• YaksDC@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    The Cuecat: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

    Came at a time when there weren’t barcodes everywhere and QR codes didn’t exist yet. Companies had to publish Cuecat specific barcodes, it was much easier to just type in the URL by the time you figured out you could use it at all.

    • AdamEatsAss@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The man who holds the patent legally changed his name after it failed so he wouldn’t be associated with it.

      • Waldowal@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Went down the rabbit hole on this guy a bit. He went on to participate in the CyberNinjas audit of Arizona’s ballots after the 2020 election. He claimed to have technology that could detect whether ballots had been folded in the mail, and claimed to detect bamboo in “fraudulent Chinese ballots”.

        He was such a kook, the other kooks rejected him.