Despite all the negativity around Google Glasses' camera, that was actually the best feature. You could really capture some great moments directly from your eye's perspective at the wink of an eye. My mother recently passed and out of all the photos and videos, my favorite was a 10 second video of me handing her flowers shot from Google Glasses. It looks like she's staring right back into my soul.
I have a three month old daughter now and I find myself fumbling about with my phone trying to take photos of her. Just last night I dropped my Pixel phone while trying to capture a photo of her. Phone is fine, but she wasn't too happy with the loud noise of my phone hitting the wood floor :) I kind of miss Google Glasses simply for the camera feature.
Instead of a minimal heads up display, I would much rather have a minimal wearable camera without all the extra functionality Google Glasses offered. Google Clips seems to be an alternative hands-free camera with different pros and cons (+I can be in the photo. -Can't capture the same type of photos from my eye viewpoint).
Just my two cents; I'm a father of 4 and I'm okay with not capturing those moments on film. And I mean that in two senses. One, I'm fine using my very imperfect memory to recall special moments and two, because of the logistical problems with grabbing the camera I'm not willing to risk missing out being fully in the moment. The occasionally photograph from an event or time period seems sufficient to conjure up the feelings from that time.
Regarding an always on camera - I'll second other comments in warning there are just so many concerns with abuse, I don't see how to get around those.
I don't mean to derail this topic, but we don't have too many videos of my mother because for half of her life recording a video meant carrying one of those massive VHS recorders on your shoulder. When she passed and I realized how few videos we had, my first thoughts were: "How can I preserve these moments with my daughter, not just for myself but for her when I'm no longer around?" So I started looking into 360 degree video cameras and that sort of thing and that's when I remembered Google Clips. It's not ideal, but it may be one of the better solutions for preserving moments that doesn't require you to miss anything. I seem to take 90% of the photos of our family, which means I'm not in 90% of the photos.
I hope that doesn't sound strange, but you start thinking about these things during these times.
It's definitely something that deaths and similar events make you think about, but ultimately, I also find myself asking if it would be used at all. And if it was, would it be beneficial?
I have thousands of family slide photos from my grandparents. This is unusual, but they were big photography fans. Nobody looked at them for at least a decade. But about 10 years ago I had access to a nice scanner, so I digitized a few hundred of them, so that we could look at them more easily. Now I have thousands of slide photos nobody has looked at in two decades, hundreds of digitized versions nobody has looked at in one decade, and a handful of ones we printed or such that get looked at more regularly. I think quantity is overrated, and it just becomes write-only-memory. I still take hundreds of photos for myself every year, but I doubt my kids will ever look at them for more than a few hours, max.
And I think there's something to be said for the impermanence of memory for helping people move on with their lives. I thought I was going to die a few years ago - I didn't, which is great, obviously, but if I had, I wouldn't have wanted those who loved me to still be dwelling on me today.
Snapchat is basically the app recognition of this idea that not everything is worth saving, that for 99.99% of stuff the value today far, far outweighs any value in the future. Shame it's such a hard concept to monetize, I guess.
(I say this, but I'm not immune to the temptation, either. If you ask the people in my life, they'd definitely tell you they wish I'd follow my own advice around "remember, you're taking pictures for yourself, not for other people, and don't prioritize your pictures of others over other people themselves." :| )
>I think quantity is overrated, and it just becomes write-only-memory. I still take hundreds of photos for myself every year, but I doubt my kids will ever look at them for more than a few hours, max.
My mother has a habit of taking a bunch of photos of an event, and posting all of them to fb, disregarding quality. Blurry shots, photos of people mid-scarfing down food, etc, it all goes up.
These kinds of collections are utterly worthless, and to a degree, kind of disgusting to go through. But the events themselves are perfectly worthy of being photographed, posted, and whatever.
The problem is the lack of curation. Its fine that she took many photos, as long as she only shared the two that actually looked good.
In the same way, I doubt you'd have the problem having many unseen photos if you selected, and shared, the ones that were worth sharing. I doubt all of the thousands should be shared; instead you're forcing the filtering process on every individual you pass the collection to.
And collecting all of your experiences in video would be fine, if you only actually shared the 0.01% of it actually worth sharing. Of course no one wants to do it on your behalf.
> In the same way, I doubt you'd have the problem having many unseen photos if you selected, and shared, the ones that were worth sharing. I doubt all of the thousands should be shared; instead you're forcing the filtering process on every individual you pass the collection to.
That's kinda the point, isn't it? Hardly anybody actually spends their time curating their possessions for future generations, yet nobody is super sad about this missing inheritance. If we thought we'd value it more, there'd be more of a market for products to manage it - instead, things like Lightroom are a small nice. "On this day..." type reminders from Facebook and the like seem to be enough.
I don't think I have a problem: I have a bunch of pictures I look at, for me. It's just nothing more than that.
I would think you also don't want thousands of random photos in your archives: you'd ideally have filtered through it already, and whatever remains is likely worth looking back on
An archive of 10,000 images, i think, should be an impressive work; a grand feat of labour, through years of collection and curation. Even if you don't care about the content, you'd have to care about the effort spent. For personal use, or for sharing.
>Hardly anybody actually spends their time curating their possessions for future generations, yet nobody is super sad about this missing inheritance
I think ideally, you wouldn't have to curate for the future generations, just the future you, to create a valuable collection. But people often don't even curate for themselves, maintaining a mostly worthless collection. (With maybe a few hidden gems)
And I think curated collections, even those that never leave the basement, are assigned an inherent value. The attic used as a dump can burn and no one will care.
And in the same fashion, constantly recorded lifespans will also have little value (except maybe to historians), if it stays as a data dump. The value of that feature is lost if left alone, as is the collection of objects dumped in the attic. But the act of collecting gives you the chance to derive value that you otherwise couldn't (say because you didn't expect that particular moment to be noteworthy before it occurred for example), by curating it. A found, used but unprocessed film roll has no value; a gallery of selected photos can be extremely valuable.
I think it's a great conversation to have and one I've seen come up more and more.
I totally understand the inclination to capture as much as possible and have found myself wishing I had more photographs/videos/etc of certain things.
However, I think most of us are already past the point of useful amounts of capture. I definitely noticed it for myself when I realized I don't really ever go back and look at most of the pictures I take. When I do, it is almost always pictures of people that are gone. Even then, as the parent comment said, having one or two pictures from a time period or maybe one from a particular event is more than enough. Your mind fills in the details and that's awesome!
As far as the other side of things, I have definitely found myself spending more time trying to capture as much as possible (or capturing "just the right one") than actually enjoying the event.
I'm not saying don't take pictures. Far from it. I'm saying I don't think we have to try and preserve people via pictures. Because you can't.
As a father of 2, I think the best videos I have are the ones of the kids when little doing everyday silly things. Pottering around in the living room, colouring in.
It's nice to capture these occassional snippets, and you can still be in the moment for important things.
No, not when recording is as simple as noting after the moment that you might have liked to capture that, and then telling your smart device to preserve that last 30 to 60 seconds of buffered video.
I have little to no recording of my children by myself because getting the phone out is always a pain and seems to take too long and make me miss the moment. That doesn't mean the few videos I have aren't appreciated.
The best tools enhance our natural abilities, not replace them. Having an enhanced recall function would be appreciated by many, I'm sure.
Those are fine two cents for you, but I don't know why it should matter that you mention them in this thread. The parent comment clearly shows he/she appreciates the ability to take photos/videos at his/her leisure. If that works for them then why bring your opinion to the conversation?
I can understand that. I just think it was a case of the parent comment already having a method/process that worked for them. I'd say there are a couple of different schools of thought when it comes to committing things to memory nowadays (more photos or more living in the moments) and if one works for someone then it's a bit unnecessary for someone else to come in and simply say that the other way works better for them.
I hate that I lost it, will have to spend an afternoon on the internet achive, But these are so tired. It's the exact same things people were spouting when phones started to have cameras. That came, and it turned out, having a quality camera you take with you is pretty cool and the end of the world didn't happen. Button cameras have existed for literally decades, if someone wants to take discrete pictures of you the means are there and it's a hell of a lot less awkward than staring at someone while your HUD camera grabs them.
A heads up display with no way of taking in data from the outside world is gimped to the point of uselessness and I think you really need to sit down and logic through the "concerns of abuse". There's no opportunity for privacy violation that isn't easier with another form of tech; at least Ive never heard one that sounds remotely plausible.
> That came, and it turned out, having a quality camera you take with you is pretty cool and the end of the world didn't happen.
It's a little early to say that, given that we're talking about things that take 50 years to transpire. You're telling people right now, in the midst of the smartphone explosion, that it's all said and done and over - you won't regret it at any point in your life, you'll always be glad of that smartphone, etc. But you don't know that yet.
And I will say that for some people it has already happened. I have missed countless things in the last 10 years because I was looking for my phone to take a picture. Events that happened and I never witnessed them to even get a memory of, just because I was looking down for my phone.
I already regret having the camera nearby but not quite ready to go for the last 10 years. Your examples are already wrong, and actually quite offensive in your tone, suggesting that you know better than everyone and that you know how everyone will feel in 50 years.
The concerns are real and justified, even if you personally don't share them.
So it's your phone's fault you've "missed experiences". I have to say, I've never heard that one.
Obviously no one can take away anyone's concern; however it's a larger leap to say all concerns are justified. I really don't understand your point, 50 years seems incredibly arbitrary. The smart phone explosion has come and gone; 95% of adults in the US have a cellphone and 77% have a smartphone[0]. Next to none of today's tech even existed 50 years ago can we not comment on any technological progress? I am nearly certain opinions will change over the next quarter century, and not in the way the luddites predict.
> So it's your phone's fault you've "missed experiences".
I did not say that, don't twist my words like that. It is my fault I missed the experiences - I was busy looking for my phone.
> The smart phone explosion has come and gone; 95% of adults in the US have a cellphone and 77% have a smartphone
Sounds like we're at the start of people having smartphones. I don't see how you look at those numbers and think it's gone. The explosion and cultural changes are just starting, as backed up by those numbers.
> Next to none of today's tech even existed 50 years ago can we not comment on any technological progress?
I'm not sure where you got this. Of course we can comment on technological progress. But it's ridiculous to talk about the smartphone explosion and its societal effects like its the distance past. This stuff is happening now, nothing is "settled" or "said and done". It's all starting, really.
It is regrettable that you're being downvoted so hard because I too recall these discussions. I also recall discussions about how toxic digital cameras would be with an "explosion of photography" "diluting the art" and causing an end to privacy. It's weird how prohibitionist people here are about cameras, but how other types of prohibition are axiomatically bad.
Turns out that there is a big difference between capability and intent, but no one really wants to talk about that in those discussions. If a thing COULD be used for a purpose but almost no one does, it seems difficult to really blame the tech for empowering people who breach the social contract.
Nevermind that in fact the proliferation of private cameras actually brings more parity between governments (which have proven the world over that they refuse to be trustworthy with that data) and private citizens (who can hardly do a worse job).
I think people love the idea of bad actors taking their picture because it intrinsically validates them. That guy with google glass is clearly out to take pictures of me. Oh the humanity.
There is a subtle but important difference between trusting someone doesn't have a hidden camera pointed at you and recording vs trusting someone to not have the camera that is on their face and pointed at you currently recording.
Ultimately, yes, people have been able to take hidden photographs for a very long time. I think the concern is normalizing the removal of 90% of the steps involved in doing so.
As a thought experiment, what I'd like you to do tomorrow, is the first stranger you see spend 30 seconds staring at them. Not discretely, square on staring at them, keeping your head ideally still to prevent (hypothetical) camera jitter. You'll quickly discover why effectively no one that owns heads mounted devices has ever used them to take video of consenting people (ignoring the fact that why bother anyway, when there's essentially no social stigma for whipping out your phone to take a video/picture and it's considerably more comfortable to try to be discrete since your head doesn't need to be directly facing your subject).
I own a pair of glass, and while the thing has loads of problems (unergonomic , thermal issues, and terrible developer's experience being the main ones) nothing breaks my heart more than people just repeating back click bait about the end of privacy, because as wearables go I think there's a lot more potential in HUDs than smartwatches and the like.
I don't think the camera angle matters here. If I am talking to somebody with a camera on their face, wondering whether they are recording or not becomes a constant concern.
Having shaky or off-centered video of me is still video of me.
Yup, another father here: I'd love an always-on camera that I can tell to save the last 30 seconds of playback. There are a lot of moments I'd love to have on video or camera that are there-and-gone - even if I had my phone in my pocket, by the time I pulled it out, it would be too late.
Would you love that camera if it was pointed at you?
The trade-off between the convenience of having an always-on camera and living in a society in which everyone has an always-on cameras seems like a no-brainer to me.
There's even a Black Mirror episode like that - "The Entire History of You".
>Would you love that camera if it was pointed at you?
I'm pretty sure humanity is already past the point where this question is timely. We have many cameras watching us all day long and ten years from now there will be even more.
For what it's worth, maybe this will finally teach people to thing before they act.
> I'm pretty sure humanity is already past the point where this question is timely. We have many cameras watching us all day long and ten years from now there will be even more.
Really? Do you have cameras looking at you all day at work? Or at home, while interacting with your family? I hope not. I also hope that you'd object to any attempts to put such a device.
It's true that society by and large accepts CCTV cameras in public places. But that's not the same as equipping everyone with an always-on camera and having every human interaction recorded. That's just dystopian.
> For what it's worth, maybe this will finally teach people to thing before they act.
That's the oldest argument in the book. And sure, it's true. If you point a camera at people, they will behave "better". But that's insane, that's like saying that since children are most likely to be abused at home, then we should outlaw parenting, and have the state raise all kids using only state-certified™ personnel. Sure, that might work, but it kinda seems like we're losing something important along the way, no?
Having everyone "act better" is a good cause. But surveillance comes at a huge social cost, not to mention the potential for abuse by the watchers or those who decide what "better" is. Your "act better" might be a long way off the government's idea of how it would like citizens to behave.
> Do you have cameras looking at you all day at work?
Anyone who works in an office complex does. Anyone who works in a retail store does. Bus drivers have cameras recording the entire time the bus engine is on.
Aside from a farmer in a field, I'm hard pressed to think of a job that doesn't take place under a security camera. Taxi Driver, delivery agents, street food vendors, and people who work at home remotely.
Maybe change that to "many people"; "anyone" isn't accurate. For example, at my workplace, there are security cameras at a couple of the doors, but none in the office itself. I don't think I'd stay long if there were a bunch of cameras here.
> Maybe change that to "many people"; "anyone" isn't accurate. For example, at my workplace, there are security cameras at a couple of the doors, but none in the office itself. I don't think I'd stay long if there were a bunch of cameras here.
All the big tech cos I've seen have cameras everywhere. The cameras aren't typically for the employees, they are to keep visitors from walking off with valuables.
I've heard of my coworkers having entire computers swiped, and smaller items like phones were also at risk. An old office manager had someone go through a pallet of desktops and haul more than one of them off.
With many millions of dollars of hardware just sitting around, not to mention the IP contained on the machines, security cameras are a rather good idea.
These buildings are of course locked, but lots of vendors pass through, and determined people can tailgate past checkpoints.
I work at an office of a large tech company. I've worked in this office for almost 10 years at this point, and was here as we acquired 3/4 of the building (we shared with 3 other tenants when I started, and now are renting the entire building). We did some massive renovations when the previous tenants left, and I was in-office during the buildout. There are cameras at some entrances. There are cameras in the lab. There are not cameras anywhere in the main office areas.
I'm part of "anyone", and so are my several hundred coworkers here, and the hundreds that have worked here in the past.
I think I should have put "all day long" in quote in my original comment.
This is an exaggeration for sure, I just wanted to say that when you can been seen on the screen while commuting to work, while walking in the street, walking through the business center etc - this is basically "all day long" in my book.
While not constant, farmers probably do have cameras "pointed on them" in their fields - land surveys using aerial and satellite photo capability are common. I'm sure competitors also overfly each other's fields using drones and whatnot to keep tabs on who is growing what and when. Plus there's the fact that some farmers use drones on their own fields for a variety of reasons (though this last doesn't really count).
Taxi drivers have cameras pointed at the customers often.
But I'm surprised you can't find other examples. The bank I go to has a camera. Maybe the supermarket at the exits. That's pretty much it for the town - almost everyone I interact with has no cameras. Some never will - for example doctors.
>Really? Do you have cameras looking at you all day at work? Or at home, while interacting with your family? I hope not. I also hope that you'd object to any attempts to put such a device.
Okay, this was a generalization and exaggeration on my part (to a certain extent that is), but at the same time - how many cameras (notebook, smartphone etc) do you have at home at any give time? At the office? Security cameras are everywhere, any modern business center have dozens of them on each floor.
>that's like saying that since children are most likely to be abused at home, then we should outlaw parenting, and have the state raise all kids using only state-certified™ personnel.
Two differenct things here. If we are to compare those to IT support - parenting is the last line of support (in fact parents are the developers in this case). But you also need to make sure that kids who happen to be born into a bad family\neighbourhood also behave. Yes, you shouldn't just put a collar on them, but instead try to help them somehow - that's the 2nd line of support. 1st line of support is the CCTV's AI that will monitor them to keep things under control.
In other words - I'm not trying to say that one should be replaced by the other.
>potential for abuse
This risk in always out there. Gun control, police, drug stores you name it.
This is a common tactic in normalizing stuff people are uncomfortable with "its already been that way for X years why are you complaining now".
Besides the fact this statement is inaccurate (there are not infact security cameras everywhere, footage is not centralized and analyized by huge powerful parties), It in no way somehow justifies the situation as it stands, or will stand if these become popular.
No all of us live in the UK or some city that has cameras everywhere. Private CCTV footage and most government footage not part of a dragnet collection program is usually discarded after a few weeks or months if it's not needed. Cell phones are not always on.
I agree that everything being recorded all the time is somewhat inevitable considering the way things are going. While this does make the situation symmetric to some extent as far as the capacity to record interesting things goes. However, I believe that in the foreseeable future the negatives outweigh the positives.
You might be able to get the clerk at the DMV to be nicer if they're on camera but your ability to influence society with the ability to record video doesn't extend much beyond there.
Only the incumbents (tech giants and the government) have the ability to store and mine this sort of data for interesting things that are only interesting in retrospect. You do not have access to a big chunk of the data set. Your bank, insurance company and government do. They can mine that data to punish you or others for whatever behavior they deem bad and to extract compliance to their whims. You, neither as a individual nor as part of a group do not have the capacity to do the same analysis, the means to use what you learn to manipulate individuals. Even if you did you don't have access to a large enough chunk of the data set.
Until the power to access and draw meaning from this sort of data is in everyone's hands the situation is not symmetric. I hope you and those who agree with you reconsider your opinions.
The proposal wasn't dragnet surveillance. It was everyone walking around with a rolling 30-second video buffer that they can chose to save. There is no giant record for someone to datamine.
Not living in the UK doesn't change much, it goes from "in public I'm always possibly on camera" to "in public I'm always possibly on camera" everywhere, not just the Uk.
My ability to influence society with a camera is far beyond "the DMV clerk being nicer". It's being able to hold the cop who pulls me over accountable. Being able to get video of the van that hit a parked car and sped off. Being able to submit proof that the person I saw trying to open the doors on a bunch of parked cars was actually trying to do that. The second two are real examples that have happened to me within the last 6 months, the first one is a real example that you can easily see the utility of via verifiable stories on the internet.
And even if you think my ability to influence society is minimal with it, that's fine, ability to influence society wasn't why people above were asking for it.
>There is no giant record for someone to datamine.
It's laughable to think there won't be cloud integration. Having automatic or one click upload is probably one of the most powerful features. People want to be able to post stuff on snapchat, store it in drive/dropbox, etc. The data sets will be mined just like existing social media is mined.
>Not living in the UK doesn't change much, it goes from "in public I'm always possibly on camera" to "in public I'm always possibly on camera" everywhere, not just the Uk.
The UK goes particularly far (for a western country) when it comes to mining the data to recognize and track people. That's why I chose it as my example.
>My ability to influence society with a camera is far beyond "the DMV clerk being nicer". It's being able to hold the cop who pulls me over accountable. Being able to get video of the van that hit a parked car and sped off. Being able to submit proof that the person I saw trying to open the doors on a bunch of parked cars was actually trying to do that. The second two are real examples that have happened to me within the last 6 months, the first one is a real example that you can easily see the utility of via verifiable stories on the internet.
Same general idea, multiple implementations. All the things you listed are about on the same order.
>And even if you think my ability to influence society is minimal with it, that's fine, ability to influence society wasn't why people above were asking for it.
I agree. Having a "record the last 30sec of my life" button would be super useful. Every time I see something funny, I could scroll back , take a screenshot and post it online so my buddies can get a laugh. That's useful. I think it would also be incredibly dangerous at scale because it will be easy for the incumbents to use to influence society.
Basically everything I'm saying here has been said about Facebook/Google, etc. The difference I see in this case is that I think that by reducing the friction of recording/uploading to near zero the effects will be magnified.
> It's laughable to think there won't be cloud integration.
Doesn't matter if there is cloud integration, there won't be constant livestreaming simply due to bandwidth constraints. Occasional 30 second segments is not dragnet surveillance or substantially worse than what is currently available. People aren't going to be randomly uploading themselves walking down the street - because why would they. The location data android uploads by default is far worse.
> Same general idea, multiple implementations. All the things you listed are about on the same order.
A cop not beating someone up, illegally searching your car, illegally fining you, etc is not on the "same order" as "a DMV worker being nicer".
Stopping criminal behaviour is not on the same order as "a DMV worker being nicer".
I think one of the reasons people don't like the idea is this very reason.
It's coming from the position "someone is likely to do me wrong and I will be collecting evidence with that in mind". That in itself is a pretty aggressive position to take - but once you interact with someone it then says "_you_ are likely to do me wrong".
It's not a position of "someone is likely to do me wrong", it's a position of "someone is likely to do society wrong". Interacting with someone isn't an accusation...
It's a well supported position by the fact that I seem to witness theft (bikes, from cars, etc) in plain view on the street with a frequency of about once a year. Double that if you include things like hit and runs on parked cars that aren't exactly malicious but more crimes of opportunity.
I suspect that frequency is higher for me than for most people - simply because I walk a lot and I live downtown in a big city (Toronto). But if you change "6 monts to a year" to "3 - 6 years", applied over a city of a few million people that is still extremely significant.
I suspect things like police abuse of power are much rarer still, but the impact from them is so larger it's also a significant factor (why there is the huge movement for bodycams...).
I think whether that position is reasonable depends on whether you see people as trustworthy by default or not.
Most people would not have a problem having every minute of their workday recorded if their job was handling gold bars or diamonds or something really high stakes.
Having even the most trivial interactions between people subject to a recording is inappropriate overkill if you believe people to be trustworthy.
It's like requiring a notarized bill of sale for a used laptop.
If you believe people to be untrustworthy by default then you would consider everyone having the ability to discreetly record any interaction with anyone else to be a net positive.
> Would you love that camera if it was pointed at you?
If the camera had a light indicating when it was actually recording, that seems better. There are probably many small changes to make such cameras more acceptable.
And from my short experience even if you manage to pull out your phone or DSLR quickly to capture that special moment, the baby immediately stops cooing/smiling and instead is staring at this black object you're sticking in their face.
I think Google's onto something with Google Clips. But I think there's more to this concept. Would definitely be interested in a v2 that is able to capture video.
That's all well and good, and I don't think many people are disputing the value of having more and better memories of loved ones.
The trouble is in resolving that against the kind of culture that has fostered things like the "creepshots" subreddit.
Smartphones (and GoPros) have already shown the value of being able to film and share more of our lives, but they've also shown the downsides of having our graceless moments broadcast to the world, or the many events that are now impossible to enjoy in a sea of smartphones held aloft, or, if you're an attractive woman, far more of you put online for other people to gawk at.
Until those abuses are resolved somehow, people are going to resist having a little camera attached to everyone's face.
Given Google refused to allow you to store pictures local-only, Glass' camera was... it's least-used feature for me. I loved notifications without having to get out my phone (or look at my wrist). Google's absolute refusal to make photo sync optional on Glass was honestly the beginning of the end for my trust in El Goog.
Yeah, I loved the form factor, it was the software and the cloud dependency that crippled it. I've actually been looking at a Vufine+ combined with an Intel Compute Stick to create a more customized alternative.
The Vufine+'s battery life kills that option for me. Wearables need to have a long enough battery life that you can use them most of your day without taking them in and out.
Definitely true. My impression is that I'd use it cabled with a battery pack (that could also power the Compute Stick), but since I already need micro-HDMI running off of it, that's two separate cables.
I've mentioned this idea to the Vufine team, but if they removed the battery (to lighten up the unit significantly), and switched the cable type to a USB-C that delivered both video and power, it could reasonably offload battery to an external pack, and run video along the same cable, and I'd maybe clip something on my belt and be rocking.
That being said, Vufine's current hardware isn't designed to be a day-use wearable, it's intended to be used for things like seeing the camera on a drone you're flying (which also has a very short battery life).
I'm not sure that the USB-C cable buys your much that some electrical tape couldn't provide. Besides usb-c being a more elegant solution.
Offloading the battery would be helpful for longer sessions. I wonder if you could either completely remove it and use pass through power or replace it with a smaller/lighter battery.
Despite all the negativity around Google Glasses' camera, that was actually the best feature
The negativity around Google Glasses amounted to a mismanaged launch. iPhones were introduced to a public already familiar 1st-hand with cell phones, camera phones, and digital cameras. The public was already passingly familiar with smart phones. Google Glasses were introduced with maximum hype to as many early adopters as possible, with no thought as to how it could backfire, and how to navigate those pitfalls. In retrospect, is it any wonder that there were so many inadvisable actions, all adding up to a societal backlash?
Google Glasses should have been rolled out to far fewer people, and in a form factor almost indistinguishable from ordinary eyeglasses.
Except Google Clip is like the camera in the movie "The Circle" and is a rabbid privacy violation.
The discontent with Google Glasses was likely because it was ahead of its time.
I'm not familiar with that movie, but how does Google Clips violate your privacy? As far as I understand, everything is local on the Clips device (including the AI). You can view pictures on your phone and choose the ones to save.
This is completely different from a device like Echo which sends your voice (and everything it hears in the background) to Amazon for processing.
I don't think anyone cares if you use such a glasses camera in your private space, with people who know you and are fine with it. The problem is when it becomes normal and everyone has them on all the time, in public spaces too. Then nobody can opt out anymore.
The trick is getting a camera powerful enough to get acceptable quality pictures but small enough, and blended with the surroundings enough that you don't notice it.
Yup absolutely. For me that was Google Glasses biggest flaw. I could capture beautiful photos of family and relatives instantly, but they were beautiful because no one else in the photo was wearing Google Glasses.
Another reply mentioned Snaps, which I haven't heard of. It looks interesting, but ultimately it has the same flaw. I'm not going to wear dark sunglasses with LEDs indoors to take family photos.
I suppose there really is no ideal solution. It's either going to be noticeable and thus culturally acceptable or hidden and be bashed for being used by creeps. I suppose a device like Google Clips is probably a better solution for my needs, but it lacks that killer "wink to take a photo" feature.
> You could really capture some great moments directly
That should be, "you could really capture some great moments directly on film..."
You already captured these moments; you were there; they are ingrained in your memory.
> My mother recently passed and out of all the photos [..] staring right back into my soul."
First of all, my sincere condolences.
Again, you were there. That moment, that specific wonderful moment you witnessed, nice as it is to have something to remember it by, it feels very personal, not something you could share unless you were there, and you were you.
Back in the days of photo-lab development, there existed magic moments caught on camera as well, but it was the luck of the draw. Since they were so rare, there was no fear of missing out, but any such moment caught on camera was all the more special for it.
Maybe this fear of missing out on your own life, pushing one to commit everything to camera, comes at the cost of actually missing out. Life is made better by witnessing these magic moments, but I'm unsure the drive to capture them all enhances the experience, witnessed and remembered in that particular fashion by no one but yourself.
This is actually something I would like to wear. It's like normal glasses, I am not recording videos of the people around me, and it could show me relevant information when needed without looking at my phone. I can think of a few use cases this could cover, in a very elegant way.
The nice thing is, that they are completely "invisible" for other people around me.
I do think they are cool and could be useful, but not to the point of making someone that doesn't wear glasses want to wear them.
My main problem is what does it give me over wearing a smart watch? The only thing I can think of is being slightly more discreet and the "gesture" not being rude to activate when you are in company. That is something I found out quickly when I started wearing an Apple Watch - even if you are just checking a text message it appears you are checking the time and want to leave. Since then I have greatly cut down on notifications going to my watch, and have even fewer that even ping on my phone.
To me, having a camera on it is what would make it compelling, but at the same time make it creepy. Say being able show driving directions overlaid on the actual road, versus some floating text. Or you sit down at a desk with just a keyboard and mouse and your "displays" are only shown in your field of view - and you can customize, move and resize them as you wish.
> you sit down at a desk with just a keyboard and mouse and your "displays" are only shown in your field of view - and you can customize, move and resize them as you wish
This. I don't wear glasses and don't like the idea of walking around with notifications floating around my eyes.
But a set of monitors that fill my field of vision and fit in my pocket sounds awesome.
From what I understand (I'd love to be wrong here) we have currently no AR or VR technology which could conceivably be used to work with a lot of text. The resolution is not there and it's possible that it won't ever be.
Which is a damn shame, because I'd sell my kidney for the ability to work with two decently sized (virtual) displays from my couch or in the garden...
I can answer a little. It's a problem of the conjunction of providing enough resolution that the screen is useful while having a large enough viewing angle. If I want to replicate the screen for my Surface Book, 3kx2k, at normal working distance that screen takes up about 1/5th of my working vision (that being the area my glasses cover which is a majority of my whole field of view and as much as I could expect of a non-contacts AR solution). So to render that screen and be able to place it inside the normal working field of view any AR glasses would need to have a resolution of about 5-6x whatever screen you want to duplicate, and this number gets worse as we talk about replicating TV screens which are further away and thus need even higher resolution to look the same.
It's a problem of being able to pack that many pixels onto the tiny screen area of a glasses based AR solution and then being able to process and render that in a mobile form factor. It's a hard problem to solve to say the least.
> My main problem is what does it give me over wearing a smart watch?
Smart watches are not for everyone either. I hate having things weighting down my hands or hitting tables so this would be a device I’d choose over any smartwatch.
Also I think it’s nice to have a device that is instantanous to put on and take off. You want to focus on something for 15 seconds ? just take them off. Finished focusing ? they’re back on.
> even if you are just checking a text message it appears you are checking the time and want to leave.
I often wonder whether I'm alone in thinking that checking messages in company is rude too? I'm quite sure that it would be considered rude 10 years ago, but I feel like general opinion has changed on that.
> My main problem is what does it give me over wearing a smart watch?
Turn by turn directions when riding a bike. Easy to track countdown timers that don't require swiping/navigating through a smartwatch UI.
Limited purpose devices are useful because the UI can be optimized to just a handful of use cases. Just like the original Palm Pilots were (IMHO) better for organization than modern smartphones. (The original Palm Pilots also had a more responsive UI and never decided to, at random, take 10 seconds to load my home screen after unlock.)
Combine this with Amazon's smart store that knows when you've put an item in your basket, and a shopping list. Have your shopping list appear one item at a time, and automatically progress to the next item as you fill up your basket!
No need to flip through the UI on a smartwatch to get to the shopping list, it just appears when you walk into the store.
FWIW, the Apple Watch offers this. It buzzes or audibly signals one way for turning left and another for turning right. I use it when walking around a new city sometimes.
I love the idea of the shopping list, though not integration with Amazon or having it automatically progress. It doesn't know where things are in my store (and they change), so that doesn't make sense to me. But having it there and being able to see it without taking out my phone would be nice.
> FWIW, the Apple Watch offers this. It buzzes or audibly signals one way for turning left and another for turning right.
What does it do at 5 way intersections? :-D
When I was trying to propose this feature for Microsoft Band , I realized that it worked great in West Coast cities with their nice grid layouts, and also while strolling around Manhattan. Falls apart in a lot of other situations though. :(
As someone who does wear glasses all the time I'd be really into this, it's the one thing that might deter me from paying for LASIK instead. Since I need to get a new pair right now I'm really wishing I could beta test these B)
I'm curious if the position of the "Vaunt display" will feel similar to Google Glass.
From the article:
>> It projects a rectangle of red text and icons down in the lower right of your visual field. But when I wasn’t glancing down in that direction, the display wasn’t there. My first thought was that the frames were misaligned.
The HUD in Google Glass was also outside of your normal field of view and for certain things this was a poor experience. For example, using Google maps integration I felt like I was taking my eyes off the road and felt safer simply using my smartphone mounted to my windshield.
Yeah. I was working on some search-and-rescue stuff using Google Glass. My eventual prototype had a "coarse" mode and a "fine" mode.
In fine mode, it would give you a fairly detailed readout of the bearing and distance to your target (marked with GPS). It required doing that thing where you're looking up-and-to-the-right in order to see what was going on.
In coarse mode, the entire Glass display was changed to a single color. I found that it showed up well even in someone's peripheral vision and the colors were distinct enough that you could navigate pretty well without having to watch the display.
I tried using symbols (giant triangles to indicate direction and such) but none of them worked as well as the color blocks.
These are going to own the security industry's human surveillance staff. Imagine being a security guard for some corporate or university campus, these are a must.
I think there's definitely a market for endurance athletes. Runners and cyclists would like to see time, speed, distance, cadence, power output, navigation, etc without having to look down at a wristwatch or bike computer. Those people are accustomed to spending a lot on sports equipment. There are existing products like the Everysight Raptor and Garmin Varia View but they're bulky or goofy looking or obstruct vision, so Intel has plenty of space to offer a better alternative.
I think cyclists would need it more than runners, but cyclists are too small of a market to be worth the r&d cost. That's why current offerings are bad. Cyclist-oriented tech has to piggy back on more popular tech, the way bike lights got a LOT better very quickly after smart phones started pushing li-ion tech.
I agree in general that it would be useful in these situations.
As someone who wears glasses, I find it impossible to run with them because of the movement or them just falling off. Are people who wear glasses able to run with them - am I doing something wrong?
At the gym I don't really need it on the machines. Treadmill is flat, ellpitical removes bounce. But if I'm sprinting outside they can start to slide.
Get a strap for your glasses and have it pulled fairly tight to your head. They are cheap. One similar to this. It needs to be the correct shape for your glasses frame so it's probably best to go to a real store and try a few straps in person.
A lot of runners wear sunglasses, sometimes with prescription lenses. Talk to your optometrist. Everyone has a unique head shape so you might have to try several pairs until you find one that stays in place.
I ran cross country and track and field with no trouble while wearing normal prescription glasses, as did several friends. I wear my glasses fairly snug, but unfortunately everyone's ear and face shape is odd in their own ways, so it might not be possible to get a secure fit that is also comfortable.
Worst case scenario: Companies make what are essentially prescription goggles, like you can see in the NBA
I always run and cycle with glasses, no problem at all. I even have reasonably heavy sunnies. Just make sure they are a tight fit and metal frames help form them around your head. I have never even noticed them really.
I don't like running with glasses because they end up getting covered in salt and sweat, but I don't have a problem with them staying on. I would guess that largely depends on the frames you have.
Recon are also owned by Intel (they bought them several years back IIRC as part of their largely failed "wearables" push).
FWIW I also agree there is a strong market for endurance athletes - the progress of Recon Jet has been followed pretty closely by many in the Cycling/Triathalon community, where getting Garmin Edge computer style realtime metrics for things like speed/power output etc into glasses has been a dream of many for a while. This is a market already used to high priced electronics for training (a good bicycle power meter regularly runs over $1000 alone).
Sure but it's goofy looking, relatively heavy, and obstructs vision. So it will be limited to a few early adopters and won't cross the chasm to a mainstream market.
This might just be the start of a new, big, market at a time when they desperately need to diversify their sources of revenue. Seeing them achieve that through in-house innovation as opposed to copying (or buying) competing products would be great.
I'm disappointed that "programming for Vaunt will involve JavaScript". We're stuck with this horribly designed language on the web because browsers don't run anything else (natively), and there is a strong trend in the field to replace it, either with compilation of saner languages to JS or with WebAssembly. We don't need to infect another nascent market with this atrocity, let it die.
Interesting that they chose red as the display color. One of the co-creators of Google Glass said that they initially all thought red would be good, but after trying different colors the consensus was that it was terrible. This was because there wasn't enough contrast with the background environment.
It sounds like Intel's tech is fundamentally different—they paint your retina with a laser—and this may make the background issue irrelevant. And it was certainly part of the safety pitch, which was that this is a very low-powered laser. If it had blue or green in it they couldn't make this claim.
>> Google Glass said that they initially all thought red would be good, but after trying different colors the consensus was that it was terrible
They should have looked at a larger sample size. Red is used in rangefinder viewfinders for over 30+ years. Leica M240 has red and white as options. Red is by far the best from all standpoints - contrast, legibility and versatility.
Red dot sights are used in firearms and they are also by far superior to any other color.
I am doubtful of Google engineers and whether they put enough thought into exploring colors by using a larger sample size or cross checking different industries.
I really like how much effort they put in to make things as natural and unintruive as possible.
The article mentionned there's no interaction yet; I wonder if they could track eyeball movement and use eye blinks for clicking. (Someone else mentionned a ring as an input device which is also an excellent idea.)
I want these, and then I want an app on them that will tell me if the person standing directly in front of me is on my LinkedIn/Facebook, and if so, what their name is and what they do.
The Facebook app already know where you are. If both you and the other person have the Fb app, then I'm sure this feature could be implemented relatively easily.
Unfortunately as the other reply says, there's no camera to see who's there. But as someone who's bad with names I generally agree, in fact I don't even need the Internet connectivity. Just let me write a note on someone - "John Smith. Met at Steve's BBQ" - and have it show up when the camera sees them again.
I don't see the point of these overpriced smartwatches and glasses that can barely do one thing (display notifications), but I want my future full AR/VR glasses, so I'm glad the early adopters pay for it.
Right now, what I'd want is a very simple, slim, long-lasting watch that would notify me of emails, messages, phone calls and notifications based on their origin (business account, work account, personal, random). It doesn't even need a display, different vibration modes and LED's would do fine.
Fitbit Ionic has a five day battery life, give or take. But a smartwatch pales in comparison to how convenient Glass was to use: I used to be able to be read and reply to texts while doing anything, including driving, safely. And not having to interrupt a conversation when I noticed the incoming call or message was unimportant was fantastic.
Glass verbally reads you the text, you verbally reply to the text. Even if you glance at the screen, it's more like an overlay than a second place to look.
Comparatively, the center console of a car is drastically less safe to look at than a heads-up display like Google Glass. We seem to accept that center displays are largely safe to use (with some functions disabled while driving).
The Fitbits look good, the Charge seems like what I'd want if it wasn't geared for fitness. I'd wear it all day long, unlike glasses... I guess if you already wear glasses, it's much easier.
The Ionic is in it's early stages, but is much more of a "smartwatch" than their previous models. I can do payments with Fitbit Pay on it, and it's their first to support third party apps, though there's only a handful at the moment.
I'm curious, what is it useful for? I've been thinking of getting one since it came out, but can't really imagine what I'd use it for after the coolness of the new gadget wears off.
To provide another data point, I use it to quickly check the weather before heading out, see when my next meeting is, get notified of important messages (such as from my wife), quickly send or respond to messages, track my heart rate and exercise, play music without needing my phone, etc.
My recommendation would be to try it. If you find it isn't useful you can return it, but my bet is that after 2 weeks you'll find it indispensable.
I'm thinking of getting one for a single application - Drafts.
It's basically a take-a-note app. You talk to the watch, it records and transcribes your message, storing it in an application that's similar to an email client. At the end of my day I would open my inbox and process my notes.
I've also been getting into time tracking and I think there are some apps for starting and stopping timers from the watch.
Not to burst your bubble or anything, but as an Apple Watch user I've found that apps on the watch are nothing like you would have hoped: they're slow and limited. I'm not saying that Apple Watch isn't useful–I'm just saying that in my experience, its value comes from things other than apps.
I also have a question: If you are one of those folks that don't use the phone function on their phone often (mostly games and reading and timekeeper while i'm out of the house), and only gets occasional email... is it still useful?
Honestly, they've always looked like a less functional phone strapped to my wrist.
There exist a lot of display-less smartwatches out there, I found this list which is mostly that [1]. Often they use the hands of the watch to display extra data and have very long lasting batteries.
You can still buy an older watch and play around with it if you are a hacker, but its probably a bad idea for the general consumer because it doesn't receive support/updates.
It's in the article:
It's a monochrome Virtual Retinal Display (VRD), powered by a monochrome VCSEL light source and MEMS scanner. The resolution of the image is 400X100 pixels.
Surveillance will become ubiquitous. There's no plausible scenario where it doesn't, right? Can't legislate it away once the sensors/cameras become unnoticeably small.
So we'll need new social norms to control what people share about what they learn. E.g. we already don't mention what we hear from behind bathroom doors in polite company. We'll need rules so that people can continue to operate as humans in this new paradigm.
Yeah, right - "no one will use it for every tweet notification, it will only provide contextual information" - it will be used for whatever people want to use it and we know what people want to use it for (porn).
It's not hard, it's an innate characteristic of porn. It's the inverse of rule 36 - as long as a communication channel exists, it will be used for porn, no matter how inconvenient it might be. Also, playing it straight, someone will have a fetish for porn over that channel, no way around it.
Because no one would ever want to see porn during sex with their partner without being obvious about the whole thing? (depending on relationship and stuff, naturally)
Now in addition to people talking out loud alone on the streets, people checking their notifications on their watch and phones at dinner, we'll have people looking at your teeth doing weird eye and head motions when you talk to them...
Most people on HN believe that technology will only ever improve society, with very limited negative effects that can be mitigated or eliminated with more technology.
Over all they see any negative effects (both current and future) caused by technological advancement to be a technological problem that can be eliminated
In their minds the dystopian worlds depicted in scifi and fantasy just simply can not happen, "we will not allow it"
> "Most people on HN believe that technology will only ever improve society, with very limited negative effects that can be mitigated or eliminated with more technology."
I think it's safe to say that there are people who are enthusiastic about the promises of technology and those who are concerned about how it can be used, and likely significant overlap of those two groups. The likelihood of making an error when making sweeping generalizations about the constituency of HN (or anything else, for that matter) is pretty much guaranteed to miss the mark for a large subset of the population.
Your comment upthread likewise is very general and unsubstantive, and comes off as flip, for that matter. I suspect that has more to do with why your comment was down voted than about your particular concerns or position: after all, the comment doesn't say much. Granted, the comment you're replying to doesn't have a whole lot either, but that isn't an excuse for commenting poorly oneself. Dig in. Share specific thoughts or concerns you have. Help move the conversation in a constructive direction.
Yeah, I can imagine that's frustrating. Is it something you actually want to take some action on? Do you want to help make HN a better place? Please don't take that as accusatory: it takes effort to be constructive, and each person has to make a decision whether or not that's worth the effort. If it's not (or perhaps at least not right now), it may not worth commenting at all: as you say, your comments have been attracting downvotes regardless.
If you think it is worth the effort, then I'd ask you to take a step back and see if there may be ways you can change how you're commenting: Communication is a many way street, involving all parties involved. The only one you have control over however, is yourself, so really the only thing you can do.
You mention "push[ing] hard against the echo chamber", so it sounds like you are interested in making HN a better place. I definitely think it's important to figure out ways to have constructive conversations about difficult topics. I also think there are ways of going about this that actively work against that. It's really important to keep in mind normal human psychology and behavior.
Unconstructive complaining is very unlikely to move the needle in a positive direction. It adds to the noise and degrades the overall atmosphere. Commenting on the internet is hard: it's low bandwidth compared to many other forms we're used to: we don't have the benefit of intonation or body language. On a diverse forum, we can't rely on a common background in which to place what we're saying. It sometimes feels like there are more ways it can go wrong than to go right.
So extra time and care is important, particularly if you're interested in discussing contentious issues. When things go wrong, it's really important to take a step back and see how you might have contributed to the situation, and, even if you think you didn't do anything wrong, to look at what you can do to actively prevent whatever went wrong in the future.
It's perhaps trite, but I think it often can be summed up in "it's not what you say, it's how you say it", with the corollary that as the topic becomes more contentious, it's even more important to take care in how you say it.
I hope you do choose to look at ways you might change how you comment to have the effect you want, to make HN the place you want it to be. HN is a community and how each member chooses to contribute makes HN what it is. We can each help make it the place we want it to be by how we participate: how we comment, vote, and submit.
My biggest problem with HN commenting is the rate limiting, if you get too many down votes other people can respond but you are barred from responding, any attempt get met with "you are posting to fast"
I honestly do not care about the down voting, I do care about being silenced... That is what is frustrating to not be able to respond to people. I understand the rationality behind the rate limiting but personally I find it to be an affront to free speech.
HN actively works against controversial conversations and promotes the echo chamber by the way the moderate and implement commenting.
I'll sign off after this, as it's not clear to me whether I'm being effective.
I'm going to take a step back and look at the behavior you're describing. I'm going to use as a starting point that the moderators penalize behavior, not position.†
* Member begins commenting in a way that's unconstructive.
* Mods rate-limit the member, in an effort to limit the opportunities the member has to continue to post unconstructively.
* Member feels this is limiting their ability to respond.
It is limiting the member's ability to respond, but the member has shown that they're responses aren't, on balance, constructive. They aren't completely banned from responding, and in your case, you're aware you're rate-limited. That should make each comment you can post more valuable to you, and an opportunity to take extra care in each comment you post. It's human nature to react negatively to restrictions, so I can understand it's frustrating.
However, it's frustrating to many members who do mostly follow the guidelines and post in the spirit of the sight to have conversations degrade due to repeated behavior of a minority of members. You acknowledge the rationality behind rate limiting, and feel frustrated when it's applied to you. That's human nature, and understandable as well. It's on all of us to work against our more destructive tendencies, and help each other in doing so. "Better angels of our nature", and all that. (That's why I'm taking the time to write these comments, by the way.)
And the mods do lift rate limits. It doesn't need to be a permanent condition. Contact them via the contact link in the footer and see if there's something you can do. I encourage you to do so.
---
† If you don't subscribe to this, I think your options are to limit your discussions to non-contentious topics, or to stop commenting all together. You're unlikely to change how the mods moderate HN by behaving in a way they consider destructive. Continuing to comment in ways you're aware are against the guidelines or you believe the mods are going to react poorly to is very likely going to get you banned eventually, with frustration all around.
>>>I'll sign off after this, as it's not clear to me whether I'm being effective.
I hope not, I believe this is a decent conversation. I understand your point, and yes some of my comments are flippant and oneliners, I personally believe those kind of comments are relevant and constructive as well. hell the last election was won with bumper Sticker rhetoric. Not everything needs to be a dissertation
I seems to me that I am the one being ineffective, as it seem you have come to the impression that I understand my comments would be downvoted and/or that I know my comment is "nonconstructive" and have chosen to post them anyway. This is not true, my original comment that started this was a parody of the comment I replied to, i did not add more because the original comment did not have any additional substance. They made a statement of fact backed by no data, and I made a statement of fact backed by no data. The political bias of HN lead to my comment, which IMO has clear historical reasons for being true prediction, Was downvoted multiple times whereas the parent comment gets up voted. [My comment as since rebounded and is now in the Positive, it was in a negative when this conversation started]
Your claim however is the downvotes are not motivated by politics or disagreement but instead because the community believes it was a unconstrictive comment. this is the basis of our disagreement and resulting conversation.
>>>Member begins commenting in a way that's unconstructive.
That is a big assumption, that downvotes == unconstrctive. when more often downvotes == unpopular or against the mainstream view.
Contrary to every web sites attempts and goal down votes are used by users to express disagreement. So if a person disagrees with a post regardless of it substantive value to the conversation it they will down vote it. So to assume a heavily down voted comment is unconstructive is a terrible, and flawed assumption to make
Also I Pretty sure on HN rate limiting is an automated not manual process. If I am wrong on that then may opinion would shift to the moderators which I will not comment on as that seems to be instant ban here...
>>>You acknowledge the rationality behind rate limiting, and feel frustrated when it's applied to you
I understand the logic they applied when creating it. To limit spam, flame wars, etc. I do not agree with that logic and believe it a failed and overly aggressive policy. If anything it should be thread not user based, meaning the thread should be rate limited instead of the user...
>>>Continuing to comment in ways you're aware are against the guidelines or you believe the mods are going to react poorly to is very likely going to get you banned eventually, with frustration all around.
Well technically speaking any comment is "against the guidelines" if is deemed so by the moderators, HN guidelines like most sites are written is such an overly broad manner as to include anything and nothing at the same time, all dependent upon the mods subjective opinion and personal bias. This is not just a problem on HN but every websites anymore as the political landscape gets more polarized and people start creating echo chambers for themselves, and HN is a political echo chamber even if it attempts to claim an apolitical stance.
>>>I think your options are to limit your discussions to non-contentious topics, or to stop commenting all together.
Where politics meets technology is where my interest lies. No topic I am interested in non-contentious. I desire to advocate using technology to advance individual freedom, and guard against using technology to create or aid Authoritarian societies filled with surveillance, censorship, and tyranny. As the technology industry in general along with HN moves more and more away from Individualism and more towards Authoritarianism my views seem to considered "destructive" even though 5 or 10 years ago they would not have been. I desire to see HN and society in general shift away from this Authoritarian censorship culture and more towards Individualism and free speech. I simply can not self censor to the point where I only comment on apolitical topics as that will only allow the echo chamber to fester.
When I describe moderator action, I'm speaking specifically of action by HN admins, who are able to rate-limit. As I understand it, downvotes on their own do not result in rate-limiting. I can understand why you may have misread this, as the conversation started out discussing downvotes, and while I was careful in the language I chose, I didn't point out that I was also excluding downvotes from my last comment.
I did so for a couple of reasons: you brought up rate-limiting and banning, which are actions only a mod can take, or change; downvotes are by far the action of HN members, and as such, much harder to categorize systematically. People downvote for all kinds of reasons, and not everyone agrees on how downvotes should be handled, and why they were given in any particular instance. A distinct impression I have is that often people view downvotes as disagreement, when they could just as easily be interpreted as a downvote for an unsubstantive or uncivil comment. And I believe that a disagreement couched in a civil and substantive way is much less likely to receive a downvote than one that is rude, snarky, and unsubstantive. You'll note a recurring theme here: it's more often than not what you say, but how you say it. You mention parody: parody is really difficult, and while I appreciate the wit of those who are able to wield it, most are not able to do so in a manner that's enlightening, and the misses hurt discourse much more than the rare win helps.
There's not a lot else I have to say with respect to the rest of what you've commented here. I think I've addressed most of it, if not specifically, in a way that's pretty easy to derive given other things I've commented. Operating from a position of defense and opposition does not lend itself to good faith and moving forward. Some games are played to win, and some are played to keep playing: and conversation, particularly on contentious topics, is most definitely the latter.
I watched the Verge video this morning where they tried to explain how the hologram projector works, but I am still confused. How can it ensure a sharp image shining directly through your own intraocular lens (not the glasses themselves) to the retina? If you have a "longer" or "shorter" eyeball the light ray's focus point will not be on the retina itself.
Laser light is "coherent" both spatially and temporally. Spatial coherence allows the beam to be "collimated", which basically just means that it looks like a cylinder and not a cone. That's why you can shine a laser at the moon and see the spot; most of the energy from the laser makes it to the same place, bounces back to your eyes, and you get a bright spot. Shining a flashlight doesn't work because the light spreads out too much. Technically some of the light still gets to the moon and back to your eyes, it's just below the threshold of your eye's ability to distinguish differences in brightness.
For the glasses, the laser is probably being scanned using a mems mirror (like how a DLP tv works, sorta), and modulated in brightness periodically to create the pixels. Since there's only one "point" of contact between your lens and the beam, the lens doesn't distort the beam like it would an image. That's where the idea of focus comes in. If you were looking at a photograph with your eye, there would be many sources and colors of light. Since the lens refracts incoming light based on direction, position, and color, your lens' job is to make sure the "pixels" of the photograph stay spatially organized with respect to each other. That's what being in focus means. And since the laser has only one color and one direction, all that light stays together and makes a nice dot on your retina. The only thing left to do is make a correction to the overall distortion pattern your lens introduces ,which is similar for pretty much everyone. Same reason you need to add barrel distortion before sending video to an HMD. I think that's what they were showing with that "warping" red image of the glasses' display.
Thank you for the explanation! I had figured that laser light was indeed different than normal light rays, but couldn't remember my undergrad optics to explain why.
Just think of it this way: all natural light (i.e. the typical incoherent light you see reflected or emitted off of surfaces in your environment) emit wavefronts that eminate spherically from each reflection (or emission) point. As such, the spherical wavefronts from light eminating from objects close towards your eye (i.e. less than ~8m away, a.k.a optical infinity), will have a curvature that the optics of your eye (i.e. your cornea and lens) work or morph in order to focus into a point on your retina. The closer the object is to your eye, the greater the curvature (i.e. the higher the angle of divergence). However, objects further from your eye (i.e. greater than ~8m, or optical infinity), from your eye's perspective, will have a wavefront that is still curved, but that is essentially flat, such that your eye's optics do not have to morph to focus thes objects. All objects past optical infinity appear "in focus" unless your eye attempts to focus (i.e. the lens morphs or "accomodates") on an object in the foreground. A laser beam essentially emulates a flat wavefront because the photons comprising the beam have a very small angle of divergence. Thus, light eminating from a laser will appear in focus just like an object placed at optical infinity.
Actually, this is part of the principle underpinning the accomodation-vergence conflict.
bufferless - Don't wait for an image, just stream pixels as fast as you find them
clockless - No world "ticks", the world is an append-only log of "percepts"¹ which can be projected onto any time.
stochastic - Don't wait for certainty about a pixel, just push out the most probable ones first
signed distance field - Afformentioned "percepts" don't have well defined boundaries like a polygon, instead "fields" centered on a point describe how light moves around them. Any two fields can be trivially summed, so you can ignore most of a scene when searching for a specific pixel near a small number of local fields.
Together they allow you to supply the eyes with nearly zero-latency data with arbitrarily low computing power.
¹ As an aside, there is evidence humans don't see a "now" tick either, we perceive "fields out of time" directly, log them, and interpolate their relationship to "now" thereafter, such that we feel that we are "seeing" something which our eyes have already stopped reporting about. Thus SDFs and clockless rendering are a natural fit and map well to human perception.
I would be excited if these can display charts, graphs, pictures and video -- stuff that's too detailed for a smart watch and Alexa can't speak out loud.
I was just learning how to make a "Julia Child" omelette and would've loved to have her technique (<5 secs!) on repeat while I perform the maneuver.
Gestures might be needed for some cases, but there are many situations when you could just use the smartphone as the control device. Often I do have one hand available, but the problem using a smartphone is that it requires me to stare at the screen. For example walking in the city, driving the car.
Q. Hey, this won't just try to show me
more Twitter bullshit, will it?
A. No, no, no! Heh heh! It will show you
Yelp bullshit. Much better, yes?
Q. Ah... so the advertising will finally
be the kind we all yearn for?
A. Yessssss!
I‘m not sure I would want these. Shining a laser (even though it will be safe and well tested) right into my eyes seems a bit.. risky. I presume the laser will be controlled by its own microcontroller, well tested and „unhackable“.. but still, if we can learn anything from Spectre, it’s that inconspicuous system parts can open a security hole. Burning holes into a retina is quickly done given the right amount of power.
There’s also the thing that blue light accelerates retina cell death.. I‘d rather wait for some long term studies before putting these on.
Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's unsafe. From the description it sounds like the laser is incapable of a high enough output to damage your eyes.
> Using a Vaunt display is unlike anything else I’ve tried. It projects a rectangle of red text and icons down in the lower right of your visual field.
Interesting choice of location -- I would have thought it would be better to put it somewhere above the normal field of view, as most people tend to look up when thinking and trying to recall something. The kind of information smart glasses offer seems like it could be more naturally accessed that way.
So the tech geek in my wants to love these things. It is so SciFi future-y. I just cannot see using them.
1. I paid to have my eyes fixed so I do not need glasses.
2. I am not sure what value any of this brings. I have not see the killer app..
That being said there is an irrational part of me that wants to hold out for the in eyeball version of this. The real issue is the killer app, now that I think about it, is the brain interface where you can think about they information you want and have it come up. Until then...well.
I think this looks awesome. The only problem is I have two pairs of glasses - one for reading/computer and one for everything else - so I'll need two of them.
If I was them, I would add a bone conduction speaker in the stem so it can give you audible information as well.
I also like the ring input device another commenter mentioned.[1]
I can picture using this with a voice interface w/ full screen transparent overlay toggle for navigating the world. Eye-swiping seems too difficult. Couple that with sensing where your hands are and you could manipulate 3d interfaces with gestures. People talking to themselves on a Jawbone was weird enough. Now they'll be full skitso where everyone's a talking mime with their own personal minority report / terminator UI.
I can't help but think of how much more productive a factory worker or repairman would be with these glasses, if it were possible to display instructions, dimensions, parts of a reference manual, etc...
The first successful business in the "glasses with HUD" space will be one that targets businesses which manufacture complex things using human beings.
> Intel intends to attract investors who can contribute to the business with strong sales channels, industry or design expertise, rather than financial backers.
Luxottica-Essilor? They own global eyeglass distribution, both offline and online. They can take the Android market. Apple’s glasses are supposedly a couple of years away.
Whether it fits your personal style has no bearing at all on whether it's normal. I don't like v-neck shirts, so personally I never wear them, but they're definitely normal.
As someone who wears glasses that look like those every day -- I think they look great! Big glasses like these help frame my overly-large head and face features, making me look better :)
Since Intel doesn’t productize themselves, I wonder who Intel will find to build and sell it. Traditional PC companies don’t seem like a great fit, but I have a feeling the launch partners will be companies like Asus anyway.
Funny you should say that - when I was working @Intel I wrote a proposal for a Bluetooth Low Power ring that provide a simple input device for headless devices with 1 rotary input and one press input, sufficient to scroll and click on items.
Another proposal I had was a bracelet that would sense capacitance changes in the hand upon fingers touching each other; this way you could have a 12-key "keyboard" on the phalanges of the non-opposable fingers (3 phalanges x 4 fingers) touch-able by the thumb.
Such technologies would require minimal power input and provide good interaction with any headset; but at the time Intel were not interested in the research needed to build a prototype.
Speaking of ring interfaces, Ring [0] was a Kickstarter project that happened. I seem to recall that it did ship but didn't actually work too well. I suspect that your simpler interface would have been a lot more successful.
I think some of it depends on which finger you're targeting, too. Wearing it on the index finger makes it easier to tap/push buttons using the thumb.
In my HCI class, we went over this paper [1] (2010). It has a wide variety of always-available input and output and many of them would work well with these glasses. My hardware crush is a Myo [2], although I don't know how well it works. The videos of it look neat, at least :).
Also, I had the exact same idea for a hand interface as a project for my Ubicomp class, but I didn't have the skills to do it. I ended up doing research for "smart jewelry" instead :|
I found this use of the Myo (to control the robotic arm of an amputee) really cool -- it seems like they found a life-changing use for what might have ended up a cool toy -- http://developerblog.myo.com/meet-the-man-with-a-myo-control... -- not sure how perfectly it works though.
Probably not particularly well as the Myo band only detects a handful of super basic gestures, and unless they have changed their stance in the past year or two they refuse to expose the raw data to developers. This makes it impossible to distinguish more than their predefined gestures.
The main problem I'm seeing is the extreme variance of the capacitance between users and the variance across the same user during usage - some smart algorithms that constantly re-calibrate and infer what's touched are needed.
IMHO, Soon, smart glasses will be as ubiquitous as cellphones. We as humans keep increasing our communications and multitasking. This item covers both.
It's interesting that this is on the front page at the same time as the article about Apple. I would love a product with Apple quality that would provide real value AR. Hope they make it happen.
I have a three month old daughter now and I find myself fumbling about with my phone trying to take photos of her. Just last night I dropped my Pixel phone while trying to capture a photo of her. Phone is fine, but she wasn't too happy with the loud noise of my phone hitting the wood floor :) I kind of miss Google Glasses simply for the camera feature.
Instead of a minimal heads up display, I would much rather have a minimal wearable camera without all the extra functionality Google Glasses offered. Google Clips seems to be an alternative hands-free camera with different pros and cons (+I can be in the photo. -Can't capture the same type of photos from my eye viewpoint).