I cannot emphasize enough how unwilling I’d be to interact with someone that has these.
Cool… now everyone can be a part of their respective surveillance states. While Meta makes a buck on selling your feed to governments and law enforcement.
New GL-assholes?
Yes, that’s the joke.
For me at least, the killer feature is going to be tagging faces with names. Face blindness sucks.
This reminds me of Peacemaker, a guy claiming to be ‘bird blind’. Hilarious bit
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Oh man I’m wearing ray bans. I should get a new pair else I’d get lynched for it… again…
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I understand the gripes about Meta, but I don’t understand how everyone clowns on this like the core concept is stupid or unwanted.
Easy $1000 sell: cycling / escooter accessory. People already regularly buy expensive sport glasses just for sun and wind protection. With a smart version of them like this, you add open ear headphone, and you add the potential for navigation directions, or even a Bluetooth rear view camera on the back of your helmet to get a virtual mirror.
Sell your bike to afford them. Easy. It’s another pointless gimmick, like 3D TV or the Metaverse and virtual shopping. Zuckerberg had one idea and got lucky, it’s been wasting money since.
To me it seems like a thing that sounds kinda cool on paper, but is not actually that useful in practice. We already have the ability to do real time translations or point the camera at something to get more information via AI with our smartphones, but who actually uses that on the regular? It’s just not useful or accurate enough in its current state and having it always available as a HUD isn’t going to change that imo. Being able to point a camera at something and have AI tell me “that’s a red bicycle” is a cool novelty the first few times, but I already knew that information just by looking at it. And if I’m trying to communicate with someone in a foreign language using my phone to translate for me, I’ll just feel like a dork.
real time translations or point the camera at something to get more information via AI with our smartphones, but who actually uses that on the regular?
Anybody living in a foreign country with a different language.
As a cyclist, this is a terrible sell. I already have tech which does all this, and probably does it better, for less.
I don’t need a HUD constantly in my face obscuring the beautiful views. I have sun glasses which fit well with a helmet and wrap around my face to keep the wind out.
I have a cycling computer, which offers GPS turn by turn, and pairs to power meters, heart rate and radar light. It is mounted on the handlebars in an easy to view place.
I have bone conducting headphones for music.
All of this is significantly less than $1000, and if something breaks, I can replace it all individually. I also don’t have to wear ridiculous looking sunglasses to listen to my bone conducting headphones.
We’re at the point now that we “need” 6 gadgets that do the same thing.
I don’t necessarily disagree, but this reads a bit like some of the comments on those old Slashdot threads clowning on the first smartphones.
‘these things will fail, I already have a camera, a cellphone, and an mp3 player, why would anyone want them all in one device?’
The core technology is impressive, and has legitimate use cases.
But that doesn’t outweigh the enormous privacy concerns these devices raise. They aren’t being angled as an accessory for specific activities, but as everyday wearables. If smart glasses like these became common they would be unavoidable, creating leave of intrusion that’s concerning even without Meta being involved.
I agree that head mounted displays can be useful, I’m contemplating getting something like it, but just no cameras, please. not in the frame, not backwards, not anywhere.
If you don’t have cameras you instantly lose a tonne of potential amazing functionality.
If you’re in public you have no expectation of privacy, so someone being able to photograph you or record you with glasses is no different to being able to do it with a camera or phone.
People should still have an expectation of privacy in public spaces to some extent, otherwise the only way is to move to the foresf. One should not have to be concerned about being recorded, especially children (a pdfile can take photos to pick “targets”, so to speak).
The pdfile will do it anyways. What concerns me is all those data will be streamed to Meta. They will relay it to Palantir. The best mass surveillance you can think of.
I wonder what the result of mass adoption of these will be on society - surely there will have to be “no smart glasses” rules set up in places where you would expect confidentiality like hospitals and classrooms. Also what the ability to instantly watch video content or listen to anything with the click of your fingers (without anyone knowing) will do to people’s attention spans. Things in public will have a much higher chance of being recorded by someone, for better or for worse. If someone like Elon Musk makes his own with his own “woke free” xAI (which he has so far been unsuccessful in moulding to his viewpoints), people could have an immediate propagandized perspective and answer for anything they see in real life.
most people do not generally wear glasses
I don’t know about other countries but about two thirds of Americans wear glasses. A good number of them will be older adults with age-related long-sightedness for which they may only wear reading glasses, but this is a basic mistake.
…but this is a basic mistake.
They just fell prey to one of the classic blunders!
The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this: Never go in against a septuagenarian when blindness is on the line!
I never thought I’d hear someone mentioning the Bosnian Ape Society, on Lemmy.
There are also plenty of people who wear glasses who don’t need them. It’s weird to act like Plano lenses don’t exist.
Lauren Boebert. She thinks they make her look smartish.
Maybe “smart” electronics is a bubble. Understandable that some people want their puppet controller devices in every piece of reality. What’s not understandable is the motivation to buy those. Though I think Nazi courts did sometimes put the cost of investigation (and surveillance) upon the “criminal”, sometimes even make them pay for the bullet to execute them.
I mean, it’s not until superprofits from oligopolized companies with their hands in everything exist. Because those superprofits go to clueless VC that also wants to take part in new superprofits.
It’s going to fade very slowly, if oligopoly isn’t broken.
On an unrelated note, I’ve just yesterday read about a German company going to produce fully optical general-purpose computers. For all bad things about optical computers (not much history, less density possible) some are very good, and it’s not even delays and fields and heat being not a problem - it’s production of these being less demanding for enormous very precise foundries like TSMC. And the fact that it’s a German company is refreshing, because, well, not USA and not China.
And among alternative bases for computers I like optics more than DNA computing, because DNA computing is good for parallel equations and bad for response, which means it benefits big companies and big data processing if it happens. While for optical computers it’s the other way around, volatile memory is a bit of a problem to make cheap, but response is better than anything. So if optical computing boom happens, it might get us back to functional programming and conscious design as opposed to big data processing. I mean, well, that’s about plausible general purpose optical computers, while dedicated ones are usable for this “AI” thing too unfortunately.
And I’m probably atrociously simplifying things, just - have read a couple of articles yesterday, one of them describing a general purpose optical computer design.
These glasses are actually insanely cool. I’d pay so much for an open source pair and the band.
It sucks that no matter what cool new hardware meta comes out with will always be ruined by them stuffing in “meta integration”.
Agreed, I’d totally buy a Meta Quest as well if they didn’t zuck up all their devices with spyware that can’t be removed.
It would be really nice if every country would enact digital privacy laws so that Meta’s business model was just forced to be better. They genuinely have some of the best and most accessible VR/AR hardware available.
It would of course be nicer if a more ethical competitor stepped up in a serious way but no one seems that interested. It’s interesting that the vast majority of Meta’s business model is being extremely good at copying or buying out competitors but with VR they’re basically the only ones actually sinking serious money into making it a thing.
Seriously, an open source version would be awesome. You could connect it to your own server running whatever local models you want without needing to worry about that audio/video being processed by some large corporation willing to sell you out along with your data.
An open source smart glasses platform would be a much better direction.
But that only provides security assurances for the wearer of the glasses. Anyone else interacting with them doesn’t know how they are configured, and what is being recorded and/or shared.
I can think of one useful function. I have a lot of friends who are totally blind, and there’s an app called Be My Eyes, where a sighted person can take a look at something through your phone’s camera. But, being blind, a lot of blind people are absolutely terrible at aiming cameras, because they can’t see what they’re aiming at.
In this case, the object ends up out of the camera’s field of view, or at an angle, or upside down, etc. etc. etc. Whereas, I think having a pair of smart glasses on your face would make the camera platform be much steadier.
I can imagine that haptic/soft vibrations could also be used to steer a blind person towards an object that needs more focus by the camera.
As you say, it has a lot of potential for accessibility and people with handicaps like that, but it’s not direction that tech, the economy, or the world itself is interested in right now…
but it’s not direction that tech, the economy, or the world itself is interested in right now…
Yeah great. Capitalist market without socialist values means the elite can overcome their handicaps and live long lives with a physical form sculpted to their wants.
Call me when it’s done without a metric tonne of exploitation.
This comment seems to lack perspective. In countries where medicine is socialised, this technology wasn’t invented. Could it have been? Yes, absolutely. But in the reality we are faced with, it was invented with capitalist values. Now it can be assessed and potentially taken up by public health systems.
I’ll give you an upvote. I feel thats fair. Like you guys if you can’t make buck you lose a buck. (Any of you read Uglies?) We really need a reset on the capitalist regime imo and instate a socialist platform that is by the people and for the people. Fuck with this AI nonsense too
It’s really bad yes. I’m no communist but I really think we should have had mixed economies and better tax policies to keep the rich in check. AI and other automation could have led to us working 20hrs a week on average while everything runs smooth, if used for the benefit of all.
Right now they have snowballed so much money and power and tech that I just can’t see how we can out of outside of revolts. Democracy has been corrupted almost everywhere and people are being manipulated into thinking other religions or immigrant are the problem.
There was a time we banned cloning to prevent the rich from making armies to exploit. But religion/ethics made that easy. We never considered doing the same with tech and important means of production.
I read “the new assholes” instead of glassholes.
How improper!
That’s intentional.
Smart glasses also raise many privacy concerns, as their cameras and microphones may be recording at any given time, which can be unnerving to people. When Google launched their Google Glass smart glasses, this led to the coining of the term ‘glasshole‘ for people who refuse to follow perceived proper smart glasses etiquette.
Smart glasses also raise many privacy concerns, as their cameras and microphones may be recording at any given time, which can be unnerving to people.
This reaction has always struck me as, at best ill-informed. If I search for spy camera glasses on Amazon, I can find much cheaper and less obvious options to record people without their knowledge. If glasses are getting extra scrutiny lately, maybe I’d be better off with a spy camera pen or something like this which can be disguised as part of a button-up shirt.
Of course actually using any of these to record people without their consent in most situations makes you an asshole, but that capability already existed and is continually expanding.
sure, but there the spying is the purpose, whereas with the glasses it’s incidental.
you don’t buy such gadgets if you don’t intend to spy, but people would buy meta glasses for other reason, and meta being able to spy on you is just a side-effect. Plus it’ a matter of scale, this has the potential of being much more prominent than some spy camera.
Meta spying is its own issue, and I think a very legitimate concern.
I’m understanding the concern the article mentions about smart glasses in general (independent of who manufactures them) being the user recording people. That’s what people seemed to be upset about when Google Glass launched as well.
I think the reason this is a problem with smart glasses but not with spy pens is that smart glasses are more accessible. I mean, you don’t just keep a spy pen on your person, or even buy one, in case it will be useful, right? but the smart glasses are just there, on your head. and why not take a few stealthy photos if I can just click and its one, nobody knowing? or even just that you take a photo of something, but there are others in the field of view who have no idea.
and not just with Meta. I don’t think other companies either can be trusted with tech like this. Certainly not in this age.
Whoever exhibits that mentality you describe hasn’t waiting for meta to be a creep.
Yeah, they do. You never heard of a crime of opportunity?
Why do you lock your doors at night? You know that anyone who wants to get in can just rake the god damn lock, right? Most people don’t want to get into your house, and the ones who do will be able to enter anyway, so what pathology drives you to waste your time like this?
“Incidental”—this is Meta we’re talking about, and you can exchange them with any other technofacist and it still applies.
But I wholly agree with you that they know exactly what they are doing. This is how they get people to “participate” in their platforms and algorithms, whether they want to or not.
Not spying other people. Spying the owner of the glasses.
This was never the concern that caused people to call users “glassholes”.
If the last fifteen years have shown us anything it’s that very few people care.
Could these replace the dashcam in my car?
Short answer, no. Cameras are still much worse than the human eye, especially once this small.
What? They are talking about replacing the camera fixed to their car with this one on their head. They are probably wondering if the resolution is good and how the recording works.
Yes, but a dashcam is already pushing the limits of getting a decent wide view camera that can see far away, and it’s substantially larger than the one embedded in the glasses, and is fixed on the dash right near the windshield, making it much less susceptible to both movement and effects like glare / reflections.
Not sure you’d want to be constantly writing to the internal storage of these on every drive like a dashcam - it can be hard on memory to be constantly written like that (hence often using high endurance SD cards in dashcams and having the ability to replace those when they kick the bucket with wear). Plus, a good dashcam would have front and back facing cameras and these would only see what you do.
That being said - I know some people who use the Gen 1 glasses to record things like racing cars and flying airplanes and the footage is bloody awesome from the driver perspective like that. I’d love to see the Gen 2 somehow safely incorporate a HUD for example.
