Facebook, Ray-Ban debut picture-taking smart glasses
axios.com
axios.com
This is a good summary of the kind of deal buying a pair of these would be. Even putting a piece of tape on something you bought and supposedly own is a violation of some contract and may in theory render your device inoperable. It's not hard to imagine that the companion app, which is the only way to use the device, requires Facebook login and then you just end up with a few hundred dollars worth of regular old glasses.
As to your complaint: I don't see a problem? Assuming for a second that such a scheme would work, it allows transactions to happen and devices to be sold that otherwise would not or could not.
That's the basic mechanism of how contract law and court system help a society: a bank wouldn't have the capability to build its own mercenary force to collect debt (or, at least, it would be expensive and a nightmare for civil liberties). So, counterintuitively, by allowing you to bind yourself to an agreement to pay back a loan, your range of options is only expanded.
I don't think that's true: LEDs can also be used as light sensors. If the camera sees a bright day and the LEDs see pitch black, you know something sketchy's going on.
I still can't get over how it is still legal for a manufacturer to retain any kind of control over a device after sale. It's even more dystopian that you basically can't buy a phone that isn't backdoored.
We should stop making it illegal for people to do what they want to things they own.
You making a modification to your glasses to hide an LED isn't a repair... at least in the terms the FTC is using at present.
Probably not but many of us live in the surveillance states. Businesses and governments already have lots of hidden and visible video cameras everywhere, I don't see why citizens shouldn't be granted the same liberties to invade others privacy instead of having double standards.
It would be nice to live in a world where the needs of nerds are more important than those of idiots on Instagram but that's not going to happen.
Luxottica/FB should be free to make a product/service they can charge for and you're free to buy something else (PineGlasses release in 2030?) or hack it.
At least now you can buy a second-hand phone with an unlocked bootloader, and flash it with GrapheneOS or PostmarketOS, which likely are not phoning home you location or actions, and switch off the mobile and wifi data connections just in case.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nsa-g...
The NSA has had the capability to track switched-off phones since 2004, so it's fair to assume that a number of actors, nation-state and otherwise, can also do it now
Edit: changed to a better source
I was able to find this article about how this could work: https://privacyinternational.org/blog/1357/tech-companies-re... Apparently this relies on a software hijacking so that the phone is not really off.
Another, actually better article: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130723/12395923907/even-... also points to malware injection.
This corroborates what I've heard here and there while working in the GSM industry: you could trust a phone that's turned off, if only you could trust it being actually turned off.
Furthermore I do in fact think that the distinction is big enough to justify legal protection to the end user on the basis that one can burn your house down (and can happen by accident with no user intervention) and the other cannot.
Personally I think words like “harm” have concrete meaning outside of language specifically crafted by marketers in order to make awful products more palatable.
I'm reminded of how phones sold in Japan have a fake shutter sound on their camera apps that you can't disable. Yes, there's a good reason for it (preventing creeps from quietly taking upskirt photos of women on subways), but it also removes the ability to take silent photos for legitimate reasons.
But in the general sense, I do find this new Facebook product to be gross and creepy, far worse than Google Glass. And frankly I think a recording light, which will easily become washed out and invisible in sunlight, is a pretty poor attempt at helping maintain the privacy of random people.
An exploding battery is not, to my knowledge, “controversial” in that we’ve all agreed that fire is unwanted behavior. This is why I’ve found issue with your battery analogy.
I do not believe there is a meaningful equivalence there.
Yes. I use knives for cooking. I could use them for butchering my neighbors but that would be none of the knives' manufacturers business.
Not just knives. Anything can be used in a dangerous or harmful way. You can suffocate someone with a pillow. So this line of reasoning leads to any company having the right (or maybe the duty?) to monitor us.
They’re not particularly popular as far as I can tell, but my point only relies on the concept itself as another example of manufacturers implementing features to attempt to influence how the product can be used.
It's still dangerous via slashing if it's at all useful for food prep
https://www.1911forum.com/threads/does-a-fighting-knife-need...
https://www.google.com/search?q=bayonet+crossguard
It's subtle, but true. I would imagine that a "kitchen knife" with a full cross-guard that was regularly carried in your belt and implicated in a crime would probably not be considered "just a kitchen knife".
eg: all the rules around gun shapes, sizes, etc. etc. so they don't become "assault-style weapons" or give people impure thoughts when they're out on the shooting range.
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/08/748665339/the-pistol-that-loo...
So they can make "safe knives" if they wish but I would rather buy the other ones.
Whats difficult to get over is when non-tech companies, e.g., Bausch & Lomb, go along with the nonsense.^1 All this supposed corporate responsibility and yet they still partner with unethical "tech" companies.
1 Probably should not be surprised considering B&L is owned by Valeant Pharmaceuticals. (Who has sinced changed its name to try to escape its well-earned bad reputation.)
It's the same as asking "is internet backdoored". It might be wiretapped, but you can use encryption to avoid that risk.
Since I no longer have a landline, I can't confirm it works now.
It also seems like the only way to implement devices whose operation requires ongoing performance of services by the company. If I'm needed to ensure a device can fulfill its stated goal in an ongoing way, then of course I need to retain some kind of control - if to tell devices to update or send me photos or whatever. This doesn't mean that you need to cut off modified devices, but it also doesn't mean you need to put up with them either.
[0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/faceboo...
• Instead of driving your LED from one live pin to ground or power, put it between two pins (with its current limiting resistor unless your microcontroller can safely limit the current and you can tolerate the heat in package (RP2040!))
• Forward bias (say pin 1 high, pin 2 low) to illuminate.
• Reverse bias briefly (pin 1 low, pin 2 high) to charge the stray capacitance of your pin 2 driver. Then turn pin 2 into an input and time how long it takes to change from a "1" to a "0".
Your LED is going to be matching up photons and electrons and passing electrons across. It isn't great at this compared to a photodiode, but it does do it. If the current flow through the LED is at least in the ball park of the input current on pin 2 you will be able to tell the difference in light levels.
It's crude, and may not be workable at all in low light levels because the input pin current will dwarf the LED current.
But for compliance checking in FB Glass, the camera knows when it is in bright light, and if the LED disagrees, then you have covered your LED. The cost to implement is one package pin and a little software.
Note: I am not necessarily known as nefarious. I used it to automatically modulate the brightness of indicator LEDs. Bright in the day, dimmer in the dark. The time to sense is short enough that you can do it with your indicator and no one notices the tiny dark interval.
I think this is the part the fuss is about. Account banning needs to be banned, regardless of whether the services are not offered paid.
In some countries, masking recording/photo-taking indicators is a bona-fide crime.
The TOS normalizing this to "don't hide the fact that your recording glasses are recoding" is not only not an onerous term of service, it is uncharacteristically pro-safety and pro-privacy.
That's me. I don't have an Oculus Quest 2 but have heard good things about it. But I can't get one because my Facebook account was shut down without explanation in 2019. Despite its age (15 years) I barely used it, let alone for anything "controversial", but did regularly log into it. I repeatedly tried to verify my identity by submitting an image of my driver's license, without any response.
If a Facebook employee is reading this ... I don't want to create a fake new Facebook account (which would be against the TOS, anyway). I want my own back.
If this is the case, I guess it's just a legal cover-up to comply to the law.
Something like a HUD would be great but people don't want cameras pointing at them all the time.
Even local bars and restaurants that don't even handle that much cash have tons of surveillance cameras up everywhere.
1: https://blogs.harvard.edu/internetmonitor/2013/07/10/surveil...
Right now there are too many retail security cameras for humans to monitor constantly, and too many shoppers to tag and track even if the data could be retained and processed. But both of these problems are well on their way to being solved.
Higher quality, and now with data collection.
All I really want is a nice HUD which pairs with my phone via bluetooth to show content, and a low-effort way of navigating. No camera needed.
I really wanted this maybe 5-10 years ago, but personally I've reached a point in my life where I feel "less is more" regarding tech. Enough things want to send me notifications that I know it would be as worthless as my email feed, or my phone notifications feed, or my facebook feed, or any of the other feeds out there that have become sources of noise.
Other things are. Maps which track your location and show you the way overlaid on the streets and roads you see. Books and manuals which you don't need to hold in your hands. Video instructions that track your hands and correct their position. Finding stuff in a warehouse or in your closet by pointing at it right in your FOV. Heart rate monitor, etc right before your eyes when you are performing your hardest and can't lift your smartwatch to your eyes.
Many good uses with broad markets. Sadly, it's technically too difficult, so it's too expensive for non-professional use.
Maps and navigation seem to be good enough when they are handheld or mounted on a vehicle. When you are on foot you're moving slowly so no need to have it always visible. Yes, there's a special case of you're on foot and carrying two heavy bags in both hands, in an unfamiliar place outdoors, and cannot stop, and do not speak local language. Voice navigation should still suffice.
Video instructions. Some of them have to be seen in advance to be able to plan your actions and logistics (e.g. cooking). Some of them teach skills which should be watched multiple times and/or tried multiple times to achieve mastery (e.g. sports and dancing techniques). What kind of instructional video benefits from being seen while doing, in real time? Even origami howtos are usually back and forth, until you _understand_ what you're doing.
Not holding books in your hands. I admit I wanted it on several occasions. My concern is usability. Is it easy to read four hours from a semitransparent surface, is it easy to focus on HUD projections continuously.
Finding stuff in the closet. This is so sci-fi. We'll see level 5 autonomous driving first.
Heart rate (blood sugar, any other vital) monitor. Basically, it's a solved problem and a feature available commercially. You don't need to see heart rate continuously to be warned about an anomaly. Sound alarm works just as well if not better.
Though, with that said, some people I know tried it on and the HUD was easier to use. A lot depended, I think, on the shape of your face. The way my nose and eye sockets and ears are I had to look up with my eyes at an uncomfortable angle to see the full HUD.
Maybe they fixed it since V1.
Without that, it really ended up just being a tiny smartwatch screen that is in the corner of your vision instead of on your wrist.
the leaders of these companies are also fairly uncreative leading them to blindly follow the current meme of "the future" which ironically leads to them faltering anyway
I don't know whether it will be a success, but I don't think the crowd that doesn't want a camera pointed at them is a majority. For the record, I don't want a camera pointed at me.
If the upcoming generation of developers and tech professionals no longer believe in a separation of personal and professional boundaries, will we see a complete elimination of boundaries and privacy? Is the end goal to have the ability to directly tap into what others are seeing on demand in their most intimate interactions. Something similar to the TV adaption of Brave New World? (I haven't read the book, so I don't know if this is true to the original.) As far as I know, Facebook photos and accounts are private, or that's what it appears people tend to send the accounts to, but Instagram is all about leaving an account open, so they can get influencer collaboration bucks.
Otherwise it's pretty weird (unless you were friends with them before the gig, presumably).
This isn't a 'i dont want people to watch me pee' argument, that was just an example. I don't want to be recorded when I have an expectation of privacy - full stop.
Yes I have used Glass. They sucked.
They just don’t think it will happen.
- Mechanics who can see under the car and identify components and potential issues with those components. - Logistics handlers who can look at a package and know where it goes next, or people who scan QR and barcode codes all day - Construction workers who can measure distances, see wind speed, temperature, etc
In other words, there is good use for this tech while avoiding all together any privacy concerns, as you are looking and analysing objects, not people.
How would these "see" wind speed? I just don't get how it's needed to have this in front of your eyes at all times...
There's definitely a bunch of commercial use-cases.
Personally, all I want is for these glasses to tell me the names of people who are my Facebook friends. Given the privacy concerns though, this is very unlikely to happen.
Taqtile's Manifest [0] product does something like this. There are some videos of it here [1] [2]. It's not exactly what you describe w.r.t diagnostics, but instead it's used to speed up training of mechanics/mechanic-like tasks. It uses Microsoft's hololens, so a bit bulkier than these glasses, but it's a cool look into what kinds of tools some of these jobs might have 10-20 years from now.
[0]: https://taqtile.com/manifest/ [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1xNd_n1QyE [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxoczR8-mwU
It's like giving mechanics/diagnosticians an IDE with lining, autocomplete, dev docs, etc as opposed to coding on notepad.
Car mechanics can recognize components. It's the easiest part of their trade. And doctors know how organs look like. That's not the kind of information they need. And no heart surgeon would look at getting started tutorial with a patient in front of them. Construction workers would use a proper measurement tool if they need a measurement and their decisions depend on this measurement.
Another assumption about AR which is often wrong is that looking at things is the easiest solution to many problems.
Yes, a cash register worker scans codes all day. No, rotating each and every box to have the code facing you and then moving the head and the upper body to center at the code is not easier than reaching the same code with a hand scanner. Hands are good at reaching things. Neck gets tired. And even a better solution might be transition to RFID, or installing multiple cameras along the belt, or promoting a self service process, none of them require to look at every code.
Loooking at keyboard is not the fastest way to type. Many AR usage scenarios are like suggesting to project key labels on a keyboard through a magic HUD when there are already keyboards with labeled keys and many people using them professionally are blind typists.
What I'd really want is to go back to a world where we just don't have the opportunity and expectation to record so much. But that's not going to happen. And a lot of it really does have immense value for us. Our parents live on the other side of the country and this (plus FaceTime) is the main way they get to see their grandchildren grow up.
With that in mind, I would love a set of glasses that record what we're seeing on a short buffer and let us tap to save whenever something interesting/significant happens. No more phone out worried that we'll miss a big moment.
I'd really prefer to see someone with some ethical sense try to tackle this in a way that doesn't send us directly into this world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Entire_History_of_You
I don't know who that would be, but it's certainly not Facebook.
We probably overwrite a lot of great memories with the slightly shittier version of what actually happened marred by the distraction of 'I must record this'.
Memories aren't what they used to be.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
That ship has sailed. People have their phones out all the time, often held at a 45° angle, but frequently vertical as well. Taking photos surreptitiously is already ridiculously easy and nearly anyone around you could do it all the time.
I'm not condoning it, just saying that building it into glasses isn't changing anything. We already live in a world where people might be recording you at any time. We have been for years.
Rayban integrating with Facebook looks like the Mafia and Triads joining forces.
People look at me like a madman when I try to explain that you can buy good-quality glasses for $7 online + $6 shipping (or ~$40 with all the coatings and fancy upgrades you could ever want)
I just buy a sack of glasses every couple of years and then treat them with absolutely no respect whatsoever. My toddler loves to rip the glasses off my face and chew on them or use them as a club to beat on random objects around the house.. This is not a problem for me. I popped the lenses out of a $7 pair of glasses and strapped them into my VR headset. When I find an old scuffed-up pair of glasses, I just throw them in the trash.
I wonder how many other parts of our society are a blatant scam without me knowing about it.. I know that the way people study English in Japan and Korea is a giant scam where they basically learn nothing, but I could only recognize that thanks to my outside perspective
Absent the actual AR part though I don't think there's much here that's an improvement on previous failed attempts (with a big exception for improved hardware integration/design which does matter a lot). I don't personally find the camera/video recording stuff compelling (but I'm also not the target audience) and there's still the negative privacy/social element of it. That's been talked to death so nothing interesting to discuss there imo.
I think Apple's focus on airpods/lidar and waiting on glasses with cameras until they have the actual UX/AR working in hardware probably makes sense, but FB always has a bias to shipping and testing new stuff early.
I can imagine that various video lessons can benefit from a camera positioned right at your eyes; there are several other offers for that on the market. OTOH reporting in a social situations, like a birthday party, can benefit even more, because you don't have to carry the camera around, keep it pointed, etc, you can participate and sometimes make shots, or shoot video.
As an aside: an ideal reporting camera would have a button like "save the shots from 10 seconds ago to now", and "start video recording 10 seconds ago". This hardware likely lacks the battery capacity for such a mode, though.
Oculus stands alone in that they offer a product that’s good enough to get some people to ignore that and all the potential future Facebook-initiated awfulness that will inevitably come down the pipeline. Even then I’d happily buy a Facebook-less Oculus device, though I understand that the financial realities of VR R&D kinda necessitate having them there.
And I absolutely don't want Facebook to have more portals into more of society. Also, based on every choice Facebook has ever made, any claim that FB makes implying or asserting they can't access video/image/general camera data is not credible.
I really hope FB doesn't make a dominant product. I'm excited about the possibilities afforded by a mature AR platform, but the idea of giving FB the ability to see through my eyes is so viscerally repulsive that no product could be amazing enough to offset that.
Then it completely fell flat. It just didn't cross the divide from enthusiasts to the wider culture at all. The term glasshole was invented. We all saw scoble in the shower.
It might be that the culture's moved enough over the last decade that smart glasses will be a thing, as more people see social media success as aspirational. AR and VR give a value prop that wasn't there. Still, it seems like there's a big gap between the enthusiast market and the mainstream, and this release doesn't do much for that.
/s
I heard it was the combo of battery life and ability to package an SoC that could perform the features they wanted wasn’t available.
I really don't appreciate that every attempt by FB to free themselves of ads they end up with a product perfect for scooping up data so it either flops out of consumer fear and/or turns into a data collection funnel.
I want FB to be more than a heinous data trap. I don't think it's going to happen though.
I would really like our world to be one in which attracting top talent requires more interestingness than simply being an a data vacuuming ad service.
If you work at, or would work at Facebook, you should probably follow Bill Hicks' advice.
They are, how naive could such hypothetical employees be that they wouldn't know FB's stances on privacy?
Plainly put: suggesting people kill themselves is a shitty thing to do, in any context. Please don't.
Only 6-12 months later.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/faceboo...
I am generally weary of government regulation, but, depending on the implementation, I might be onboard with a law that requires cameras and microphones to have a power indicator. Specifically, the LED should be hard-wired into the main power wire going into the camera/mic, so that it will activate any time those sensors are receiving electricity.
Such a law should be equally applied to police body cameras.
Cops frequently have to chase suspects into dark areas. Being lit up will both help suspects get away easier and massively increase the risk that the suspects will be able to easily shoot their pursuers.
They're either in cars or if they're patrolling on foot (which is basically only something that happens in very dense commercial areas), they're dressed to be obvious and noticable. That's the mechanism by which police can prevent/displace crime: would-be perpetrators see police and choose to wait, commit their crime elsewhere, or (potentially) cool off and not commit the crime.
Hence all cameras must make powerful low-frequency vibration when active.
I can't figure out who else would be using it. Good way to lose friends and make enemies. I wouldn't be hanging out with anyone with them on. Would stay away from any strangers with them on.
I imagine a lot of people will choose to only cavort with people who have hidden audio recording devices, as opposed to visible video recording devices. At least until we all get used to this in 2-4 years.
And why buy a $299 device when you could just buy a $5 headband mount for a phone or GoPro?
There's a lot more parents out there than amateur pornographers. At least I hope so.
There is a huge overlap :P
I watched a WSJ video on these glasses and from 5+ feet away, they are indistinguishable from the ubiquitous Ray-Ban Wayfarers sunglasses. The "camera's on" LED is about the size of a poppy seed and in daylight conditions, it was nearly impossible to notice. Also, they put the button that starts recording in a place I touch while adjusting my glasses, so starting a recording will also be completely inconspicuous. These seem to be designed to violate people's privacy, which would make sense considering how incredibly good FB is at monitizing their (often non-consensual) access to the intimate details of people's lives.
I'm not sure these glasses are a Good Thing™ for humanity.
I'd only need around $50k-100k, so it looks doable.
Plus the privacy concerns and the "glasshole" nickname.
I see that there is an activity indicator LED (just like there was with Google Glass) but even the article admits there will likely be nonconsensual candid photo taking.
Which raises the question: Did things really change that much about how people perceive privacy since 2013 that now no one cares?
I'm happy with with smart watches at this point. I'm not convinced smart devises were meant to be attached to our head.
My guess is that is a mixture of glassholes from back then are willing to try again and younger people who would have been glassholes back then never got a chance and so are trying again. The societal expectations probably haven't changed, although the loudness of the different voices in society may have. I almost expect more pushback now, given the increased awareness of privacy invasion and the greater trust Google enjoie(s/d) vs Facebook
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/faceboo...
At least this is up-front from the beginning, unlike what they did with the Oculus Quest. Though, I daresay many people won't realise this is the case until they get a pair and set them up.
But given how everyone seems to have forgotten about privacy and invited always on microphones into their homes, maybe this won't hit the same brick wall Google did in 2012?
I can already tell that this will be popular with creeps.
Maybe attitudes have changed but I can’t imagine it going much better.
Nobody is ever recorded in public to exonerate them. The idea someone could have an objection to carrying firearms as public aggression but not see how recording people is effectively brandishing with an implied threat is going to be one of those things we will look back and laugh at.
I watched an excellent interview with Khary Payton where my ideas on surveillance really changed. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GnZ1HCRqdB4
I think socially there’s a difference at play between recording in general and headwear for it, specifically.
People will attempt to blur the lines between adjacent categories to argue their point, but you're going from the first straight to the last, skipping over everything in the middle. That's what I call 'a stretch'.
Low level violence and physicality used to snap people who exploited this latter nerd version back into moderation, but now terrible people have become sacred cows, and here we are.
I would have also asked you to take them off. For one, normalizing wearing them even if not recording is a step towards normalizing them at all. For another, I don't really trust you when you say they're not recording. I remember having to alter my paths through crowds to avoid glassholes back then, and I don't want to go back.
Why would you even want to wear it in a bar?
> Maybe attitudes have changed but I can’t imagine it going much better.
I hope attitudes haven't changed. I hope people still ostracize beaming pictures of everyone around them into the cloud without consent.
I swear to God. What about a camera you can wear in a public bathroom don't people get the obvious 'wrong'-ness of?
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
The wearer can't really record anything he/she can't directly see already. Is the concern that the guy at the next urinal might crane his neck over the divider and film your junk? Would you consider that acceptable behavior if he didn't have camera glasses on?
Is the worry that someone might capture you entering or leaving a bathroom stall, or record your back as you stand at a urinal? It seems like a regular old cell phone would be a more effective way to take sneaky pictures or videos, since it doesn't involve popping your whole head under the stall...
It just feels like doing anything truly unpleasant with camera glasses would require a serious breach of standard bathroom etiquette, and even considering how shitty the general public can be, I've never experienced that level of bad behavior in a public bathroom in all my years.
My concern is the difference between something being able to be seen and something being able to be recorded and shared later.
I like that there is a light signaling the glasses are capturing photo/video, although it might not be noticeable in some cases, just like other devices
Cool to see the pictures/videos don't go directly to FB.
FB always launches things in a better state then errodes privacy and user value to tilt towards more data collection.
...and the certainty that a law will then be passed within a year. Also you're no longer getting government contracts.
Yet. They also said you'd never need a FB account to use Oculus. Or that Whatsapp data would be kept separate.
And instead ask: Is there a reason to not immediately "defend yourself" against any person who is looking at you with a pair of these? (Physically or not)
Yes. You would be guilty of assault and potentially end up in prison. You would not be in the "right" in this scenario.
Nobody believes me how bad the crime has gotten here. I'd like to document it.
A great benefit from having cameras everywhere (e.g. Ring), is the crime evidence aspect.
May we ask what general area you live in?
It weighs nothing, cost nothing. I just have to figure out how to plug it into a raspberry pi for an augmented car experience. (right not using my bulky laptop)
I've trained a small model with my voice to respond to basic commands. No need to go through a Facebook server or any cloud server for that matter. Tech can be a lot of fun when you get your hands dirty and ignore FAANGs.
[1]: https://www.ifixit.com/Store/PC-Laptop/Asus-G75VW-DS73-3D-Ca...
I'm actually surprised. Just looking at the glasses, I'd expect some sort of "make 3d cameras popular" attempt to help create 3d content.
No Face Halloween Mirror Mask / Anonymous Disguise
https://www.thegreenhead.com/2014/10/no-face-halloween-mirro...
Anti-Mask Laws
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/1169/anti-mask-...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/faceboo...
I hope wearers of these get the same stigma that the Google Glassholes did.
This isn't enabling any new functionality there.
The danger from these is the internet-connectedness, and Facebook.
You pickup a felony battery and/or assault charge?