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Technology

Universal Product Code Barcode Will Be Supplanted By 2027 With a More Data-Rich '2D' Barcode (axios.com) 206

Posted by BeauHD from the more-data-rich dept.
The humble and familiar barcode -- a staple on consumer packaging for nearly 50 years -- will soon be replaced with a more robust and muscular successor that offers far more information about the product inside. Axios reports: In a worldwide push called "Sunrise 2027," the retail industry is transitioning from the standard 12-digit barcode -- that square of vertical lines that's printed on a package and makes it go "beep" at the checkout scanner -- to a two-dimensional web-enabled version. The effort is being orchestrated by GS1 US, the nonprofit standards organization that oversees the barcode world. In the United States, Universal Product Code (UPC) barcodes will be supplanted by a new 2D type, with information encoded on both the horizontal and vertical axes. By 2027, only the 2D barcodes will be accepted at registers globally.

The new "2D" barcodes will unlock reams of online extras (for consumers) and revolutionize inventory management (for retailers). Scanning them may tell us the field where something was grown, the factory where a garment was sewn, the sustainability practices of the company that made it -- or the washing instructions. [...] Stores will be able to respond immediately to product recalls, identifying faulty items and removing them from shelves. They'll be able to flag foods that are approaching their sell-by date -- and offer discounts before they expire. Consumers will gain online access to a trove of useful data -- everything from ingredients, recipes and potential allergens to promotional offers and information about how to recycle the product.

GS1 US just released a "barcode capabilities test kit" to help retailers evaluate their readiness for the 2D transition. We can expect to start seeing more products printed with 2D barcodes (or both types, as the transition moves forward) fairly soon.
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Universal Product Code Barcode Will Be Supplanted By 2027 With a More Data-Rich '2D' Barcode More

Universal Product Code Barcode Will Be Supplanted By 2027 With a More Data-Rich '2D' Barcode

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  • Meh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:44PM (#63457218)
    I really don't care. As long as it doesn't take any longer than the 2d stuff now.
    Fuck the useless online feature the article promotes. It will not be used for safety or discounts. It will be another place to put ads to amuse the mouth breathers.

    • Re: Meh (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 )

      One thing I've really been wanting out of labels is more nutritional data. Manufacturers tend to have additional micronutrient data after they send packaged goods to food labs for analysis, but they don't put it on package labels because there's enough data from it to fit two 8x11 pages, so they're allowed to limit it, which is totally reasonable.

      However, this information is very important for people with certain medical conditions, and is generally hard to access. Usually if you just ask the manufacturer,

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )

        If they don't care enough to put it on their website, why do you think they'd care enough to put it in a barcode? And if it's already on their website, the gains of this new system are minimal to none.

        If this unlocks some special new functionality for the supply chain, that's fine let's switch. But the consumer oriented part seems gimicky and unnecessary. Or could be done by a QR code.

    • Re:Meh (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @10:10PM (#63457784)

      The new 2D barcode will fail.

      The main reason it will fail is the chicken-and-egg problem.

      Standard UPC barcodes are already on millions of products, and millions of retail establishments already have UPC barcode scanners.

      So new packaging will have only UPCs or maybe both, but never only the new 2D barcode. If they have both, there is no reason for retailers to update their scanners.

      The second reason it will fail is that it doesn't solve any actual problem. You don't need to cram information like serving size or nutrition into a 2D barcode. Just use the old-fashioned UPC as an index into a database, which millions of manufacturers and retailers already do.

      • Re:Meh (Score:5, Informative)

        by anoncoward69 ( 6496862 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @12:03AM (#63457908)
        Probably not. Most barcode scanners installed at retailers have been 2d barcode ready for the last decade or more. Ever since we moved on from spinning mirror laser barcode scanners, most of these scanners now just wash the entire bardcode in light, usually red, snap a picture of the code with a camera module, then decode what's in the image. Really all it would probably need is an update to the software running in the POS terminal to support the extra data they contain and to parse out whats needed to complete the transaction.. Old spinning mirror laser scanners could only do the old style linear bar codes because they worked by sweeping the beam over the code and looking for the pulses of light as the laser swept over it.

      • I'm not sure that really makes much sense. They are giving a transition date limit, by which time retailers must be ready with new 2D scanners - a whole five years. So retailers have a firm time limit by which they must transition. Beyond that point, we're going to see products with only the 2D codes. The chicken and egg problem is solved by declaring which one comes first, and in this case, it's the requirement for the new systems.

        As for "millions of products and millions of retail establishments alrea

        • They are giving a transition date limit

          Who are "they" and what enforcement power do "they" have over either manufacturers or retailers?

          Millions of retailers also didn't have readers that could deal with chip & pin credit cards

          Millions still don't. At least in America, I've never seen chip & pin working anywhere.

        • Many are using laser barcode scanners, and these can't do 2D. Those old scanners are bulletproof, purchased decades ago and still going strong. They are also built into the system's produce scale, and the whole counter structure built around them.

          You are asking the retailers to change their entire POS setup. That will be many thousands per checkout lane.

      • It might not but yes, what's the actual value add here? It does exactly the same as before, but now with extra web! Manufacturers have been able to include QR codes on products for ages with extra info. Thy haven't mostly, because presumably no one actually wants it.

      • The GS1 proposal already takes into account backwards compatibility. Scanners that can read the new 2D format will be able to transpose the data into the old format for POS systems so they don't need to be updated if they aren't making use of the additional information.

        2D barcodes have the added feature of error correction, which 1D barcodes do not have, at most they have a checksum to ensure it was read correctly but checksums don't correct errors. This should make it easier to read codes, including damage

      • It will succeed. This has been announced by GS1, the body responsible for the UPC standard for retail and for assigning codes to companies/products. They've mandated that products will no longer use UPC in 2027.

    • It isn't as if we haven't had PDF417 barcodes for over almost two decades. Some libraries used them for their MARC info for branches that were not networked with the central library in the past.

  • Usual question (Score:3)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:49PM (#63457236)

    How to block the ads and the privacy rape?

    • You can't. Those are features.
      Ads are the only things that would pay the sorry devs any money for their work.

    • You don't scan the barcode with your phone?

      Seems like a worthwhile move for manufacturers, retailers, and grocery stores, with better product tracking (good for safety recalls) and better inventory management. Sort of "meh" benefits for the consumer, but probably not many downsides either.

      I'm not seeing any evidence that this will require sending any information about you and/or your purchase directly to manufacturers during the normal checkout process. In fact, I'd take a guess that's probably very illeg

      • Tracking by the retail store like that is done already. The only difference is that they will now be able to track the batch number of the product you buy which is actually helpful to the consumer, it means that if there is a recall on a product the retailer can know exactly who bought from that particular batch and contact them directly to let them know not to consume it. It could even be used to automatically credit the consumer for the product.

      • I don't need to scan it myself to link the product to me. The store will do that just fine.

        I don't know whether your country has those "loyalty cards". Over here, they went a step further. They created something akin to a "national payback card". A loyalty card that is shared by pretty much any relevant store, from groceries to stationary stores.

        Now ponder the implications when they can pinpoint exactly WHICH product (not just that you bought the Munchmunch Flakes, but that exact box of Munchmunch Flakes) y

  • Empty promises (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    You could equally well have a site (and companion "app") where you can look up any product barcode and get those "reams of extras" right now. The difficulty is gathering up all the data, not pointing to it through a barcode.

    All a "2D barcode" is, is still a barcode. The ability to add a URL to the payload (because there's more room in the encoding) doesn't really help materially. It does open a well-known door to fraud and like trickery.

    So this is chasing the new for... what really? More digits in the bar

    • No. When you say "The difficulty is gathering up all the data" you are understating the problem by several, several orders of magnitude. The "reams of extras" can be put there by the people who make the product, or, in your example, crowdsourced, essentially.

      Reading a barcode isn't rocket science, open source can do it well, and there's no room in an open standard for junk data that can't be ignored. URI, ignore, problem solved.

  • They get your info and you get (Score:5, Insightful)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:50PM (#63457242)
    zip. Every scan is a call home with everything they can grab off your device.
    • The apps that tell you calories, ingredients, ratings, and quality that already exist will have to update their entire database. Manufacturing/Best By dates are already printed on products and recall is already pretty simple using the bar code and date. So this change will give consumers less information, not more, for several years until the databases for the apps can be updated.

      • Any app that has quality data behind it will be *well* ahead of the curve on this. I have 3,938,006 items after a year, and I gave up. You have to be in the industry to get this much data handed to you.

        Sure, I could get hundreds or thousands of AWS instances to crawl the largest retailers, but they typically have anti-bot tech running. You can, and I have, crawl one site and get banned by other sites based on your cloudflare reputation.

  • Soooo...... (Score:3)

    by WankerWeasel ( 875277 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:50PM (#63457244)

    So you're saying they're changing to QR codes?

  • Great. Just great. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:50PM (#63457248)

    Did anyone ask consumers about this? How difficult will these be to manually enter when the scanner doesn't work for whatever reason?

    • "Sorry, we can't sell that because the barcode is damaged or the server is down". They better have redundancy with one on every side of the product.

      Also, what is with this 'web data' link - UPC codes are already unique to product type and if anyone bothered could be linked to the same data. I guess embedding an expiration date on food would be useful, but that date better be human readable too - without internet or phone.

      • In the US, I believe human-readable expiration dates are already mandatory on all edible packaged products. I'd rather keep that than give the manufacturers an excuse to require we visit their product web pages... can you imagine clearing out your pantry and having to do web searches on dozens of items?

        • almost every date is a "best used by" date, they're voluntary for product rotation. iirc only the meat/dairy/eggs department "sell by" dates are actually required
      • Expiration date is meaningless. Use your eyes and nose. A bit of slime? Wash it off and fry it. We waste way too much food. It's practically encouraged.

    • There's literally no reason not to extend the current UPC to have a component that can be typed, and separate metadata.

      No one asked the consumer about the original UPC standard, and your questions are those of ignorance.

    • Same as today. They manually enter the numbers printed under the barcode.

      • Manually enter over 4,000 alphanumeric characters per barcode? How long would it take you to copy 4,000 random characters from some piece of paper?

    • Where are you shopping that is is common for the actual scanner to not work.

      Everywhere I shop, it is very rare for the scanner to not work.

      They can have issues reading the barcode because of either damage to the barcode, how it is printed, or what it is printed on; but not working is rare.

      2D barcodes are generally much easier and quicker for the scanner to pickup because unlike 1d barcodes that have to be picked up in their entirety and perfectly, 2d barcodes have a decent amount of forward error correction

  • Oh, please! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jrq ( 119773 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:52PM (#63457258)
    "take you on an experience that the brand wants you to have," says Carrie Wilkie, SVP of standards and technology at GS1 US
    Why take away the ability to ID a product without the aid of a computer? Not to mention, the added, unwanted ability to hijack your phone/camera's browser to take it somewhere that you really didn't want to go, and may regret.

    • Hijacking your phone is a desired feature for them. Expect to see a lot more items coming with "reward points". Like the soda bottle caps have now, but instead of having to manually type in a URL and manually type in your code, that can be done automatically when you point your phone at it. Quite a bit less friction in the process.

      The goal, of course, is to do all kinds of tracking each time you do this. My guess is that it will often be tied to an "app" so they can track more than they can from a browser.

  • Do not EVER buy stuff with these on!

    These here 2Dead Bar Codes were invented by Peewee Herman to control mankind. They have wifi that can receive and SEND your brain waves to Ralph Lauren shops where they will use them to take control of your life.
    They are also fully compatible with the Corona Vaccine microchips and USB 3.

  • How wasteful (Score:3)

    by BoB235423424 ( 6928344 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:56PM (#63457270)

    So, they're going to mandate that old style barcodes can no longer be accepted after 2027? How many product packages will need to be re-designed? How many stickers will need to be put on existing packages to include a new style barcode? If they want to transition this in (I see no value in it), they shouldn't eol the existing. Not every product sold has short lifecycles like technology.

    • So, they're going to mandate that old style barcodes can no longer be accepted after 2027? How many product packages will need to be re-designed? How many stickers will need to be put on existing packages to include a new style barcode? If they want to transition this in (I see no value in it), they shouldn't eol the existing. Not every product sold has short lifecycles like technology.

      The proposal is that all scanners should be able to accept the new barcodes by 2027, not that the old ones should go away by then.

    • "How many product packages will need to be re-designed?"

      No more than are currently slated to be done, I'd guess. They are constantly changing sizes and counts and amounts, and each change should be its own barcode update. And major brands already have 2D barcodes. So, meh.

  • so within 4 years... (Score:3)

    by Ghostworks ( 991012 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @05:59PM (#63457276)

    ... every scanner in the US, from the 50,000-ish at US' 4700 Walmarts, to the one or two at that mom-and-pop grocer on the corner, at great cost, is going to need replacing to support this.

    Yeah, I don't see that happening.

    I don't think it's impossible, but I don't think there's any strong reason for vendors to piss off their customers (the stores), nor for stores to voluntarily pay for that opportunity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      We've been buying scanners for years that will read 2D barcodes, even QR codes. In fact, we can't buy scanners that don't have the ability.

      All else is software updates.

    • Re:so within 4 years... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Bite The Pillow ( 3087109 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @07:56PM (#63457606)

      Barcode scanner tech dating back to at least the 90s has had configuration options to enable/disable specific types. IDK when 2D first hit, but I've never had a device old enough to not support it. Yes at work, and yes in a slowly changing environment.

    • Maybe decades old laser-style scanners will need replacing. For years now scanners have just been digital cameras with software that decodes the barcode and the vast majority can read most 2d barcodes out of the box. Some will require a firmware upgrade but very few will require an actual hardware replacement.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jsonn ( 792303 )
        Laser-style scanners are still sold for a reason. They are way more reliable and robust, in part because the tech behind them is so much simpler.

  • Scanning them may tell us the field where something was grown, the factory where a garment was sewn, the sustainability practices of the company that made it -- or the washing instructions. [...] Stores will be able to respond immediately to product recalls, identifying faulty items and removing them from shelves. They'll be able to flag foods that are approaching their sell-by date -- and offer discounts before they expire. Consumers will gain online access to a trove of useful data -- everything from ingredients, recipes and potential allergens to promotional offers and information about how to recycle the product.

    So, how long do you all think the web sites enabling all these wonderous capabilities will stay online?

    • Also, why the hell does that have to be encoded in a barcode? If that's the goal, and if you need a webpage to access that information anyway, why not just scan the product, which tells the webpage what product it is, then the webpage can tell you based on the product you have in your hands according to its database what ingredients it contains and how to recycle it.

      If you believe that, I have an affordable bridge for sale.

      • You don't necessarily need a website, just put the GPS coordinates or where it was grown, or the recyclable material type. Not sure about the ingredients, but I'd expect their website to be available as long as the product is being manufactured.

        If not, IDK, don't buy it?

        • Buy something without a barcode. Anything. Go to a store and just TRY to find anything that doesn't have a barcode.

          How long 'til such a code is mandatory? No, not because some law mandates it, just because stores won't carry your product if it doesn't have one.

  • Lessons from the CueCat (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ByTor-2112 ( 313205 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @06:02PM (#63457296)

    No one wants to scan a barcode to "find out more" about their products, even with a phone.

    • On the other hand, I've got a perfectly functional USB barcode reader I got for 1 dollar on ebay in 2006...

    • No one wants to scan a barcode to "find out more" about their products, even with a phone.

      Check this open source product repository https://world.openfoodfacts.or... [openfoodfacts.org] where you can check product factsheets and contribute new products by scanning barcodes with your phone.

    • My Aunt is part of one of those Weight Watcher programs, which assigns "points" to all food items in the store. She regularly scans items with her phone to find out how they rank in her nutrition program.

      Hey, I don't even own a smartphone and don't understand it myself, but people really DO use this crap.

  • But Wegman's, StopnShop and whoever else still make you key in the 4 digit produce code by hand anyway.

  • Paging CueCat tech support (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rademir ( 168324 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @06:16PM (#63457348) Homepage

    As long as they offer firmware upgrades for my CueCat, I'm good.

  • Get ready for some fun (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ebunga ( 95613 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @06:17PM (#63457356)

    You thought it was bad when someone slapped the UPC from one product on another, wait until you have an overly complicated encoding scheme that can have some really subtle effects yet look 100% normal.

  • You'll be able to trust all that metadata (origin, batch, etc.) about as much as you can trust the "certified organic" label.

  • I call bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @06:19PM (#63457360)

    What again does that new barcode promise? Let's see...

    Stores will be able to respond immediately to product recalls, identifying faulty items and removing them from shelves.

    That already happens. Every item has a charge number and according to this, you can tell whether your inventory is defective. With most products, this IS already encoded in a secondary barcode.

    They'll be able to flag foods that are approaching their sell-by date — and offer discounts before they expire.

    That would be useful, but again, why not simply add another barcode, or add that one to the charge number barcode that already exists?

    Consumers will gain online access to a trove of useful data — everything from ingredients, recipes and potential allergens to promotional offers and information about how to recycle the product.

    And that's different from box to box? You can't just scan the barcode, identify the product, then look up an online database for allergens and other information about it? Because you sure as all hell won't have that kind of ability in the app of your phone for all the million products out there.

    • With most products, this IS already encoded in a secondary barcode.

      No. Very few products have a secondary barcode.

      That would be useful, but again, why not simply add another barcode

      Because barcodes have a minimum size, and there are already products that can't fit the mandatory packaging information along side the barcode on the package. They won't take kindly to you asking them to give up another 1sq cm

      Because you sure as all hell won't have that kind of ability in the app of your phone for all the million products out there.

      That is the point they are getting at. And yeah you can already do this with ISBNs. But for periodical publications you need to scan a far larger EAN because the ISBN couldn't encode enough information, and that's precisely what is trying

  • What about damaged QR codes? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Culture20 ( 968837 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @06:21PM (#63457366)
    I'll admit I haven't looked into QR codes very much, but I imagine they're not robust in the face of defacement. For a standard bardcode, if part of the barcode is torn, smudged, covered, or otherwise occluded, there's still a chance that the scanner can read enough the barcode above or below the damage it only needs to read a "line" across the 2D plane that is the barcode. With a QR code, I imagine that it's so data dense that a small amount of damage will render it unreadable.

    Hmm, just did some reading; apparently they can handle 30% loss of surface area. Compare that to UPC being able to lose 99.99% of surface area (at the proper angle). I always see UPC barcodes torn, crumpled, inked-over, because they're usually on the bottom of a box or bag. They'll need to splat these QR codes on multiple sides of the packaging to be safe.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      I'll admit I haven't looked into QR codes very much, but I imagine they're not robust in the face of defacement. For a standard bardcode, if part of the barcode is torn, smudged, covered, or otherwise occluded, there's still a chance that the scanner can read enough the barcode above or below the damage it only needs to read a "line" across the 2D plane that is the barcode. With a QR code, I imagine that it's so data dense that a small amount of damage will render it unreadable.

      Hmm, just did some reading; a

  • Why do we need a central registry for serial numbers today?

    encode upc://com.example.foo or a URL or whatever

    query via DNSSEC or HTTPS and return a json data blob or whatever.

    What made sense in the 70's doesn't make sense today. GS1 won't propose a standard that removes their need to exist.

  • Nice thing about bar codes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt AT nerdflat DOT com> on Monday April 17, 2023 @06:55PM (#63457440) Journal

    Is that they are simple enough that they can actually be read manually if you need to do it.

    I know of nobody who is able to read a QR code.

    • And I know of nobody who can read a bar code. What's your point?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        I know plenty of people who can read bar codes. The code isn't that complicated, actually.

        Although, to be honest, it's probably a dying art.

  • This is just an advertisement for a product/service.

  • What are the chances the new code will allow data collection, tracking, privacy invasion? 100%

  • One good thing about the barcodes was that a damaged barcode or malfunctioning barcode reader could be handled by simply typing in the number. What happens to the 2D code if the printed code is damaged or the reader is malfunctioning? Or does that fault tolerance go away?

    Separate question: Is the physical laser scanner different for the barcode and 2D code? If the scanner is the same, then the software should be programmable to recognize both. That would seem to be more fault tolerant and better for ma

  • which codes? these codes (Score:5, Informative)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday April 17, 2023 @07:38PM (#63457580) Homepage Journal

    https://www.gs1us.org/content/... [gs1us.org]

    Gets good about page 19. e.g.

    In the U.S., UPC-A will remain the primary POS barcode until 2027.
    â- If adding an advanced data carrier, the following applications are approved in the GS1 General Specifications, Version 21.0 (January 2021):
    â- Data Matrix or QR Code can be used to encode a GS1 Digital Link URI for consumer engagement.
    â- GS1 DataMatrix can be used for variable-measure fresh food use cases by trading partner agreement or non-POS use cases requiring element string syntax.
    â- RFID can be used for use cases that benefit from non-line-of-sight scanning, such as inventory management.
    Between now and 2027, brand owners and retailers can collaborate through pilots and trading partner agreements to scan 2D barcodes at POS for price lookup and the additional use cases outlined in Section 3.2. Beginning in 2027, industry will be ready to accept an advanced data carrier at POS and brand owners will have the option of removing the UPC-A barcode.

  • Looks like it is fairly low bit count datamatrix and QR codes. I would think that a higher data storage system would be of better utility as a standard, although I appreciate the challenges of using existing registers and scanners with a totally new format.

  • This is horrible news. I don't care if they add a 2D barcode that could be a great thing. But REMOVING the 1D barcode is going to grossly negatively affect many thousands of small retailers. Why? Because their paid-for and simple 1D barcode readers will no longer work. And their register software won't either.

    I have worked with 2D readers, they are great. AND they cost a LOT more than their 1D counterparts. A whole lot more.

    There is absolutely no good reason the 1D barcode can't continue on products

  • I see a problem with this (Score:4, Informative)

    by PAjamian ( 679137 ) on Monday April 17, 2023 @10:16PM (#63457790)

    UPC barcodes nowadays are generally printed on product packaging from the supplier of the packaging. A product manufacturer can order a batch of a million packaging units and use them for the next ten years to package their product if they want. This is going to require that the barcode contain information about each batch of the product (a batch ID and/or product expiration date) in the barcode and as such it will mean that the barcode will have to be printed on the packaging by the manufacturer instead of by the packaging supplier which will increase manufacturing costs and possibly result in lower quality of the barcode itself.

    I also call BS on this statement from the article, "By 2027, only the 2D barcodes will be accepted at registers globally." No retailer in their right mind will *remove* UPC barcode functionality from their equipment, it would just end up requiring them to relabel any older product that still has the old barcodes.

  • We have the technology to label and process unique serial numbers on everything... So why are we not doing that ?!
    I can think of a number of benefits around that and if the barcodes standard is being updated, it should be the perfect time to start doing that.

  • There are some changes they could make. (Score:3)

    by robbak ( 775424 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @04:47AM (#63458180) Homepage

    A big problem with the UPC system is the organizations that have been set up in each country to administer them. These charge large fees for the basic job of assigning your company a prefix number that gives you a small number of unique codes to use. You know, the sort of thing that could be hosted on a single cheap VPS and administered by a single part-time employee.

    An updated UPC system could do away with them. Make the new UPC a 128-bit number. First 10 bits for a country code, next 100 bits or so for the country's established business numbering scheme - ABN in Australia, I'm sure every country has something similar - leaving 18 bits for 200,000 different products. Now you can eliminate the useless, rent-seeking barcode organizations!

  • WTF Why? (Score:3)

    by OfMiceAndMenus ( 4553885 ) on Tuesday April 18, 2023 @09:20AM (#63458614)
    This is retarded. It's the humans that care about where something was grown, how it was raised, or how it was packed. Why the fuck does a checkout POS system need to know that stuff? It's already on the label as human-readable text.

    I've worked on a lot of POS software including barcode scanning, and there are a HUGE NUMBER of mom-and-pop shops operating from simple $35 handheld 2D barcode scanners that won't support this. Many times on a non-internet-connected device that won't be able to look up a URL(it's a PCI-DSS requirement to keep general user networks and payment processing networks separate).

    There's also a CONSIDERABLE amount of products which won't be expired or off shelves within 4 years which rely on these 2D codes - think auto parts. This is some Web 3.0 push by clueless corporate entities who have peaked long ago in their one field and have nothing better to do.

    And to implement something that will only reliably work in a first-world industrialized society to the entire world assuming it will replace a decades-old offline system in 4 years... what fucking hubris and ignorance.
    • I meant 1D barcodes as opposed to QR codes, not 2D barcodes (which are basically the same thing). Got so mad at the stupidity I wrote the wrong thing.

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