• Semi-Hemi-Lemmygod@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I remember back when they first started getting popular I was at a conference and told a marketing person that we should make one instead of giving folks a long url. The marketing person said “I don’t know if we have the budget to register one.”

    I used to think that this was because the marketing person didn’t know how they worked, but now I know that they thought it worked like UPCs.

    Shout out to Masahiro Hara for not asserting his patent rights so this incredibly useful tool could be free.

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
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      5 days ago

      If he didn’t, one of the several other 2D barcodes would have caught on. I see non-QR ones around pretty often, though usually in industrial applications.

      I remember back around 2009, there were a few of these in the newspaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Capacity_Color_Barcode

      I don’t know how well it worked given the loose color registration. I didn’t have anything that could read them at the time.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        4 days ago

        Are you sure they weren’t just test colors? Most newspapers have them.

        I cannot imagine what information they needed to encode that required that level of information density.

    • UraniumBlazer@lemm.eeOP
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      6 days ago

      Very interesting video, I had no idea the level of redundancy built into QR codes.

      RIGHT?!! Same here. I didn’t know there was SO MUCH of thought put behind QR codes. I always assumed they were just bits visually represented in 2D with the three black squares being there for alignment purposes. Turns out it is a lot more complicated than that hehe

      Thanks!

      Np <3

    • 200ok@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Same! And now I know why my phone is able to scan a QR code, even when it’s only partially in the frame/border that comes up.