- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
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.
“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.
I don’t disagree. I meant for users it is incidental. Most users probably wouldn’t buy them with spying as the main purpose(they just also don’t really care that it can spy). making them much more widespread than something where spying was the main use-case, making the problem worse.
And as someone else mentioned, once you did get it, the temptation for using it for spying is there for a user. Making it worse than e.g. a spy pen imo, as with that you’d need the intent to spy first, and then buy it, but with this, you buy it for whatever reason and then think “oh, I could just spy now” since you already own the device, which I’d argue leads to more overall spying, so to speak. Maybe you see a video online and go “oh, I can just do that, right now, no effort on my part, since I already own this device”.
And for Meta it’s like tracking cookies on crack
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?
Not spying other people. Spying the owner of the glasses.
If the last fifteen years have shown us anything it’s that very few people care.
This was never the concern that caused people to call users “glassholes”.
There’s new glassholes?
All I need is a nu-metal revival and we’re back in 2008 baby.
Worst part with Meta Quest is it seems you have to sign up as a dev and give them a credit card in order to side load (a.k.a., install stuff on the device you fucking purchased). So, you can shell out hundreds for one of their devices and the device and all your data are belong to Meta. I assume it’s the same deal with these glasses. Fuck off, Zuck.🖕
I got a voucher for a free pair of meta glasses. I don’t want to order them. I’d need a meta account.
Wife is bugging me to order and resell and I want zero part of it.
Not to be rude. But tell the wife to fuck off. Fuck Zuck and Fuck Meta.
throwaway account is an option?
I might try that.
I love this image. I think it should be required on any smartglasses packaging like the surgeon general’s warning is on a pack of cigarettes (for now).
Ah, yet another bit of technology I’ve been looking forward to for years.
Let’s see @technology dump all over it.
I’ll take a crack at it:
- It’s a massive privacy/surveillance concern. Look at the issues that come with doorbell cams and now multiply the number of cameras and scatter them all over
- It’s another platform for mega corporations to track and sell data to advertisers or any malicious actors, but at an entirely new intrusive level. They no longer have to approximate what’s getting your attention when they literally know what has your attention. Good luck anonymizing or hiding your usage when you can’t spoof the real world in front of you.
- It’s unnecessary e-waste, at best providing the exact same functionality you’d get from your phone with the added benefit of… not reaching into your pocket? You still need a free hand to use it…
- It’s a distraction in a way that other tech can’t touch. Pedestrians/drivers getting notifications shoved directly into their eyes won’t end well.
- It probably has all the same inherent problems as previous generations of smart glasses. Primarily: your eyes aren’t designed for extended/repeated focus on an image less than an inch from your face and at the edge of your vision
Could these replace the dashcam in my car?
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.
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.
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.
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.
…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.
Both my wife and I own the gen 1 version and we love it. Listening to music and taking POV shots without taking your phone out keeps you engaged in the moment and not focusing on recording.
Nice. That’s what I really want a pair of smart glasses for. Quick capturing a (private family) moment without leaving the moment.
But any Meta software running anywhere near me is too high of a price to pay, for me.
Ya, I block all packets when it tries to phone home.
Now we need a device that detects Meta Glasses and makes us invisible to them. I know this is a losing battle and it’s just inevitable over time but I don’t like having information provided to someone about me without my consent. With enough adoption, at some point we would all just need to have our own glasses to even the field.
high powered infrared leds at full blast? Just spitballing here
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.
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.
Being able to read signs and storefronts from a motorbike in real time would be life-changing.
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.
Visual search is already useful. People go through the effort of posting requests to social media or forums asking “what is this thing” or “help me ID these shoes and where I can buy them” or “what kind of spider is this” all the time. They’re not searching for red bicycles, they’re taking pictures of a specific Bianchi model and asking what year it was manufactured. Automating the process and improving the reliability/accuracy of that search will improve day to day life.
And I have strong reservations about the fundamental issues of inference engines being used to generate things (LLMs and diffusers and things like that), but image recognition, speech to text, and translation are areas where these tools excel today.
they’re taking pictures of a specific Bianchi model and asking what year it was manufactured
And the answer they get will probably be wrong, or at least wrong often enough that you can’t trust it without looking it up yourself. And even if these things do get good enough people will still won’t be using it frequently enough to want to wear a device on their face to do it, when they can already do it better on their phone.
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.
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.
The glasses don’t record and stream all the time btw. They don’t have their own built in wireless connection to meta.
For now, just give it some more time. ;)
People should still have an expectation of privacy in public spaces to some extent
Why? You’re in a public space. You don’t have privacy when you’re out in public. There are already laws around taking photos of minors etc, but it being able to be done via glasses is no different to it being able to be done with a phone or a camera.
Unless society gets revolutionized so that people can remain in their homes as much as they want (and even then), that is not an option.
What is not an option?
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.
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?’
Exactly my first thought.
Hope it doesn’t turn out the same way this time around
You’d rather have a camera cell phone and mp3 player than a smartphone?
No.
Doesn’t make me any less apprehensive about meta putting cameras and microphones on everybody’s face.
Heh…these days I kinda long for devices for for specific purposes again 😅 and I’m a software engineer.
As a cyclist, this is a terrible sell. I already have tech which does all this, and probably does it better, for less.
Oh yeah, totally valid point you raise, I’m sure every single cyclist for all eternity going forward already owns every bit of cycling technology and no one will ever have to buy new ones.
I mean why didn’t they ask whether or not /u/orgundonor already bought a cycling computer before they developed a new one? What were they possibly thinking???
I don’t need a HUD constantly in my face obscuring the beautiful views.
Yeah, good thing it’s a small transparent display that can just pop up a small arrow when you need it.
I have sun glasses which fit well with a helmet and wrap around my face to keep the wind out.
Yes, just like the cycling smart glasses that Meta released alongside these. Try and keep up.
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.
You know where’s easier to view?
I have bone conducting headphones for music.
Hey, everyone, check out this guy’s bone conduction headphones! See? No one cares.
I also don’t have to wear ridiculous looking sunglasses to listen to my bone conducting headphones.
LMFAO you bought cycling specific sunglasses. Yes, you already do look ridiculous. Everyone is already making your de France wannabe jokes about you, but you don’t care because they’re practical.
Literally everything you said is just dumb hater bullshit. If I want to see someone be as pessimistic as possible to the point of being blindly inaccurate, I would just go rewatch black mirror.
Literally everything you said is just dumb hater bullshit. You added nothing to the discussion.
Literally everything you said is just dumb hater bullshit. You added nothing to the discussion.
We’re at the point now that we “need” 6 gadgets that do the same thing.
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.
“Hi, just wearing my glasses in the changing room…”
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.
surely there will have to be “no smart glasses” rules
They have this rule for ebikes at the lake I love to walk and the kids are zooming by anyway. I think we’ll struggle to enforce it and that really sucks. I hope this fails. It’s hard not to be pessimistic about it, as much as I can see some legitimate use cases. I just don’t trust big tech with it, least of all Meta.
Meh
If I find you wearing these around me tey’re getting smashed while still attached to your face. Fucking STASI loving idiots.
Oh man I’m wearing ray bans. I should get a new pair else I’d get lynched for it… again…