i have one of those already. my bookmarks file on the home pc, which began life ~ early 2001 and has thousands (10s of thousands.. probably) of entries. it's been 'de-duped' a few times over the years, but i've never ran a dead-link checker on them.

Technically, there's nothing stopping them from just putting the full obituary text in the QR code.

But I know they'll just use a link shortener...

Afaik, these pages have a comment function where the visitor may express their condolences or alike. I.e. the web page not only contains content but serves a purpose.

Yeah this is probably easy to crack, although not sure they'll use the same URL structure, personally I'd put a text not an URL but personally I'd also like my body to be tossed in the trash, or wild, dunno but burial and cremation are either too expensive or I don't like them but again I'd be dead

Perhaps the QR code spec defines the maximum to be 3kb but in practice that might not be ideal.

3kb is something like a 155 x 155 grid.

It would still work I guess but it would look ugly and would be harder to scan if it got dirty.

Make the tombstone an access point/server and the qr code the login to the WiFi.

The curse of the modern mummy would be a rootkit.

We have clay tablets that are 3,000 years old and still readable. Those qr codes aren't etched deep in granite but some will survive through luck.

I think you're missing a key point. Archaeology doesn't look at every single thing from 2,000 years ago. All we have are sparse records of a small fraction of artifacts that happened to be preserved against the odds due to anomalous natural events. Nature could preserve a few long into the future.

Doesn't have to be a URL. You can encode any data.

No subscription required.

Of course, it'll erode over time.

... and the irony that there would be a dead link on someone's gravestone the moment the company goes out of business... unless someone goes there and peels off the sticker.

Anyone could set up a website and point a QR code at it. The issue is one of longevity - what use is a QR code if the site/domain goes down in 5 years? It has to be something which lasts a period of time into the future guaranteed. Or the QR code is just self-describing - 2kb of information about the person.

As for this service, it looks like BS. I see no evidence on their website that they will even try to hold the server in perpetuity or even guarantee it will be up a year from now. I expect the service to last as long as they can convince people to fork out £200 for a link, but that's it.

It's absolutely a gimmick markup, but as gimmick markups on gravestones go that's not that expensive. Not because that's reasonable but because there's so much guilting people into spending at least 4 figures while they're grieving.

Half of us are OK with destroying the world because we'll be rewarded afterwards.

QRs are a lot more complex than that, though. It's not a symbol mapping, it's an encoding of a binary string, which then pieces of map to characters. And even if they do figure out how to decode them, they'll just get the urls, which won't mean anything without understanding the internet.

If human civilization loses continuity, we're going to lose so much knowledge in the process. If another civilization proceeds us (either post collapse humans or some new species that goes down the big brain plus societal knowledge), they will truly live in a situation where there were ancients unfathomly advanced. It's possible that some of the things we're capable of now are forever the high point and no life on earth will ever understand that thing the same as we do now or better.

Though a lot of it will require a certain amount of advancement to even understand how advanced it is.

That said, any ink-based QR codes aren't going to last for thousands or even hundreds of years. Engraved ones might, but the ink ones will probably depend on some advanced molecular/chemical methods to even figure out that they were once coloured black and white.