Details of Google's Project Glass revealed in FCC report | Hacker News Reader

Details of Google's Project Glass revealed in FCC report

bbc.co.uk

38 pointspolskibus28 comments

Watch this before you consider one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mirror_%28TV_series%29

Season 1 Episode 3: The Entire History Of You

Watch a paranoid melodrama slighting the product before I consider it? Why not just reasonably consider its possible significance in your life?

The parent just linked to a half-hour long TV show which does a reasonably thoughtful job at depicting the possible significance of ubiquitous recording in people's lives. Is this not the right kind of considering, or what?

It's not a new consideration; Bob Shaw’s 1972 book Other Days, Other Eyes does a credible job of looking at a world with ubiquitous recording - a cheap dust like recording medium is crop dusted across entire countries with the result that it can be hoovered up and played back to show whatever took place in the vicinity.

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/10/slow-glass-seen-from-all-ar...

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Light_of_Other_Days

I wear hearing aids. The bone conduction had better be optional.

What exactly is your complaint? Surely you could mute the device?

Unless the sound is available as an audio out pluggable into a hearing aid (or a hearing-aid replacement), it's useless to me beyond basic boop-beep.

"You are not authorized to access this page." on FCC :(

I wonder why they are going with something like bone-conductor, instead of normal Bluetooth headset type set-up, when it is actually not good at the only thing it should do: Sound good !

I think it's just the trade off here. You want a fairly seamless experience when putting on the glasses - so headphones would distract from that; also when having to choose between good quality from the device as opposed to good quality when speaking to others normally, I'd prefer the latter. But who knows - maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised and have good quality audio all around!

I'm hopeful too; Too bad about the FCC images not being published by BBC

Don't bone conductors work better in noisy places? They're used on the Bridge Climb in Sydney for some reason like this.

I'm not sure that the goal for Glass v1 is audiophile-quality music reproduction. I think a more realistic goal is to make sure that you can use the device without annoying others with audio leaking out. With that in mind, bone conduction makes sense. (Actually, I've never used a bone-conduction headset, so I don't know if it's any good. But the idea seems promising to me.)

I have a pair of bone conduction headphones, and sound leaking out is definitely a problem. The advantage of bone conduction is that it doesn't block sound from the outside world like normal headphones do.

Because you're meant to wear these glasses all day, and blocking outside sound is not very desirable.

I still don't understand why nobody is talking about the legal and social issues around the video recording capabilities of the Google Glasses. Which so far looks like its only real use case.

It is illegal to record someone without permission in particular on private property. It is illegal to record children. There are major implications if illegal activity is recorded. Are you responsible if you don't notify police about a crime. Then there are the myriad of social concerns. If you record me and for privacy reasons I want the video erased how can I do so ? Or am I forced to remove the glasses from your head and destroy them?

Just like smartphones are required to make a noise when taking a photo I wonder whether there should be a red LED light to indicate when recording is occurring or a button to erase the last 5 minutes of video.

Just like smartphones are required to make a noise when taking a photo

I'm pretty sure that just about every smartphone allows you to mute the shutter sound.

Not on iOS IIRC.

And it definitely is a law that ALL smartphones make that sound in many countries e.g. Japan, South Korea.

iPhones in vibrate mode make no shutter sound.

Not in Japan.

On my Japanese iPhone (and all Japanese phones) the sound cannot be disabled; on my American iPhone, it can.

My Nokia Lumia most definitely does not make any noise when taking a photo.

Just took two pictures in two different camera apps on iOS and not a peep.

In the US, maybe.

I don't think that's entirely correct, at least in the United States. As far as I understand the law, it IS legal to videorecord people, children and otherwise in public places with or without their permission and on private property under some conditions. I'm certainly not a legal expert and I would be interested in seeing any citations that might prove this wrong. Here are a few sources I found on the web:

http://communications-media.lawyers.com/privacy-law/Child-Ph... (note that according to this, in the state of Georgia and possibly New Jersey it may now be illegal to photograph children who aren't your own)

http://www.uvu.edu/wrs/trainingmaterials/recording.html

So ignoring the fact that the US has far more lax privacy restrictions than many other countries. It would still be illegal then to record audio without consent and record video on private property, wherever a sign has been displayed or in places like public bathrooms.

Which again begs the question. Nobody seems to care then that it would be illegal to use the device for its current intended purpose.

As devil's advocate,

I doubt the intention is to record other people's conversations, in fact quite the opposite since everything is recorded.

The real question is, when an incriminating conversation is recorded, which would otherwise be inadmissible, would a court allow it? I suppose yes because the recording is accidental, not intentional.

Do you have a LED light on when you're recording a video with your phone? Some countries mandate it, others don't. Do you find it weird that nobody is talking about issues involving the recording capabilities of cellphones?

In public, by law, you have no reasonable expectation of privacy. In private, it's up to you to deny entry to someone using recording devices. If he's your friend and you are ok with it you let him in, otherwise you ask him to remove the glasses, exactly as you would do with someone with a camera. And, as with a camera, the intent is what matters.

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