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Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

What do people think about the (almost hidden) cameras in glasses?

With traditional cameras, feature phones, and smartphones, if someone wanted to be creepy with the camera, they'd have to point the device at someone, which tended to look exactly like they are using the camera.

(IIUC, some countries even required a shutter sound, for anti-creepy reasons, when the pointing of the phone wasn't enough warning.)

Now, the wearer of the glasses spy camera just has to look in the general direction that creepiness should be sprayed.

The creepiness isn't even that of the wearer; it could also be that of the tech company.

Is this going to end up another Google "Glassholes" situation, with the wearers shunned?

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There's a pretty bright light that turns on when the camera is recording, and if you try and cover the light the camera won't work. Their existing glasses are pretty popular and there haven't been big compaints about it. If you really wanted to do secret recordings there are plenty of better and cheaper glasses in the market for it.

What a relief, they really thought about it, exactly like the AirTags with the warning buzzer.

There are several videos showing you can easily cover or disable the LED with no loss in functionality.

Many years ago there was some summer camp and the staff organized a game "take a picture of your team leader without having them realize you're taking a picture". I completely obliterated the game by downloading an app that allowed me to record "in the background". I got a few good shots by showing a funny picture to people while having the front-facing camera on. Then I got other shots by turning on the back camera, locking the phone, and then just casually holding it in my hand like any other locked phone and waving it around.

The point is, if you want to secretly record, it's already trivial to do it.

So, your point is: "things are already bad now, no harm in making it worse"?

I'm really not a fan of them. There's already too much recording going on on a daily basis. I would personally avoid anyone wearing these. They say the mandatory LED activation prevents the issue, but I still don't trust it, and find it very off putting either way.

This is HN. People would call it free speech- until it happens to their daughter.

They've had the camera glasses part for a few years now.

But currently not very popular.

there are millions in the wild ... so maybe not super popular but it's above penetration of anything you would call a niche product

Millions in the wild, but mostly sitting in a drawer.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/metas-ray-ban-smart-g...

That's about gen 1, gen 2 is vastly more successful

Is it? I've seen zero people wearing them in central london.

I haven't noticed anyone wearing them in real-life, despite walking every day in a concentration of university/college campuses (Harvard Square, USA, and surrounding neighborhoods, sometimes including MIT).

I've only noticed some influencers wearing them in Web videos, where they look prominent, like I should also be able to recognize them in-person.

Maybe people are only wearing them at home or in the office? Maybe it's mostly a California techbro regional thing?

Maybe I'm not paying enough attention. I will start consciously looking for them.

I've ever seen them in the California Bay Area either. I don't go into the office for my current job, though, so maybe there are some tech bros out there wearing them?

That's a pretty small fraction of the population.

There are about 50M foldables in use, probably 30X as many in use as the Meta Ray-Bans, and I see one of those every couple of years and the only pair of Meta Ray-Bans I've seen in the wild has been a blind friend who got the first generation early because of its accessibility capabilities.

I got given them for free and I've never once turned them on. There's no way in this world I would ever wear a Meta produced personal life tracking device on my face (or anywhere else for that matter)

Amazon has a ton of spy glasses for like $50 that are no more obtrusive than this new Meta product so I think we've been living in this world for awhile. I suppose if the Meta product becomes popular it might raise awareness of them.

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