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61% Positive

Analyzed from 2523 words in the discussion.

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#glasses#cameras#wearing#don#smart#meta#public#those#camera#going

Discussion (29 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

wolvoleo•about 1 hour ago
Wow really well done with the lenticular effect. I immediately recognised the reference to They Live too.

That must have cost a lot. To get posters like that made.

boomboomsubban•23 minutes ago
I doubt it's that pricy. I believe you print a regular poster with a special image then apply the textured layer on top.
dieselgate•about 1 hour ago
I agree it’s very well done. Not sure if they’re all from/by EHE but the political adverts like this I’ve seen from around the UK are so clever.
pjmlp•18 minutes ago
Yes, and we definitely need more of them, society seems to have gone numb, especially for those of us that had activism in the 70s and 80s.
pillefitz•about 1 hour ago
Gemini estimated it to cost around 500€ per piece
gdulli•about 1 hour ago
It's hard to believe that in the late smartphone era there are people who think they're not online enough already, and want smart glasses so they can be even more online.
wolvoleo•about 1 hour ago
Well, I kinda wouldn't mind glasses that could show important notifications or maps. It could be handy for lots of things, like a heads up display. Not to watch the social feeds but to find my way or read a message from a friend saying they're late. When I use my phone or watch to navigate it's a bit more dangerous. Thinking specifically of one time when I fell badly doing just that.

I absolutely wouldn't want them to incorporate a camera though. They should not have one at all.

And I would want them with open firmware from a respectable company or organisation. So these ones are a non starter obviously.

all2•44 minutes ago
I would take a camera with AR integration. I'm imagining some mashup of scrap book note keeping in digital space and technical work like car repairs or utility work. Imagine seeing where the studs are in the walls, or finding a now you left yourself in the engine bay of your car...
ElProlactin•about 1 hour ago
> Not to watch the social feeds but to find my way or read a message from a friend saying they're late.

Do you really need this for that?

Barbing•41 minutes ago
There are all kinds of products that we need to reject not because the fundamentals aren't awesome for some proportion of people, but because the implementation is as obviously corrupt as the business owners pushing it.

The dumb speaker that OpenAI is hoping you stick in your home to spy on you is not some preposterously worthless piece of crap from beginning to end without exception. It's just a creepy mess that's nowhere near worth it for anybody who cares about themselves or anyone who ever visits their domicile. That doesn't mean that it isn't pretty nice to have your hands full of grease and be able to get a small piece of information using your voice.

All about the details. You want to ethically produce something private at reasonable cost without excessive energy usage to serve useful functions, sign me up. Just no cloud, no privacy invasion, an entire impossible wishlist for companies not as cool as e.g. Framework.

wolvoleo•about 1 hour ago
No but it would be handy. I don't really need my smartwatch to read notifications either but it's super handy when I'm out and I have my hands full. This would be even better (and replace my smartwatch I'm sure).
Nursie•about 1 hour ago
The problem I see is you're going to want a camera built-in for vision reasons for your amazing reality-overlay, and at that point, well, you've got a camera built-in.
wolvoleo•about 1 hour ago
I'm sure you could do that without one. Gyro, accelerometer, compass, GPS, step counter, altimeter. Should be accurate enough for basic navigation. Especially with some smart dead reckoning algorithm that calibrates itself at known map points like when you turn a corner. Showing notifications shouldn't need any kind of AR awareness at all. You could just show them above the normal field of vision just like the Google glass did.

Again there the problem was not the display, it was the camera. And Google glass didn't even use it for any tracking purpose.

I don't think the issue is that it can't be done without the camera. I think the issue is that the whole product exists to get those cameras out there. Data is the new gold, those vision AIs need to be trained. So they've never even tried without one.

Gigachad•about 1 hour ago
What if I could watch Instagram reels at all moments all day. Streamed right in to my eyeballs.
ElProlactin•about 1 hour ago
> What if I could watch Instagram reels at all moments all day. Streamed right in to my eyeballs.

You'd be Mark Zuckerberg's idea of an ideal person.

ge96•about 1 hour ago
The concept of constantly taking images and storing metadata so you can remember where your keys are seems nuts but at the same time I could see it being normal.
drdaeman•12 minutes ago
At least one can put a radio-equipped tag on many things nowadays, and search for those that way.

If those glasses would be hackable and not tied to shady companies (Meta), and if power budget would allow for that (doubt it), I’d love to use camera for always-on face recognition. (Wait, put that pitchfork down please.)

My brain has difficulty recognizing faces on its own, a face almost never “clicks” (I recognize people by overall appearance instead). I see those glasses as a sign that maybe I can have prosthetics someday, for what others take for granted. No storage or transmission past the companion device, obviously. And a private non-shared database - I literally have no use for faces of people I don’t know.

But seeing all the ignorance with go-to “that’s only for creepy perverts, ban that and punch faces” altitude makes me quite unhappy.

paul7986•43 minutes ago
If you do one of the following now...

- Wear sunglasses or glasses now

- Take pics or videos with your phone

Smart glasses are very handy and when traveling especially solo asking about what your seeing in front of you is handy/informative.

I can see when AI becomes 100% reliable with smart glasses we all are almost know it alls. Everything and anything we need to know will be presented in front of us.

Ok all the above sounds crazy to most, but ive enjoyed using my Metas since Oct 2023 (had to buy another paid April 2025) though Meta glasses are sh!t in terms of durability. So i can recommend smart glasses but not really Metas especially if you like to buy technology that lasts!

Barbing•37 minutes ago
> when AI becomes 100% reliable with smart glasses we all are almost know it alls

Keep going with that line of imagination and it's easy to understand how even someone burned on the Metaverse could be excited about the kinds of pitches Zuckerberg must give for his future visions. (Legitimately exciting thoughts, w/optimist hat on)

Have you ever unintentionally recorded a stranger?

paul7986•17 minutes ago
Have you ever took a photo or video while your in a crowd and other people you don't know appearred in either? Did you care about them and look for them to ask if it was ok that they were in the background of the media you took?

Pardon but I don't understand your question cause if you think of it all humans have done the above since the day cameras or video cameras existed.

Further, im pretty sure smart glasses to AI devices are the next big thing. Meta probably will not win the smart glass race as many hate them due to privacy reasons. Apple a privacy focused company could add tech to blur out and or anonymize faces of those in the background to calm peoples fears.

arjie•about 1 hour ago
I wonder if these things will meet the same fate as bluetooth headsets. Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.

One day perhaps Meta Glasses will be the same. I really like them. They're a spectacular (haha) addition to a sightseeing trip. At the aquarium you can ask them what you're looking at and it'll tell you about the fish, at the playground you can record your kids running around, and you've got music where you go and so on. The problem, of course, is that they have short battery life and I don't want to switch from my smart glasses to my other glasses since the entire point is availability.

Here's a video of my daughter running around the playground from the perspective of my wife: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcLAByw6ZYc

niwtsol•about 1 hour ago
That is an interesting perspective I hadn't thought about. I see relatives constantly throwing phone cameras in baby's faces "look here, look here" the kids are trained to look at the phone/camera. I think of the experience from your daughter here, just running up to her mom wearing glasses - I hear the mass surveillance concerns, I see the pervert/harassment angle, I saw a friend do the "recording a party" angle, but I am just surprised I didn't see something as wholesome as this - thanks for expanding my view.
afavour•43 minutes ago
> Once upon a time decried as the preserve of "Bluetooth Douches" who worse the Jabra while taking their banking phone calls, now they're everywhere. Everyone's got Airpods in.

Two very different use cases. The vast majority of folks wearing AirPods are listening, not talking. The former is not disruptive to others while the latter is.

sublinear•about 1 hour ago
I'm very confused by this take.

It's been over 20 years since then and it's still just as awkward to take a call in public. People will instinctively prefer a quiet place away from the crowd. Otherwise others may eavesdrop, think you're talking to them, or are crazy.

You'll find that most of those people with airpods are listening to something, not talking on a call. The most popular "smart glasses" that I see everywhere don't have cameras. They're "AR" HUDs for watching movies or playing games.

It's not about social acceptance. These hardware designs still suck big time.

Nursie•about 1 hour ago
> think you're talking to them

Yeah that's still weird. Last time it happened to me was in the City of London near Liverpool St (ironic as we're talking about banking phonecalls). Out of nowhere a guy walking towards me starts speaking, for all the world like he's trying to talk to me, so I stopped and said "Hey, can I help you?"

Nope, strides on past, then I noticed the airpods.

zkmon•about 1 hour ago
Unfortunately, educating people against some technology is not going to help. It should be a state-level mandate to have any effect. Most people are discretion-less, sheep-minded money pockets. Meta and other businesses discovered this fact long ago and exploit it to maximum extent. Their products always target the "sheep-following" aspects, instead of individual usefulness.
baxtr•about 1 hour ago
Education can work if there is a convincing story.

What’s the story here other than a gruesome image?

I wish their storytelling matched their visual designs in terms of imagination.

beej71•about 1 hour ago
This is why the "put the sunglasses on" fight went on forever. :)
_carbyau_•24 minutes ago
Companies, businesses, governments of all sizes, while having distinct legal rights to them as entities, are actually made up of people.

So yeah, "educating people against some technology" is kind of the only way to help people see what is going on.

I mean, the government isn't run by aliens... probably.

pembrook•26 minutes ago
How charming.

A young, authoritarian-minded elitist aiming to force their views onto the rest of us 'stupid sheep'...with the implicit threat of a gun to the head via the state's monopoly on violence.

Have you ever examined the idea that, people doing things you don't agree with may not all be less enlightened than you? And that, in fact, it could be you who is a sheep, angrily shouting in unison with the mob in the midst of a trendy moral panic...scapegoating all the worlds problems and your own personal frustrations onto some dumb social media app?

charcircuit•about 1 hour ago
The UK police monitoring your social media posts is more of a risk than Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms.
collingreen•about 1 hour ago
We can (and should) try to avoid many bad things at once, not just whatever might be the worst bad thing.
Barbing•31 minutes ago
Advanced https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism potentially? (Maybe I’m being unfair)
Nursie•about 1 hour ago
> Meta monitoring your social media posts to their platforms.

Monitoring everything around you, all the time.

And what you've heard about the UK police is likely to have been comically exaggerated by people with an agenda. There are problems, yes, they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no.

(I'm rate limited and can't reply below - when people look into these figures what they tend to find is the majority are people getting arrested for using services like whatsapp or facebook messenger to stalk, harass and threaten others, often in a domestic-violence situation. These are categorised as social media-related but it's not what is often described or assumed by american commentators, that they said something politically sensitive in public, and OH MY GOSH just look at the state of free speech in Britain. It's often much more along the lines of abusers threatening to kill an ex that finally managed to leave them.)

brigandish•less than a minute ago
> they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no.

It doesn't need to be thousands for it to be worrying.

From [1]:

> The Metropolitan Police has awarded Father Ted creator and Irish comedian Graham Linehan ÂŁ25,000 and an unreserved apology after they arrested him last year as his plane touched down at Heathrow airport.

> Last year, Graham Linehan — who now lives in Arizona, United States of America — was arrested by five armed police officers as he landed at Heathrow airport in one of the most shocking incidents we have seen in years.

> What was Graham's supposed crime? Three gender-critical posts on X. This is despite the fact that gender-critical beliefs are protected under the Equality Act 2010 and were reaffirmed by last year's landmark Supreme Court ruling, which settled that "sex" is defined by biology, not gender identity.

Armed police for 3 tweets on a political topic, seems like overkill in an unfortunately possible literal use of the word. It also seems that it is far more than one, too:

> General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young, said: "I'm beginning to lose count of the number of cases we've fought in which the police have arrested someone for a tweet, decided to take no further action and then had to pay them substantial compensation for wrongful arrest.

[1] https://freespeechunion.org/news/met-police-apologises-and-p...

UberFly•26 minutes ago
"comically exaggerated". Tell that to the 10-12,000 people arrested per year for "inappropriate" speech. Please don't go out of your way to defend it.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

charcircuit•about 1 hour ago
>they do not arrest thousands of people a year for being mean on twitter, no

They arrest thousands of people for posts they make online. The public data does not break down what site it the arrests were from.

downrightmike•about 2 hours ago
glassholes never change
infinite_spin•about 1 hour ago
Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them. So why the ad hominems? What is your best argument against these devices? When I go to a coffee shop I do so with the understanding that the establishment is likely recording me, are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces?
dabinat•about 1 hour ago
Generally public places do not have cameras that record your interactions with others in detail (including sound) and the owners of the establishment generally do not interact with you for the sole purpose of generating footage they can monetize online.

Additionally there are laws and expectations around cameras in places like bathrooms. Those laws still exist for smartglasses-wearers, but it can be hard to police if it is not obvious that the glasses have cameras and are recording.

sapphicsnail•about 1 hour ago
> Help me understand this attitude, because I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them.

How? This is just going to give a bunch of creepy men an easier way to film me. I'm dreading these getting mainstream adoption.

smokedetector1•about 1 hour ago
you genuinely dont see a difference between

(1) a single or handful of security-angled cameras controlled by a local business for security purposes

(2) any individual possibly recording you at eye level at any second without you knowing, and having the ability to use and manipulate that footage and upload it to the internet

garciansmith•about 1 hour ago
Plus: (1) the security camera footage is constantly overwritten. (2) the video from the glasses is being uploaded to Meta.
Barbing•30 minutes ago
>I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products

Anyone have data on this? Feelin’ doubtful

afavour•44 minutes ago
> I've mostly seen women wearing these types of products, and they stand to gain a lot in terms of security from wearing them

How?

Barbing•28 minutes ago
Sounds like Flock CEO thinking. If everyone wore a bodycam, the world would be crime free. (The thinking must stop before downsides are considered.)
toofy•about 1 hour ago
> … are we going to accept this same rhetoric for anyone that films others in public and/or commercial spaces?

yes, please.

i think that is exactly the direction we should be pushing. this creepy compulsion to record random people is weird af.

lotsofpulp•about 1 hour ago
Is there a better way to modulate others’ behavior?

Before, when it was he said, she said, it was always tenuous for the person with less power to pursue the issue. Now, they can finally access consequences for people violating their freedoms.

Nursie•about 1 hour ago
Easy - covert recording of other people in public is not OK.

This ridiculous idea that "it's in public so you have no expectation of privacy" is a semantic retcon, the pervasiveness of cameras is new and fundamentally changes your level of exposure in the public sphere. Overtly recording people in public is not really OK. Face-mounted, covert recording is another step too far and offensive to most people.

If you genuinely wish to understand the attitude, may I recommend doing a deep dive into the many fine articles written about this back in 2013-15, when Google failed to launch the original glasshole-wear.

Barbing•27 minutes ago
What was your favorite article on Glassholery?
photios•about 1 hour ago
It's okay to record everyone around you all the time because:

1. Women do it. 2. The government does it. 3. Private businesses do it.

What?!

deejaaymac•about 1 hour ago
People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what. Why would it slow down?

Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely anti a lot of things, including people wearing cameras all the time, but I see no logical way to stop it without stomping on freedoms. In this case, defense will be your ally, whatever form that may take,eg wearing a mask.

If I had to choose between flock cameras and meta glasses existing, I'd choose the glasses.

somenameforme•39 minutes ago
Quite simply because people don't want to be casually recorded 24/7. By "casually" I mean by other people doing so indiscriminately, if not actively fishing for "content", as opposed to entities doing so for more justifiable reasons, like a security cam.
drdaeman•31 minutes ago
Doesn’t that strongly suggest us that it’s not the filming that’s actually problematic, but something that happens afterwards?
Barbing•27 minutes ago
>If I had to choose between flock cameras and meta glasses existing, I'd choose the glasses.

Whatever happened to give me liberty or give me death

afavour•42 minutes ago
> People wearing cameras is going to increase over time, no matter what.

Why?