a laptop screen without glasses is a massive pain. But I don’t go everywhere with them, and I’d prefer using my phone flashlight to read the paper menu.

To read a piece of paper I only need glasses or magnifying glass, and the entire menu is still available; it's easy to jump from one place to another on it. Zooming in on a small screen restricts the amount of information I can readily access, and forces me to scroll around to find what I want

> If I don't have an internet-connected device capable of dealing with a QR code about my person, eating out is no longer for me.

What kind of dystopian city do you live in? QR codes are on the decline again¹, fortunately.

1: https://www.theguardian.com/food/2023/may/23/off-the-menu-wh...

I can think of a large number of restaurants in Richmond BC that are still this way. (And only Richmond; neighbouring Vancouver/Burnaby/New West/Surrey are fine.)

I feel like my IQ has dropped 10 points after reading that article

Or, I have no idea how these QR providers work, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this was the sort of low-effort service that restaurants don’t want to pay for. So, maybe ad/tracking funded.

It is annoying when a transaction that for ages has been all-paper gets bumped into the panopticon.

QR codes can encode many things, including a url. If your restaurant already has a reasonable menu online, you can just link to that. No need to pay anyone, other than if you fancy print the qr code notices.

If I owned a restaurant that’s what I’d do, but the ones around here typically end up linking the QR code to some complicated website for some reason.

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