You are right, QR codes are very easy to decode if you have them raw, even the C64 should do it in a few seconds, maybe a minute for one of those 22 giant ones. The hard part is image processing when decoding a camera picture - and that can be done on the C64 too if it has enough time and some external memory (or disks for virtual memory). People have even emulated a 32-bit RISC processor on the poor thing, and made it boot Linux.

The hole in the fuselage that caused them to be sucked out was actually made by one of them in a suicide/homicide. Very tragic. Somebody invest in mental health please!

Because

1. When the internet was rolling out, a decentralized, open, best-effort solution of TCP/IP thankfully won over telephone companies’ centralized system proposal
2. IPv6 is still not universal for some damn reason
3. Onion addresses solve these problems but good luck getting everyone aboard with Tor
4. You always trade anonymity for reachability, and with the amount of threats, NAT and firewalls have been put up to make it harder for unsolicited requests to reach you by default

Sure, no algorithm is able to extract any more information from a single photo. But how about combining detail caught in multiple frames of video? Some phones already do this kind of thing, getting multiple samples for highly zoomed photos thanks to camera shake.

Still, the problem remains that the results from a cherry-picked algorithm or outright hand-crafted pics may be presented.

You two can stop now. It’s not funny.