You're both wrong. It only becomes a meteorite once embedded in the rock. Until then it's a meteor.

If you look at ALDI, they print multiple 1D bar codes that take the entire length of the box. This greatly decreases the time needed at the checkout stand to orient and scan the box.

https://www.the-sun.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/12/o...

I don't see chains like ALDI agreeing to anything else until they can prove the same speed and accuracy as the mega-1D print.

I can confirm that. Barcodes are in increased demand, since they offer an almost universal API to the physical world, kind of the not-IoT devices.

Jevons paradox in full force.

How do manufacturers print QR codes on packaging that potentially could change daily, like in the case for expiration dates? 1D barcodes don't ever change so they can be easily printed in mass on the packaging.

And that's exactly why they went with QR codes. The 2D barcode for checkout just contains a valid URL in a well-known format, so it can do double-duty as link-providing QR code for customer information. And because QR codes can store a lot of data, adding the batch information from the current tracking-only Datamatrix is trivial.

There will be no "wrong" barcodes to scan, just redundant ones for legacy devices.

Also, QR codes are a bar code.

What I found amusing is that the article claiming bar codes are dead is being displayed on devices with dozens if not hundreds of components with bar codes (matrix codes) on them.

Urgh. Yazio. Use it for basic calorie tracking and the camera support. Could do without the gamification. Could really do with "scan barcode, OCR the nutrition table". Manual inputs by the other users has led me to find multiple foods where the kj value was supplied as the kcal value..

There are several things happening:

- Retail 2D codes are being rolled out at scale from next year already in many markets; 2d codes will be on many products in the supermarket. Preparations for this have been ongoing for quite long. Mostly scanners have been ready for this for some time. Most recent hardware should handle all this fine. Scanners that don't handle 2D will rapidly disappear.

- For industrial use, QR codes are already quite common. Use of QR codes is much less about replacing existing bar codes with QR codes and more about completely new uses for QR codes. You are right that most factories won't do invasive changes in their setups unless there's a good reason. But efficiency improvements tend to be a good reason.

I was at the Logimat fair in Stuttgart earlier this year. Lots of companies demonstrating scanners, sticker printing, camera modules, and all the rest. There are a lot of companies actively pushing all sorts of solutions around 2D codes.

Linear barcodes aren't going extinct any time soon.

Instead, we'll see an IPv6 style transition, with some early adopters and others having no reason to change over.

Makers of short-life products like pre-packaged sushi will be at the front of the line as they get real benefits from tracking dates and batches throughout the supply chain. Retailers accidentally selling expired sushi does genuine reputational damage.

Makers of long-life products, though? That 24-pack of cans of diet coke has its barcode printed by the box factory, not the canning factory. Putting the expiry date in the barcode would be a total hassle, for very little benefit. If forced to, they'll just print the QR code next to the linear barcode, with exactly the same data.

And even if a retailer has the market power to bully their suppliers - there's no motivation to do so for non-fresh products. All commercial scanners that can read QR codes can also read linear barcodes. Wal-Mart doesn't lose anything if their bleach supplier keeps using a linear barcode.

As I understand it, The key bits of data are in the QR code, they are just encoded as a URL - a highly structured URL that point of sale systems can decode without visiting the URL.

Doing it this way means the QR code is directly usable by consumers to get to a product info / marketing page, and directly usable by the POS systems.

Edit: I looked it up. An example URL:

https://example.com/01/09521207311511/21/1234ABDE1235

01 is a marker before the traditional barcode.

21 is a marker before the serial number.

There seems to be many other codes like 17 (expiry date) and 10 (batch number).

thank you, Claude, very cool.

Yes, but it's no different from the QR codes already present on many consumer products. In fact, it is easier to spot, as either a cashier (or someone at a self-checkout) is likely to notice that there's a sticker over the barcode and get suspicious that there's some kind of fraud going on.

The standard URL format can also be encoded into RFID tags.

This is likely where things will head as printing serialized products is slow, cumbersome and is fraught with issues due to smearing, resolution etc.. and the reason you mentioned.

An infinitely wide but infinitely short world should suffice.

Interesting, but your website looks completely AI-slopped.

You need example product pages.

This doesnt happen in English mode? I guess it tries to interpret a payment code but then obviously throws an error. Protip you can scan your products and then show payment code, or tap nfc, no need to touch the screen at any point (except for 18+ products)

Yeah. But this is a problem this can fix, in theory. Instead of having multiple codes you could just have one with the info for every piece of the chain that needs it.

Context: Back then the user experience was terrible, cameras and phones were so slow that scanning even one code was a painful chore.

Been a huge fan of QR codes since the beginning. URLs are awesome, and QR codes are a way of putting links in the real world. Obviously awesome! There was a dark period in the early 2010s where everyone I said this to sent me a link to an empty tumblr "people scanning at codes", but I'm glad they've gotten more traction. Took a trip to Santiago this past week, and they are ubiquitous: from room service and connecting to WiFi to menus in every restaurant. Super cool.

QR Codes were heavily promoted during the global lockdown.

It's entirely predictable: First they ridicule it; second they say it violates existing norms for how things are done; third they say they accepted it all along.

That trite saying is very real. You're describing stage 2. Stage 2 is a good signal that the development has enough power to be difficult to ridicule.

Except there are mandates like FSMA 204 that make them required.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCR-A

It has been tried, I am pretty sure this is just a move from the bar code association to be able to charge more for having barcodes. That is why it is so complicated.

The trajectory of this is heavily optimized packaging design, isn’t it? Which overshoots simple codes integrated with any design.

How to i keep my thumb off it during scanning?

I don't see how this is better, my first thoughts: more difficult to print, more difficult to scan, vulnerable to light shifts (imagine trying to scan a can with colored bar code in a club with flashing lights) and impossible to print in some technolgies.

Bar code won't go away exact for the reason it's super simple to scan and print. Even QR codes can't stand that (and if you tried scanning yourself grocery in soft bag with barcode in the corner which gets crumpled you know what I mean).

It's not easy to print in color on some products (e.g. products that use thermal printer labels).

I love how the website shows examples and comparisons with the codes it claims to be better than.

Putting a chip on everything sounds wasteful and worse for the environment than a printed piece of paper. Not the right direction to go in.

Decathlon does it in every country, not just France. Same with Uniqlo and a few others, but it's still only very large chains that can afford it

And what is average price of one product in Decathlon compared to Lidl? Apples and oranges. How do you put RFID on fruit, vegetables and pastry btw. or you propose wrapping everything in unnecessary packaging?

Too pricey for food, it’s cheaper to print.

Can any regular smartphone scan those RFID tags? If not, then the QR codes are superior because they can be scanned, making it trivial to use them for product recalls.

Merchandise point-of-sales tags isn't the only use of barcode or QR codes. Hospitals aren't going to start putting RFID for all equipment, files, and patients.

I am quite sure they still use optical on the German shops.

Sure,nobody cares.

But if my phone automatically tells me about stuff in my fridge :

-The cheese has expired or about to be expired

-There's a recall on that baby formula

That's useful.

Or if uses those smart carts at the supermarket, it can tell me:

-this isn't safe with my peanut allergy

-this isn't ethically sourced

-the expiry date is too short

> Cough IRC, email

Luckily the first, and increasingly the second, are being replaced by Slack!

Not at all. I worked apart time job delivering parcels that were scanned with a specialized bar code scanner. Most of the parcels had dual barcode/QR codes for the tracking number. You would be surprised how much damage could be done to the QR codes before they were unreadable. Even if the QR code had small folds over itself the codes would still read. The barcodes were unreadable with the slightest amount of damage or ink bleed.

Isn't it the other way around? QR codes have built-in error correction whereas barcodes typically don't (beyond a single check-digit, which is more error detection rather than correction, and even that depends on the information being encoded) so can sustain a surprisingly large amount of damage and still be readable.

Indeed, I often see QR codes which have been deliberately damaged for the visual impact (e.g. chunks missing to make a pleasing shape, or place an arbitrary logo in the centre). They still work due to the error correction but now there's no redundancy left and one additional piece of damage might literally make it unreadable.

> Reminds me of RFID labels pipe dream.

Visit a decathlon when you have time, they’ve been using that since a long time, it’s neat

In the UK I've noticed some items having 2D barcodes instead of 1D ones lately. Of course, all the scanners have been able to read them all for years now. They're not all QR codes, though. Other 2D barcodes exist.

Most barcode scanners are already cameras, actually. Turns out that it is a lot cheaper to manufacture than the old "put a mirror on a moving 2d servo assembly" approach - and it's more reliable as well.

You can get an entry-level barcode scanner from a reputable brand with 2d support for less than 100 bucks, and you'll have trouble finding any kind of premium scanner which doesn't have 2d support.