Hacker News Reader

Comment by dvfjsdhgfv | Hacker News Reader

I'm wondering what convinced the management to try this idea gain after Google Glass failed as a commercial product.

Glass had a backlash when privacy still existed. Now we have the Rabbit or the AI Pin, and everyone tells their deepest secrets (even commercial ones like source code) to ChatGPT without thinking about what could go wrong.

Even on HN we can see users saying that AI is better than a psychiatrist.

If it is cheaper than a Meta VR thing, it could be as popular as the latest iPhone.

> even commercial ones like source code

I believe this is the most important argument in favor of local LLMs. There are industries where you can just send some info to OpenAI or Anthropic and just hope it will be safe there.

That's why I'm not involved in the LLMs nowadays. I'm waiting for the whole thing to cool down, and when they have a real local and useful solution for sensitive or regulated industries, I may use it but I'm not in a hurry and I don't believe the FOMO around it.

Its like Google Search. They sold a lot of books for a technology that you could learn in 5 minutes.

The fact that I am not disgusted by those new glasses is worrying me more. Privacy is really dead outside my house and there is nothing I can do about it.

At least it replaced every Google and Apple devices I own with Linux and custom OSes that I fully control, it gives some peace of mind as long as you remember to spend a few minutes to backup your stuff every week.

I understand why you are not in a hurry but I'd like to offer a counter-argument. I have a machine powerful enough to experiment with local LLMs and interestingly enough at least some models are on a par with what OpenAI used to charge for (GPT4). It means I can experiment and see what these models are capable of, whether it makes sense to use them to solve my problem, and if not - why, and if anything can be done about it on my part. And because the API is the same, it's relatively easy.

It's not necessary to be at the bleeding edge, two steps away is also fine, but today LLMs are just another tool in your toolbelt and I reached the conclusion it makes no sense to ignore them, in spite of how irritating the hype (or, sometimes, plain lies) can be.

On top of that they got released more than 10 years ago. We have a new generation of users - I think (might be wrong thought) for gen Gen Z privacy is less of an issue and they are heavy users or tiktok and snapchat (comparing to millenials).

Original glasses looked also more futuristic - new one like raybans looks more like sunglasses so other people less aware about being recorded.

Meta Quest 3, Apple Vision Pro, Meta Ray-Ban camera glass, XREAL Air, Meta Orion. Google has to respond.

No one wants to talk about how those headsets are used or how are usage breakdowns by regions, though.

Your examples are the reason I asked. Whatever Meta was thinking the result was a flop in spite of billions spent on research and production. Apple halted the production of Vision Pro.

So I'm very curious - what caused Google's CXOs to think they absolutely have to revive the dead horse everybody tries to resuscitate but nobody succeeds?

I think transparent kinds can be explained by the concept being simply cool.

As for enclosed VR style headsets, I really think Quest must be actively being used by some non-negligible numbers of users for purposes considered career-unsafe to mention that isn't pornography, by which I mean VRChat. This pink elephant theory can explain paradoxical continued presence of Quest inconsistent with apparent total flop status, especially contrast to actual total flop of AVP.

because other companies have done it without it instantly triggering everyone that saw them. Snapchat has Spectacles and Facebook/RayBans have ReyBan-Meta and neither are having customers called glassholes and getting beaten for wearing head mounted cameras everywhere. honestly i think the reason is for whatever reason popular media demonized google glass as evil privacy invading spying device thus killing it in its infancy and ignored snapchat and facebook when they did the same thing.

The public backlash was from apple fanboys and apple PR department. Some of internal apple data got leaked a while back and they talked about their PR plans which included seeding social media with "glasshole".

I wonder if there is a case that could be made against for inciting violence as there were people who were literary beaten for waring google glass.

I tried Glass and it basically didn't work at all. I don't have a strong accent (standard British) and it could only understand half of what I was saying. Given that the only interface was voice... kind of a deal-breaker.

That said, I wouldn't expect this to be a success either. People don't really like talking to devices in public. It's fundamentally embarrassing.

Google Glass development never really stopped. The enterprise editions where on sale for years. They were shelved around the time work on these translation glasses was announced.

It will cost 10 times less.

Seeing Meta sell millions of them?

Putting Gemini in it.

oh come on, Google Glass was so early, it could never be expected to be anything but a hint of a tech demo. no one believed it was a "product"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com