Hacker News Reader

Comment by caseyf7 | Hacker News Reader

I really hope Apple can show enough restraint to not make these glasses cameras or video recorders like Google glass.

It pretty much has to have cameras for working AR. The MS Hololens has 6 cameras.

Any solutions have to be software-side, like an external indicator light when images are saved in some form. I think Google Glass attempted that too.

I think the interesting question to follow up is: "why not camera"? Is it intuitively bad? How bad? When weighing against the benefits, is camera still worth it? I'm not 100% sure, just a couple random points:

1/ The first concern pops into my head is having a recording device nearly always on. In reality, there is no way you can prevent people to take photos and/or videos using smartphone when something interesting is happening in the public. It takes less than 5 seconds for people to take the phone out of their pockets and start recording. Then what's the real difference between camera on the face or camera in the pocket?

2/ The Glass-Hole issue. People always blame the camera as the ultimate evil. I'm not that sure. Remember, the original Google Glass was basically a piece of not-that-useful-to-put-it-nicely gadget that costs $1500. Honestly, back then, I thought whoever is buying those stuff that just overpaid nerdy douchebags (I'm thinking that way mainly because I cannot afford it). I'm not sure having a camera is the biggest issue; but having a camera is probably the biggest issue that you can publicly talk about.

3/ Trust issue, i.e. whether Google/Apple/FB are secretively collecting those video feed. Or even worse: what if the business model of future AR products depending on collecting those video feed.

When someone is holding up their phone or actual camera to take a photo, that’s very visible and obvious to everyone in the area what they’re doing, and social feedback can be delivered if the usage is inappropriate.

That’s very different from an accessory like glasses, which are typically on somebody’s face all the time, whether or not they’re being used for photo functionality, with a hidden camera constantly pointed at whoever they’re talking to or whatever they’re looking at. You may never know that a photo or video or other recordings of you, of your property, of your company secrets, of national security, etc are imminent or already taking place.

“What’s the real difference” is kind of absurdly obvious, yes?

Apologize if I didn't make my idea clear enough. Seems there are two topics here: 1. being able to use a camera & 2. being able to conceal a camera.

My originally argument is focusing on point 1: people can already _use_ smartphones to take pictures and to record videos as easily/convenient as using a wearable camera.

On the point 2. I totally agree with you, wearables will make it easier to conceal the camera and that is a bad thing. I guess the takeaway here is that the camera isn't the problem, the problem is being able to conceal the camera.

No one has ever said anything to me about carrying my phone in my shirt pocket. The lens is exposed and facing outward.

My primary recording device is 100% socially acceptable to have deployed at all times. Recording would be unacceptable, but no one can tell if I am recording. (To be clear, I am not recording.)

There is no technical difference between this and camera glasses. It is just a weird public perception problem for the glasses.

> .. phone in my shirt pocket.. Recording would be unacceptable, but no one can tell if I am recording.

People know how phones work, you press a button to start recording. AR Glasses are expected to capture at all times, recording or sending to cloud for analysis. And that is what no one would like.

I don't think being able to conceal the camera is a concern. People can do that already, the ones that do are scum and people probably already avoid them, even if they don't know they're concealing a camera, just because they're creepy in general. I think it's more about it becoming acceptable that a camera is always pointed at you in typical day-to-day interactions with people that wouldn't normally creep you out.

Do something strange in public in a large city and you'll have a bunch of cameras pointing at you in pretty short time.

The ubiquity of cameras is becoming more accepted too, I think Google Glass released now might just have made it.

I'm talking about when not doing something strange. If someone approched me with an active camera (and a microphone), until it's turned off, the only conversation we'll be having is about turning it off.

I've seen this pattern several times: ground-breaking new technology appears, public freaks out over the privacy implications, killer app appears, convenience overwhelms pragmatic, nobody cares about privacy implications.

C'mon, y'all are using credit cards, cell phones, Google, smart speakers, etc. You'll be wearing always-on cameras soon enough.

And newborns would have mandatory NFC chips implanted. Ya.

This is a technical impossibility right now. Any inside out tracking will need at least one camera, multiple if you want it to be good.

I really hope they can figure out how to get camera record full day without recharge...

How would they augment reality without a camera?

There’s a big difference between a camera used in real-time for AR vs a camera recording everything to disk and sending it to the cloud for analysis and data mining.

My only guess is the glasses screen not relying on a camera and something like soli would be used instead of a camera for detecting air interactions. https://atap.google.com/soli/

Make the screens transparent.

Everybody has transparent screens on their AR googles, but how do you overlay information over real objects if the device has no clue what real objects exist and where they are? Without cameras you are restricted to being essentially another screen for your smartphone.

>the device has no clue what real objects exist and where they are

The technology in the article solves that

Eh, no. UWB solves the problem of locating yourself in relation to other UWB devices. It doesn't help you identify non-UWB devices (like a wall) that AR glasses might want to know about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com