tired: barcode tattoo carefully aligned horizontally on your neck
inspired: laser scarred asset tag on whichever patch of skin was sufficiently large in the marking machine's field of view first
@whitequark ive been rotating the barcode tattoo in my mind for a few months now. and for me the practicality has always been the main consideration in determining where it'd go (that'd be my upper left arm (it'd be easiest for a right handed entity to scan, and in a standard location (that is relatively likely to still be attached) so they wouldn't need to search)) long before any aesthetics were considered. obviously!
@whitequark the research is important! you wouldn't want them to have to turn you 180 degrees and reaching up to your neck before being able to scan you... that shit wastes valuable seconds!! it has to be efficient!
@whitequark i'd be afraid of data matrix and qr codes becoming unreadable over time (apparently a thing that happens to bar codes as well) but i've never actually looked into it so maybe it's not at all an issue
@azzie but that's the thing, you can increase the ECC factor so there's more redundancy built into it! also if you have any idea on the aging patterns that could be simulated beforehand and the right ECC settings chosen :3
@azzie a datamatrix code in particular can survive up to ~30% loss, and doesn't even require the dots to be square. they can be circles, this is done fairly frequently on equipment where it's annoying to do squares, like if you're making tiny dents with a needle