Dithered QR Codes • Hacker News Board

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#11

Post by sphars » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:14 AM UTC

zahrevsky wrote: post #10

You can also run animations in QR codes: https://cgv.cs.nthu.edu.tw/Projects/Recreational_Graphics/Ha... So, technically, you can run Doom inside a QR code?

I'm now waiting for someone to post the Bad Apple meme but all in QR codes

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#12

Post by OscarCunningham » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 3:17 AM UTC

sphars wrote: post #11

zahrevsky wrote: post #10

You can also run animations in QR codes: https://cgv.cs.nthu.edu.tw/Projects/Recreational_Graphics/Ha... So, technically, you can run Doom inside a QR code?

I'm now waiting for someone to post the Bad Apple meme but all in QR codes

https://pony.social/@luna/115057532794342459

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#13

Post by hmry » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 4:47 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #8

ideasphere wrote: post #6

Is that Lena with Sean Connery’s face??

https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/ I suspect.

That's absolutely hilarious

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#14

Post by userbinator » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 4:51 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #8

ideasphere wrote: post #6

Is that Lena with Sean Connery’s face??

https://mortenhannemose.github.io/lena/ I suspect.

LOL! It's a sign of the times that, before I saw the year, I thought "that has to be AI generated", because this sort of outlandish silliness is exactly the type of thing that genAI excels at.

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#15

Post by mi_lk » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:19 AM UTC

I like the writing style. The first section is super clear about what QR code is in ~200 words

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#16

Post by unkl_ » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

You can use colour as well: https://janglingpointer.github.io/Image_To_QR/

The guy that made that did a writeup on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt/comments/1v52x96/

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#17

Post by gblargg » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 8:55 AM UTC

This reminds me of car safety features, how drivers have become more complacent to offset the benefits. QR codes were made to be robust in the face of errors, but over time this has been eaten into for aesthetic purposes. Businesses commonly put a logo in the center, eating up some error correction budget. This likely has a similar effect.

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#18

Post by petters » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 9:21 AM UTC

These are also very cool: https://antfu.me/posts/ai-qrcode

Diffusion image generation constrained to also be a valid QR code

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#19

Post by benj111 » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 12:03 PM UTC

I find it slightly disconcerting that lena has a mustache.

Re: Dithered QR Codes

#20

Post by hellojomp » Sun, Aug 09, 2026, 12:13 PM UTC

This is really neat!

A question I had about QR codes:

Let’s say I want to produce a QR code that is as close as possible to an image (let’s say the Nike swoosh logo), if I just added that to the center and added the 3 orientation markers on the corners it wouldn’t be a proper QR code yet, my question is what is the minimal amount of edits I would need to do from that symbol to get a valid QR code?

I’m thinking of something like people buying and hoarding domains in early 00’s (even now), if I could generate the minimal QR code (minimal is important here in the same way that .com is treated as superior to .ca or .net) of well-known symbols and buy the resulting domain it points to (if it even points to a domain) couldn’t I sell this to companies with the associated domain as a re-direct as well?