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What’s the worst piece of technology you’ve ever owned? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 months ago by zachimusprime44@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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[–] YaksDC@lemm.ee 59 points 4 months ago (4 children)

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 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Waldowal@lemmy.world 19 points 4 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.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You can cut one leg off an IC on the board and it becomes a regular barcode reader.

[–] cygnus@lemmy.ca 2 points 4 months ago

It also looks vaguely like a dildo, which is cool.

[–] ouRKaoS 9 points 4 months ago

I completely forgot these existed until you just mentioned it!

I think I still have one somewhere in a box of "I might need this" along with a parallel port ZIP drive and a bunch of FireWire cables.

[–] Deconceptualist@lemm.ee 5 points 4 months ago

Ha, I had one and it's what first came to mind too. Pretty useless.