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527 points lxm | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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klhutchins ◴[] No.27672010[source]
QR codes are no good if cell service is spotty with certain carriers. Recently at a distant restaurant, I scanned the QR, waited for it to time out, discover there was no cell service, find the free wifi, enable my VPN, connect to the restaurants wifi, wait for authentication, then open camera app and scan QR again, wait for the kindle app to open the PDF, only to be handed a paper menu a few seconds later...

I know how a menu works. I read the food, see the price, and order. Personally I want to relax at a restaurant and not troubleshoot for myself and others, all while increasing my stress levels.

One way to fix this might be to encode the full text of the menu within the QR code, instead of a link?

QR codes are handy for easing people into eating out again... but wow; it can be pretty frustrating. Something I find myself thinking about more, is how Technology really needs to be more reliable, and how we really need to consider all the edge cases, before we can begin to replace the simple items such as a menu, let along more complex systems....Rant: I want something that will work 100% of the time.

replies(3): >>27672232 #>>27672347 #>>27672652 #
Charon77 ◴[] No.27672232[source]
Why not just setup wifi hotspot, make the captive page the menu.
replies(2): >>27673389 #>>27676296 #
1. bspammer ◴[] No.27673389[source]
Usually the restaurant hasn’t made their own site but is paying some menus-as-a-service company to handle it for them.

E.g. https://www.meandu.com.au/