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I built a QR code with my bare hands to see how it works

Name: I built a QR code with my bare hands to see how it works
Description: Veritasium builds a QR code by hand to explain how it works. It covers the history of Morse code and barcodes, how QR codes encode data, why damaged codes still scan, and how safe they are.

Veritasium

92 videos recommended on HN

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1 HN user recommended this explainer1 month2024–2025 score 1

Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN points to it as a recent, well-made explanation of QR code structure and error correction.

Veritasium builds a QR code by hand to explain how it works. It covers the history of Morse code and barcodes, how QR codes encode data, why damaged codes still scan, and how safe they are.

“Derek Muller just did an interesting take on QR codes and their history” (HN, 2024)

1 recommendations · 2 citations · Explainers

Information theory & signal processing Recreational & visual math Explainers Mathematics & Theoretical CS

3 Hacker News comments

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@nhatcher Oct 2024 Recommends

on HN thread The history of the barcode

Derek Muller just did an interesting take on QR codes and their history on his popular channel veritasium: [this video]

Interesting take on QR codes and their history

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Citations, criticism and jokes

@throw0101c Nov 2024 Cites it

on HN thread Creating a QR Code step by step

Recent Veritasium video on the topic, "I used to hate QR codes. But they're actually genius": * [this video]

Recent Veritasium video on QR codes

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@gukov Jun 2025 Cites it

on HN thread Show HN: Qrkey – Offline private key backup on paper

Yep, if I'm using a physical medium like paper I want to allow for some degradation. Here's a Veritasium video on QR codes: [this video]

QR code degradation tolerance

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