[zf00002]

Anyone else scan their random junk that has QR codes to see where it goes? I've found a fair number of stuff has codes that do nothing. Bought an extra garage door opener remote, qr code on it does nothing. Got some SwitchBot gear, qr codes do absolutely nothing.

[kqr]

QR codes, like other barcodes, store information. They never "do" anything.

Or are you saying the ones you found failed to checksum?

[thesuitonym]

QR codes were invented for inventorying and labeling. Sending links to your phone is a side effect.

[Ajakks]

No. They were invented for whatever reason and then the ability to be a link a phone can scan became their primary function when everyone on Earth started carrying phones. Pokemon cards have QR codes - every kid scans them, do you think they think whatever you do? I had a startup in 2012 that extensively used QR codes to make a game kinda like Pokémon Go and various "Scan to Win" games (I had in 3 bars and were scanned 50k times in their 1st month in a town of 12k people) I over invested in the local area and I ultimately failed bc of a handful of Boomers that literally believed smartphones were a "fad" and convinced several organizations to spend their marketing budgets on literally the newspaper and convinced several organizations to back pedal their investment and cancel deals already made. This post and all these comments proves most people still have no idea what a QR code actually is - none should ever be made that can't be changed at will later 1st off - they should also all be AR codes - bc a smartphone just needs to look at them with the camera open and you can have any graphic you start want start playing as they look at it without needing to scan. They are the easiest link in reality to the digital world - nothing has come of them bc people severely lack imagination.

[emj]

AR codes does not seem to be that seamless, but I am a Boomer by heart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARToolKit

[Ajakks]

The real reason nothing has been done with AR - bc it could easily function exactly as I said industry wide - is bc the people that make our phones do not want us engaging more with our actual reality, they don't want our phones to be a tool we use to see the world - they just want our eyes glued to the screens. They profit off our attention, so they keep it for money - much of the world sucks for exactly such reasons.

So, know that it may not be that seamless but I've experienced practically seamless AR, by simply opening an app camera, instead my default camera and I was able to do that to "blow peoples minds" back in 2012 - nobody had seen Pokémon Go yet and we showing them animated characters running around the actual room.

If a phone can automatically scan a QR code - which virtually all of them do, there is no reason it can't scan an AR tag built into the QR code by default also - not like a "real" reason.

I'll look into it later but I'm assuming its a bunch of excuses of the type corpos typically run with when they dont intend to do something - I dont really believe there is a patent they wouldn't infringe to keep our attention on lock - the AR tech existed 15 years ago and, just like Pokémon Go, its actually really cool stuff and has tons of very real applications that we haven't even skimmed the surface of yet.

Everyone isnt wearing smart glasses yet, but they are here for real now - ideally everything on earth is AR tagged or equivalent (there are several ways to do this now actually, tagless ways even) before we all have those glasses on - bc it will 100% certainly become so after that shift transpires.

The very fact that you even looked into AR makes you a better Boomer in my book - I'm sure a lot of Boomers on HN are like you, I will consider that more in the future when commenting here.

I hope you have a great day.

Sry for the book - I think you made me feel a little guilty, which is interesting.

[InitialLastName]

I work in hardware manufacturing. Our PCBs have QR codes both on the silkscreen and on stickers, but they don't encode websites. Rather, they are part numbers and serial/lot numbers for traceability and to assist manufacturing/inventory. Unless you know our (and our upstream manufacturers') specific patterns, they'll be irrelevant to you.

[opan]

I used to in the mid 2000s but they kinda lost their magic for me at some point. They briefly regained the magic when I realized I could encode arbitrary text and make my own, but then I had so much trouble scanning the giant QR code I made (from printer paper) that the magic was gone again.

[moralestapia]

>qr code on it does nothing

It's like in the 2000s when you opened an .exe and nothing seemed to happen ... bad news.

[rossant]

They likely encode not URLs for the public, but internal identifiers that are only useful internally.