Google applies for another Glass patent, controlling your home | Hacker News Reader

Google applies for another Glass patent, controlling your home

engadget.com

11 pointsinfoman25 comments

There's an assumption here that if you're going to be using your Google Glasses to open a garage door, you'd presumably be wearing them while you're driving. I hope they finish driver-less cars first.

Other uses listed in the patent include: "For example, target device 14 could be a household appliance or device, such as a refrigerator, television, dishwasher, audio system, video system, alarm system, thermostat, garage door, etc. Alternatively, target device 14 could be an office appliance or device, such as a copy machine, fax machine, projection system, security system, etc. Other examples of target device 14 are also possible."

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...

Why wouldn't one wear them while driving?

One of my first ideas for Glass is to act as a HUD for driving information. Especially for motorcyclists, having speed information and even rear view camera easily within your field of vision sounds like an excellent use of this technology.

The most important information while driving is in front of you and not on a HUD.

Wouldn't a HUD be less of an obstruction to your field of vision rather than multiple controls and readings spread throughout your dashboard?

There's also some nice-to-have information on the dashboard, which is why the dashboard is placed where the driver can easily see it.

Having your speedometer on a HUD instead of a dashboard does not make someone incapable of paying attention to the road.

I think that is actually his point. If you don't have to turn your head to the side to look back, at your speed, etc., the road ahead stays at least in your peripheral vision, at most an eye movement away.

I mean, have you seen how some people fiddle with their radios while driving? Personally, I'd be happy if at least a part of those people had the chance to keep their eyes on front while they do that. I might be biased though, due to the german speed limits and not being a driver myself :)

What about checking your blindspots? My 2005 subaru outback has terrible visibility when trying to look back and left (the posts somehow block most of the view). On highway merges, my spouse helps check the blindspot for me or I ask her to look ahead while i crane my neck around.

Is this seriously the future? Where people are so lazy they can't use any strength at all to open a fridge or pressing a goddamn button to open a garage?

Guess I should have seen it coming. I'll commit suicide long before this kind of "technology" arrives.

Only because it's not technology. It does nothing to advance the human race except make them lazier. Stop the madness.

/old person rant

Y U NO walk to wallmart? Why do you drive by car?

I do walk to the local grocery store. I don't own a car.

>I'll commit suicide long before this kind of "technology" arrives.

That's kind of strong...

>It does nothing to advance the human race except make them lazier.

You seem to believe that humans are supposed to use their muscles to do stuff. But why should we not voluntarily "evolve" to become intelligences that control our environment through our brains and harness it through minimal interactions? Is our goal not to discover everything and discard unimportant distractions such as opening the fridge and going to the mall from the seeking of knowledge?

It's a matter of opinions, but just remember that this is not intrinsincally bad. If we can alter our bodies to become detached from physical needs such as feeding, sleeping and everything that we do to prevent our deaths, I can say I'd embrace it.

I admit, the suicide part was far-fetched, but tell me once that you'd like to sit in front of a computer all day, absorbing knowledge endlessly.

No food. No walking. No sleeping. No sex.

Tell me that you would want that.

Who wants to be a brain?

I am a brain, wired permanently to a pretty primitive first-run body. It works okay, but it's all downhill for the next fifty-eighty years or so.

Why on earth wouldn't I want to upgrade that?

Your body is not primitive, try becoming advanced at a complex martial art, a sport or an artisan of a beautiful craft.

Look into history at the things built with our bodies.

The only thing primitive is thinking that our bodies are not exquisite works of artistic science in this utterly beautiful universe.

Imagine a descendant of humanity fifty thousand years from now unearthing my bones and tell me I'm not primitive.

When you worship the beauty and wonder of the universe, don't forget to include the most wonderful part: the future.

While that may be true, your conscious only experiences the Now, and focusing on what other form conscious will take in the future and not enjoying what you are now could rob you of deeply experience what you already are.

One of the things I'm experiencing Now is a sense of limitless unfolding possibility for the future. Ignoring that would also rob me of a deep experience of what I have.

> No food. No walking. No sleeping. No sex.

That's quite hyperbolic.

Is it unacceptable laziness to use a dishwasher, even though it's more efficient? A car to travel two miles? A remote instead of walking over to the TV? Cruise control on your car? A riding mower instead of a self-propelled walk behind?

We've always been pushing for ways that let us do things with less effort. I think we just need to accept that in order to stay healthy, we need to be active in ways we enjoy instead of by relying on doing things the hard way/slightly less easy way.

I agree, however, that's not what the person I replied to was implying.

It's not like using that strength to open the fridge is beneficial in any way. You're not going to pump iron flipping your light switch, man.

The more time I save managing the daily nuisances of my house, the more I can spend on my exercise routine, and other things that require actual mental effort.

What's the point in opening a fridge remotely if you're not there to take food out?

Jokes aside, I get your point, but I have concerns. The more we dislocate our physical presence from our environment, the less our environment will require us over anyone else. Your fridge, by needing a physical operator to share its location in space, provides a safeguard against someone on the other side of the world hacking it and ruining your food.

What I'm beginning to think is that the "make life easier" and more convenient isn't the primary reason for doing what Google is doing nowadays.

Sure, these things make your life that much more accessible, but as opposed to that being the selling point of the product, it is a sort of a hook, an enticement.

It seems to be that by capturing more parts of our personal lives, Google will be able to develop better human language algorithms and sentiment analysis algorithms.

I think what we say and correspond in public is a filtered, impersonal language highly adapted to the audience we are speaking to. In addition, language deals a lot with the environment and a lot with contextual and non-verbal clues, more, I suspect, than linguists think. Hence it is difficult to develop accurate human language models from impersonal, public correspondence.

But by going into the home, Google will have a better opportunity to directly observe the emotional core that shapes the deepest beliefs and opinions of its consumers, and serve targeted ads to the categories of people who will respond best to said targeted ads.

Of course, the data collected have more value than targeted ads. But I think it's well worth keeping an eye on the advertising industry and taking note how their advertisements shape (irrational) demand.

Sounds like a modernized X10 (which I haven't seen much of since the 1980s).

> Google applies for another Glass patent. controlling your homw

Do people even take the time to proofread their titles before submitting?

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