4 ms·

Though QR codes are very interesting technically, they were designed to be used by devices with orders of magnitude less computational power than is currently t

Though QR codes are very interesting technically, they were designed to be used by devices with orders of magnitude less computational power than is currently the norm, and much lower resolution optics as well. This is a good thing from an error-prevention perspective, but I wonder if a more modern QR code could be designed for today's smartphones. I think an interesting new standard would take advantage of higher resolution cameras and OCR functionality to make data transparent to the consumer. I personally wonder what the hell is going to pop up on my phone every time I use a QR code... Text? URL? Link to an app store? Who knows. A standard which marks text as "data" would let a user know what they're saving, and let them point a camera in the general direction of some text, and all the relevant info be extracted and organized. (Think addresses, receipts, etc.) I already use my phone to remember lots of things - like I take a picture of the back of my DSL router for the access codes printed there, or take a picture of my bike tire to remember the size of the tube I need, etc. Or if transparency isn't important, given we have 4K cameras now, imagine if there was a popular standard using steganography! I can imagine movie posters having showtimes, director and actor info, URLs for streaming it online, etc. all baked into the image.

mjevans 6y ago
Most of your critique would be handled by proper input sanitation and allowing the user to review and confirm the best / default action. For a modern QR code I'd prefer something that allows more data and which also mandates support for some compression algorithms and data filters. Old QR codes are optimized for shrinking serial numbers, barcodes, and the like to a very small size on a product. That's a good use case and I feel they've sufficiently solved that problem domain. A modern QR might include more like a very tiny web-page, with a subset of allowed entities for security. An icon, or a link to an icon, image (links, maybe bitstream embed?), and simple links. I would ideally love to be able to hand out small files as blob patches on a business card, printed on a standard laser printer (300 DPI max resolution, assume 100 to 150ish DPI). Maybe two files on the back half. One a reasonable resume and the other a pack of public key data. Edit, back of napkin math: In the US that would be about 3.5in by 2in and in the dot density about 1.5 in square for each of two squares. At 300 that'd be 450 by 450 dots, or 150 by 150 in the minimum. 22500 to about 200000 bits, not including ECC. The upper density I'd like only offers about 25K of data. This might be enough for a compressed mostly text document or some well-packed PQC safe keys and en EC crypto key or two for current use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography#Comparison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography#Comp...

mjevans 6y ago

Most of your critique would be handled by proper input sanitation and allowing the user to review and confirm the best / default action. For a modern QR code I'd prefer something that allows more data and which also mandates support for some compression algorithms and data filters. Old QR codes are optimized for shrinking serial numbers, barcodes, and the like to a very small size on a product. That's a good use case and I feel they've sufficiently solved that problem domain. A modern QR might include more like a very tiny web-page, with a subset of allowed entities for security. An icon, or a link to an icon, image (links, maybe bitstream embed?), and simple links. I would ideally love to be able to hand out small files as blob patches on a business card, printed on a standard laser printer (300 DPI max resolution, assume 100 to 150ish DPI). Maybe two files on the back half. One a reasonable resume and the other a pack of public key data. Edit, back of napkin math: In the US that would be about 3.5in by 2in and in the dot density about 1.5 in square for each of two squares. At 300 that'd be 450 by 450 dots, or 150 by 150 in the minimum. 22500 to about 200000 bits, not including ECC. The upper density I'd like only offers about 25K of data. This might be enough for a compressed mostly text document or some well-packed PQC safe keys and en EC crypto key or two for current use. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography#Comparison https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography#Comp...