And also teams within the product pushing for different things, like the recent Google Marketing Team vs Google Chrome Team wanting different approaches.
Windows 1.0 was release 38 years ago, microsoft has changed persona at least three times since then.
Not that we shouldnt be suspicious of facebook, but we really must actually seek evidence rather than just decry them as witches. It lets other companies get away with loads simply because they are well liked.
based on engineering a product that has a power capacity of <2 watt hours, to work reliably and is able to play and stream audio correctly.
To spy on someone using these glasses would mean decent audio stack that can actually reconnect by its self, rather than having to power cycle the entire device.
Not only that, but a level of attention to detail that means that what ever spying it does can happen reliably and inside a tiny power envelope.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying don't be suspicious of facebook, What I'm asking is to actually interrogate their level of skill.
facebook are frankly shite at software, just use any of their supporting apps.
o Portal, great hardware, shame that it never connected reliably.
o oculus: They have the power of facebook/instagram/social graph, yet its impossible to join your mate in game. Something Steam nailed in the days of dialup
o Rayban: cannot play audio reliably, pretty tricky to download pictures.
o Advertising: fuck me, its like oracle had a baby with SAP, and force fed it MS access forms.
Yes, yes its an advertising giant. But have you tried to get any usable and accurate data out of it?
Stop building them up like they are an unstoppable genius factory. Its basically a bunch of confused cats trapped under a duvet. The difference being those cats can drive advertising clicks.
Haha a guy wore them in a bar in downtown Vegas in 2013, and I watched multiple people approach him and tell him to take them off and stop recording everything. I never saw another pair IRL again.
If I were working for the Zuckborg, I wonder how I could make these things socially acceptable. Host an event with A-list beautiful people and pay them to wear these things and post all over social media, to make the glasses be desirable for the influencable?
Though not many celebs might want to be associated with the Zuckborg, nowadays.
Like the college student at open mic night who can't sing but has a gaggle of supportive friends and family who applaud profusely, there's a cult of toxic positivity surrounding him who refuse to be honest, adult supervision.
Sounds a bit like Tony Hsieh, who got us all out to the bars in downtown Vegas in 2013 in the first place. Does seem like Zuck has healthier hobbies and a different sort of discipline.
That said, yes, the first time I met Tony he was sitting at a bar with a meat grinder, yes I spotted him swinging around Slim Jims in a mariachi suit atop a mecha grasshopper shooting flames out its mouth one time, but I guess I don't image he ever killed a mammal for no reason and served it cold to a vegetarian (he loved his llamas! RIP)
The technology for displays (resolution, battery/power needs, field of view issues) is so many years away that it makes sense to try and go with basic touch/swipe and audio UI now. There are great use cases for a device like this...no doubt with a display ability it would be truly incredible but no reason not to be working on this today.
Is there a market for this? Stealth smart glasses that force you to indicate you are recording? Are live-streamers going to use this? Don't people want to be using their phone anyway?
>The Capture LED lets others know when you’re capturing content or going live. If the LED is covered, you’ll be notified to clear it.
They do this generally while doing some kind of movement based activity, the kind of activity where you need to strap a camera on, not wear a set ofglasses.
Can you list activities that you're thinking of? Because a lot of active sports are compatible with "wearing glasses". Surfing, snowboarding, rock climbing, water skiing, mountain biking, etc.
Sure, scuba divers still need some specialized gear, but there's tons of room in the sports segment for this kind of product.
> Because a lot of active sports are compatible with "wearing glasses". Surfing, snowboarding, rock climbing, water skiing, mountain biking, etc.
I would not say any of those are compatible with wearing fashion-style sunglasses. I've lost pairs of glasses paddleboarding and kayaking before. I'm a mountain biker as well and crashes can be violent, I wouldn't trust glasses to stay on your face. All of those sports require firm attachment for a device worth more than say $100.
Why do you think people would prefer to use their phone over something like this? I assume people use their phone because that's what they have to use now. I could be wrong, I'm not representative of the average person, but if I could use my phone less and still engage with tech, I'd do it.
My assumption is that people like to be seen recording and/or recording themselves. I'm guessing 'terminally online phone' people don't have the impulse to use their phones less and keep it in their pocket?
I don't think so. Do people at a concert hold their phones out to be seen recording? No, they just want to record and that's the only way to do it. They'd love to be able to do it hands free for sure.
They are not "stealth smart glasses", they are the first iteration of AR glasses. Recording is one of the many things they do. And I'd buy them in a second if it means I don't need to take my phone out every few minutes (and if I had the money, I expect them to be uber-expensive); or I don't need to look away from the road to check directions as I drive; or I don't need to reveal in-shop that I'm checking online prices for an item. There are a lot of possibilities beyond capturing, if not in this generation in the next one with displays.
You seem to be forgetting a lot of previous products. If anything these are a really late reply to Snap's Spectacles.
Also, these don't have a display. Many of your listed use cases don't apply unless you count audio replies, which we already have, all over the place. Please read about what a product does before correcting someone in the future...
Yea there's for sure a market. Beyond what others have said wrt GoPros, many people photograph/stream shows/concerts/etc. Studies have shown you remember events better when you take the intentional act to photograph it, but fiddling with a phone in the moment can be distracting. Why would people want to be focusing on a phone, or be seen with a phone, when they could just watch the event AND get the recording?
I attend concerts a lot, and often post snippets to social media. There's always a tension I see among myself and others of trying to catch those particular lines of a song, while still not missing the show to mess with your phone.
Will I buy these? Meh, maybe. But the appeal is there.
Any good argument that anyone can think of for a scenario where smart eyewear will not be as ubiquitous as smart phones eventually? I understand the privacy argument, but that is not going to be enough. The ability to think or blink in a certain way and capture anything you see is too powerful a tool, alongside the augmented reality that is coming.
Eventually? Sure. Maybe. It wont be a capture story, it'll be a consumption and interaction story.
The biggest thing preventing that future is hardware, and considering how you're brushing up against hard physics, I honestly don't see smart eyeglasses that look like normal eyelgasses playing out in any serious capacity for a looooong time.
I was one of the ridiculous-looking people who had a Google Glass when it came out. It was clunky, and lasted a very short time, and your face would get hot, and it had no real AR interaction with the real world.
But. If you could squint at the rough edges, and project forward what this could be like with more advanced tech, it was a no-brainer for me that it will be a far superior form factor for what we do with the phone. For 2 weeks, I tried hard NOT using a phone and just using it. While it was difficult (mostly because I couldn't have a conversation with anyone that didn't begin with them asking what was on my head), when I went back to the phone I so strongly noticed how much I was craning my neck, how annoying it was to interact with tech like that, and it kinda felt terrible.
You can't imagine police departments that buy stingray devices and spy illegally with them to also pay for surveillance data? Anyway for real time tracking, police stations can likely get the feds involved which get that info from your telco, who are best buddies with the federal government.
Yeah... but I am not american, but from a tiny european country. Police makes some requests for data after the fact every year, but as far as I know there are no deals between police and giant american corporations. I'm probably naive.
That's fair, we are on mostly American website after all!
I'm just traveling through France and saw on the news that a woman disappeared. They are trying to find her by triangulating the last location based on nearby cell towers of where she was last seen. So even giant European countries can't/don't use facebook/google to locate people.
"To conclude, it’s worth noting that, at least for a time, product managers at Facebook — Russ’ job before starting DocSend — were required to read Snow Crash as part of their internal training."[0]
Wow dang, they really should make this more obvious. If I bought one and discovered that (despite being able to record and stream video) it had no display, I would be pissed.
To be fair the second sentence in the short top description is about staying connected with calls and messages. I don't think many people's first assumption (without any other context/knowing more) would be that that means having them read out.
> Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers.
Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.
Then later:
> No more stopping to answer your phone. Also, make calls and send messages on WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS, completely hands-free – simply by using your voice.
The first part seems intentionally ambiguously worded to be interpreted as:
> (Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages) and (listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers)
vs:
> (Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks) through built-in speakers
So it's not clear from that wording that there isn't a display, or that the messages are read aloud. An unambiguous wording would be:
> listen to your favourite tracks and stay connected with hands-free calls and messages through built-in speakers
As, well, the below statement is true whether there is a screen or not, and also doesn't specify that the messages are read aloud:
> No more stopping to answer your phone. Also, make calls and send messages on WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS, completely hands-free – simply by using your voice
That plus the image of the screen floating next to the glasses definitely make it seem like marketing is trying to trick people into thinking there's a display without explicitly claiming it
> Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.
That's true. But it's not excluding display stuff.
It's along the lines of some product having multiple features, and some marketing point only talking about the advantages of the first feature. People would expect further marketing points to address the other features, and/or not even realise they'd not seen the other ("assumed to be present") features mentioned later on.
> That's true. But it's not excluding display stuff.
How many product landing pages talk about what you cannot do with the product or what it doesn't include? That'd be a very strange landing page for a product...
I think you're technically correct, it definitely is unusual to talk about what you cannot do.
However, do you really think the marketing team didn't get together and recognize the major limitation of not having a display, and carefully craft the marketing so as to minimize that?
> However, do you really think the marketing team didn't get together and recognize the major limitation of not having a display, and carefully craft the marketing so as to minimize that?
Probably a bunch of people wished it was Google Glass 2.0 because it'd make the marketing people jobs easier/more interesting, but I don't think they'd craft the message to trick people, it'll impact the amount of returns and they'll probably lose more handling that than people not buying it because it doesn't have a screen.
> > Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers.
> Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.
I don't agree at all (I wasn't not quoting to hide anything, I was just typing from mobile with a crappy connection on a train) - that's not clear to me - but ok.
Meta is all about VR. VR means a display. Anyone would assume "meta glasses" are AR glasses. This is just a desperate attempt to boost the meta hype because they have made no progress on actual VR products.
They are also called "smart glasses", but they are just headphones and a camera. Nobody calls their bluetooth headphones "smart".
I wonder if we will see an inversion of the clip-on sunglasses design but with corrective lenses.
Clip your prescription to a pair of sunglasses instead, or to your smart glasses.
You might have to clip them to the backside to get it all to work out. But in that case variations in lens shape will be less visible, because sunglasses.
These days, at least if you can afford designer, they use rare earth magnets and the frames are exactly the same shape.
Since most glasses only grind the back side of the lens, they fit pretty closely together.
Which is also why you wouldn't be able to reverse the position of the lenses without changing how they're ground (also thick lenses hidden behind the frame conceal just how bad your eyes are, which some people get self conscious about.
Point was, if you wear a pair of glasses that people require you to take off regularly, you still need to be able to see, and that means carrying two pair of glasses. Transitions lenses exist in large part because people can't be arsed to carry around two pair of glasses.
You're missing the point. Corrective lenses have thickness. For the frames that use magnets to add a sunglass layer, they only work because it can go on the outside, with the lens already set in the frame at the right distance from the eyes/lashes. It just wouldn't work in reverse, to take a sunglass lens at the right distance and snap something in behind it. You'd get oily lash streaks all over the corrective layer constantly.
It's even worse if you wear really thick glasses, because sometimes they even have to sit slightly proud of the frame in the front.
Your solution just isn't viable for this problem, as any longtime glasses wearer could easily tell you.
If that's not enough, there's a whole industry of people designing eyewear; you really think "What if you just added the corrective part inside the tinted part?" wouldn't have been done if it were viable?
Take a pair of glasses. Attach sunglasses to them. Move the bows from the glasses to the sunglasses. The geometry of the glasses or frames don’t matter, it’s whether there’s enough distance from the eye.
My glasses have almost always sat proud of the frames. And there’s plenty of distance behind them. (I’ve had sunglasses that brush my eyelashes though, when I was young and they were cheap, and that bugs the hell out of me).
> If that's not enough, there's a whole industry of people designing eyewear; you really think "What if you just added the corrective part inside the tinted part?" wouldn't have been done if it were viable?
First of all, that's an Appeal to Authority, and you know where you can stick that. Two, you think I'm trying to solve a very old problem, which means you missed the point.
Putting something on your face that vastly outsizes and outcosts your glasses is a brand new problem.
Scientists get eyepieces for microscopes with prescription lenses. That's not on your face. Skiers just buy goggles with prescription lenses, which cost almost as much as VR goggles. That's basically a luxury market, not a consumer market.
Also the whole fuckin' point is that none of these solutions (to people insisting you take your glasses off) work because a rounding error of people are going to carry two pair of glasses with them, and even the workaround is unwieldy. You're lost in the weeds talking about the physics of it, which aren't a problem and aren't the real problem.
What you actually said was:
> Clip your prescription to a pair of sunglasses instead, or to your smart glasses.
You might have to clip them to the backside to get it all to work out.
And what does "Move the bows from the glasses to the sunglasses" even mean? Bows?
You can't take a glasses frame that is designed to be worn at a normal distance from the eye and then clip something to the back side of it, between the original lens and your eye. There's not enough space to add a corrective lens back there.
Even if there were, it's still unfeasible, because the part you have to take off is the smart part or the tinted part not the prescription part.
Never mind that it's only a rounding error of people who are willing to carry around a clip-on layer either, because it requires nearly as much protection as a full pair of glasses to avoid breaking it.
Making the prescription part the clipping part is inane on every level. Nothing about it works.
I found google glass to be great. It had real world AR in directions. I used it several times in other cities to move about. I never really had any heat issues. I do wish we could have gotten a couple iterations, but that's Google for you.
I remember having similar thoughts about Google Glass despite never using it and never really wanting to use it.
I mean, the concept seemed amazing, but it seemed clear that it needed to be combined with vastly more AI capability. All of the things that people imagined it doing were basically impossible.
But now it seems like something much more powerful shouldn't be that far away.
"Capture anything" aka recording videos is exactly one use case compared to a smartphone which can do that and..basically anything else. So I don't see how smart glasses will ever approach the ubiquity of a phone.
The only argument that I have is that wearing glasses kind of sucks and is pretty inconvenient. And glasses are kind of a fashion statement so unless these manufacturers can come up with a way to easily swap out parts like the frame (just like people change phone cases today) and lenses (to support people with prescriptions), it'll be tough to reach the mainstream.
As someone who wears glasses, my argument was always that most people don't want to wear glasses all the time, even if they were adding no extra friction vs your regular sunglasses (weight, looks, cost).
But, I had the same argument for Apple watch - no one in my circle was wearing watches any more. However, that didn't prevent people to start wearing an Apple watch.
So, I can definitely see a future where people who don't wear glasses choose to wear smart glasses.
I do agree that I wouldn't have assumed that the watch is used that much but after it got its own esim and can be used instead of a phone, it can replace a device.
And for sports it's actually practical.
Glasses? I still think nope. It's still not a beauty thing
I mean, sure, there are plenty: regulation, battery life, ruggedness, the creep factor, the fact that this does not provide me with anything similar to the value of a smartphone.
Not all of us spend our days walking down urban streets, having a desire to have the things around us augmented. My smart phone spends 98% of its life in my pocket because I don't want or need any application most of the time. I've tried adopting a smartwatch on multiple occasions and never found it offered me any value. All it did was convince me to turn off a bunch of notifications I didn't need to be getting to begin with.
You have a presented a great argument on why you will not be using smart eyewear. Nothing convincing about why it won't be adopted by the general population. Smart watch doesn't have and will never have anywhere close to the capabilities smart eyewear eventually will.
My point is that this view of the "general population" is extremely skewed. I would wager that more than half of smartphone users do not have any use case for their phone aside from calling, texting, and scrolling social media. Despite years of the technology existing, no one has come forward with a use case for "smart" glasses that has even had remotely broad appeal with the general public. It's all hype backed up by descriptions of niche uses.
I don't think it will be as ubiquitous as smart phones for the same reason smart watches are not as ubiquitous as smart phones.
The reason I do not wear a smart watch is not because they're not useful, but because it's simply not comfortable for me to be wearing something on my wrist. It's not a big deal, but I prefer to not wear rings, watches, bracelets, etc.
Similarly, I prefer contacts over glasses because of a 1) glasses reduce your field of view / quality of vision, 2) the touch / feel of having something on my face, and 3) them inevitably falling off or being grabbed by my baby.
Smart watches got as ubiquitous as normal watches, and smartphones got as ubiquitous as wallets (and other things you might keep in a pocket or purse). I expect smart glasses will become about as ubiquitous as regular glasses.
Is there a good way to text someone with smart glasses yet? How about cropping a photo before posting to instagram? What's the experience of doomscrolling twitter/x/whatever? I really don't think they're going to be as ubiquitous, as smartphones without being as good or better than them in at least some of these
> Any good argument that anyone can think of for a scenario where smart eyewear will not be as ubiquitous as smart phones eventually?
I see 2 potential scenarios:
1. Some series of safety/privacy mishaps will lead to social/media hysteria which will push politicians towards a ban for such devices.
2. Initial price set too high will cause vicious circle of: low userbase -> lack of interest from developers -> lack of valuable features -> low userbase.
I won't argue that these are very probable scenarios, but quite possible imho.
But these aren't good enough to see mass adoption. It's possible that the tech needed to create an affordable smart glasses product that is actually usefully is for whatever reason just physically impossible to create.
"Smart" glasses erode everyone's privacy unlike any other technology. Cameras and cell phones have to be held up to record. Glasses can stream effortlessly and continuously, without anyone's consent. If that is not reason enough to object what more do you want, my fist in your face?
By the time I am close enough see that puny light you've already recorded me. It's an opt out mechanism, not opt in. Maybe if there was an unobtrusive way for me to prevent recording through a wearable, like a ROBOTS.TXT file, or a universal gesture (a middle finger, or a grimace) to indicate my desire to be erased from your recording, I would consider it. I would also want some assurance that my request is honored. Given how unlikely this all is, I am simply saying "nope" today.
It's fine in situations where consent is obtained in advance; e.g., events.
I should add that I take more pictures than the average person, and used to be a street photographer, so I have been in situations where people did not want their likeness captured. Also in countries where people objected to photography altogether on the grounds that it stole their spirit. I always had to make a decision with my trigger finger, so I was able to apply human oversight. My stance is informed by experience.
Try taking your phone out and start recording when talking to some random people on the street or in shop at cash register, or when talking to policeman etc. and see if none of them will start getting very annoyed or even aggressive - even if it's not (maybe) illegal people won't like it.
People are allowed to be annoyed. If you punch someone, or break/steal their property for recording, there are actual LEGAL consequences that could befall you. People record others all the time, there is this whole Karen phenomenon that is kinda hard not to know about..
There is a big difference between actively choosing to film, showing you are filming someone and a passive camera always on. The first one can be easily avoided, the second one not so much.
That is a technicality; I object on principle. I extrapolated current capabilities to underscore the argument, because more people will lifestream/lifecast the easier it gets. Tomorrow it may be a neural link.
Don't squander your right to record in public on something as mundane and personal as a civilian minding his own business. Record a crime, at least. Otherwise the law may change and you may lose that "right".
I don't like being recorded all the time when out in public or in stores or hospitals or other places or institutions. The thing that I find completly unacceptable is having the recording sent off to meta or google or somewhere to be analyzed and monetized without my consent. Not only do I not benefit from this I consider it a profound abuse of my privacy and autonamy. before all this invasive corporate surveillance being seen in public was a localized and ephemeral experience and privacy laws were adequate to cover this. This is no longer true. Not that I think this will happen any time soon (or ever) because, you know, money; and not enough people outraged about this or that feel safe enought to express thier outrage, but a simple fix would be that if I am not a consenting user of a corporate service like meta or google or ticktock or whatever then that service is not permited to retain or use that (personal) information in any way. So when the service recieves video it must remove or completely obsure any individuals image and audio from the video that are not current users of the service. Better yet and more feasible would be to just flag and delete the video, which puts the burden on the person making the video, where it belongs. Of course this would apply to any and all information conected to all non users of the service. To motivate compliance an automatic award of, let's say, $10,000 to an abused party would probably do the trick. If this sounds extream to you I just consider it a good start.
I didn't mean that this is ok to punch someone. My point is it will annoy a lot of people and some will eventually punch you. There are many legal things that if you do you are just asking yourself for a problem.
I also think in some countries it might be illegal to record someone either video or audio without explicitly telling or asking for permission. Even at the airport (at least in many I have been) it was not allowed to do video recording
> there are actual LEGAL consequences that could befall you
There are, but they are extraordinarly unlikely. People push and shove each other all the time over minor insults and disagreements and almost never end up in front of a judge. Most cops would just say "you should have put the camera down when he asked you to, now stop wasting my time."
Then what else have we got left in order to confront those very rude people that film you without your consent? It's pretty clear that the law is not up to the task.
The copy claims the glasses will complain audibly if you cover up the LED, but doesn’t say whether or not it stops recording. It’s also not clear how easily circumvented this is, but they’ve obviously considered the angle.
Correct, and people do have expectations, albeit reduced, of privacy in public too. Moreover, this expectation is thankfully backed by the law in various jurisdictions. I would very much like to see those rights beefed up for the machine learning age, after reading all these comments.
Or would you like to live in a panopticon like the Chinese? Hey, you're on PUBLIC property, citizen! Smile for the camera, and don't think we can't read your lips. Like for real; we got software for that.
It is not the norm everywhere and, in any case, we should push back. It gives me no joy to walk past video surveillance cameras. They stick out like sore thumbs to me and make me feel treated like a potential criminal.
I believe we reclaim no power by recording our fellow citizens going about their daily lives. We merely augment the corpus of corporations and governments.
My beef with these smart glasses is that while they can be used to document crimes, I estimate they will typically be used for mundane purposes, while eroding the privacy of law-abiding citizens. More so than cell phones, which require you to at least hold the thing up and press a button. You will do so to document a crime, but not to mindlessly and continuously record everything you see. This changes the balance.
if you are in public, you have no expectation of privacy outside of physical interaction in your immediate space outside your body (and even then, on crowded public transport, this is not the case). If someone can see what you are doing, there is no difference between that and them recording it. If someone can hear what your are saying, there is no difference between that and them recording it.
If you don't agree, you are essentially saying that you are entitled to do and say what you want, but gathering any evidence of you doing so is not allowed, which not only doesn't make sense but is also pretty indicative that you are looking to be up to no good.
> If someone can see what you are doing, there is no difference between that and them recording it. If someone can hear what your are saying, there is no difference between that and them recording it.
There is all the difference in the world. This is what we're debating here. According to your binary logic, everyone is within their right to record and retain in perpetuity all public activity, with arbitrary high fidelity. And if that's fair game, I suppose you'd be okay with unifying them into one view and mining it? Like China, but even worse. I would be disgusted and ashamed to live in such a society. Fortunately, the law does not say this.
For this specific product. If successful, you will no doubt get some i-glasses, goggles, galaxy glasses, ... and probably some infighting for openglasses and libreglasses.
First, just because China did it doesn't mean its necessarily wrong. The real bad part of Chinese system are the laws that govern what is bad and what the punishment - the surveillance in itself alone is neutral at worst. More information never hurts.
Secondly, this would be "society filming society", without the government being involved.
I really see only positive with the mass adoption of these things. When I go out in public, I drive respectfully, I don't cut in line, I clean up if I make a mess, I don't play loud music or have an obnoxiously loud car, I don't talk loudly, and am generally not an asshole to people. If someone needs the fear of being recorded, and put online and losing their job to not act like asshole, then so be it.
Because the hypothetical damage a bad member of society could do outweighs the potential risk of private life details leaking (and any effect resulting from this) for good members of society.
Say you live in a neighborhood with 50 people, and nobody knows anything about each other. Then one day, a hacker comes in an publishes a lot of private details about every single resident - grocery shopping lists, movie preferences, political leanings, website search history, even private videos and photos. However, it turns out that one of the residents is a serial rapist, while another one deals drugs. Getting information on those two is extremely valuable to the neighborhood, even if it came at a price of reduced privacy.
>It would also be a corporation filming private citizens on a very large scale (and government can obtain data from corporations).
I get the whole "government bad" liberterian sentiment, but this never really plays out in reality. I mean, lived 4 years under a literal fascist and came out largely ok. There is enough due process in place and good people in the government to avoid misuse of power on a wide scale. Furthermore, the government is a combination of incompetency and not enough man power for the average citizen to worry about.
As for corporations, most people are ok with data being collected about them and used for things like advertising, because they still continue to use the products and apps, because the value add of those is worth more than privacy (which many people don't even understand what it is).
> However, it turns out that one of the residents is a serial rapist, while another one deals drugs.
Hypotheticals are easy to populate with supporting examples, but also in the neighborhood are the political enemies of the government, minorities, targets of oppression (e.g., LGBTQ), etc.
> I get the whole "government bad" liberterian sentiment
Spare me your bullshit dimissal. Do you have anything substantive or is that all you have?
> this never really plays out in reality
I think cracking open any history book or reading the news will show the horrors inflicted by dictators. I'm glad you were ok.
Nah, earbuds and phones could do audio recording just fine and for longer. Adding video does not make it "unlike any other", so this is rather a minor erosion on top.
> Glasses can stream effortlessly and continuously
For a rather limited time duration and with a glowing light and with actually quite a bit of effort.
> without anyone's consent.
Why? You still need the same amount of consent as with any other camera.
> Any good argument that anyone can think of for a scenario where smart eyewear will not be as ubiquitous as smart phones eventually?
Yes, if it is clunky and doesn't look like an ordinary accessory people would wear anyway.
Smart watches are popular enough as people might wear a watch. Smart glasses could be popular if they look like actual glasses. Smart pants? Sure, if they can be worn like pants, thrown in the laundry and so on.
I recently saw an ad, probably on facebook, for a camera with a form factor the size of a USB stick, that you could clip on your belt or lapel or whatever, and record whatever was around you with a wide angle lens.
That same ability might lead people to ban people wearing smart glasses from participating.
If we were having a party, we’d almost certainly not allow people to keep their smart glasses on because the complete lack of friction would mean certain individuals who are decently in the public eye would have to basically spend the whole evening just making sure there’s not even a suggestion of a still picture capturing something that may go wrong.
You will almost certainly be required to remove your smart glasses before entering any sort of medical institution, and even a building containing a medical institution would probably have you removing it on entering the building itself.
Thanks a lot for this viewpoint. This type of surveillance tech is extremely scary to me. I have no doubt a big enough minority will want to embrace it, without a moments thought to what the people around them might feel like.
But it's very comforting that in many places they will be outright banned.
I will do my best to get them forbidden in as many places as I can.
"Would you favor or oppose the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse and other illegal activity"
In the 18-29 age range, 30% said yes.
I agree with your sentiments but we have already lost. You just have to enjoy what we have now because it won't last forever. Someday everyone's entire life will be filmed and watched over by AI. To me, that is absolutely obvious at this point. If that was not going to be the case we wouldn't be where we are now.
Why glasses? I’ve paid a lot of money not to have to wear glasses.
I might use some kind of camera attached to my head if it was something most people used. Would be nice to be able to capture moments instantly.
I haven’t seen a use-case for low quality augmented reality that would make me use glasses daily. Then again, I personally don’t find smart watches worth it and lots of people use those.
I think the Apple Vision kind of illustrates what it’d take for really compelling augmented reality. If it can replace my TV I might actually use it. But then they clearly don’t intend for you to use them outside. And I’m still not sure if it’s worth the discomfort of wearing tightly fitting glasses.
> Why glasses? I’ve paid a lot of money not to have to wear glasses.
Because it's the only socially acceptable way to point a camera at people without tipping them off.
That's one reason google glass didn't take off as well. When you show up at the party waving your camera around on record, people tend to find a way to distance themselves.
It means that either this line of product will ruin glasses (false positives of people assuming your thick frame glasses are a hidden camera) either people really aren't tipped off and we'll have a moral panic about private footages overflowing in the media.
I see a future in smart glasses, in particular for notifications, but they absolutely need to tip off people when the camera is pointed at them.
Cost and interface mostly. Also to some extent privacy issues.
Phones being $1000 is already an issue, and they're by default more robust. Glasses, assuming we can get them to a similar cost, are probably even more likely to be lost or broken. For comparison think of foldable smart phones, which exist, but are mostly seen as a trendy luxury item due to their durability issues.
The interface, I think is huge. Smart phones took off because apple figured out a good interface. People like to rip on them for just copying an idea that already existed and hadn't taken off, but they ignore that apple nailed the hell out of getting it so the average person could use it.
You need it to be clear, obvious, and responsive.
All the examples i've seen of these smart glasses (website isn't loading for me so I can't check this) are the sorts of things that nerdy people like me (typing on a cornish zen) would find fine, and will never be smooth enough for the average user, ESPECIALLY at current costs.
While things like the air pods pro have changed my opinion on the average user adopting tactile controls, I still think that voice activation and mostly reference-less tactile controls is NOT mass adoptable. And this is before we get into just the hassle of glasses (smudges and the like).
From what I can tell, these are basically just "headphones + camera" on your face. So it's not displaying anything, at which point this is like airpods with a camera. Is there a group of people who want that? Sure, this looks tailor made for luxury influences. Is that a use case for the average person? I don't think so.
Not a feature I like or endorse, but one that's clearly in the interest of both device vendors and much of the online advertising and commercial sector.
In a world in which credible attestations of interest and potential commercial value are difficult to assess without the manifest signals of a high street address and the visual assessments made possible by physical presence, owning a < 2 y.o. piece of $1,000 kit is a highly reliable market segmentation signal.
This is a key reason why websites (especially commercial ones, but also anything advertising-related) are on such a relentless treadmill of ever-escallating resource demand. Got to keep those undesireable old-cheap-Android and 15-year-old desktop plebes out somehow.
Eyeballs are pretty optimal for getting data out of a computer and into a brain. I think professionals will continue to use a high-resolution large-format desktop monitor, but a high-resolution large-format display on a pair of glasses is unambiguously superior to a phone screen, no matter how much resolution they pack in or how much larger than a pocket they get.
What I wonder is where the keyboard is going. I have an imagination that can draw and abstract things with (I think?) about as much fidelity as my eyes can take in, but there's nothing that even comes close to that for getting that data out of my brain and into the computer. Not keyboards, not mice, not touchscreens or pen/tablet, not game controllers, not voice-to-text. Not my Leap Motion gesture sensor or Spacemouse, though those are interesting products. With lots and lots of training, I can get hundreds of WPM of text into a computer, with exotic, high-information-density syntax if required (text entry speed doesn't really seem to be the bottleneck for productive work, but that's beside the point IMO).
The optimal input mechanism is definitely not blinking, though I can imagine that eyeglasses with gaze tracking tech (and some training for "wink to click" or similar) may someday be of comparable or greater utility to a mouse pointer. But how close can we get to "think to text" or "think to image"?
I’ve been imagining the future will be smart glasses paired with mini pocket keyboards, like the bottom half of a blackberry. Or who knows maybe everyone will lean heavily into dictation.
I think there’s also a future where hand tracking gets so good you just type on a full sized floating keyboard. That’s seems to be apples approach with the Vision Pro.
> Or who knows maybe everyone will lean heavily into dictation.
Impractical, as lots of input is hard or even impossible to do with dictation; saying "next" or "go back" every time quickly becomes tiresome, and never mind things like games.
For pure text messages and the like there are loads of scenarios where you don't want to be talking out loud, for reasons of convenience, privacy, and not being a nuisance to others.
It's looks cool on Star Trek and all, but voice control will never be the main interface to computers. Absolutely great accessibility tool and like many accessibility tools useful for everyone from time to time. But the default for regular people? I'm not seeing that happening.
I can't imagine willingly introducing any more "smart" devices into my life given the baggage "smart" comes with. We have to cede a little autonomy and privacy to unaccountable central authorities for every new "smart", cloud-enabled gimmick we buy into. I'd be happy to invest in tech that treats me like I own it, but that way of doing things is on its way out, at least for the average person.
People spend thousands to avoid having to wear glasses or contacts all the time.
Now you can wear them all the time again, but now with more ads?
EDIT to add something less snarky: phones were a "here's another thing to carry in your purse or pocket" additive thing to lifestyles, which wasn't too big a burden, and then gradually got more and more useful. Glasses and contacts, on the other hand, have decades of evidences of people actively avoiding them except for situational stuff. So them getting as pervasive as phones would need a lot more behavioral change.
This comment may eventually seem as outdated as asking 'what's the point of Dropbox,’ but it seems we’re approaching the limits of human-computer interaction. It feels as if we’ve reached a point where technology, originally a 'tool' to serve humans, is beginning to erode essential aspects of our humanity, manipulating our core motivations. People may start to opt out, not necessarily due to a lack of useful features and functionalities, but because the overall cost to our humanity outweighs the benefits. This is something we’re gradually coming to realize more fully.
I kind of agree with your first part. For a while now, I've considered the possibility that a handheld device like an iPhone is actually pretty close to the ideal way humans actually want to interact with a computer. Even though it seems cool as an idea, I don't think people want their experience with a computer to be too immersive--handheld device might be the sweet spot.
No. Wearable AR tech is the future. The trend has been "get this device as out of my way, and integrate it into my life as much as possible." e.g: big iron -> desktops -> laptops -> smart phones enabling greater mobility and flexibility of use.
We're just starting to see the next state of it with wearable tech. Smart watches. Airpods. Many people have these. Many people wear them for extended periods because they're comfortable interfaces to the services they care about. A family member has a hearing aid that's connected to their phone's bluetooth. Comfortable enough to wear all day & discretely listen to phone audio whenever. I think that's the next step (obvious evolution from airpods). Glasses -> AR displays shortly after.
The tendency for people to be creeped out by your surveillance glasses.
If anyone around me wore these, I'd promptly tease them playfully about it, making it clear it's creepy.
I understand that there are folks like yourself that are comfortable with it, but most people are against others walking around and recording.
I hate that they are trying to hide the fact that the glasses are modified. Clearly they understand that the camera must be hidden for it to be socially acceptable.
Cops have to wear body cams that are recording continuously (or at least we hope they are). Dash cams are popular...even standard...in places where insurance fraud is rife. How long the hold out will be until wearing a headset recording device is considered normal rather than creepy?
I see your point, but dash cams are recording the road, which is not a place that most people consider private.
An always-present personal recording device is different. People enter and leave areas that others feel are private. In some cases, there are even laws protecting what can be recorded (two-party states in the U.S. for example).
If something like these glasses started to take off, I would expect public backlash and legislation that restricted or prevented its use in certain contexts, which would essentially make them useless (the point is that you wear them all the time).
Depends on the culture, really. Dash cams (& ring doorbells/private security cameras) are illegal in quite a few countries with strong privacy protections.
Even on a public street people have a right to privacy in my country, I couldn't just start taking pictures or video of someone without consent.
I think a single trip down Reddit's r/PublicFreakout should be enough to convince you that the ubiquity of cameras doesn't stop people from acting like assholes.
Thats a small minority of incidents. There are a lot more day to day behaviors that people do that are inconsiderate, and if there is a chance of you getting on video, being identified and losing your job, Im all for it. There is no immediate reward for acting good, and very little to no punishment for acting like an asshole.
>There are a lot more day to day behaviors that people do that are inconsiderate, and if there is a chance of you getting on video, being identified and losing your job, Im all for it.
Good thing you've never done anything in your life that could be construed as inconsiderate, so this wouldn't affect you.
1. Outward appearance. People don't like wearing glasses if they don't have to.
2. Tech issues: e.g. short battery life, weight, need for charging, UX.
3. Compelling features that make them worthwhile to use. This point is harder to explain, but a device needs to provide features to the wearer as they wear them and not indirect benefits. These features need to be particular to the device's unique position on the face. It needs to solve the question: what can a device on the face do, that one in the hand can't.
4. Recording content must be a secondary feature of such devices. We let smartphones into private places, such as change rooms, because they provide an enormous set of features, and only bad actors would use the recording features in an indecent way. If the main purpose of smart eyewear is to record others, then they'll not only be banned from such locations, but those around the wearer will become unnerved by them. People need privacy and downtime.
I feel meta's smart glasses partly answer point 1, but fail at the rest. They are a lop sided product in their efforts: the main feature is to produce recordings, this means there's no compelling reason to always take them out and their primary purpose is bested by the smartphone they need to be paired with. The smartphone has better cameras, better battery life, the ability to easily review and retake photos, and doesn't need to be worn on the face.
I can't understate how wearable tech needs to deliver features to the user as they're wearing them, and in a way that only that position on the body enables. Meta's product here doesn't really offer anything that they can't get in a better form from other products, products that the market already owns:
Recording content: The phone is infinitely better.
Shortcuts/listening to music: BT headphones/Airpods are simpler, have longer battery, more private and provide all of the same features such as handling calls, volume and playback control.
With al of these obvious shortcomings, the only rationale I can imagine is that Meta are just doing their fast-follow strategy. They couldn't acquire Snap, so they copied Snap's stories and now these are a copy of Snap Spectacles.
I’d say “comfort”. Glasses aren’t comfortable for many people and neither are contact lenses. I have a mild prescription but the discomfort of the glasses (arms, nose bridge, turning head more) is greater than the discomfort of my vision not being ultra sharp (for me). So a future of putting on glasses for the tech really isn’t for me.
David Brin's 'Earth' novel (which feels very prescient in some ways) has elderly people wearing sunglasses that continuously capture live video which is monitored by (private?) security companies. If I recall correctly, in the novel this effectively eliminates street-crime.
We already do this with dashcams; when the form factor allows, I expect it'll be just as common for walking. For mostly the same reasons. It might actually improve city street life.
I don't want to typical mind the world and assume very many people feel the same, but I'm at least chiming in with the few here who have already they don't like wearing any kind of jewelry or really non-essential accoutrement of any kind. I have thankfully never needed corrective glasses, but I don't wear sunglasses, either, nor a watch, nor hats. I don't even wear my wedding ring except when I'm traveling and my wife nags me enough. I get that a wearable probably feels less obtrusive than a phone to someone who actually uses their phone a lot, but I don't. It's not obtrusive sitting in my pocket and even less so when it's on my bedside table charging and I'm somewhere else without it. Anything I'm wearing is inherently there. I don't particularly want to be that integrated with a digital world. I don't usually feel much of a need to record or augment my environment.
I'd go for musculoskeletal enhancement, given how much it sucks to get old and have more or less at least one active chronic joint injury at all times no matter what, but thankfully, for now, my eyes and memory still work pretty well on their own.
Glasses are uncomfortable to wear all the time. They are hard to control because they have very limited input methods. Nobody wants to charge their glasse. Every "smart glasses" product ever has failed - nobody wants these.
The argument is that many people go through the hassle of contact lenses as to not have to wear things on their face.
The bigger problem is that most of reality is just not that interesting. We are already well passed the marginal utility of additional photos/video.
Augmented reality has been right around the corner for many years now. There is obviously all kinds of fundamental flaws with these ideas that those with vested interest pretend do not exist.
Comfort and looks: In recent years I have seen lots of people move from glasses to contacts or even to laser surgery. And smart glasses will necessarily be even heavier.
Battery life: The announcement says 4 hours. That puts it at "gaming laptop" levels of inconvenience. It will have to be at least day long to be that ubiquitous and improvements of that scale will take many years.
Usability: touch gestures on the frame or a smartphone app make this very non-effortless. The "think or blink in a certain way" is definitely not there yet and I doubt it will be in the next 20 years. Also, that UX would be the innovation, not the glasses it is affixed to.
Banal reason: Look at VR, 3D, google glass,... . Much hype and then nothing. Why should this be any different?
The same argument I make against smartwatches: they are great for people who regularly wear the dumb version, but uncomfortable for people who don't.
Smartphones became ubiquous quickly because by the year 2007 almost everyone was used to having a cellphone in their pocket, smart or not. Personally, I find regular sun/glasses uncomfortable and I don't see myself ever buying smart ones.
Can dang do something about the corporate spam that keeps popping up on HN? I don't think meta, or Apple, or the rest of these companies need help advertising products.
I dislike Facebook as much as the next guy, probably more, but this stuff is news for hackers. And it's not even particularly beneficial for them to be featured on HN, we're a rather critical audience.
1. Flag content you feel isn't appropriate for HN.
2. Email mods at hn@ycombinator.com requesting that specific sites be deprecated and/or penalised.
As for the latter, I'm aware that general news and ideological sites are deprecated. I'm not aware that any mainstream corporate sites which have not engaged in vote-juicing practices are penalised.
There are those who share your weariness of promotional material from ... a certain commercial toothed segment, let's say.
The test for a good HN post isn't whether something is corporate, it's whether it gratifies intellectual curiosity. I of course agree with you that most corporate PR and advertising doesn't remotely clear that bar, but occasionally it does and such posts are fine on HN.
Meanwhile: Apple's internal teams already acknowledge this... by showing [digitally, with outward-facing LCDs] the wearer's "eyes" whenever they are able to see [and where they're looking, approximately?].
I'm no fan of either company but the general concept is that Meta specializes in software not fashion, so partnering with Rayban will allow people to feel fashionable while using Meta's device (and of course allowing meta to follow their every move).
I'm not interested in this particular device, but after almost being hit by cars several times this month while walking my dog, I am starting to warm to the idea of some form of "dash cam" for walking.
To play devil's advocate: be careful what you wish for. With the way that things are going, police will probably have zero issue getting whatever video from your "dash cam" they deem necessary to do their jobs.
This isn't true. For one, it'll not be secret. The LED will be on. Also, these glasses do not match the appearance of their "analog" namesakes. I just compared the Wayfarers on that page to the pair I have right here, and the thickness is quite noticeable. These things are chunky!
I think having it to record snippets of my golf game would be neat. Every par 3 I tee off is a hole-in-one opportunity, and how cool would that be to have that moment captured? Or grabbing some footage of a concert without holding my phone up like a dick. A lot of uses cases for chest-strapped GoPros will switch to these for sure.
I guess. Meta claims these will know when the LED is blocked, but that's probably circumventable as well. And little hidden cameras also already exist, and people filming in public is already a thing, so I don't really see how this specific product will change things in any significant way.
This specific product is backed by one of the largest corporations on the planet led by an absolute ruler who is at best amoral if not absolutely immoral, and has a long, long, long, long, long history of violating privacy, breaking promises regarding privacy,[1] and of refusing to accept responsibility of the consequences arising from doing so.
There are other amoral and immoral players out there, certainly. Few have Facebook's resources, however.
"The trust me, dumb fucks" still seems to be his guiding compass.
As for hidden cameras and unauthorised video: regulation is required. I'd suggest attacking the trade, transfer, and publishing of such video, as well as a strong right-to-privacy legislation. I'm not holding my breath, however.
I really hope it'll be possible to use the cameras in voice calls. First person PoV would be way better than phone camera PoV, and it would free my hand from carrying the phone in front of me.
Makes me think of the power dynamic between smart glass wearers and bystanders as a social problem and not a technical one: https://spectrum.ieee.org/ar-glasses
Wow, that is so dirty. They are doing the 2009 "get people to share things privately and then do a settings refactor that now makes the private things public until you reset them to private" Wow, I am sure this ends well for Rayband. :)
I interpreted "you’ll be notified to clear it" in the sense of "You will be notified that this is the reason the camera won't take pictures".
It seems like a logical assumption - what's the point of adding tech to prevent the target-visible warning light from being obscured, if you're still allowed to take the pictures with it obscured?
It's better than nothing, but it does put other people in the uncomfortable position of having to ask the glasses wearer to not record. And can you see the indication before you're actually on camera?
The counter is to put on your own pair of glasses that have mirrored lenses, a laser beam scanning back and forth and a prominent shotgun microphone pointed at the other person.
I had the original version of these, which didn't know if the LED was covered, but it didn't matter because no one even noticed when the LED was on, or if they did, they didn't seem to realize that it was a camera. I tried it at a party to get some candid shots with my friends. But in the end, the quality wasn't good enough for the candid shots to actually be worth keeping.
I can't help but feel like "smart glasses" is really pushing what this is? I feel like the vast majority of people when they see the words "smart glasses" they probably think some sort of AR tech, or at the very least some sort of screen.
And yet this is really just glasses with something like AirPods stuck in it with a camera connected to your phone. Super smart.
Society is far far from ready to answer the privacy questions of something like this, but when has Meta ever cared about that so why not just release it...
I feel like's it's inevitable that these types of devices will eventually become useful enough and stylish enough to start catching on. Companies have to start somewhere.
Google Glasses were a neat toy, but pretty far ahead of the tech's capabilities. One could make a similar argument for these new glasses as well, since they have no AR component.
I have to give it to Meta on this one. These look stylish and cool and they are at a price point that I could justify. About $400 Canadian. That means a lot of people can adopt this technology. I think Google was just a bit premature for peoples comfort level but I really wanted to see it expand.
The con I see is pretty soon there will be no privacy. Facial recognition will make a record of where you are and someone will have caught your face on camera. But in a world heading towards deep fakes maybe this will be a good thing.
These are going to also be awesome for Youtube videos I can not wait to get a set and start doing motorcycle repair videos where what I see is what you see so you can know exactly what I am looking at.
I don't wear glasses. I don't live in a sunny country. Unless I'm wearing flat and clear lenses I would infrequently wear these casually.
I like the concept. Just not sure about market fit outside a people who wear glasses, sunny locations and hardcore fans. Although that's a lot of people!
Used these for a year. Great content, but the stabilization is trash. That and exporting without using the Snapchat app made me question if it is really worth sharing the most intimate moments.
Did Snapchat's have really good audio quality that doesn't
disturb the people around you? Pair that with modern AI assistant breakthroughs and it starts to seem pretty compelling.
They also look way less dorky than Snapchat's attempt.
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[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 623 ms ] threadI would also imagine that Meta is paying them handsomely for the obvious brand risk here - getting Ray-Bans associated with glasshole behaviour.
The Ray-Ban brand is owned by the Italian-French EssilorLuxottica conglomerate. Market cap 74B EUR.
(Meta market cap: 770B USD.)
Compare Windows 1.0 (https://winworldpc.com/product/windows-10/101) with Windows 10/11.
Not that we shouldnt be suspicious of facebook, but we really must actually seek evidence rather than just decry them as witches. It lets other companies get away with loads simply because they are well liked.
Based on what do you assume playing sound reliably is a harder or more priority problem than spying on you?
To spy on someone using these glasses would mean decent audio stack that can actually reconnect by its self, rather than having to power cycle the entire device.
Not only that, but a level of attention to detail that means that what ever spying it does can happen reliably and inside a tiny power envelope.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying don't be suspicious of facebook, What I'm asking is to actually interrogate their level of skill.
facebook are frankly shite at software, just use any of their supporting apps.
o Portal, great hardware, shame that it never connected reliably.
o oculus: They have the power of facebook/instagram/social graph, yet its impossible to join your mate in game. Something Steam nailed in the days of dialup
o Rayban: cannot play audio reliably, pretty tricky to download pictures.
o Advertising: fuck me, its like oracle had a baby with SAP, and force fed it MS access forms.
Yes, yes its an advertising giant. But have you tried to get any usable and accurate data out of it?
Stop building them up like they are an unstoppable genius factory. Its basically a bunch of confused cats trapped under a duvet. The difference being those cats can drive advertising clicks.
Though not many celebs might want to be associated with the Zuckborg, nowadays.
That said, yes, the first time I met Tony he was sitting at a bar with a meat grinder, yes I spotted him swinging around Slim Jims in a mariachi suit atop a mecha grasshopper shooting flames out its mouth one time, but I guess I don't image he ever killed a mammal for no reason and served it cold to a vegetarian (he loved his llamas! RIP)
>The Capture LED lets others know when you’re capturing content or going live. If the LED is covered, you’ll be notified to clear it.
Sure, scuba divers still need some specialized gear, but there's tons of room in the sports segment for this kind of product.
I would not say any of those are compatible with wearing fashion-style sunglasses. I've lost pairs of glasses paddleboarding and kayaking before. I'm a mountain biker as well and crashes can be violent, I wouldn't trust glasses to stay on your face. All of those sports require firm attachment for a device worth more than say $100.
I don't think so. Do people at a concert hold their phones out to be seen recording? No, they just want to record and that's the only way to do it. They'd love to be able to do it hands free for sure.
You seem to be forgetting a lot of previous products. If anything these are a really late reply to Snap's Spectacles.
Also, these don't have a display. Many of your listed use cases don't apply unless you count audio replies, which we already have, all over the place. Please read about what a product does before correcting someone in the future...
I attend concerts a lot, and often post snippets to social media. There's always a tension I see among myself and others of trying to catch those particular lines of a song, while still not missing the show to mess with your phone.
Will I buy these? Meh, maybe. But the appeal is there.
The biggest thing preventing that future is hardware, and considering how you're brushing up against hard physics, I honestly don't see smart eyeglasses that look like normal eyelgasses playing out in any serious capacity for a looooong time.
But. If you could squint at the rough edges, and project forward what this could be like with more advanced tech, it was a no-brainer for me that it will be a far superior form factor for what we do with the phone. For 2 weeks, I tried hard NOT using a phone and just using it. While it was difficult (mostly because I couldn't have a conversation with anyone that didn't begin with them asking what was on my head), when I went back to the phone I so strongly noticed how much I was craning my neck, how annoying it was to interact with tech like that, and it kinda felt terrible.
I'm just traveling through France and saw on the news that a woman disappeared. They are trying to find her by triangulating the last location based on nearby cell towers of where she was last seen. So even giant European countries can't/don't use facebook/google to locate people.
I think he knows.
0: https://www.deaneckles.com/blog/700_docsend_in_snow_crash/
How? It's not mentioned anywhere that this is about displaying content, but it's very clear it's about capturing video and listening to audio only.
Or you want them to put "Notice: No display is included in the device" on the landing page?
> Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers.
Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.
Then later:
> No more stopping to answer your phone. Also, make calls and send messages on WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS, completely hands-free – simply by using your voice.
> (Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages) and (listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers)
vs:
> (Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks) through built-in speakers
So it's not clear from that wording that there isn't a display, or that the messages are read aloud. An unambiguous wording would be:
> listen to your favourite tracks and stay connected with hands-free calls and messages through built-in speakers
As, well, the below statement is true whether there is a screen or not, and also doesn't specify that the messages are read aloud:
> No more stopping to answer your phone. Also, make calls and send messages on WhatsApp, Messenger and SMS, completely hands-free – simply by using your voice
That plus the image of the screen floating next to the glasses definitely make it seem like marketing is trying to trick people into thinking there's a display without explicitly claiming it
That's true. But it's not excluding display stuff.
It's along the lines of some product having multiple features, and some marketing point only talking about the advantages of the first feature. People would expect further marketing points to address the other features, and/or not even realise they'd not seen the other ("assumed to be present") features mentioned later on.
How many product landing pages talk about what you cannot do with the product or what it doesn't include? That'd be a very strange landing page for a product...
However, do you really think the marketing team didn't get together and recognize the major limitation of not having a display, and carefully craft the marketing so as to minimize that?
Probably a bunch of people wished it was Google Glass 2.0 because it'd make the marketing people jobs easier/more interesting, but I don't think they'd craft the message to trick people, it'll impact the amount of returns and they'll probably lose more handling that than people not buying it because it doesn't have a screen.
> > Stay connected with hands-free calls and messages and listen to your favourite tracks through built-in speakers.
> Which makes it seem pretty clear they're talking about stuff you can do because of the speakers.
I don't agree at all (I wasn't not quoting to hide anything, I was just typing from mobile with a crappy connection on a train) - that's not clear to me - but ok.
They are also called "smart glasses", but they are just headphones and a camera. Nobody calls their bluetooth headphones "smart".
Clip your prescription to a pair of sunglasses instead, or to your smart glasses.
You might have to clip them to the backside to get it all to work out. But in that case variations in lens shape will be less visible, because sunglasses.
There's a reason over-glasses sunglasses are so big and clunky and ugly.
Since most glasses only grind the back side of the lens, they fit pretty closely together.
Which is also why you wouldn't be able to reverse the position of the lenses without changing how they're ground (also thick lenses hidden behind the frame conceal just how bad your eyes are, which some people get self conscious about.
Point was, if you wear a pair of glasses that people require you to take off regularly, you still need to be able to see, and that means carrying two pair of glasses. Transitions lenses exist in large part because people can't be arsed to carry around two pair of glasses.
It's even worse if you wear really thick glasses, because sometimes they even have to sit slightly proud of the frame in the front.
Your solution just isn't viable for this problem, as any longtime glasses wearer could easily tell you.
If that's not enough, there's a whole industry of people designing eyewear; you really think "What if you just added the corrective part inside the tinted part?" wouldn't have been done if it were viable?
Take a pair of glasses. Attach sunglasses to them. Move the bows from the glasses to the sunglasses. The geometry of the glasses or frames don’t matter, it’s whether there’s enough distance from the eye.
My glasses have almost always sat proud of the frames. And there’s plenty of distance behind them. (I’ve had sunglasses that brush my eyelashes though, when I was young and they were cheap, and that bugs the hell out of me).
> If that's not enough, there's a whole industry of people designing eyewear; you really think "What if you just added the corrective part inside the tinted part?" wouldn't have been done if it were viable?
First of all, that's an Appeal to Authority, and you know where you can stick that. Two, you think I'm trying to solve a very old problem, which means you missed the point.
Putting something on your face that vastly outsizes and outcosts your glasses is a brand new problem.
Scientists get eyepieces for microscopes with prescription lenses. That's not on your face. Skiers just buy goggles with prescription lenses, which cost almost as much as VR goggles. That's basically a luxury market, not a consumer market.
Also the whole fuckin' point is that none of these solutions (to people insisting you take your glasses off) work because a rounding error of people are going to carry two pair of glasses with them, and even the workaround is unwieldy. You're lost in the weeds talking about the physics of it, which aren't a problem and aren't the real problem.
You might have to clip them to the backside to get it all to work out.
And what does "Move the bows from the glasses to the sunglasses" even mean? Bows?
You can't take a glasses frame that is designed to be worn at a normal distance from the eye and then clip something to the back side of it, between the original lens and your eye. There's not enough space to add a corrective lens back there.
Even if there were, it's still unfeasible, because the part you have to take off is the smart part or the tinted part not the prescription part.
Never mind that it's only a rounding error of people who are willing to carry around a clip-on layer either, because it requires nearly as much protection as a full pair of glasses to avoid breaking it.
Making the prescription part the clipping part is inane on every level. Nothing about it works.
I mean, the concept seemed amazing, but it seemed clear that it needed to be combined with vastly more AI capability. All of the things that people imagined it doing were basically impossible.
But now it seems like something much more powerful shouldn't be that far away.
edit: All right, all right! It's a fair cop.
The person wearing them could be on a call, and the caller on the other side would hear what you say.
The person wearing them could be streaming to twitch, and everybody watching that stream would hear what you say.
All while you assume that you are having a private conversation with earbud person.
Which I don't do. If someone is wearing earbuds, that's an unambiguous signal that they don't want people talking to them.
I worked at a such a startup. It was vapor.
At least Glass had an API.
I wonder if any of the VPs at Essilor and Meta who shook on this are still with their companies and if their bonuses are linked to adoption.
But, I had the same argument for Apple watch - no one in my circle was wearing watches any more. However, that didn't prevent people to start wearing an Apple watch.
So, I can definitely see a future where people who don't wear glasses choose to wear smart glasses.
That watch can do a lot. Like paying etc.
I do agree that I wouldn't have assumed that the watch is used that much but after it got its own esim and can be used instead of a phone, it can replace a device.
And for sports it's actually practical.
Glasses? I still think nope. It's still not a beauty thing
Not all of us spend our days walking down urban streets, having a desire to have the things around us augmented. My smart phone spends 98% of its life in my pocket because I don't want or need any application most of the time. I've tried adopting a smartwatch on multiple occasions and never found it offered me any value. All it did was convince me to turn off a bunch of notifications I didn't need to be getting to begin with.
The reason I do not wear a smart watch is not because they're not useful, but because it's simply not comfortable for me to be wearing something on my wrist. It's not a big deal, but I prefer to not wear rings, watches, bracelets, etc.
Similarly, I prefer contacts over glasses because of a 1) glasses reduce your field of view / quality of vision, 2) the touch / feel of having something on my face, and 3) them inevitably falling off or being grabbed by my baby.
Smart watches got as ubiquitous as normal watches, and smartphones got as ubiquitous as wallets (and other things you might keep in a pocket or purse). I expect smart glasses will become about as ubiquitous as regular glasses.
You could stream video from the glasses and then video yourself writing them a note and hope someone else tags them to let them know it was for them.
I see 2 potential scenarios:
1. Some series of safety/privacy mishaps will lead to social/media hysteria which will push politicians towards a ban for such devices.
2. Initial price set too high will cause vicious circle of: low userbase -> lack of interest from developers -> lack of valuable features -> low userbase.
I won't argue that these are very probable scenarios, but quite possible imho.
These are listed at $299. Hardly expensive, compared to how much ray bans cost.
I'm very deeply concerned about privacy, but a simple thing like an "on" or "recording" light on the glasses could alert people that recording is on.
It's fine in situations where consent is obtained in advance; e.g., events.
I should add that I take more pictures than the average person, and used to be a street photographer, so I have been in situations where people did not want their likeness captured. Also in countries where people objected to photography altogether on the grounds that it stole their spirit. I always had to make a decision with my trigger finger, so I was able to apply human oversight. My stance is informed by experience.
Edit: OP removed their reference to punching people who would dare film them. This thread will no longer make sense to other's trying to catch up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestreaming
Don't squander your right to record in public on something as mundane and personal as a civilian minding his own business. Record a crime, at least. Otherwise the law may change and you may lose that "right".
I also think in some countries it might be illegal to record someone either video or audio without explicitly telling or asking for permission. Even at the airport (at least in many I have been) it was not allowed to do video recording
There are, but they are extraordinarly unlikely. People push and shove each other all the time over minor insults and disagreements and almost never end up in front of a judge. Most cops would just say "you should have put the camera down when he asked you to, now stop wasting my time."
Or would you like to live in a panopticon like the Chinese? Hey, you're on PUBLIC property, citizen! Smile for the camera, and don't think we can't read your lips. Like for real; we got software for that.
If we're already dealing with ubiquitous recording in public, I'd rather give some of that power back to individuals rather than the government.
I believe we reclaim no power by recording our fellow citizens going about their daily lives. We merely augment the corpus of corporations and governments.
My beef with these smart glasses is that while they can be used to document crimes, I estimate they will typically be used for mundane purposes, while eroding the privacy of law-abiding citizens. More so than cell phones, which require you to at least hold the thing up and press a button. You will do so to document a crime, but not to mindlessly and continuously record everything you see. This changes the balance.
if you are in public, you have no expectation of privacy outside of physical interaction in your immediate space outside your body (and even then, on crowded public transport, this is not the case). If someone can see what you are doing, there is no difference between that and them recording it. If someone can hear what your are saying, there is no difference between that and them recording it.
If you don't agree, you are essentially saying that you are entitled to do and say what you want, but gathering any evidence of you doing so is not allowed, which not only doesn't make sense but is also pretty indicative that you are looking to be up to no good.
There is all the difference in the world. This is what we're debating here. According to your binary logic, everyone is within their right to record and retain in perpetuity all public activity, with arbitrary high fidelity. And if that's fair game, I suppose you'd be okay with unifying them into one view and mining it? Like China, but even worse. I would be disgusted and ashamed to live in such a society. Fortunately, the law does not say this.
You'd be giving it to Facebook, though I suppose Zuckerberg is an individual.
Secondly, this would be "society filming society", without the government being involved.
I really see only positive with the mass adoption of these things. When I go out in public, I drive respectfully, I don't cut in line, I clean up if I make a mess, I don't play loud music or have an obnoxiously loud car, I don't talk loudly, and am generally not an asshole to people. If someone needs the fear of being recorded, and put online and losing their job to not act like asshole, then so be it.
How do you reach that conclusion?
> this would be "society filming society"
It would also be a corporation filming private citizens on a very large scale (and government can obtain data from corporations).
> If someone needs the fear of being recorded, and put online and losing their job to not act like asshole, then so be it.
People are attacked and shamed for many things that are private or harmless or even good things.
Because the hypothetical damage a bad member of society could do outweighs the potential risk of private life details leaking (and any effect resulting from this) for good members of society.
Say you live in a neighborhood with 50 people, and nobody knows anything about each other. Then one day, a hacker comes in an publishes a lot of private details about every single resident - grocery shopping lists, movie preferences, political leanings, website search history, even private videos and photos. However, it turns out that one of the residents is a serial rapist, while another one deals drugs. Getting information on those two is extremely valuable to the neighborhood, even if it came at a price of reduced privacy.
>It would also be a corporation filming private citizens on a very large scale (and government can obtain data from corporations).
I get the whole "government bad" liberterian sentiment, but this never really plays out in reality. I mean, lived 4 years under a literal fascist and came out largely ok. There is enough due process in place and good people in the government to avoid misuse of power on a wide scale. Furthermore, the government is a combination of incompetency and not enough man power for the average citizen to worry about.
As for corporations, most people are ok with data being collected about them and used for things like advertising, because they still continue to use the products and apps, because the value add of those is worth more than privacy (which many people don't even understand what it is).
Hypotheticals are easy to populate with supporting examples, but also in the neighborhood are the political enemies of the government, minorities, targets of oppression (e.g., LGBTQ), etc.
> I get the whole "government bad" liberterian sentiment
Spare me your bullshit dimissal. Do you have anything substantive or is that all you have?
> this never really plays out in reality
I think cracking open any history book or reading the news will show the horrors inflicted by dictators. I'm glad you were ok.
> Glasses can stream effortlessly and continuously
For a rather limited time duration and with a glowing light and with actually quite a bit of effort.
> without anyone's consent.
Why? You still need the same amount of consent as with any other camera.
Yes, if it is clunky and doesn't look like an ordinary accessory people would wear anyway.
Smart watches are popular enough as people might wear a watch. Smart glasses could be popular if they look like actual glasses. Smart pants? Sure, if they can be worn like pants, thrown in the laundry and so on.
If we were having a party, we’d almost certainly not allow people to keep their smart glasses on because the complete lack of friction would mean certain individuals who are decently in the public eye would have to basically spend the whole evening just making sure there’s not even a suggestion of a still picture capturing something that may go wrong.
You will almost certainly be required to remove your smart glasses before entering any sort of medical institution, and even a building containing a medical institution would probably have you removing it on entering the building itself.
But it's very comforting that in many places they will be outright banned. I will do my best to get them forbidden in as many places as I can.
In the 18-29 age range, 30% said yes.
I agree with your sentiments but we have already lost. You just have to enjoy what we have now because it won't last forever. Someday everyone's entire life will be filmed and watched over by AI. To me, that is absolutely obvious at this point. If that was not going to be the case we wouldn't be where we are now.
I might use some kind of camera attached to my head if it was something most people used. Would be nice to be able to capture moments instantly.
I haven’t seen a use-case for low quality augmented reality that would make me use glasses daily. Then again, I personally don’t find smart watches worth it and lots of people use those.
I think the Apple Vision kind of illustrates what it’d take for really compelling augmented reality. If it can replace my TV I might actually use it. But then they clearly don’t intend for you to use them outside. And I’m still not sure if it’s worth the discomfort of wearing tightly fitting glasses.
Because it's the only socially acceptable way to point a camera at people without tipping them off.
That's one reason google glass didn't take off as well. When you show up at the party waving your camera around on record, people tend to find a way to distance themselves.
I see a future in smart glasses, in particular for notifications, but they absolutely need to tip off people when the camera is pointed at them.
Which is already "too late", as most of the time the person will be recorded before they've noticed it.
Not sure there's a perfect solution to the problem though, as it's the intersection of several concurrent conflicting requirements. :/
Phones being $1000 is already an issue, and they're by default more robust. Glasses, assuming we can get them to a similar cost, are probably even more likely to be lost or broken. For comparison think of foldable smart phones, which exist, but are mostly seen as a trendy luxury item due to their durability issues.
The interface, I think is huge. Smart phones took off because apple figured out a good interface. People like to rip on them for just copying an idea that already existed and hadn't taken off, but they ignore that apple nailed the hell out of getting it so the average person could use it.
You need it to be clear, obvious, and responsive.
All the examples i've seen of these smart glasses (website isn't loading for me so I can't check this) are the sorts of things that nerdy people like me (typing on a cornish zen) would find fine, and will never be smooth enough for the average user, ESPECIALLY at current costs.
While things like the air pods pro have changed my opinion on the average user adopting tactile controls, I still think that voice activation and mostly reference-less tactile controls is NOT mass adoptable. And this is before we get into just the hassle of glasses (smudges and the like).
From what I can tell, these are basically just "headphones + camera" on your face. So it's not displaying anything, at which point this is like airpods with a camera. Is there a group of people who want that? Sure, this looks tailor made for luxury influences. Is that a use case for the average person? I don't think so.
Not a feature I like or endorse, but one that's clearly in the interest of both device vendors and much of the online advertising and commercial sector.
In a world in which credible attestations of interest and potential commercial value are difficult to assess without the manifest signals of a high street address and the visual assessments made possible by physical presence, owning a < 2 y.o. piece of $1,000 kit is a highly reliable market segmentation signal.
This is a key reason why websites (especially commercial ones, but also anything advertising-related) are on such a relentless treadmill of ever-escallating resource demand. Got to keep those undesireable old-cheap-Android and 15-year-old desktop plebes out somehow.
Previously: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27410503> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29612296> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16959819> <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21530274>
What I wonder is where the keyboard is going. I have an imagination that can draw and abstract things with (I think?) about as much fidelity as my eyes can take in, but there's nothing that even comes close to that for getting that data out of my brain and into the computer. Not keyboards, not mice, not touchscreens or pen/tablet, not game controllers, not voice-to-text. Not my Leap Motion gesture sensor or Spacemouse, though those are interesting products. With lots and lots of training, I can get hundreds of WPM of text into a computer, with exotic, high-information-density syntax if required (text entry speed doesn't really seem to be the bottleneck for productive work, but that's beside the point IMO).
The optimal input mechanism is definitely not blinking, though I can imagine that eyeglasses with gaze tracking tech (and some training for "wink to click" or similar) may someday be of comparable or greater utility to a mouse pointer. But how close can we get to "think to text" or "think to image"?
I think there’s also a future where hand tracking gets so good you just type on a full sized floating keyboard. That’s seems to be apples approach with the Vision Pro.
Impractical, as lots of input is hard or even impossible to do with dictation; saying "next" or "go back" every time quickly becomes tiresome, and never mind things like games.
For pure text messages and the like there are loads of scenarios where you don't want to be talking out loud, for reasons of convenience, privacy, and not being a nuisance to others.
It's looks cool on Star Trek and all, but voice control will never be the main interface to computers. Absolutely great accessibility tool and like many accessibility tools useful for everyone from time to time. But the default for regular people? I'm not seeing that happening.
the inner ear is a mechanical amplifier.
a device comparing the incoming acoustic spectrum with the otoacoustically emitted spectrum can see the mixer settings (controlled by the brain).
we could learn to type and communicate with our cochleas (assuming they weren't destroyed by wearing big headphones while cycling...)
Now you can wear them all the time again, but now with more ads?
EDIT to add something less snarky: phones were a "here's another thing to carry in your purse or pocket" additive thing to lifestyles, which wasn't too big a burden, and then gradually got more and more useful. Glasses and contacts, on the other hand, have decades of evidences of people actively avoiding them except for situational stuff. So them getting as pervasive as phones would need a lot more behavioral change.
Moreover its really hard to upskirt with glasses on your head. mobile phones however are super easy, as I witnessed last year.
As a capture device, smart glasses are a dead end. When they have a display, and a ergonmic input system, then they'll replace smartphones
oh and 100x battery density.
We're just starting to see the next state of it with wearable tech. Smart watches. Airpods. Many people have these. Many people wear them for extended periods because they're comfortable interfaces to the services they care about. A family member has a hearing aid that's connected to their phone's bluetooth. Comfortable enough to wear all day & discretely listen to phone audio whenever. I think that's the next step (obvious evolution from airpods). Glasses -> AR displays shortly after.
If anyone around me wore these, I'd promptly tease them playfully about it, making it clear it's creepy.
I understand that there are folks like yourself that are comfortable with it, but most people are against others walking around and recording.
I hate that they are trying to hide the fact that the glasses are modified. Clearly they understand that the camera must be hidden for it to be socially acceptable.
An always-present personal recording device is different. People enter and leave areas that others feel are private. In some cases, there are even laws protecting what can be recorded (two-party states in the U.S. for example).
If something like these glasses started to take off, I would expect public backlash and legislation that restricted or prevented its use in certain contexts, which would essentially make them useless (the point is that you wear them all the time).
Even on a public street people have a right to privacy in my country, I couldn't just start taking pictures or video of someone without consent.
Good thing you've never done anything in your life that could be construed as inconsiderate, so this wouldn't affect you.
1. Outward appearance. People don't like wearing glasses if they don't have to.
2. Tech issues: e.g. short battery life, weight, need for charging, UX.
3. Compelling features that make them worthwhile to use. This point is harder to explain, but a device needs to provide features to the wearer as they wear them and not indirect benefits. These features need to be particular to the device's unique position on the face. It needs to solve the question: what can a device on the face do, that one in the hand can't.
4. Recording content must be a secondary feature of such devices. We let smartphones into private places, such as change rooms, because they provide an enormous set of features, and only bad actors would use the recording features in an indecent way. If the main purpose of smart eyewear is to record others, then they'll not only be banned from such locations, but those around the wearer will become unnerved by them. People need privacy and downtime.
I feel meta's smart glasses partly answer point 1, but fail at the rest. They are a lop sided product in their efforts: the main feature is to produce recordings, this means there's no compelling reason to always take them out and their primary purpose is bested by the smartphone they need to be paired with. The smartphone has better cameras, better battery life, the ability to easily review and retake photos, and doesn't need to be worn on the face.
I can't understate how wearable tech needs to deliver features to the user as they're wearing them, and in a way that only that position on the body enables. Meta's product here doesn't really offer anything that they can't get in a better form from other products, products that the market already owns:
Recording content: The phone is infinitely better.
Shortcuts/listening to music: BT headphones/Airpods are simpler, have longer battery, more private and provide all of the same features such as handling calls, volume and playback control.
With al of these obvious shortcomings, the only rationale I can imagine is that Meta are just doing their fast-follow strategy. They couldn't acquire Snap, so they copied Snap's stories and now these are a copy of Snap Spectacles.
> I feel meta's smart glasses partly answer point 1, but fail at the rest.
I'd go for musculoskeletal enhancement, given how much it sucks to get old and have more or less at least one active chronic joint injury at all times no matter what, but thankfully, for now, my eyes and memory still work pretty well on their own.
The bigger problem is that most of reality is just not that interesting. We are already well passed the marginal utility of additional photos/video.
Augmented reality has been right around the corner for many years now. There is obviously all kinds of fundamental flaws with these ideas that those with vested interest pretend do not exist.
Why not? Privacy is important to people.
For a long time, the majority of people didn't really seem to care about their online privacy. However, the EU still created the GDPR.
Perhaps a "real world privacy" equivalent of GDPR should happen at some point?
If delivered, augmented reality will be the single biggest technical breakthrough since the smartphone.
Battery life: The announcement says 4 hours. That puts it at "gaming laptop" levels of inconvenience. It will have to be at least day long to be that ubiquitous and improvements of that scale will take many years.
Usability: touch gestures on the frame or a smartphone app make this very non-effortless. The "think or blink in a certain way" is definitely not there yet and I doubt it will be in the next 20 years. Also, that UX would be the innovation, not the glasses it is affixed to.
Banal reason: Look at VR, 3D, google glass,... . Much hype and then nothing. Why should this be any different?
Smartphones became ubiquous quickly because by the year 2007 almost everyone was used to having a cellphone in their pocket, smart or not. Personally, I find regular sun/glasses uncomfortable and I don't see myself ever buying smart ones.
I think that's worth my attention even if I'm not the intended customer.
1. Flag content you feel isn't appropriate for HN.
2. Email mods at hn@ycombinator.com requesting that specific sites be deprecated and/or penalised.
As for the latter, I'm aware that general news and ideological sites are deprecated. I'm not aware that any mainstream corporate sites which have not engaged in vote-juicing practices are penalised.
There are those who share your weariness of promotional material from ... a certain commercial toothed segment, let's say.
This is one of those cases where it's really helpful to know specifically what we're optimizing for and what we don't need to worry about: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
—Some Rayban Executive, probably.
I think having it to record snippets of my golf game would be neat. Every par 3 I tee off is a hole-in-one opportunity, and how cool would that be to have that moment captured? Or grabbing some footage of a concert without holding my phone up like a dick. A lot of uses cases for chest-strapped GoPros will switch to these for sure.
Requiring The Rest of The World have 100% situational awareness to look for the glowing specs is also frankly ridiculous.
There are other amoral and immoral players out there, certainly. Few have Facebook's resources, however.
"The trust me, dumb fucks" still seems to be his guiding compass.
As for hidden cameras and unauthorised video: regulation is required. I'd suggest attacking the trade, transfer, and publishing of such video, as well as a strong right-to-privacy legislation. I'm not holding my breath, however.
________________________________
Notes:
1. "Why Zuckerberg's 14-Year Apology Tour Hasn't Fixed Facebook", Zeynep Tufekci, <https://www.wired.com/story/why-zuckerberg-15-year-apology-t...>
2. <https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zucker...>
"The Capture LED lets others know when you're capturing content or going live. If the LED is covered, you'll be notified to clear it."
So that's nice.
>Bystander privacy
>The Capture LED lets others know when you’re capturing content or going live. If the LED is covered, you’ll be notified to clear it.
It seems like a logical assumption - what's the point of adding tech to prevent the target-visible warning light from being obscured, if you're still allowed to take the pictures with it obscured?
And yet this is really just glasses with something like AirPods stuck in it with a camera connected to your phone. Super smart.
Society is far far from ready to answer the privacy questions of something like this, but when has Meta ever cared about that so why not just release it...
The only "innovation" here is the camera. But while isn't horrible is far from anything I could call "smart glasses".
I mean it isn't like it is even all self contained, it's tethered to a phone. I just don't see what this is really bringing to the table.
Google Glasses were a neat toy, but pretty far ahead of the tech's capabilities. One could make a similar argument for these new glasses as well, since they have no AR component.
I like the concept. Just not sure about market fit outside a people who wear glasses, sunny locations and hardcore fans. Although that's a lot of people!
Forgot those even existed.
How are these glasses different? I can't imagine the market for this sort or thing has gotten _that_ much bigger since Snapchat's try at this.
[1]: https://mashable.com/article/snap-spectacles-warehouse-deman...
They also look way less dorky than Snapchat's attempt.
Not to mention, of course, the intrusion into the lives of the people you’re recording, whose “moment” is not your moment to record.
Their language positively reeks of lies. I’m sure the glasses will be popular, and there’s nothing we can do about it.