Even better: you can encode an ID like in qr/barcode or what ever you want or you also can encode URLs and have some backend processing the "access to the partial URL". You can have a lot information encoded. As i remember its more than with ordinary QR code at the same area. May be I have forgotten something.
Its actually the base for the "holy grail 2.0" initiative to make recycling of printed packaging better. It then doesnt even matter if you only have a peace of the packaging. It must be big enough to carry the code (that roughly 4x4 cm). The code has some ID which is looked up and then all the information neccessary to know what material it is, how to recycle it - all the important things can be looked up in the DB and then handled accordingly.
its a nice thing with own problems, but better approach as barcode/qr code.
I also like the aesthetics of QR codes better than traditional barcodes. They do kind of invoke the look of a Go board partway through a game, which is more visually interesting than the boring straight lines of the traditional barcode.
I'll be glad to see a better Claude than Claude.
Hopefully they can reproduce and ensure the survival of their species.
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).
Perhaps not for files, but definitely for equipment.
I suspect it's less relevant for things that can't be moved. (Or are extremely heavy/difficult to move).
While it can indeed be helpful as an indication, cost often doesn't factor in externalities such as pollution during production, and recycling after use. Paper has much fewer problems in those areas.
Nothing to see here and there can't be any possible negative consequences when people are making so much money.
Even if the customers does it, it still takes a lot more time and space than scanning a basket full of RFIDs labels. It literally takes seconds.
Utility is key and RFID has a lot of advantages over bar codes (and QR codes).
My diving mask and backpack certainly went through optical.
Surely the actual data will be stored in the QR code and available offline
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).
The whole point of it is that you can just say "scan the barcode with your smartphone to find out if your product is part of this recall".
We have the technology to encode a short, plain human-readable description of an item into a 2D barcode, with born-on and/or sell-by dates, and/or things like serialization and/or lot codes, or other useful things.
Brevity is important; fields can have a standardized-but-flexible format that fits the particular item's needs.
A single-quantity small Fuji apple, picked today (October 3, 2026), with a PLU of 4129, and a magic-number lot code of b29sF, distributed by Stemilt Growers might present as such:
Apple Fuji Sm,B0261003,P4129,Lb29sF,MStemilt
Water Spring 1.5l,D0280112,U07514000500,Lkek67,MCG
https://example.com/01/09521207311511/21/1234ABDE1235
It's just that, sadly, we can no longer have nice things.
If items have unique (ie serialized) codes, then it's safe to assume that those codes will be recorded at purchase (since that's kind of the whole point), along with who bought them (yay discount cards and cashless society).
Now the contents of my pantry describe things like where I've been, when I was there, and/or who I hang out with. Fun times!
Even with cash and without discount cards: One random food label out of a recycling bin can relate all the way to photos of the purchaser's face at checkout, track them walking to their car, and see where that car went. This could happen months or years down the road.
Most of those pieces are already in-place: Our photos are already recorded alongside of our transaction details -- that's been going on in POS world for a long time. Tracking people to their vehicle is a function of Avigilon camera systems. Tracking the car itself is the primary purpose of Flock.
All that's missing right now is serialization records and a centralized database.
I'm sure that nobody will ever finish fitting these things together into a cohesive system and that nobody would ever use it with ill intent.
It probably would never happen anyway, since there's not a single retailer on Earth who would ever exchange this kind of data for an upgrade to their in-store surveillance systems and a monthly check. ;)
(And we still don't get directly-useful consumer information into or out of these new 2D barcodes. I love losing.)
I reckon they already have a pretty reasonable idea of which store it ends up going to, and with just-in-time resupply a pretty reasonable bound of when it will end up having been sold. Look at the overlap of a few dozen products and it should be quite easy to reduce the number of people who could've bought all of them to just you.
The QR codes just make this more explicit, and slightly easier to track. You're not wrong, but at least this time we could get, say, automated warnings in the Walmart app of a recall on something you bought out of it.
So it's still a deductive process at best to correlate a lot number and a consumer. If all we have to go on is the implication of a limited range of lot codes, then the results are fuzzy.
Tomorrow, with unique serialization: The right person will absolutely be able to pin down exactly which store a particular can of beans was bought at, and when, and by whom. It's not just something that is made "slightly easier" -- it is instead a fundamental built-in capability of the concept. There's nothing to deduce or to guess at when this unique data is collected and correlated both deliberately, and automatically.
(RFID product tags, commonly known as EPCs, are also usually unique. This property reduces error from duplicate reads. When each tag is unique, it disambiguates a checkout involving 3 packs of #2 pencils from a checkout with just 1 pack of #2 pencils that was read 3 different times.
To pick one standard: SGTIN-96 is often used for EPCs on individual items and includes 38 bits for a serial number. That's enough bits for ~274 billion unique numbers. So with a haystack of 274 billion packages of #2 pencils sold and scattered around the world, the one in my desk drawer is very easy to identify.)
As I understand it, fields are standardized. I don't think they contain the name of the product (I didn't read the spec), but the other info is there, so no need to hit the servers/db on other servers.
As for the quantity of data, Qr codes have special encoding modes depending on the content. The numeric mode uses 3.3 bits per digit, the alphanumeric 5.5 bits per character (45 characters in the set). Switching modes in the stream is supported, though it adds a few bits of overhead.
Looking at the examples, it looks like the scheme is not as efficient as it could be (pesky slashes, alphanumeric at the end), but that's not too bad either.
It was just a quick expression of an idea, presented in the form of a gripe; it's not a formal specification.
As to consumers, and their hardware: People still get new phones and features can be (and sometimes actually are) added to existing phones. I'm not too worried about it as a constraint; things would catch up soon enough.
The reason they're so verbose comes from a few facts.
First of all, it's an existing logistics labelling standard, they've just replaced brackets with forward slashes and put a domain name on the front. So https://example.com/01/09521207311511/21/1234ABDE1235 is just a QR code version of those huge barcodes like (01)09521207311511(21)1234ABDE1235 you see on cases of products in the supermarket.
Second of all, the standard doesn't limit itself to a single date, so they can't identify dates with a simple ,D prefix. It's a kitchen sink standard [1] with 16 different types of date (production date, due date, packaging date, sell by date, best before date, expiration date, release date, first freeze date, harvest date, production date and time...) and just as many options for sizes and weights - so the identifier can be up to 4 digits. /11/ or /8008/
The third thing to know is QR codes pack different alphabets at different densities. Numbers at 3.5 bits per character, upper case letters and some symbols at 5.5 bits per character, ASCII at 8 bits per character. So the 13 characters of of "Apple Fuji Sm" uses about as much space in a QR code as a 29-digit number like "12345678901234567890123456789"
Fourth, you've replaced the 14-digit GTIN with an 11-digit UPC and replace the 13-digit serial number with a 5-digit lot code :)
IMHO the standard isn't going to take over the world, and anyone who says "Barcodes are about to go extinct" doesn't know what they're talking about. But it's not the information density, it's other reasons.
I have been deep into this space for a fair bit of time now. The real power is in Recalls and Return Fraud. There a ton of other nice things that this will empower of course. AMA - I will do my best to answer.
For some other stuff to read about how they can help have a poke at https://blog.closient.com/
Not advertising - just trying to get the word out on 2D codes and RFID and what they provide consumers.
For those saying "Why not something else?" - it comes down to adoption - QR was just the more popular winner. While the register/till is where most of the scanning is happening the QR is just a normal URL and consumer can scan them.
Just don't bury the core concept of your product in marketing-slop on your website (this site is certainly pushing that limit for me).
HN readers are probably much deeper down the AI rabbit hole than people who buy barcode software. The fact you see and judge an AI-created website poorly doesn't mean customers of the product will.
It's possible that you're in the middle of the Venn diagram of barcode software buyers and HN readers though. In that case your comment is very insightful.
I am actually looking for feedback if they are giving it.
My hope was to help spread information about the upcoming changes to packaging but knew I might get the stings of criticism.
Not denying what it is.
Any suggestions on how to unslup it are always welcome.
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
This won’t work for groceries though: the margins are too thin and there’s too many manufacturers.
Sadly food tracking apps still don't read these codes. They are vibe coding new features constantly but not working on adding what is actually important.
Yazio, im talking to you...
An unintentionally appropriate metaphor. How many of the ~17 meteorites that hit the planet per day do you pay attention to?
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.
- 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.
For a quick test I projected a flat QR code onto the surface of a cylinder, printed the distorted image on a household printer, wrapped the paper around a 3 mm diameter wire. The result is readable from a still image made by a smartphone.
It haven't worked with 2 mm image / cable, but I'm pretty sure that's just limit of my printer's resolution. With 600 DPI there is only 2-3 dots per QR code pixel.
You could repeat that pattern with few degrees of rotation so one will always be in the right enough orientation to decode.
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.
1D barcode is like CSV, it's not going away, it's too simple/useful/cheap.
Remember the most important fact about these codes: 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
You're only buying eggs every second week? We can't have that, let's present you with a recipe that uses eggs. You still have those cookies you bought four days ago? Let's give you a coupon for milk.
And there will be a nice recipe or a coupon or a Very Limited Exclusive Offer you'll need to send to a friend, so now the app need access to your contacts, and why not sync that info with Meta, and oh look at that, we have a map of all our customers and their spending habits and geographical location and political orientation.
Barcodes are easy and cheap to read in a way that QR codes aren’t (particularly complex ones)
Any old cheap laser scanner will read a barcode and they can be made at large sizes e.g. how Aldi use them on products in the UK to make self scan faster
QR codes need a camera, their complexity goes up as more data is encoded in them so require better cameras especially is high speed situations
They both have places in the world and will co-exist for years to come
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.
Got cheap one from China that does my uses cases pretty well. Supports USB, proprietary wireless and BT...
There is cheaper models with less features. Pointing towards quite a lot of market segmentation. And I could guess some of those models are same but with different firmware...
I’ve worked in areas where barcodes and QR codes were used for automation — we used both but for fast, cheap and reliable scanning barcodes were the winner
Where more data needed to be encoded then QR codes were used but the wuality and price of cameras needed to read QR codes as items came based on an automated line was significantly more costly than barcodes
Are there studies on how that might affect logistics?
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.
1d bar codes will go extinct, but only after every scanning system at every retailer has changed to recognize 2d bar codes/qr codes. This will likely take decades.
In the meantime, there will be a world where 2d bar codes and 1d bar codes will coexist on packs. With the additional confusion that many packs already have qr codes, either for consumer information or for internal tracking at the plant (batches for quality control), so we will probably have a little zoo of qr codes for a while, until they all finally can be merged.
There will be no "wrong" barcodes to scan, just redundant ones for legacy devices.
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.
Jevons paradox in full force.
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.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing#QR_code_phishing_(qui...
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.
Besides, it has gotten less attractive over time. With the rise of self-checkout stores no longer save on cashiers by switching to RFID. The kind of tag to support "scan an entire basket at once" isn't compatible with being scanned by a NFC-enabled smartphone, so you can't use them for extra recall information either.
Serialized printing is basically a solved problem by now. I have several dozen products using it in my kitchen pantry right now, and none of them suffer from smearing or have low resolutions - and I can guarantee you they were rapidly and automatically applied in mass produciton.
Luckily the first, and increasingly the second, are being replaced by Slack!
"In 1992, on a factory floor in a Toyota auto-parts subsidiary in Japan, workers were drowning in barcodes."
(collect underpants)
"And that decision is about to change every single thing you buy."
I think recognizing packaging sounds like an ideal use for AGI. Boil them oceans, not the eggs.
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.
