Hacker News Reader

Comment by scrollaway | Hacker News Reader

Mirrors? You mean those webcam-connected monitors that livestream your image back to you after running image recognition to figure out how well you brushed your teeth?

View on HN

I just had a weird realization that we are probably actually only 10-20 years away from people starting to use a webcam monitor combination instead of mirrors as a mainstream (albeit high-end) option.

It adds 100 milliseconds of latency for no benefit, but it only costs $1000!

And it’s sensitive to moisture! And requires power! And probably software updates. And at some point, it’ll start selling your data and showing you ads. And then one day the manufacturer will brick it remotely because they don’t want to support it anymore, even though it was still working.

.. and when inexorably it gets hacked it will get you your 15 Mb of fame.

well benefit is that the fancy mirror can add filters to make you feel better about yourself :)

... that's weird... I've been using my smartphone like that since my extremely late 2015 adoption of the technology.

No, I mean a scenario where instead of hanging a mirror in your high-end designed bathroom you are actually using a monitor. I can already imagine the advertisements in a catalogue where you are checking out the weather or watching CNN while brushing your teeth and it's all integrated.

And I can imagine the advertisements on the mirror you have to look at while shaving. Or before.

A quick message from our sponsors before your mirror sessions starts

"Sorry I'm looking a bit out of sorts, my mirror had a update so I wasn't able to do my makeup this morning"

For you, it was the day of your job interview for your first C-suite position.

For us at Microsoft...it was Tuesday.

One could use social media as their distributed mirror.

Some people use their cellphone as a pocket mirror to apply make-up in a pinch. So we're there already.

Sibling comments might want to search for "smart mirror" ;) though they're usually an actual mirror with an embedded display.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com