I got a pair as a gift and they've been sitting around unopened. I can't say I have any clue what to do with them—I like cheap sunglasses and I don't like talking to chatbots. I don't understand why we can't have dumb tools anymore.
I also strongly suspect these numbers are misleading. I was offered another pair for free on opening a verizon fiber account. I'm betting there's some scheme to pump up these numbers to make it look like they're catching on. Though perhaps this skepticism is negated by the increase in production.
Granted, I've seen a couple tiktokers use something like them, but I don't know what the experience is like getting that video out of Meta's grasp.
For me the meta sunglasses have two killer features. Taking candid pictures of my family is extremely easy, I no longer miss catching photos of small things my toddlers do and I'm able to do it hands-free. Additionally, they work remarkably well as headphones, they use some technique where only you hear the audio which is great both for music and for watching videos in public without bothering other folks.
I'm surprised the candid picture case is so compelling. I can pull my phone from my pocket, double click the power button to enter camera mode, then tap volume button to shoot, very quickly. Under 2 seconds easily.
Guessing based on what I see: The act of simply pulling out your phone can break the moment. Kids tend to zero in on it immediately, making it the new center of their attention.
I dunno, I have lots of photos of kids on my phone just like I described. It's true, sometimes they do do that, but also, because I take so many, they got over it.
Don't forget having to frame the shot, making sure it's in focus, ensuring your subject doesn't get distracted by your motion, and not fumbling your phone in the hurry to capture the moment... as opposed to pressing a button on the glasses you're already wearing.
I mean this as unjudgementally as possible, but the first reason is super creepy no matter how well intentioned your use case is. I don’t think we were meant to prioritize capturing the moment so highly.
This is the same thing Google did with Google Home. For a few years, a new Spotify subscription, Nest subscription, I think certain Google Drive storage subscriptions, etc. would give you a free Google Home Mini.
I do now have one in nearly every room in my house, and Google Home is pretty dominant in its field. I’m not convinced Meta glasses will have the same effect (I hope not) but it does seem possible.
i use them as headphones more than the camera. their AI is useless and turning them on significantly lowers battery life. but then still useful as sunglasses without battery
The last version was chunky and cheap looking. I couldn't find a use for them and sent them back. And that was when I worked there. Wouldn't touch them now.
I bought mine last year and use them practically everyday - mostly as headphones/microphone, but taking photos/videos ocasionally too.
While I never planned to use them as a headphones, there is something surprisingly pleasant about not needing to put yet another gadget in your ears. And the sound feels more like coming from the environment and not directly emerging in your ears. Talking to ChatGPT with Advanced Voice mode or listening a podcast during a walk or bike ride or so is a really nice experience with these. Receiving calls is fun too.
Camera is really interesting to use in some unusual scenarios, like POV view of a ballet teacher or figure skating couple performing a death spiral. I give them to try to my friends when I see an opportunity to film something like that. That's really fun and sometimes illuminating.
I briefly enjoyed playing with Meta AI. One use case was "listening the podcast, encounter unknown term or name, ask "Hey Meta, explain <word> meaning", and back to listening without even lifting a finger". But then Meta disabled it in the country I'm in (I bought it in airport in another country), so only basic voice commands are working, which is fine.
> alking to ChatGPT with Advanced Voice mode or listening a podcast during a walk or bike ride or so is a really nice experience with these.
I've recently thought that a killer bit of hardware would be a way to interact with an LLM by voice without other people thinking you're talking to them and saying "what?". I was imagining the return of those classic bluetooth headseats, or some combo of earbud and throat mic, but the Ray Bans seem like they might be an option, too.
This + a button on watch to feed last x seconds of environmental data to a local micro LLM could be interesting.
"The user pressed button as the word `cromulent` was spoken by unidentified individual in front of ...",
"The user seemed to have been engaged in a snowboarding session when the button was pressed, ...",
"The user was screaming `computer LOCKDOWN LOC-aaagh` as they..."
Meta's AI assistant can take in a picture today along with your prompt. Pretty basic and unfortunately tied only to their AI assistant but along the lines of what you're talking about.
If they opened up the glasses and all of their cameras to other AI models, it'd be pretty powerful. Alas, walled gardens. I would bet OpenAI is working on some similar hardware to compete.
Google was right in the end, just ten years too soon with Google Glass.
I don't know, I think that would still require people to change their assumptions about glasses. Currently, I don't assume someone is talking to their sunnies.
Irrelevant really, because plenty of people use plug style ear buds that you can't obviously see in their ears. If someone is talking to thin air then I always presume they're on a call with someone.
Best way to do this is a with a wireless one hand chorded keyboard. A fancier solution would be detecting subvocalizations. That would feel almost like mind-reading
I think if you don't want to type and more control the OS and you add chording to it, would beat any other input system other than scanning brainwaves for me.
I know someone who has a pair and authentically loves them. He's blind. It's easy to pooh-pooh their utility if someone doesn't need assistance to know what's in the room with them, but hopefully we can all understand the clear value proposition for those who do.
> Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which oversees the product as well as its virtual- and augmented-reality goggles, reported losses of nearly $5 billion in the fourth quarter.
Reality Labs is much much bigger than this product. It's unreasonable to point to their aggregate losses here unless you have some indication that those losses are due to this product.
The second they make this and make it useful in any way, immediately the apps people create will lay bare exactly how bad of a privacy invasion they are, tons of bad press ensuing.
It's definitely not technical hurdles preventing them from making one.
Censorship and alignment (speech, LLMs, glasses, drones, ..) rarely stops negative scenarios, but it slows positive scenarios from existence and competition with negative scenarios.
I understand the value proposition. My problem is that people using them are offloading the cost onto others who have not agreed to be so exposed.
If it were possible to use something like these without throwing everyone they interact with under the bus in terms of privacy and security, I'd have no problem with them.
That’s a totally different product. The Meta glasses don’t have a screen, only camera paired with voice UI.
If we’re looking for a head-mounted device that’s useful for blind people, taking away the camera and intelligence and replacing them with a screen definitely is not it. You’re losing the useful parts and replacing them with a useless one.
AFAICT, none of the XReal glasses have an integrated camera, and the accessory camera on their website just says "coming soon". Without a camera, it's not suitable for the purpose.
You've suggested a device that takes away the one thing they need (the ability to perceive the world without sight) and replaced it with the one thing they don't need (the ability to overlay content onto sight).
I mean there is no cost for others, though. You don't have a right to not be "exposed". If you think the way we handle laws around photography or whatever should be changed, we have a whole democracy for brokering that. (Or at least we did until very recently.)
You didn't really specify what's bad, and I don't think the current law on photography (or whatever you're worried about) is an issue so I'm arguing both ethics/morals and legalities.
Interesting, I've been thinking for a long time these would be most useful to the hearing impaired if they get a simple text display going. Some people just simply avoid social situations because hearing aids aren't good enough, having subtitles wherever you go would be really revolutionary for them. Same for traveling.
The same value proposition surely applies to locking GPS collars. A clear value for individuals managing dementia patients, but it's a privacy nightmare for everyone and most of the customers aren't nurses.
Accessibility doesn't need to come at the expense of privacy.
That's exactly my point. These glasses affect more than just the wearer. Wearing these glasses exposes others.
I see the argument in public (thought I'm uncomfortable with that as well), but this affects other situations too. I'm not going to ask my blind friend to remove his accessibility device when he enters my home, but the same can't be true of my business. Can't have protected personal, health, financial, or corporate information delivered directly to Meta.
That's probably the crux of it. These aren't just vision aids, they're cloud-centric data-harvesting Meta products.
So I'm not arguing against the tech, but I am expressing discomfort. If I knew someone who wore these, even as an accessibility aid, I'd feel uncomfortable around them.
I do not agree that others are exposed in a way that can be compared with how they are exposed to hidden spy cameras.
Whenever you are in a place where there are other humans around, you are exposed, regardless if they have cameras or not.
Just counting on the fact that most humans have poor photographic memory, so they might forget what they have seen at you, cannot be claimed to be enough to consider that you are not exposed.
Whatever you do not want to be remembered, you should not do in the presence of humans. Wherever in your home or at your business there is something that you would not want remembered by others, you should not bring any guests, regardless if they carry cameras or not. If there exists any "protected personal, health, financial, or corporate information" that you do not consider public, you should not show that to your guests, regardless if they carry cameras or not.
I agree however that any cameras hidden wherever you believe that nobody sees you, are an assault on privacy, unlike cameras carried by humans, who you must expect to be able to see and remember you (or any of your private information that is visible), even without cameras.
Therefore I believe that in the majority of situations, restrictions on the carrying of cameras, including such as the Meta glasses, do not make sense. Either the presence of the untrusted humans must be completely forbidden, or wherever they are allowed they should be able to carry their cameras or glasses with them. One of the acceptable exceptions is for preventing the recording of shows, where even if I consider that it is an abuse to forbid recording for personal use, I agree that otherwise it would be difficult to discover later whether such recordings are in fact distributed commercially.
For a visit in a company however, camera restrictions are useless, because usually far less of the private information of a company is valuable than its management or its lawyers believe. The really valuable information is usually small enough to be easily remembered by a competent human who has seen it, with no need to record it with a camera. Information leaks must be prevented by allowing guest access only in selected areas and by showing them only the information that must be shared with them, not by frisking them for cameras.
I see your point, but I care about exposure to Meta, not to my friends. That's the new element here.
I don't agree that corporate restrictions on cameras are useless, even if the information itself isn't particularly valuable. I work in semicon, if I put these on at work and information somehow gets sent to a non-US server, I would have broken International Traffic in Arms Regulations. In all likelihood the information won't reach or be useful to China, but the US government doesn't care and will fine us into oblivion regardless. Honestly, it's more a liability thing than actual security.
Yup, privacy has and always been illusion. You can never know for certain if someone is listening or there's one OV6948 or 10,000 of them hidden in your house.
We need better laws around this, not the fact that the technology is present but managing the presence of the technology a la The Quantum Thief's Gevulot.
I always put it as "If I'm in bed and I see the shadow of a person standing outside my window, is it a person or an inconveniently shaped tree?" in that moment my supposed privacy is a Schrodinger's cat and after I have drawn the curtain to see what's out there, the hard truth is that I still can't be 100% certain that I have "privacy".
Being Mr. or Ms. Surveillance Narc has a little less stigma than back then, but there is still stigma. We'll have captivating stories of Little Brother, intentional and accidental, in the near future. One person's "breaking the moment" is another person's "fair warning", especially in private spaces.
>Google, for all the backlash it's gotten over gentrification, last year's NSA revelations, and personal data collection for ads, still looks like a company that gives a damn.
Being introduced to something in adult hood vs being primed for it from your first moments of thought. That is the real mark between generations. What sensibilities marketing departments have propagandized within this cohort of youths. They will hold those views to some degree for the rest of their lives.
Odd story given your comment. Story is about being mugged for wearing a device. 15 years ago a fellow student had someone walk up to them, ask to see their phone, then bolt off with it. Tho that student was pretty tall so he laughed it off since the guy didn't get far
& as for internet laughing at someone's misfortune, that's normal. He says they wouldn't say he had it coming if it was jewelry, but people are laughing saying this rapper had it coming singing "ice on my neck" before going for crowd surfing: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VocdUpfuepY
Instagram shows me too many videos of "pick up artists" doing POV videos of their douchey interaction with girls, recorded on these. I wonder if it's too stealthy that the people being recorded don't notice. Slash, maybe they have release forms and the videos published are just the ones where they consented to being recorded (heh, as if the pick-up scene cares so great about consent...), and the failed ones are where they immediately say "Is that a camera? Fuck off!".
If you put black tape over the light, it will not allow you to turn on the camera, however, I believe someone found a hack that said if you started recording and then put black tape over the recording, it would allow you to continue to record, but only for 3 minute increments.
I suppose that really depends on how hard they’re trying to prevent you from doing that…
* They could measure the forward voltage of the LED when driven by a known current. Bonus points for measuring at multiple currents. Remember that the forward voltage depends on color.
* They could measure the reverse leakage current at a known voltage, and compare that to the illumination from the camera’s exposure feedback. Remember that every LED is also a photodiode.
* They could vary the LED driver current to heat it up, then measure that both of the above measurements are compatible with the higher temperature. Remember that most semiconductor properties have a strong temperature dependence.
So it would be pretty easy to detect most simple mods if they really wanted to.
all the picked on glasses wearing nerds got programming jobs and are about to flip the whole script on society. only ones not wearing glasses now are the wierd ones
I would argue it has more to do with conventional styling and what that signals rather than some wider acceptance.
The Google Glass look tended to draw attention in a negative way, such god awful styling that narrow minded people might conclude you were an asshole for wearing one.
The form factor for these improves acceptance but no doubt there has been a societal shift, so much more of our lives are captured, shared, communicated and entertained through individuals filming. If not your peers, the generation below you is a ‘video and image as communication’ generation.
A bypass is not possible. I believe the raybans meta have an "always on" AI mode/session now.
To be honest, the biggest issue with the glasses is battery life and I don't see that changing any time soon. It doesn't matter what LLM processes your data if it can only do it for one hour per charge.
You can use it like this, it's just that it's integrated with Meta's companion app which also has AI capabilities.
Personally, I found the AI capabilities kind of lackluster now but I'm sure more features will be added in the future.
The most useful features I found were taking quick photos and video calls with friends and family while away on work trips. Music playback was also decent but it eats up the limited battery.
The AI stuff is already offloaded to Meta servers via your phone.
I don't think there are any models AI that would be able to run natively on phones with acceptable performance.
Even if it did, my experience with video calls and the glasses are that the battery only lasts about 45minutes so I'm guessing slightly better performance for always on AI depending on what features you use.
It's wild that people buy these, let alone feel comfortable wearing them. I'm already pretty strongly anti Meta, I can't imagine buying a mic and camera they control and bringing it with me everywhere.
I would never buy one because I also try to avoid anything Meta or Google but I received one anyway as a birthday gift. Wife’s thought process was “he likes tech, he wears sunglasses, he’ll love it”. They’re fine glasses and the video recording is surprisingly good quality. But I don’t need AI enabled, video recording glasses.
I understand all the usual caveats of no expectation of privacy in public but this is very much slippery slope stuff.
Say on the metro sitting opposite someone. If they pulled out a camera and pointed it in your face you'd be offended and say something, with a camera phone you'd still probably notice if they tried to get a pic of you and most people would find it at best creepy and ask the person to stop or move away from them.
This product normalises that. Sure there are some legit use cases but I'm not consenting to you as a stranger pointing your camera in my face. You may not legally need my consent to do that but it's straight up rude to do it anyway.
Will be interesting to see how this pans out. I'm fairly placid and would probably just tut and move if someone sat opposite with these but I suspect other people might have a stronger reaction.
Breaking societal norms like this should have consequences, even if it's sanctioned by Zuck.
Hopefully, they'll have a heads-up display soon; Nothing like driving a motorcycle and having directions upfront without needing to look down at a phone
Yes, exactly. If you don't need corrected vision or sunglasses, you could pop out the lenses and have 100% of the functionality. There is no display so it does not actually use the lenses for anything. The primary function of glasses, altering your vision, is not enhanced.
Putting aside the obviously dystopian qualities of this product... I find it strange that I know zero people who own this device which has sold supposedly over a million units.
2M units globally, so maybe generously 1M in the US (assuming you're from there but multiply by some factor proportional to your country's consumeristic tendencies), divided by the population is only something like a .3% rate of ownership. So not quite as prevalent as gopro, which has sold something like 35M in the US over the past 10 years [1]
I know one person who has a pair, they’re are an investor and were given a pair for free, naturally they have to tell you how good they are all the time as well.
Maybe people buying this don't want to creep out their friends and admit it.
It might be interesting if people will be able to tell the glasses are being used, like "How are you today Charles?" "don't you remember I go by chuck?"
Biggest features of these is the speakers. I use mine to listen to podcasts all the time when I’m out and about. Or even just scrolling TikTok when I’m not alone. The camera has allowed me to get some great photos of my pets. The fpv video is delightful. I wish I could change the ai. I look forward to competition in this space. I think it will end up being the next smart watchesque market segment.
Know some people who have these and apparently the AI is very limited. They were standing in front of the Golden Gate bridge and the glasses had no idea what they were looking at.
I'm sure the AI will improve quite a bit but given the hype it was a surprise.
I own a pair and haven’t looked back. IMHO these have incredible utility and for me feel freeing. I have small kids and I want to capture those special small moments, but I refuse to pull out a phone to do so, small kids are so perceptive and they intuit something has changed when you pull out a phone to record. With the meta’s I just hit record and I don’t feel guilty or torn about recording. Granted, I don’t love how they look so I’m not always wearing them…
Seen some comments about juiced numbers, every teen interacts video first, that’s how they communicate with friends, not text, so I totally buy these numbers. Anecdotal, I’ve been to a couple of ray ban stores and staff say they sell like hot cakes and are sold out a lot of the time (obviously low production is a contributor, but point being they seem to have market fit)
Pretty soon we'll be walking around with electronic warfare backpacks on our backs to disable all this bullshit within 300 foot radius. I thought no one would want Zuck's ad platform on their face. Apparently I was underestimating the stupidity of the public.
They appear to be fantastic for those with limited vision.
Same thing with voice assistants like Alexa, for the average person having a live speaker listening 24 7 is kinda silly, but for someone who's legally blind it's a life changer.
Say at 90 you can't see well, you can say, "Hey Alexa, play some John Coltrane". It would be better for this all to run locally, but let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Amazon has many device variants, they can even be used to guide vision-impaired users indoors, e.g. navigating via a sequence of audio breadcrumb prompts across multiple devices.
It's insane (but not surprising, sadly) to me that so many people have such a level of disdain for their fellow humans that they're willing expose them to Facebook's, or any tech company's, spying ways.
Most people don't care or are oblivious, not as "tech informed or savvy", is not out of bad intent. Plus, most tech companies control the media they consume.
People are quite happy to smoke and operate combustion engines in public spaces which literally gives everyone around you cancer. Having someone record you is very low on the disdain scale.
You're on hacker news, you must have some understanding of technology. Do you really think a tiny device like this has the battery power to record everything all the time, let alone upload it to meta?
I got a pair as a gift and they've been sitting around unopened. I can't say I have any clue what to do with them—I like cheap sunglasses and I don't like talking to chatbots. I don't understand why we can't have dumb tools anymore.
I also strongly suspect these numbers are misleading. I was offered another pair for free on opening a verizon fiber account. I'm betting there's some scheme to pump up these numbers to make it look like they're catching on. Though perhaps this skepticism is negated by the increase in production.
Granted, I've seen a couple tiktokers use something like them, but I don't know what the experience is like getting that video out of Meta's grasp.
EDIT: added a couple thoughts.
For me the meta sunglasses have two killer features. Taking candid pictures of my family is extremely easy, I no longer miss catching photos of small things my toddlers do and I'm able to do it hands-free. Additionally, they work remarkably well as headphones, they use some technique where only you hear the audio which is great both for music and for watching videos in public without bothering other folks.
I'm surprised the candid picture case is so compelling. I can pull my phone from my pocket, double click the power button to enter camera mode, then tap volume button to shoot, very quickly. Under 2 seconds easily.
Guessing based on what I see: The act of simply pulling out your phone can break the moment. Kids tend to zero in on it immediately, making it the new center of their attention.
After they learn, they can look at the picture you just took and then come and look at the picture you just took. It completely breaks the moment.
I dunno, I have lots of photos of kids on my phone just like I described. It's true, sometimes they do do that, but also, because I take so many, they got over it.
Ah, so the "candid" goal here is taking photos without the kids knowing?
Don't forget having to frame the shot, making sure it's in focus, ensuring your subject doesn't get distracted by your motion, and not fumbling your phone in the hurry to capture the moment... as opposed to pressing a button on the glasses you're already wearing.
you don't have kids
hands free though.
This might be the laziest shit I’ve ever heard come out of a slobbering consumers mouth.
I mean this as unjudgementally as possible, but the first reason is super creepy no matter how well intentioned your use case is. I don’t think we were meant to prioritize capturing the moment so highly.
This is the same thing Google did with Google Home. For a few years, a new Spotify subscription, Nest subscription, I think certain Google Drive storage subscriptions, etc. would give you a free Google Home Mini.
I do now have one in nearly every room in my house, and Google Home is pretty dominant in its field. I’m not convinced Meta glasses will have the same effect (I hope not) but it does seem possible.
i use them as headphones more than the camera. their AI is useless and turning them on significantly lowers battery life. but then still useful as sunglasses without battery
> I don't understand why we can't have dumb tools anymore.
You can. Literally nobody is stopping you.
Riding my bike with open ear audio for podcasts and the ability to snap a quick video if I see something cool on a ride is extremely worth it.
The last version was chunky and cheap looking. I couldn't find a use for them and sent them back. And that was when I worked there. Wouldn't touch them now.
They make great headphones and have a decent camera that is always ready to use.
> I like cheap sunglasses and I don't like talking to chatbots. I don't understand why we can't have dumb tools anymore.
It really sucks that dumb, cheap sunglasses no longer are sold. It’s either these meta sunglasses or have your eyes melt
I bought mine last year and use them practically everyday - mostly as headphones/microphone, but taking photos/videos ocasionally too.
While I never planned to use them as a headphones, there is something surprisingly pleasant about not needing to put yet another gadget in your ears. And the sound feels more like coming from the environment and not directly emerging in your ears. Talking to ChatGPT with Advanced Voice mode or listening a podcast during a walk or bike ride or so is a really nice experience with these. Receiving calls is fun too.
Camera is really interesting to use in some unusual scenarios, like POV view of a ballet teacher or figure skating couple performing a death spiral. I give them to try to my friends when I see an opportunity to film something like that. That's really fun and sometimes illuminating.
I briefly enjoyed playing with Meta AI. One use case was "listening the podcast, encounter unknown term or name, ask "Hey Meta, explain <word> meaning", and back to listening without even lifting a finger". But then Meta disabled it in the country I'm in (I bought it in airport in another country), so only basic voice commands are working, which is fine.
> alking to ChatGPT with Advanced Voice mode or listening a podcast during a walk or bike ride or so is a really nice experience with these.
I've recently thought that a killer bit of hardware would be a way to interact with an LLM by voice without other people thinking you're talking to them and saying "what?". I was imagining the return of those classic bluetooth headseats, or some combo of earbud and throat mic, but the Ray Bans seem like they might be an option, too.
This + a button on watch to feed last x seconds of environmental data to a local micro LLM could be interesting.
Meta's AI assistant can take in a picture today along with your prompt. Pretty basic and unfortunately tied only to their AI assistant but along the lines of what you're talking about.
If they opened up the glasses and all of their cameras to other AI models, it'd be pretty powerful. Alas, walled gardens. I would bet OpenAI is working on some similar hardware to compete.
Google was right in the end, just ten years too soon with Google Glass.
I don't know, I think that would still require people to change their assumptions about glasses. Currently, I don't assume someone is talking to their sunnies.
Irrelevant really, because plenty of people use plug style ear buds that you can't obviously see in their ears. If someone is talking to thin air then I always presume they're on a call with someone.
Best way to do this is a with a wireless one hand chorded keyboard. A fancier solution would be detecting subvocalizations. That would feel almost like mind-reading
Why not typing with your tongue? https://kpronline.com/blog/typing-with-a-tongue-computer-int...
Very clever but the WPM is very low so only good for paralyzed people.
I think if you don't want to type and more control the OS and you add chording to it, would beat any other input system other than scanning brainwaves for me.
it would make an interesting mouse controller if it was accurate enough. I wonder if the tongue would get tired.
I wonder if the best format for hearing aids are... glasses?
something like a vpn might let u use those geo restricted features
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I know someone who has a pair and authentically loves them. He's blind. It's easy to pooh-pooh their utility if someone doesn't need assistance to know what's in the room with them, but hopefully we can all understand the clear value proposition for those who do.
Value to vision-impaired users would increase with an SDK, https://communityforums.atmeta.com/t5/General-VR-MR-Developm...
I agree with you, but "could this be better" is a different question than "does this help people".
I'm sure everyone would welcome competing devices. Well, Meta and EssilorLuxottica are showing that a profitable market exists.
https://archive.is/L9jY6
> Meta’s Reality Labs unit, which oversees the product as well as its virtual- and augmented-reality goggles, reported losses of nearly $5 billion in the fourth quarter.
Reality Labs is much much bigger than this product. It's unreasonable to point to their aggregate losses here unless you have some indication that those losses are due to this product.
The second they make this and make it useful in any way, immediately the apps people create will lay bare exactly how bad of a privacy invasion they are, tons of bad press ensuing.
It's definitely not technical hurdles preventing them from making one.
Already done without the SDK, https://www.engadget.com/wearables/students-used-metas-smart...
Censorship and alignment (speech, LLMs, glasses, drones, ..) rarely stops negative scenarios, but it slows positive scenarios from existence and competition with negative scenarios.
They did partner with BMW, CMU and some universities, https://www.projectaria.com/research-kit/
An engadget article is a different order of magnitude than MSM. Of course tech people have always known what they're really like.
How about Fox News? https://www.foxnews.com/tech/facial-recognition-glasses-turn...
I understand the value proposition. My problem is that people using them are offloading the cost onto others who have not agreed to be so exposed.
If it were possible to use something like these without throwing everyone they interact with under the bus in terms of privacy and security, I'd have no problem with them.
I guess I'm not comfortable with the idea that a blind person should proverbially "take one for the team" while everyone else should not.
An equivalent device not attached to meta would be great. Does one exist?
Why is it any better to force everyone else to "take one for the team"?
What I object to is other people forcing me to be exposed to threats against my will.
Yes - xreal
I use mine all the time for mostly watching movies or gaming but sometimes work
They are legitimately one of the best devices I have and I’ve been in AR a long time
That’s a totally different product. The Meta glasses don’t have a screen, only camera paired with voice UI.
If we’re looking for a head-mounted device that’s useful for blind people, taking away the camera and intelligence and replacing them with a screen definitely is not it. You’re losing the useful parts and replacing them with a useless one.
AFAICT, none of the XReal glasses have an integrated camera, and the accessory camera on their website just says "coming soon". Without a camera, it's not suitable for the purpose.
You've suggested a device that takes away the one thing they need (the ability to perceive the world without sight) and replaced it with the one thing they don't need (the ability to overlay content onto sight).
I mean there is no cost for others, though. You don't have a right to not be "exposed". If you think the way we handle laws around photography or whatever should be changed, we have a whole democracy for brokering that. (Or at least we did until very recently.)
You're arguing legalities. That's orthogonal to my objection. Plenty of bad things are legal.
You didn't really specify what's bad, and I don't think the current law on photography (or whatever you're worried about) is an issue so I'm arguing both ethics/morals and legalities.
Interesting, I've been thinking for a long time these would be most useful to the hearing impaired if they get a simple text display going. Some people just simply avoid social situations because hearing aids aren't good enough, having subtitles wherever you go would be really revolutionary for them. Same for traveling.
I get it, but I'm still uncomfortable with it.
The same value proposition surely applies to locking GPS collars. A clear value for individuals managing dementia patients, but it's a privacy nightmare for everyone and most of the customers aren't nurses.
Accessibility doesn't need to come at the expense of privacy.
There’s a clear difference in buying them for your own use and buying them for someone else: consent.
(And even giving them to someone else could still include consent)
That's exactly my point. These glasses affect more than just the wearer. Wearing these glasses exposes others.
I see the argument in public (thought I'm uncomfortable with that as well), but this affects other situations too. I'm not going to ask my blind friend to remove his accessibility device when he enters my home, but the same can't be true of my business. Can't have protected personal, health, financial, or corporate information delivered directly to Meta.
That's probably the crux of it. These aren't just vision aids, they're cloud-centric data-harvesting Meta products.
So I'm not arguing against the tech, but I am expressing discomfort. If I knew someone who wore these, even as an accessibility aid, I'd feel uncomfortable around them.
I do not agree that others are exposed in a way that can be compared with how they are exposed to hidden spy cameras.
Whenever you are in a place where there are other humans around, you are exposed, regardless if they have cameras or not.
Just counting on the fact that most humans have poor photographic memory, so they might forget what they have seen at you, cannot be claimed to be enough to consider that you are not exposed.
Whatever you do not want to be remembered, you should not do in the presence of humans. Wherever in your home or at your business there is something that you would not want remembered by others, you should not bring any guests, regardless if they carry cameras or not. If there exists any "protected personal, health, financial, or corporate information" that you do not consider public, you should not show that to your guests, regardless if they carry cameras or not.
I agree however that any cameras hidden wherever you believe that nobody sees you, are an assault on privacy, unlike cameras carried by humans, who you must expect to be able to see and remember you (or any of your private information that is visible), even without cameras.
Therefore I believe that in the majority of situations, restrictions on the carrying of cameras, including such as the Meta glasses, do not make sense. Either the presence of the untrusted humans must be completely forbidden, or wherever they are allowed they should be able to carry their cameras or glasses with them. One of the acceptable exceptions is for preventing the recording of shows, where even if I consider that it is an abuse to forbid recording for personal use, I agree that otherwise it would be difficult to discover later whether such recordings are in fact distributed commercially.
For a visit in a company however, camera restrictions are useless, because usually far less of the private information of a company is valuable than its management or its lawyers believe. The really valuable information is usually small enough to be easily remembered by a competent human who has seen it, with no need to record it with a camera. Information leaks must be prevented by allowing guest access only in selected areas and by showing them only the information that must be shared with them, not by frisking them for cameras.
I see your point, but I care about exposure to Meta, not to my friends. That's the new element here.
I don't agree that corporate restrictions on cameras are useless, even if the information itself isn't particularly valuable. I work in semicon, if I put these on at work and information somehow gets sent to a non-US server, I would have broken International Traffic in Arms Regulations. In all likelihood the information won't reach or be useful to China, but the US government doesn't care and will fine us into oblivion regardless. Honestly, it's more a liability thing than actual security.
Yup, privacy has and always been illusion. You can never know for certain if someone is listening or there's one OV6948 or 10,000 of them hidden in your house.
We need better laws around this, not the fact that the technology is present but managing the presence of the technology a la The Quantum Thief's Gevulot.
I always put it as "If I'm in bed and I see the shadow of a person standing outside my window, is it a person or an inconveniently shaped tree?" in that moment my supposed privacy is a Schrodinger's cat and after I have drawn the curtain to see what's out there, the hard truth is that I still can't be 100% certain that I have "privacy".
Dont sorry. Accessibility os DEI, so i expect them to only have privacy implications
I remember people getting beat up for wearing Google glasses in public. What a difference 10 years makes.
https://www.businessinsider.com/i-was-assaulted-for-wearing-...
Google glass looked stupid. So I think the biggest pushback was on people looking different, and not in a good way.
These look very close to normal, so I think most people don’t even notice.
A couple years before that, Steve Mann had his medically attached prototype glasses ripped off his head in a McDonald's in Paris. https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/19/3169889/steve-mann-cyborg...
Being Mr. or Ms. Surveillance Narc has a little less stigma than back then, but there is still stigma. We'll have captivating stories of Little Brother, intentional and accidental, in the near future. One person's "breaking the moment" is another person's "fair warning", especially in private spaces.
>Google, for all the backlash it's gotten over gentrification, last year's NSA revelations, and personal data collection for ads, still looks like a company that gives a damn.
this one didn't age very well did it?
Being introduced to something in adult hood vs being primed for it from your first moments of thought. That is the real mark between generations. What sensibilities marketing departments have propagandized within this cohort of youths. They will hold those views to some degree for the rest of their lives.
Odd story given your comment. Story is about being mugged for wearing a device. 15 years ago a fellow student had someone walk up to them, ask to see their phone, then bolt off with it. Tho that student was pretty tall so he laughed it off since the guy didn't get far
& as for internet laughing at someone's misfortune, that's normal. He says they wouldn't say he had it coming if it was jewelry, but people are laughing saying this rapper had it coming singing "ice on my neck" before going for crowd surfing: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VocdUpfuepY
I got beaten unconscious in public once for doing absolutely nothing. Violent people don’t really need much of a reason for doing violent things.
Instagram shows me too many videos of "pick up artists" doing POV videos of their douchey interaction with girls, recorded on these. I wonder if it's too stealthy that the people being recorded don't notice. Slash, maybe they have release forms and the videos published are just the ones where they consented to being recorded (heh, as if the pick-up scene cares so great about consent...), and the failed ones are where they immediately say "Is that a camera? Fuck off!".
It does have a glowing LED: https://youtu.be/X95mWoTgjaE?t=105 but I feel like they're easy to hide with some black tape.
If you put black tape over the light, it will not allow you to turn on the camera, however, I believe someone found a hack that said if you started recording and then put black tape over the recording, it would allow you to continue to record, but only for 3 minute increments.
Could you just replace the led with a uv led or a resistor?
If "just" requires ordering specific electronic components and soldering, it's not "just" for most people.
Also not the easy kind of 1990's LED soldering, like tiny surface mount soldering.
I suppose that really depends on how hard they’re trying to prevent you from doing that…
* They could measure the forward voltage of the LED when driven by a known current. Bonus points for measuring at multiple currents. Remember that the forward voltage depends on color.
* They could measure the reverse leakage current at a known voltage, and compare that to the illumination from the camera’s exposure feedback. Remember that every LED is also a photodiode.
* They could vary the LED driver current to heat it up, then measure that both of the above measurements are compatible with the higher temperature. Remember that most semiconductor properties have a strong temperature dependence.
So it would be pretty easy to detect most simple mods if they really wanted to.
You could replace the led with an IR led. That should have mostly the same electrical characteristics of an LED but emit no visible light
I wonder how that works. How would a LED know if it's covered by tape?
There's light sensor in the same module. The glasses compare light levels between that sensor and the camera, but only at the start of recording.
Actually, you can use any LED by itself as a light sensor as well as a light emitter.
Yeah, the shift in acceptance is really interesting to see.
This documentary has always stood out to me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Live_in_Public
all the picked on glasses wearing nerds got programming jobs and are about to flip the whole script on society. only ones not wearing glasses now are the wierd ones
I would argue it has more to do with conventional styling and what that signals rather than some wider acceptance.
The Google Glass look tended to draw attention in a negative way, such god awful styling that narrow minded people might conclude you were an asshole for wearing one.
The form factor for these improves acceptance but no doubt there has been a societal shift, so much more of our lives are captured, shared, communicated and entertained through individuals filming. If not your peers, the generation below you is a ‘video and image as communication’ generation.
Is there anyway to bypass Meta on these? Or is there an open source version in the works?
Interested to see what could be done locally with always-on visual capture + LLMs. Not interested in sending that data to Meta.
A bypass is not possible. I believe the raybans meta have an "always on" AI mode/session now.
To be honest, the biggest issue with the glasses is battery life and I don't see that changing any time soon. It doesn't matter what LLM processes your data if it can only do it for one hour per charge.
So no way to get rid of the AI portion and just have it be speakers and a camera that I wear on my face?
Darn it
You can use it like this, it's just that it's integrated with Meta's companion app which also has AI capabilities. Personally, I found the AI capabilities kind of lackluster now but I'm sure more features will be added in the future. The most useful features I found were taking quick photos and video calls with friends and family while away on work trips. Music playback was also decent but it eats up the limited battery.
Wouldn’t it make sense to offload the ai to the phone?
The AI stuff is already offloaded to Meta servers via your phone. I don't think there are any models AI that would be able to run natively on phones with acceptable performance. Even if it did, my experience with video calls and the glasses are that the battery only lasts about 45minutes so I'm guessing slightly better performance for always on AI depending on what features you use.
I have the AI turned off on mine.
This doubled my battery life.
I wear them every day when I’m not at home. I think I go something like 7 or 8 (?) hours now between charges.
It's wild that people buy these, let alone feel comfortable wearing them. I'm already pretty strongly anti Meta, I can't imagine buying a mic and camera they control and bringing it with me everywhere.
I would never buy one because I also try to avoid anything Meta or Google but I received one anyway as a birthday gift. Wife’s thought process was “he likes tech, he wears sunglasses, he’ll love it”. They’re fine glasses and the video recording is surprisingly good quality. But I don’t need AI enabled, video recording glasses.
It's astonishing that these get any use. People have short memories.
So your phone? If Alexa is any model mic data is garbage and unmonetizable.
I understand all the usual caveats of no expectation of privacy in public but this is very much slippery slope stuff.
Say on the metro sitting opposite someone. If they pulled out a camera and pointed it in your face you'd be offended and say something, with a camera phone you'd still probably notice if they tried to get a pic of you and most people would find it at best creepy and ask the person to stop or move away from them.
This product normalises that. Sure there are some legit use cases but I'm not consenting to you as a stranger pointing your camera in my face. You may not legally need my consent to do that but it's straight up rude to do it anyway.
Will be interesting to see how this pans out. I'm fairly placid and would probably just tut and move if someone sat opposite with these but I suspect other people might have a stronger reaction.
Breaking societal norms like this should have consequences, even if it's sanctioned by Zuck.
I really wish there was an open version of these.... being all to work with chatgpt advance or send pics to Gemini would be killer for me.
There are a few Open Source projects similar to this, but they are less refined.
https://brilliant.xyz/products/monocle
https://www.projectnorthstar.org/
https://github.com/AugmentOS-Community/OpenSourceSmartGlasse...
Hopefully, they'll have a heads-up display soon; Nothing like driving a motorcycle and having directions upfront without needing to look down at a phone
definitely not listening in on your phones microphone and definitely wont be watching either, but you might be interested in this cat food
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Dumb question, what makes this "VR"?
Isn't this just a voice activated camera, in a form factor that you can wear on your head.
(Genuinely curious, not hating on the product)
It’s not a VR device. It has a camera, mic and speakers, that allows you to take photos/videos and talk to an AI agent
Yes, exactly. If you don't need corrected vision or sunglasses, you could pop out the lenses and have 100% of the functionality. There is no display so it does not actually use the lenses for anything. The primary function of glasses, altering your vision, is not enhanced.
Putting aside the obviously dystopian qualities of this product... I find it strange that I know zero people who own this device which has sold supposedly over a million units.
2M units globally, so maybe generously 1M in the US (assuming you're from there but multiply by some factor proportional to your country's consumeristic tendencies), divided by the population is only something like a .3% rate of ownership. So not quite as prevalent as gopro, which has sold something like 35M in the US over the past 10 years [1]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/688306/number-of-gopro-u...
I know one person who has a pair, they’re are an investor and were given a pair for free, naturally they have to tell you how good they are all the time as well.
Maybe people buying this don't want to creep out their friends and admit it.
It might be interesting if people will be able to tell the glasses are being used, like "How are you today Charles?" "don't you remember I go by chuck?"
Biggest features of these is the speakers. I use mine to listen to podcasts all the time when I’m out and about. Or even just scrolling TikTok when I’m not alone. The camera has allowed me to get some great photos of my pets. The fpv video is delightful. I wish I could change the ai. I look forward to competition in this space. I think it will end up being the next smart watchesque market segment.
Can people next to you hear the podcast too?
Know some people who have these and apparently the AI is very limited. They were standing in front of the Golden Gate bridge and the glasses had no idea what they were looking at.
I'm sure the AI will improve quite a bit but given the hype it was a surprise.
this makes me think of people who say "my refrigerator/bbq grill/air purifier smart features are really not worth it"...
when that's not the festure and they're not the customer, the other data and people buying the data are.
You have to assume that anyone wearing these things is filming you. It's creepy. People who use them are creepy.
This upcoming hardware claims to support an open SDK, https://mentra.glass
Imma blast someone right in the face if they get up in my mug with them shits.
These glasses are somewhat trending in my country among millennials even though they aren't officially sold here.
I own a pair and haven’t looked back. IMHO these have incredible utility and for me feel freeing. I have small kids and I want to capture those special small moments, but I refuse to pull out a phone to do so, small kids are so perceptive and they intuit something has changed when you pull out a phone to record. With the meta’s I just hit record and I don’t feel guilty or torn about recording. Granted, I don’t love how they look so I’m not always wearing them…
Seen some comments about juiced numbers, every teen interacts video first, that’s how they communicate with friends, not text, so I totally buy these numbers. Anecdotal, I’ve been to a couple of ray ban stores and staff say they sell like hot cakes and are sold out a lot of the time (obviously low production is a contributor, but point being they seem to have market fit)
What do you mean exactly by teens communicate video first?
Not interested until you can replace batteries.
Pretty soon we'll be walking around with electronic warfare backpacks on our backs to disable all this bullshit within 300 foot radius. I thought no one would want Zuck's ad platform on their face. Apparently I was underestimating the stupidity of the public.
Maybe Zuck can team up with Larry to complete our transition to a surveillance/police state.
It’s insane to me that anyone would do this knowing how little Facebook respects privacy.
They appear to be fantastic for those with limited vision.
Same thing with voice assistants like Alexa, for the average person having a live speaker listening 24 7 is kinda silly, but for someone who's legally blind it's a life changer.
Say at 90 you can't see well, you can say, "Hey Alexa, play some John Coltrane". It would be better for this all to run locally, but let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Amazon has many device variants, they can even be used to guide vision-impaired users indoors, e.g. navigating via a sequence of audio breadcrumb prompts across multiple devices.
It's insane (but not surprising, sadly) to me that so many people have such a level of disdain for their fellow humans that they're willing expose them to Facebook's, or any tech company's, spying ways.
My company's IT director, who's main function is cybersecurity compliance, wears these at work.
So much of the modern world has me feeling like I'm taking crazy pills.
Most people don't care or are oblivious, not as "tech informed or savvy", is not out of bad intent. Plus, most tech companies control the media they consume.
People are quite happy to smoke and operate combustion engines in public spaces which literally gives everyone around you cancer. Having someone record you is very low on the disdain scale.
This is such a great device to avoid discussion.
... Having someone <tax you|arrest you|suppress your rights|force sterilization|anything short of death by cancer> is very low on the disdain scale.
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Yeah that seems really well adjusted. I assume you also punch everyone that happens to point a cellphone in your general direction?
If a cell phone was taped to their face and they were recording everything they see and send it up to meta, then yeah.
Is it well adjusted that I can't do anything without being tracked continuously? I can't even go pass a bus station without it tracking my wifi.
You want to live in minority report world, go ahead. But don't surveil me.
You're on hacker news, you must have some understanding of technology. Do you really think a tiny device like this has the battery power to record everything all the time, let alone upload it to meta?
man, I never realized, but 2004 was such a long time ago.
Marketing bull*
Better learn to touch type or Meta will have all your passwords.
Touch typing won't help.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-acoustic-...
Unfortunately not as fugly as the Felon Dump-Truck to become an instant punchable offense