Orion, our first true augmented reality glasses
about.fb.com
about.fb.com
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
Wireless compute puck. 70 degree FOV. Resolution high enough to read text. Wrist band detects hand gestures and will be used in another product.
did meta buy them out?
https://www.roadtovr.com/facebook-acquires-ctrl-labs-develop...
I had the first myoband sdk and didn’t work for me. I imagine tech is much improved now
https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/27/ctrl-labs-scoops-up-myo-ar...
Context: I was part of this acquisition, but am no longer at Meta.
It's interesting that meta went through the effort of bundling an accessory but stuck with hand gestures anyway.
Anyway, Logitech made an awesome little handheld keyboard for home theater PCs, called DiNovo Mini HTPC, I was able to pair it with Vision Pro.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/226367904044?_skw=Logitech+DiNovo+M...
I wonder if Apple decided against a controller in order to allow third party solutions to flourish . They can take their time and see what people gravitate towards.
Uses: Being able to physically walk around a life-sized 3d model of an engine, human body, etc.
2. Tying AR to a point relative to the user
Uses: Heads-up Display notifications, virtual screens, etc.
These things are not mutually exclusive.
Even once you've placed a "AR object" at some static absolute location, I'm sure you can scroll through the list of active processes similar at any time, and snap it back to your body.
As somebody who hates the sedentary aspect of software engineering, I messed around with a friend's Apple Vision Pro and fell in love with the spatial computing aspect. I do a great deal of pacing when working through problems, and the ability to physically move around multiple virtualized workspaces was really engaging.
If your only experience is the HoloLens, you’re roughly a decade out of date with how well it can work today.
There’s also not been much until the Vision Pro that combines eye tracking with hand tracking which is what’s really needed.
You should really try the Vision Pro, because it really does move hand tracking to the point where it’s the best primary interaction method. Controllers might be good for some stuff , in the way an Apple Pencil is, but most interactions do not need it.
It has almost as many gestures as the trackpad or iPhone though. More gestures can be handled app side.
There’s also direct touch of surfaces too.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/06/23/vision-pro-will-t...
Controllers have their strength for games but most things that people do with their computers are better with hand tracking.
I can only imagine this is an extreme minority view, as hand tracking is next to useless for these tasks, outside of tech demos.
Ofc Vision Pro users are extreme minorities so you are not wrong. But I highly encourage you to try out Vision Pro if you haven't.
Hand tracking is not a feasible input method for routine computing.
What exactly are you missing that a controller gives you for those tasks?
Haptic feedback, discrete buttons and precise analog input from controllers are also very important. The downside of controllers is that your hands are full and it's just not feasible for an all day wearable.
Hopefully someone figures out a good compromise be it rings or gloves or whatever.
Where it falls apart is not being able to feel yourself touching objects which nothing other than a full glove is going to be able to simulate. Controllers and rings provide no benefit over Apple's approach.
When I touch a good quality button, I can feel the actuation point, and it's the same every time - I can learn to tell reliably whether I've pressed it or not.
When I touch my thumb and forefinger for a camera, I can't reliably tell what point it'll get detected as touching, because it isn't the same point each time.
As a result, I have to hold them together until I'm sure it's registered.
As a user, knowing unambiguously whether you've activated a control or not is a huge advantage for controllers & buttons.
I mean, it's just laughable to suggest that inpu work just as well on the AVP. People are not using the virtual keyboard if a real one is available. Gamers want clicky buttons too.
There are clear benefits and disadvantages of each setup.
This is the problem with fanboi-ism... the hyperbole is so clearly false. Let me list the ways that controllers are better: - Typing/Chording - Cheaper - More efficient, no cameras pointing at things the user can't see. No continuous video processing. - No dead zones where the camera can't see. - Accuracy. For all but a few camera angles, Apple has to guess when you're fingers make contact. it works best with bigger movements, but the bigger the movement, the longer that movement takes. There's a reason no big-name competitive games have been ported over. - Actual haptic feedback. Play Horizon: Forbidden West on PS5 to understand just what haptics can communicate to you... it's so much more than tapping your fingers together.
Apple's approach is amazing, and it's good for the use cases that Apple tells you are important... but there's so much more than that. You're doing a disservice to Apple by going full fanboi.
And all the sensors, cameras and superfast processing will still be needed for that immerse quasi AR simulated experience, so there are no cost savings there.
Where did you experience this? My only experience is with the Apple Vision Pro and it failed like half the time
* I pressed my finger
* nothing happened
* it feels broken
the reason is that it is camera based, unlike Orion. And this is why people describe Orion as magical, whereas nobody talks about the hand gestures of the Apple Vision Pro (but people do talk about the eye tracking of the AVP as magical)
Electromyography is an awesome technology, among other reasons, because it can (or will) detect neural signals below the activation (movement) threshold, meaning you should be able to train yourself to type without moving your fingers. A viable way to thought control without the invasive aspects of other approaches.
Back in the nineties, I said the computer user fifty years from then would look like a hippy. Headband (neural interface), sunglasses (I thought monitor, but AR is cooler), and a crystal around their neck (optical computer, maybe a miss, we'll see what the next decade brings, a slab in a pocket will do for now). Given my zero trust of end stage capitalism near my noggin, wristbands are an excellent transitional, as long as they're local (or can be made so, happy jail breaking)
For typing, I'd expect you need to combine with eye tracking. So you're back to the Vision Pro UI.
On its own, EMG makes a good button, I'd expect. Maybe 1-axis control.
No 6dof either ?
Sorry for using you as the 'say something wrong, get corrected' research method, but kudos for jumping in. ;}
Try it out , it’s really neat
Something named after a small rodent that we use already. And a monitor that we use already. Then you are cooking. You've invented the desktop pc.
Its interface is unlike anything else and really can only be experienced in person. The ability to simply glance at UI controls and slightly move your head whilst resting on your leg really does feel like magic.
And the UI is built around it so if you are looking for example at a sidebar it will lock you into choosing the options unless you substantially look away. This makes using it much easier and faster than a controller.
Gaze/click is for interacting with 2D planes.
Hand tracking is for interacting with the 3D world.
You can move the point at least as fast as your eyes and a button press will be faster and more accurate than pinch, and no occlusion. Plus more buttons gives you additional actions for the same onscreen target.
If all you wanted was a pointing device to make selections on a 2D gui interface, then the laser pointer form factor would be better. But I’m going to be an old fart and ask why are you doing this in AR then? Just use a screen. I’m more interested in the different human interface possibilities that are opened up by tactile input and 3D visual controls.
For a pointing device, moving a stylus on a small graphic tablet (in relative mode, i.e. like a mouse, not in absolute mode), in order to position a visible cursor on a target, is both faster and more precise and also much more comfortable than pointing forward with a laser pointer or an equivalent device.
When you are not at a desk, perhaps one can make a pointing device with a stylus that you hold like for writing and you point downwards, but the relative movements of the stylus are used to control a visible cursor that is in front of you, or in any other direction. That would still be much better than a pointing device that forces you to point in the real direction of the target.
Especially when only the relative movements are of interest, it is easy to measure the 3D orientation of a stylus with a combined accelerometer/magnetometer sensor.
While analog manipulation devices (mice, trackpads, joysticks, the 3D controllers) are good at physically precise manipulation and navigation, keys and buttons are good at symbolic / textual entry and logical / symbolic navigation with comparatively very low effort and high speed.
When VR / AR acquires a fast and low-effort symbolic input mode, comparable in efficiency to a keyboard, and it becomes possible to build highly productive interfaces driven by it, like Vim and MS Excel are driven by the keyboard, many interesting developments will happen.
Also the gestures are recognised by something you wear rather than cameras, so I'd expect them to be more reliable.
The Vision Pro uses optical sensors for hand tracking, so if your hands aren't visible to the device it obviously can't track them. Electromyography solves that problem, and I could imagine Apple integrating some variant of this in a future Apple Watch, and just falling back to optical sensors if you don't own one.
[1] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2023/10/apple-watch-double-ta...
Wireless compute puck = iPhone Wrist band = Apple watch (although most people wear it on their non-dominant hand)
From the videos it looks like Meta adopted Apple's UI of a horizontal handle bar underneath a window for interacting with a piece of content.
Considering that the 100 degree field of view of the Apple Vision Pro is already noticeable, 70 degrees seems really limiting.
Facebook seems better aligned in that regards.
Many conversations you will have when you wear smart glasses (I wear meta's ray bans often since October) is people's concerns..oh u are filming me and I don't know ..stuff to that extent.
It's also possible they don't ever put out an offering in this form factor. They never released a dual screen phone. They never released a touchscreen laptop. This might be one of those things they just don't touch.
Also, I wonder if they'll have a tough time filling the form factor with stuff to do. The lack of apps was a huge reason the APV flopped, while Meta has a large headstart in making it possible for devs to build for their device, even those without exp in spatial dev / game dev / etc.
Couldn't disagree more, if it was possible to bet on this I would bet all my money that they do release something like this. It'll probably be called the Vision Air or something. I don't remember which article it was, but there are reports that Tim Cook only agreed to fund and ship the Vision Pro because he was told that the same tech will be put into glasses in a few years.
For an AR headset, 70 degrees is pretty good.
I had a Quest2 but sold it years ago. I'm not comparing AVP to any previous VR experiences, I don't even remember what the FOV felt like.
You can emulate this on the Vision Pro by removing the light seal entirely. It makes a dramatic difference, but also makes it impossible to use virtual environments or any immersive experiences.
Is that true? Last time I was reading about holographic lenses, it was a flat white laser backlight fed into a waveguide (the hologram part), and filtered through an LCD. An actual LED projector would have darker darks, but I would much rather have a higher resolution..
It's definitely helpful to hear about the waveguide production problems. Obviously, that's going to be the greatest hurdle; after all, they are manufacturing a completely unique object with very small feature sizes.
Huge kudos to Meta for breaking new ground and doing a ton of R&D/M&A to get to this point. Once MicroLED comes on a little further and the form factor shrinks this could be the next consumer electronics platform.
Silicon carbide is really interesting, we need high RI materials to make this work.
Hopefully glass 3D printing or similar will make cheap, Rx waveguides possible.
It's FB. They're not popular. I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole, because I expect it will be absolutely stuffed with user surveillance.
Think about it - sometimes it is much more about trust than technology. Yeah, I know all your chats go back and forth commercial GPTs, but you know half of my GPT interraction is already local inference based and it does similar job, and is OK. So that much about wanting to let s.o. see your naked friends. Their days are numbered and if you see how IT history unfolded - there is always rush to the cloud and away from the mainframe. Its like the breathwork in criya yoga, happens simultaneously in a sense.
From the funny side of things - such wearables open perspective to lot of people talking to themselves being O.k. in society. Perhaps we could only agree to have such visual interface when things get closer to what guys have in Cyberpunk 2077. Honestly I really hope someone developes a genetic enhancement or all children born 2000 suddently become enlightened enough to master telepathy.
I'm much more fascinated by the propspect of personal electronics, and how cheap they have become. I don't want Meta in them for sure, and nobody apt-get installs gcloud or fb as his must have tool.
Yet every single person carries one.
But with essentially any piece of tech you use (not just FB), you check "I agree" on a document you'll never read and give the same data to a private company who will use it however they want. And they charge you for it.
Imagine if I told you a research organization decided to throw out all their ethics and start charging their research subjects to be experimented on, and that this was actually a really solid business model.
There have been so many attempts to make VR glasses that it's really not innovation at this point, it's just gimmicky throw-away pocket tech. Something far better to invent is a phone that can project on walls, or project a full-size keyboard onto a table for an easier writing experience.
Most of these companies are gutted by investors, and turned into profit machines... There are very few visionaries leading projects now, and huge hurdles with IP theft and related lawsuits that hold up most of the typical innovation, unless these companies come up with game changing ideas that focus less on pushing out ads, they're going to fail with micro-projects like this. VR glasses have been around for ages, none of what Zuckerberg demoed was revolutionary, gotta be honest about it.
AR is certainly cool tech. It is just too bad there’s no company doing it that isn’t doing it just to spy on you.
And ads will be plastered over everything in your field of vision. Honestly who would sign up for that?
I really hope this isn’t the case. We have enough screens around us as is, the last thing I want is screens pressed up against my eyeballs
Maybe we'll be lucky enough to die before it's normal for this stuff to be integrated into our brains (which again, billions of dollars being spent on figuring this out).
If they can fix their incentives there it will address 80% of the concerns in this thread.
Counterintuitively I think a passive screen affixed to your face will reduce your reliance on all other screens. Glasses aren't a great form factor for scrolling feeds, but they are much better at connecting you to your physical world (which phones are the worst at). That plus just the posture improvements [1] that glasses can provide over the phone may make this a winner.
[1]: https://www.today.com/health/texting-neck-how-hunching-over-...
speaking /as/ a teenager, that's presumption. maybe it's an Apple-sponsored mindhack, but I actually think wireless earbuds (incl. AirPods) look quite a bit better than their dangly wired counterparts.
Part of it is that they stick out way too far so you can see them when looking at someone directly. It's especially distracting in cases where they're sticking out in different directions.
I don't know if the same effect would occur with these glasses, though. it seems unlikely that they'll have significant /public/ use amongst young people any time soon. I've never even seen an Apple Vision Pro.
I guess since airpods are visible (and expensive) they are now the desirable focus, and anyone with wired earbuds is hopelessly out of date!
Apple is very big on being a status symbol which is why they put a giant shiny (at one point glowing) logo on their laptops and why they spent a lot of money trying to convince iphone users to not use a case which would hide the logo.
These AR innovations are going to produce great value already 5 years from now.
The last company I'd want to put right in front of my eyeballs for any extended periods of time is Facebook.
Maybe as they transition to hardware they’ll spend more time making their products worthy of chronic upgrades rather than chronic addictive usage.
Was there a lot of engineering, novel problem solving, and even new invention? Yes.
Does that matter to customers if it comes together in a product that they don't feel is good enough? No.
For a site focused on tech and startups there is an awful lot of whiteknighting for companies who should know and do better.
Don’t show it to the public if you don’t want their opinion. Assuming meta knew this, it’s pretty insane that there are people defending the honour of their billion dollar corporate bff.
Negativity? Yes Facebook was negative for 20ish years and as a result of their behavior technical people don't like them.
This is not something, we are wrong about even if your "negativity here" silently suggests that.
You reminded me of something, please read this article: https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/leave_my_br...
It is helpful for becoming negative to negative companies where they deserve it.
IG Farben had great technology (for that time) but needed change of name and half of century of good service so they have been removed from our memory as producers of Cyclone B. Now they are known as Bayer. And my neighbor (concentration camp survivor), while he was alive, wasn't buying Bayer products and he was quite vocal about it. Any of them, regardless of technology, different people, different products,... Guess why. Will you say he was negative?
Thats why FB was renamed and I am eagerly waiting what they will be like after 50 years. Until then, they will not be anywhere near my devices and even less filtering my sight.
That said, I was never a Facebook user. I do have an account and that is that, which I tend to not use in most browser session because of Facebook surveillance.
You should check out WebKit‘s tracking prevention policy:
https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention-policy/
Also the Privacy category on the WebKit blog:
https://webkit.org/blog/category/privacy/
Specific blog posts you might be interested in are:
https://webkit.org/blog/7675/intelligent-tracking-prevention...
https://webkit.org/blog/9521/intelligent-tracking-prevention...
https://webkit.org/blog/10218/full-third-party-cookie-blocki...
https://webkit.org/blog/11338/cname-cloaking-and-bounce-trac...
https://webkit.org/blog/11545/updates-to-the-storage-access-...
With such a cure, you don't need disease.
That is why I was using heavily modified Android.
As I could prevent Android tracking me and kick the Google spyware out of it completely.
I am now using Sailfish ( https://sailfishos.org ) and I don't need to care about Google or Apple any more. Need to patch banking app from time to time and use plastic cards, but this is acceptable (well, not from bank software but I couldn't care less, they are free to port it to linux and make it open source /s ).
---
Anyway, the GDPR is requiring from applications to disclose tracking and allow you to chose what tracking if any, you will allow, before it occurs. Not only that, PIA cant be a payment for app usage.
So in theory, Apple is only enforcing what is already required from applications by EU directive.
Yes i do like Llama but lets be honest who paid for it and for what.
Just because suckerburg gives us nice toys...
He could actually start giving his money away to humanity in a relevant and meaningful way to start fixing what he did to our society.
Guess what? New iOS features and YouTube videos are paid-for and provided in the exact same way. Both Apple and Google are complicit in spreading misinformation, advertising to kids and profiting from lootbox/microtransaction revenue. But nobody consciously objects to Apple for partnering with Taboola, or Google for supporting extremism on YouTube. No sane critic lashes out at Tim Cook or Sundar Pichai demanding they donate their life savings to offset the obvious damages they've created.
I think Meta and moreover Facebook is a purely detestable platform. It's absolutely hilarious how unwilling this website is to apply the same criticism to their other favorite services. The cognitive dissonance is arresting.
Open Source contributions are there for three reasons. Either the license requires it (Google Fuchsia is a step into avoiding this and keep next generation hardware close source), it is a public relations stunt or they want other software developers work for them for free (which is also lowering the wages for their developers).
Never ever mistake any company that has public stocks doing anything else but earning money for the stock owners. As they didn't buy the stocks to support charity but to earn money, which is the greatest reason why their products are worse deal for their customers on y2y basis.
Google, is a lot different than Apple or Facebook. Google did a lot for our society through Android, Google maps, https, Gmail, Kubernetes and Search.
YouTube had a problem with fake news and especially the algorithm (flat earth etc.) but they actually acted on it a lot faster than facebook ever tried.
But yes pls don't assume something without knowing were my viewpoints are. There is no cognitive dissonance but we talk here about facebook and not about every other companie on the planet.
That Facebook?
Also the Russians sitting around posting on social media meme is still actively in use. I’ve seen it at least a handful of times this month
Or in words of Umberto Eco ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umberto_Eco ):
“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
You are underestimating the horror that Facebook did to human society. I am accusing them of crime against humanity. And all that, just for selling ads - where you will be able to see the comparison with IG Farben, do whatever it takes, to earn money.
I accept the argument, that if they wouldn't, someone else would, but nevertheless THEY did it or we would be talking about someone else.
Let me repeat him as you probably didnt catch it (I dont understand how, but this is one of the things, I dont understand, so I wont argue about it):
“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
I can just confirm that what he has seen and described is correct. And the more that you are standing your ground, the more you are proving, he was correct.
What these normie-networks did do was make a UX for public posting so easy that scores of low-education users were able to be influenced and re-share low-infromation-quality stuff in huge magnitudes. FB is guilty of making a super accessible user experience, and then in not being aggressive early enough in having high standards for its userbase. But it didn't invent society's ills.
The influx of normies circa 2000 did not seem so bad to me but Facebook and Twitter were another thing.
Fun fact, they didn't have large budget for shooting so they were searching for footwear that would look futuristic. They found some unknown company producing cheap "shoes" so horrible that the director wasn't worried for it to succeed as "no one would wear that". The company was Crocks.
https://media.snopes.com/2023/09/idiocracy.png
Anyway, this whole thread is actually proving my point. It wouldn't happen before Facebook.
That alone should be a very strong signal that maybe your nostalgia is not based on a rational unbiased observation of the changes in society.
edit: and to be clear, obviously there have been times in history where things really did get worse for a period. But if you're proposing that that's happening now, you have a massive burden of proof to overcome, and you should be absolutely really totally sure that you're not being influenced by rose-tinted glasses. Which I'm not even sure is possible.
Correlation does not imply causation.
But Crocs had actually become somewhat popular already before Idiocracy.
The more realistic full picture explanation being that they chose something that they or someone on their staff, like many "look at those idiots" types (myself at the time included), already knew and considered a stupid trend is much more likely. It doesn't at all negate that they in fact thought nobody with taste would wear those shoes, but I don't think that choice was entirely made in isolation not aware of the trend.
The effect of watching the movie and seeing Crocs worn was yet another of those pieces of evidence that the stupid people of today connect to that fictional future world, like all the other stuff on the movie dialed all the way to the top (energy drinks, corporate sponsorships, etc.)
The mere fact that someone knew of Crocs, thought of them, and chose them because of their ugliness, means they were popular/successful enough to pop up on someone's radar, despite them ostensibly not being something that would be worn by anyone. Perhaps they didn't know how much more popular Crocs would become but they for sure must have picked them as an artifact of things already going in a weird direction (Why can you get this? Who would want this? Someone must, these will be the stupid people of tomorrow.)
But also, actually, so what?
Look at some of the fashion of past decades older movies. Some of it is cool but a lot of it is super ridiculous.
And if you look at Crocs, are they really objectively stupid? Treating them as a high fashion item probably is. But they are versatile and robust, good for many types of use cases were people used to wear other types of cheap plastic sandals. People wearing leather shoes surely thought sneaker were stupid until they became so mainstream that they were evaluated more objectively.
Citing idiocracy and Crocs seems like a very weak argument to your case and even Idiocracy's point (fashion choices don't indicate the world is getting stupid). Mind you I'm not disagreeing that things have gotten worse in many ways and social media is definitely not helping. OTOH, Facebook actually was somewhat reasonable for a long time, and useful to connect with people. Only once the Twitterification of it started did it get so bad. But somehow Twitter never gets the bad reputation.
https://bigthink.com/the-past/nobel-disease-great-scientists...
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
https://time.com/5880118/myanmar-rohingya-genocide-facebook-...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct/07/facebooks...
The way you've phrased that makes it sound as though Facebook were trying to hide the actions they took to facilitate things, which I think is a miscommunication.
People on the Fediverse get high and mighty about the Myanmar incident but in a Fediverse world the Myanmar government would have run the big instance in their language and would have defederated anyone who tried to stop them, alternately outsiders could have defederated but then they wouldn't have any influence.
Fediverse folks could have refused to run a server to support genocide but there is no way they could stop their software from supporting genocide. A centralized system like Facebook does have more control and more responsibility but when they took that responsibility later on Myanmar kicked them out
https://apnews.com/article/myanmar-censorship-virtual-privat...
It's only privileged, highly-paid coastal elites that hate FB.
Zuck, can literally say GFY as they don't matter in the broad scheme of things and innovations.
When he called people "dumb fucks", he was including you
That's not a great look seeing what they've done since then and people always focus on the wrong part of the quote. "I would've said the same thing" (would you?) - he was offering his friend user info.
But, that said, there's also plenty of room for negativity around the actual product conception. It may have niche applications, but it just doesn't seem that most people need or want AR for everyday use - it's a solution looking for a problem. For gaming VR seems a better fit than AR, and same for Metaverse in general.
AR seems a bit like Segway two-wheelers - cool and fun, but with limited actual use. I could see AR glasses being used in the same way as Segway's end of life use for tourist city tours, or for other similar rent-to-use entertainment experiences.
Can you give some examples, because I honestly can't think of any. I certainly can imagine these in specific, mostly niche professional contexts, but as "the next computing computing platform", no thanks.
To be clear, I'm fine if this is "just me", but take this quote from the article:
> You can take a hands-free video call to catch up with friends and family in real time, and you can stay connected on WhatsApp and Messenger to view and send messages. No need to pull out your phone, unlock it, find the right app and let your friend know you’re running late for dinner – you can do it all through your glasses.
Even under their own description, the phone experience is better for me in every way. I don't want something strapped to my face - I want to perform a task and then put my device away.
I don’t see 3D printing being a solution here for a very very long time
You build a platform which allows you to share fake news and pay to win shit to billions? You make sure the algorithm makes you as much money as possible?
You know who made sure facebook fixes this? Politics, not suckerburg.
My morals also say that sharing any news, be it fake or real, should be allowed. Likewise they say making as much money as possible is admirable.
With power comes responsibility.
And your moral ethical construct should not just benefit you and work for you but for all.
Plenty of companies are not ethical and not your friend. If you have family and actually care, you wouldn't worry that facebook teaches them garbage? fake news? etc.? Just for the sake of making money or being allowed to do what they want?
Im curious why you would even debate morals here if your main objection is to make 'as much money as possible'? Just accept that its not a moral goal to have.
Moral would be "Making as much money as possible without hurting anyone and benefiting the society"
I often advocate things not for me. I'm quite good in understanding the facebook algorithm and all of that shit. I advocate this for my friends, familiy and other fellow humans including you.
Negativity isn't spared on bad actors.
I'm curious if people think that that's worth worrying about, or if the idea of optimizing ad placement based on whether it makes your pupils respond in the desired way is the kind of thing that's only effective in sci-fi.
Whether the legislature has notably limited data collection for ad purposes by then - probably not.
Unless I’m misunderstanding the current state of the technology, it’s possible today with a little effort to put my biometrics in a feedback loop with (say) GPT-4o, and use those measurements to rapidly produce and refine an increasingly horrifying series of images, personalized to my lizard brain reactions.
That’s gross, but the same technique could be applied more subtly. Imagine the worst things people suspect about TikTok’s algorithm, but with biometric feedback on its individual effectiveness.
But eventually it all devolves to this (and I include teens < 18 as children here).
Remember that FB started out as a way to connect with your college buddies.
More than just ads though, collecting data on children is dangerous as well. We really don't need corporations starting a dossier on children and placing them into buckets at such an early age. It's bad enough we hand school children chromebooks so that Google can track their test scores, growth, and intelligence
Brought to you by the same people that thought cigarette candy was a brilliant idea.
That is a more fundamental problem.
I'm not sure what people expect kids to do on iPads except watch stuff, 99% of the time.
https://nypost.com/2024/08/08/business/google-meta-reportedl...
https://nickclegg.medium.com/how-the-metaverse-can-transform...
He gave the largest party a majority in exchange for a referendum on first-past-the-post.
A pretty good article about it here: https://academic.oup.com/pa/article/68/suppl_1/70/1403259
Only now has the Lib Dem vote share recovered, largely due to an implosion in the Conservative party and a relatively regressive Labour electoral campaign.
[1] "Ocular and visual discomfort associated with smartphones, tablets and computers: what we do and do not know" (2019) https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=14343924602923438...
[0] https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/titans-of-space-plus/...
[1] https://www.meta.com/en-gb/experiences/wooorld/4360608937312...
What you are saying will make them consume information, not learn.
I grew up around the golden age of 'edutainment' produced by publishers such as Dorling Kindersley. They released books with full-colour illustrations, video cassettes, interactive computer software and games on specific topics that all complemented each other. What's particularly special about this is how the same information can be taught effectively to different children, each with their own unique characteristics. The curriculum is consistent even though the leaning style is allowed to vary. So yes, the struggles are important, but there's no reason to miss the opportunity to learn in another way while one overcomes these struggles.
It’s all based on anecdotal knowledge, but at least in my little bubble of the world nobody wants their children on Meta if they can help it. Which is a little bit hypocritical considering a lot of the same people don’t mind using Google, OpenAI, Microsoft products and so on. For some reason Facebook has taken the brunt of the dislike and I think a lot of my colleagues might actually feel better about their children being on TikTok than any sort of Meta product.
Not that you can really avoid being included on the Meta platform if these things start filming you in public.
As a former scrolling addict, I can attest that Instagram is by far worse for mental health than Tik Tok. It's about the algorithms.
If you show Tik Tok that you like certain niche content it will learn that and only show you it, when it tries to show you something else that you don't prefer (once every 100 videos in my case) if you show disinterest it won't show more of it.
With Instagram, what you prefer (e.g. mindful content) is secondary to bombarding you with content that triggers endless scroll behaviour. I've tried training it to not do that by clicking the explicit "not interested" button, on dozens of videos at a time, multiple sessions, but it just wouldn't work. At times it seemed like it is finally learning what i prefer, and then next day mindless memes are again 90% of the feed. In contrast, Tik Tok required a tiny fraction of explicit training that I prrformed on Insta, and on Tik Tok it was very effective.
I can say with absolute certainty that Instagram is very detrimental to my health (hence I don't use it), and suprisingly Tik Tok is actually pretty great.
My usual Tik Tok session now looks like this: I launch it, get a video that's really relevant to me, and for every video that I watch there's about 30% chance that I'll close the app because I'm either thinking about what I learned or researching it. My endless scroll behaviour is never triggered. And I don't usually use Tik Tok more than 2 times a week. This isn't because of willpower, it's because I genuinely value the content it's providing me and I need time to digest it. Watching more often would be like wasting it. This has been going on for about 6 months now.
Disclaimer: I wouldn't be suprised if I'm in some a/b testing program within Tik Tok, and it might be using a variant algorithm. I don't have evidence, but I know that for a time my UI was a little different than others' (e.g. no favorite functionality).
The chart here is... well, eye opening:
I don't know about anyone else, but I will never buy AR glasses with ads. That's a deal breaker for me.
Reminds me of the old 80's NHS glasses in the UK (which you could get for free if you couldn't afford otherwise).
Or for those of you old enough, Brains from the old Supermarionation versions of the Thunderbird show (https://i2-prod.walesonline.co.uk/incoming/article8451975.ec...)
I hate owning too many socks so I would wear "long" socks with everything, including shorts. I would also tuck my trousers into my socks when cycling. This was considered a massive faux pas 10 years ago. Guess what the youth do today? Yep, long socks are in!
I've been reading about AR for years and I still have no idea how, if at all, I would use it. Never really come across a use case that's compelling for me. Getting WhatsApp messages without taking my phone out of my pocket feels like the opposite to the direction I'd like to move in.
The second, yeah, maybe, if it was done incredibly well. but marginal benefit over an iPad or similar.
I do: to display a moving map from Google Maps while cycling. It'd be incredibly handy for navigation in a city. Everyone these days uses a navigation app in their car to navigate (esp. to unfamiliar destinations), but how do you do that on a bicycle? You can get one of those phone mounts for your handlebars, but it's really clunky, and difficult (or impossible) to see in bright sunlight. Plus, in my experience, phones tended to fall out of them, as it was hard to find a mount that would fit a modern-size (read: large) phone; they seem to all be designed with 2010-model phones in mind.
But it doesn't solve the visibility problem: good luck seeing your screen in direct sunlight. And also the problem where you have to look down at your handlebards, refocus your eyes for close-up vision (this is really bad if you're over ~40 due to presbyopia), and try to make out the info on the screen, and not get hit by a car or run into a pedestrian or other road hazard. If you're navigating inside a dense city, this sounds positively dangerous. AR glasses would fix all of this.
Looking down is definitely an issue, but not for simply following a route. In fact, for turn by turn nav, I prefer audio. And no, I'm not interested in your opinions about the safety of that :)
AR glasses might work better, but they'd introduce other issues, like conflicting with sunglasses and helmet. Plus a huge expense. I suspect for me even if I owned such a thing I would rarely use it for this case.
Well ideally, the AR glasses would double as sunglasses (perhaps photochromic so you can use them at night too). And if they had the same size frames as regular sunglasses (and not these huge clunky ones seen on the prototype), then they wouldn't interfere with your helmet any more than regular sunglasses.
>In fact, for turn by turn nav, I prefer audio. And no, I'm not interested in your opinions about the safety of that :)
Well I'm going to give it to you anyway :-) I've tried audio for turn-by-turn nav, and it really sucks. Not because of safety, but just because it doesn't work well. It's hard to hear if it's noisy, it doesn't tell which road to turn on correctly, etc. I guess if you're in some rural area and there's only one turn visible in the next kilometer, it's fine, but I live in Tokyo and roads here are tiny (1 car wide at best in many places) and close together, so when it says "turn right", that doesn't really tell me much. It also doesn't help much because nav usually wants to direct me on main roads instead of side roads, but side roads are much better for cycling: on main roads, you either ride with traffic and get hit by trucks, or you ride on the sidewalk and dodge pedestrians going in and out of storefronts (the latter is preferred by almost all cyclists here). But on the side roads, you can avoid most of this. The problem, however, is that many side roads don't go far before they're blocked by a park or a train line or something else. A moving map would show you the road layout so you can choose for yourself a convenient route, and also be able to make quick decisions for alternate routes in case you miss a turn or just want to ride a different way for some reason. On top of all that, the audio is just plain loud and annoying and rude to all the pedestrians nearby, and makes me feel embarrassed.
Peak Design has, in my opinion, a better solution than quadmount - it mounts securely (magnet + slot) and keeps the ability to wirelessly charge. Do have to use their case though, but it's a very attractive case. I use it in conjunction with the Trek BellBeats and I'm satisfied.
I would say the same about AR. I'm surprised by your comment. Lately I've been using it a lot when shopping for furnitures (to place the furniture in my space and see how it fits, amazon and a bunch of furniture places let you do that).
Actually it is a little bit annoying, people might actually get away with wearing these things, which means Facebook spyware might be entering everyday life. I’m glad I’m too old for parties.
I would say have a "cache level" like combination: * very low/few computation done at the glasses level * medium computation done at the brick unit level * hard/intensive computation done in the cloud.
Wireless microphones are not a good comparison because they are probably analog, but even if they are digital a few dozen milliseconds of delay is going to be imperceptible for audio in a way that video is not.
I agree. The obvious choice is to offload to our insanely powerful phones. Unfortunately WiFi is too disruptive on mobile OSs and raw Bluetooth is.. well does that even need an explanation? Apple are probably the only ones who could deliver a seamless high bandwidth link and decent pairing, atm. But they spent their prototype-billions on a headset instead.
On the other hand though.. do we really need to run multiple cameras and a realtime image processing pipeline to say that the cacao on your countertop is, in fact, cacao? These AR “experiences” make cool demos, but once the novelty wears off, nobody wants to play planetarium or anatomy class for hours a day.
Note that without the whole AR part of it, there’s still some really cool hardware for all kinds of purposes. That can be really handy when you want or need both hands free. For instance POV video for say sports, HUD and voice interface for eg cycling, maybe watching videos while working, anything requiring gloves (cold, wet hands, gardening) todo-list in the corner of eye when shopping, etc etc. You could reduce form factor and increase battery time significantly, even if you keep accelerometer, gyro, projector, light sensor, cameras etc. But for some reason, utility is not even a priority with these companies.
The problem is that by doing so we make glasses secondary, auxiliary devices. You wouldn't leave your house without your phone, but if you forget your tethered glasses, well, no big deal.
The only way we move past phone as personal computing form factor is making alternatives standalone devices. If you could do everything you do on your phone, but on glasses, you might drop the phone habit. If you can't drop the phone habit, and there are only so many things you can take with you when you leave your house, AR glasses will always be an afterthought.
Uh?? Given the size of normal ties, their "use" as a protection for a shirt is dubious!
What does it say beyond, "This person doesn't pay attention to high fashion", and why does it feel like you're judging people for that? Who cares if people aren't into it? To my mind, your comment says a lot more about you than what ignorance to high fashion says about others.
And please, look at all of Meta's own comments on the size of this prototype - it's obvious that the size isn't because it's "in" in high fashion, but because that's the smallest they could reasonably get it.
Literally all I said was I thought they were large and goofy looking. I didn't say anything about people wearing, or not wearing them, or anything about whether they were fashionable or not. You've taken my post, read things I didn't say, made up stuff, and then judged me for it.
The point is, the size of new technology tend to shrink fast.
The original iPhone was one of the smallest iPhones ever made. It did nothing but get bigger over time. If you want to compare the modern smart phone to a Zack Morris phone, or the bag phones that came before it, that would be a better way to go if the argument is size reduction over time.
Something in the collective unconscious is screaming "put the biggest brick you can make in my hand and give me a main battle tank to go to TJ's." and industry is happy to oblige!
Maybe wearing a gigantic ugly thing on your face that beeps and has flashing lights isn't such a far step
Making them as small as they are is an incredible feat actually. They are better than Hololens in every respect and Hololens is absolutely massive in comparison. There are at least 5 cameras, two HD projectors, an IMU, microphones and speakers in this thing plus the chips and batteries to run them all continuously for two hours.
Meta's got the RayBans colab but they're gonna need the Prada colab if they want to sell at 5 kilobucks
Fast forward today and nearly every phone looks like a galaxy note. Turns out when the utility is there, people will adapt.
But even people I know with smaller hands generally prefer larger phones, probably for the same reason most PC computer users prefer larger monitors rather than the 14" monitors of yesteryear.
I still think this is correct. "Features" like Reachability, and even Screen Time, are software solutions to hardware problems.
I don't think people would be as addicted to their smartphones if they stayed small. At that size, they were more of a tool, and a means to get something done when away from a proper computer. As the size increased, it became mobile-first, doom scrolling entered the picture, and people started asking if phones were bad of our mental health.
Someone needs a lesson about the uncanny valley. Short story: unless you are all the way at the top go down, not up. Lean into the goofiness that your limitations demand. Make a decent new thing, not a strange old thing.
Currently at my co, seeing most day to day use out of XReal, and keen for Visor.
AR/XR/MR/VR app I'm most looking forward to is a 360 location share with the sharing user in AR, and the receiving user in VR, with additional virtual objects shared between. Orion would be great for the send side, with a few extra cameras and Vision Pro on the receive side.
The main thing letting down tech today is how open the platforms are for external developers.
The lack of projecting black I don't see as an issue, clip on something for VR (ok 70 degress isn't quite enough but getting fairly close), or just dim and use gradients for day to day work.
I think we're still at the most basic level in terms of understanding optical physics and ultra high resolution much smaller devices will come out, probably not too soon though.
Even still, modern displays are so so good that an additive display is a massive step down.
The problem with light blocking is that when the blocker is millimeters from your eye it is completely out of focus. Unlike for the display, you can't use optics to make it appear farther away and in focus because the direction of the light it needs to attenuate can't be modified (or else your view of the world through the glasses would be warped).
For a near-eye light blocker to work, it would need to be a true holographic element which can selectively block incoming light based not just on its position but also its direction. Each pixel would essentially be an independent display unto itself that selectively blocks or passes incoming light based on its direction, instead of indiscriminately like a normal LCD. I have no idea how such a thing could ever be fabricated.
Forcing the industry to redesign visuals for additive displays is a huge uphill battle.
You mean how closed they are? Apple was bad about this, but I think Meta is pretty good with helping spatial / game devs? Am I wrong about that? I don't work in the space, it's just my impression
I am more likely to cruise around already logged into Google as a result of using those things, which obviously plays into their ad business, but those products that I pay for aren't vehicles for advertising and I don't think Google would ever try to make them that.
Likewise, Apple does obviously advertise some of their own services (like iCloud backup) in mildly annoying ways through their devices, but by and large I'm buying a thing from them and only to the extent that I am engaged with one of their Apps (like TV+ or Music) do they try and advertise at me.
In neither case are their platforms inherently about advertising.
Facebook just strikes me as a fundamentally different company. Even if I were to pay them for these glasses I would have no confidence that it wasn't just a gigantic suckhole being fed into their slush fund of data.
(P.S. Apple is much worse than you think. Look up Apple's first party tracking.)
Apple is a lot worse then most of their users believe - but even at their worst, they're leagues more privacy focused and less invasive then Google, Facebook and Microsoft are.
But they're still getting worse every year, and the time when they were actually torchbearers for privacy have slowly faded over the years as MBAs have strengthened their hold on the company and Steve Jobs influence waned.
Going back to Apple, their stance on privacy is more geared towards their internal consumption (abuse?) than towards privacy violation-as-a-service for sale. That's not great but I'll take anything I can get.
I know what I'm sharing with Apple is up for grabs by them to use "against" me. And I know the same is true for Google of Facebook, so no real difference here. The problem is the next level, where what I share with someone else is up for grabs by Google or Facebook, or the other way around. This huge web of data collection and sharing is the big problem, not the posts that I'm volunteering to give to FB or the emails I choose to host with Google.
In other words, when you talk to me alone you choose to give me the information, you're aware I will use it in some way to shape my actions. If you tell me your phone broke, I'll offer to sell you my spare, and you won't turn red that I used the info. But if a stranger shows up at your door a minute later to sell you a phone we're suddenly having a different conversation. Same if you go to a pharmacy on the other side of town to buy some medication and the moment you make the payment I send you a text offering my regrets for your illness.
"A lot worse" can mean very different things if you talk in relative or absolute terms, or if you think some practices are just as bad as others.
The problem with ad companies is not that they show ads. But that they are trying to paint a perfect picture of you to sell you stuff. And they are painting that picture by spying on you and your peers.
I hope that you can see the difference between spying on your users and selling that data to advertisers and using telemetry in some product. If you ever worked in software you will know that having telemetry can lead to massive improvements in the product. That said, that data has to be confined to the applicable use case and has to be anonymized.
If you really think there is no difference between ad tracking and telemetry you are right. Apple is a lot worse than people think, but better than Google/Facebook.
But if we are talking just about ads, than Apple is definitely not worse than people think. Because they hardly even have an ad network and when they ask you if you want to be tracked you can just select "No".
You're vastly underestimating the significance of that, as this is personalized too. It's also been shown that you cannot actually opt out of everything, only some things.
At the end of the day, I still consider my Apple devices to be less intrusive then the android and Windows devices I use, but you seem to have an outdated view of Apple's business practices - at least from my perspective
I'm not sure about much worse. It may depend on your own threat model. But here you go:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25074959
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41184153
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40006508
https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433
Personally, I don’t think Apple is bad at all relative to Google/Meta and I’m probably technically “wrong” but those links don’t do much to prove it.
> and another flat out says Google is worse
This one I can guess. Google is worse indeed, except they do not advertise themselves as "Android is privacy". This is why Apple is worse.
> Mind you, this is definitionally a conspiracy theory; please don’t let the connotations of that phrase bias you, but please feel free to read this (and everything else on the internet) as critically as you wish.
https://sneak.berlin/20231005/apple-operating-system-surveil...
I will admit that this sentence was easy to miss, hidden deeply at the start of the second sentence of the piece.
These links are just all Apple Does A Thing HN Dislikes and I just don’t think any of those things is particularly bad.
> I just don’t think any of those things is particularly bad
If it's fine with you that Apple sends info about every file you open on you Mac to their servers, read the corresponding discussion. The comments explain well why it's a serious privacy breach.
Switching to Linux worked for me.
I wonder if everyone's porn habits will one day leak
https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-pay/#:~:te....
It only takes about 30 bits of entropy to perfectly deanonymize everyone, and I know of many companies that have been doing it for at least a decade or more.
And it works very very well.
A feature which they've loudly and publicly said many many times they can't use for tracking your purchases, as they anonymize the data before it gets to them.
Apple has a long history of not using user-generated data for their own use, sometimes to their own detriment.
1. Show ads for apps in AppStore
2. Show ads in the News app.
What else are you thinking of?
There is nothing at all wrong with it since you are a direct user of the product or service.
How to turn off the opt-out thing in Firefox 128 which gathers data on your browsing and sends it to third parties.
With this option enabled, unfortunately.
Now, even if technically true for the official distribution (because I don't know, the DRM part, or something like this, although technically, I believe it is not part of this distribution, it is downloaded by open source code on first use), this seems like a weak rebuttal.
But okay, let's dig in anyway. PureOS, a FSF-approved distro listed by your link, has a FSF mirror and this mirror contains Firefox [1]. Mistakes (to be proven) aside, this makes for quite a strong endorsement from the FSF itself, actually.
Now I expect some more substantive argument or I won't answer anymore. I'm a friend, I'm heavily biased toward FLOSS, it's not like I'm trying to downplay your activism around free software, but we need strong, convincing and correct and kind, gentle and respectful arguments if we want this to work. It's not even like I'm trying to defend Firefox at all cost, I don't like some recent moves from Mozilla including this one.
Does any other FSF-approved distro include Firefox? I guess Firefox should not belong to PureOS. If you read the criteria for the free distros, you will see that anything that downloads or even mentions nonfree software should be excluded. Even Debian was excluded for this reason, including one with only "main" repository enabled. Firefox mentions DRM and downloads it in just one click. AFAIK PureOS didn't include Firefox in the beginning, but the users demanded it.
See also: https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-condemns-partnership-between-mo...
From the above link:
> Use a version of Firefox without the EME code
Oh, I found that Firefox in PureOS doesn't include the DRM part: https://forums.puri.sm/t/not-possible-to-enable-drm-content-....
Note that I was just replying to your "Firefox is non-free" statement, not to this. I do agree that the tracking story is way better when using free software in general (but that indeed, it's not a guarantee, especially when using official installers from sloppy software editors).
----
Code that is under a free software license that downloads (and runs) non-free software is still free software.
This can be seen as an anti-feature, F-droid would call this one "Non-Free Addon" [1], but this is a separate matter.
For a distro to be approved by the FSF, it needs to only include free software, and also match additional, more restrictive criteria such as, indeed, not promoting non-free software. But this doesn't qualify some specific software, it qualifies a distribution.
In addition to DRM, Firefox also has other issues, including these:
- it allows non-free addons on its extension repository, and even recommends (promotes) some of them (also Non-Free Addons)
- it includes features that depends on non-free services, like pocket (Non-Free Network Services [2])
I don't like them, but that doesn't make Firefox proprietary. Worst case, it isn't suitable as is for a FSF-approved distro. Which, again, goes beyond the quality of being free software.
The fsf.org blog post you link to (which I'm also familiar with) shares concerns (which I mostly share, indeed), but doesn't state that it makes Firefox non-free software. There's one point that I would debate from this link:
> We agree with Cory Doctorow that there is no meaningful distinction between 'installing DRM' and 'installing code that installs DRM.'
The distinction is meaningful, because embedding the DRM code in Firefox itself would make Firefox non free. However I agree that it makes Firefox promote horrible software without even warning the user, which is not great at all.
tl;dr: The concepts of FSF-approved distro and free software should not be mixed up. They are both useful but separate concepts. I could even see someone being full pro free software but thinking that FSF-approved distro goes too far.
I never thought about it. Why wouldn't it be the same for any software? A distribution is nothing else but a (large) set of software. Do you think one could find a software that downloads something nonfree in the FSF Free Software Directory? I do not expect that.
Nowadays, in our connected world, it doesn't matter if the software nonfree or it downloads a nonfree piece. It's effectively the same thing.
Then you'd have free software, and then fsf-approved software, a subset of the former.
I guess they defined criteria for distributions specifically because they needed to provide guidance to people building distributions. You have to be specific to be clear and useful, many things are probably irrelevant to general software.
> Nowadays, in our connected world, it doesn't matter if the software nonfree or it downloads a nonfree piece. It's effectively the same thing.
Well, for me a line is definitely crossed between the proprietary code never reaching my computer or the code sitting here. I'm personally comfortable with an option to download proprietary software that is disabled by default.
I'm quite comfortable with Debian offering me to install non free firmware as long as it's optional and clear. I'm fine with its documentation mentioning non-free software as long as it's clearly marked as well (and done reluctantly). Of course I would not be happy with Debian's wiki recommending proprietary software left and right. But I think forbidding to share some knowledge goes a bit too far (it is borderline censorship), and is not even practical: even Purism recommended a way to upgrade the Intel microcode when spectre and meltdown were discovered and mitigated [1]. Although they claim that the patch isn't part of PureOS, they are the ones maintaining the distro, it feels close enough and quite artificial for an update of something that's already running in the CPU anyway.
I believe that it was quite clever of RMS not to try to put those restrictions in the free software definition.
> Do you think one could find a software that downloads something nonfree in the FSF Free Software Directory? I do not expect that.
Typically, Firefox with the non-free extensions.
We need a pure message from the fsf, but I don't believe the fsf-approved distro criteria help a lot, they are so impractical (and borderline undesirable imho for the censorship part) that if free software oriented distros like Debian and Fedora respected them, the free software movement would probably be weaker, with way fewer people being able to switch to a free distro. It would possibly be counter productive, because there would probably be fewer people helping other switch, and working on free replacements.
It's a tradeoff: too many compromises dilute and weaken or even cancel the message. Too few makes the message irrelevant to too many people. And I don't believe discussing solutions based on proprietary software is compromising if done correctly. You at least need to know what to reverse engineer to produce a free alternative. Convincing people that free software is the right way to handle computers is important, and it is far more effective if it is within their reach. Migrating from windows or Mac to a (GNU/)Linux distro but with non-free firmware is already a net win. If the alternative is to just stay on windows, that's possibility way fewer people convinced that free software is the right way to do stuff, and possibility fewer people working on getting rid of proprietary software.
It's complicated.
[1] https://puri.sm/posts/purism-patches-meltdown-and-spectre-va...
> Typically, Firefox with the non-free extensions.
It's not there: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fdirect...
> but I don't believe the fsf-approved distro criteria help a lot, they are so impractical
They are, but it's by design. You are not supposed to follow them as an ordinary user. They were created in order to show the one true freedom as it should exist.
> They are, but it's by design
I don't think anybody actually wants free software without any compromise to be impractical, so no, I would not say by design, it's just a sad reality.
My stronger concern is that it's likely impractical for free software advocacy.
This is not what I meant when I said "by design". I meant that in today's world, striving for the true, pure freedom is very much expected to be impractical, so do not be surprised that the FSF-endorsed distros are unusable. Nobody wants that but it's expected. This however serves as a goal, so not completely useless. I guess we agree.
Yep, I believe so :-)
Advertising is 80% of Google's business. If you think those things aren't being factored into their ads model.... Idk what to tell you.
And it's always been very grey about exactly where that data ends up.
Google has "build an ad profile about every human being" in their DNA just like Facebook, employing similar creepy tactics with Gmail and Chrome.
I agree, and to that I would add the way they've been contributing, if not actively engaged, to push reality-denying propaganda from hostile third parties, including state actors.
This only happens for photos that were going to be sent to iCloud where all photos are scanned server side.
It's hilarious to me that this feature which is actually a privacy win for consumers got so heavily criticised.
Does Google stop tracking you when you pay for Youtube Premium ? When you buy a Pixel phone ?
Like you, I do think that in general Facebook is an evil company, more than the others mentioned, but I don't think that if Google were able to produce a similar consumer device, they would track me any less
I think people seem to give Google a free pass because so much of their presence in our lives is implicit/invisible but they are so much more embedded than Facebook could ever be.
I've used Facebook for years and the worst that's happened is they've tried to show me some ads. I can live with the forces of evil knowing I've put up "hi mum, here's my hol pics" etc.
And yeah, I do expect that if Google sells it, there's a chance they will allow me to control it, but if it's Facebook, there's no chance at all.
But in either case, the product is too intrusive to concede control to those companies.
Someday old people will use VR for escape but only when they are the late adopters. Zuckerberg has lost his damn mind. But don’t tell him that, I want the full Willie Wonka experience.
Edit -- the home page says 70-degree FoV. Not bad, better than HoloLens (45-degree FoV if I recall), but perhaps not enough to turn your head to the person next to you while still having game elements persist in vision
I tried out the first gen version at a meetup and it was really nifty (the latency was fantastic), but I just couldn't work out what anyone would use it for in real life, it seemed too limited to be useful.
Then you see what Facebook wants you to do with it - see screens in front of you all the time. One with Facebook's "Recommended" page, and a video of some talking neckbeard. There's a feeling of "we were promised virtual reality, and all we got was talking heads of influencers." The hardware apparently has GPS, but that's turned off. So, no Pokemon Go yet. Not even Hyperreality.[1] It's all about ads and clicks.
It can't draw dark. The workaround seems to be to dim out the world and draw light overlays, like almost everybody else. Will it work in bright daylight?
It's just to show what's possible, and to presumably jump the gun on their competitors
Elaborate. Do you mean this with regards to the data that users will generate when using the device? Or the privacy of the people around the wearer?
I try hard to be kind, but I will have very little patience for any individual who wears always-on cameras that infringe on my privacy. I don't use social media for a reason. Meta just wants to sell surveillance devices so they can collect more data, and will try to convince us it is for our benefit.
Do you not consider HN social media?
Not funded by ads, not about building a network of 'friends'. I consider HN more of a link sharing site.
HN is as much social media as any other platforms: traffic driven by popularity, echo chamber, bias, or algorithm.
HN is not a link sharing site. The links aren’t organized by natural order such as the alphabet. You aren’t here for the links, but for the comments.
Sites like FB were referred to as social networking. But then the terms got conflated.
Overall i dont care to film or take pics of anyone but what im experiencing in life and those Im with. No doubt that's how what the majority of Meta Ray ban wearings are using their smart glasses too.
A year of wearing them and fairly often smart glasses are the next big thing yet they will not replace the smart phone as these tech dudes say they will. You can not take a selfies with smart glasses and we are narcissistic beings.
I'm not a violent person but wouldn't rule out using my fists if someone was filming me or my kids. That said, I live in Japan, so they'll more than likely be banned or heavily restricted like other devices used to make covert recordings.
And yeah like in the future, these will shrink in size. Probably by half in five years. Remember in 2018 when we were wondering if we'd ever have the compute available to do "inside out tracking"? Now it's expected as a minimum requirement. How far we've come.
They look like what army personnel used to call “birth control glasses”. Only extra thick for added protection.
Ugh. My own petard.
The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.
–Jeff Hammerbacher
Oh lament! for what, not just the future, but the present, could have been.
Edited to add: But! Even as I have just written that and stand by it, I just don't know if humanity could have done it any other way. One must sell their soul to 'the green', even just a little, to have the time and space for the kind of creativity that will create a better future. Will we forever have to wade, neck-deep, through trash to find each tiny piece of the puzzle that, when enough pieces are put together, forms at least a picture of a brighter future?
Now it seems like ads are driving everything. (Sure, including ads on porn, but I highly doubt porn dominates the ad market overall.)
It seems like the widespread adoption that drives and is driven by technological progress always comes down to catering to some base urge. I guess if you zoom out, everything is driven by base urges, just more or less directly?
So far, the puzzle pieces have always been found in the filthy heap of slop the feeds our primitive brains. We have not yet elected someone because they're the wisest, best fit for the position. It's always the person who can stroke our egos and soothe our fears, who lies with a smile that we choose to trust even when we know it's a lie. It's always a lie. We buy the product that makes us feel best to buy. Sometimes these happen to momentarily coincide with our best interests, but usually not, and never after the competition for our eyeballs and gonads has been minmaxed. Rational superiority is never the deciding factor—even when we convince ourselves that it is, it's that conviction that makes us feel good and determines our action.
For posterity, this is completely true; people not liking it does not make it untrue.
VHS adoption was driven by the fact that time shifting content was a godsend that people loved. This is a huge reason VHS beat betamax, because you could fit more football games on the VHS, even in it's abysmal longest recording quality. People bought VHS recorders well before anyone was releasing ANY media on VHS.
Name a single video compression codec or ASIC that was produced by or for a porn company. Math geeks made compression codecs well before they were viable for software encoding on general purpose computers, and then set top box manufacturers drove the adoption and development of ASICs that could actually use those codecs.
What porn HAS driven is innovation in video streaming platform UI. Youtube has stolen every nice feature it has from Pornhub, who usually deployed them years earlier.
I think you're quibbling over what "driven by" means. Porn was not the origin of any of these, but there's pretty good evidence that its popularity played a significant role in the adoption of technologies ranging from the printing press to photography to streaming video. VHS being cheaper and recording longer caused it to be adopted by the porn producers, which resulted in much more porn being available on VHS, which tilted things in its favor. (Well, that and Sony's ambivalence towards porn on Betamax.) Geeks indeed liked to work on compression, but nobody would have cared without an application for it, and a big chunk of early internet traffic was porn. The difference between waiting 5 vs 30 minutes for a download is pretty influential. Devices with hardware acceleration, including ASICs, were popular because people had applications for them, and a solid percentage of those applications were porn.
I grew up during the development of all of these technologies. I've never been one for watching porn, but even then, it was pretty clear at least in my environment that porn was very influential. Hints and tricks to download and decode compressed video spread very rapidly through word-of-mouth networks, specifically for porn content.
Earlier, the same thing happened for stills, which were more my thing so I have firsthand knowledge. Heck, the standard test image was Lena—what showed up in the research papers was tame, but the extra 2/3 of the image below that is the reason why that was the most popular test image. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna
Well I just have to reference Futurama now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlCrcMeVZHs
Which is incomplete without: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGklt4BSQ8
I would love to see ads on these, at least once. In contrast, I've never had any interest to even try Apple's VR headset. This is one of the most well-put v1 products ever.
Avoid the MKDBHC trap (or however it's spelled). Innovation beats cynicism, every day.
There's a reason why there's no other similar device on the market right now (i.e. same capabilities).
Also, the interaction through the arm muscles is just awesome (two v1s for the price of one :D). I've been waiting for that kind of UI for decades.
Google actually had it developed about 10 years ago as one of their moonshot projects; but they also had Pichai already, who is dumb as a rock. I could believe he's secretly on the payroll of many competing companies, lol.
See-through AR and pass-through VR are not remotely the same thing.
AR is much harder.
They have quite an accomplishment with those glasses, even if image quality isn't great and they're still too heavy.
I still don't see a problem that these solve at any price, which has been the enduring problem with AR and makes me bearish on if a next generation of these glasses is anything more than an expensive toy.
MKBHD? I don't think cynicism is something he's particularly well-known for, but maybe I'm wrong.
They can only rely on 3p devs if they allow access to the hardware.
So there are many things very important to Apple e.g. running apps, creating content, watching movies etc. that AR glasses are completely useless for.
Never really understand why people keep comparing AR to XR. Very different use cases.
Till these products are common place and people have tried them, it’s unfortunately always going to be the case that the distinction is not intuitive to (effectively) a layperson.
Similarly Google has invested in 3D displays that use lightfield displays, with Project Starline.
One would assume Apple has many lines of research towards AR glasses, but nothing is publicly known.
Meta plays the asymmetry game. Apple and OpenAI are secret shops. Meta Orion and Llama can benefit from being more open.
This is going to be a very interesting platform battle to watch.
https://www.tomsguide.com/news/apple-glasses-reportedly-dela...
Apple plays the long game clearly. Wouldn’t be surprised if the Apple Vision Air already exists in an early beta form in their labs.
Vision Pro could even be a red herring to get apps developed, so when their true mass market product launches it will already have thousands of native apps.
1. wireless data transfer and how that affects the performance
2. EMG: this is alright, but seems to be a bit overhyped
3. MicroLED: clearly the best display technology available, but how close is color display to consumer price levels?
4. silicon carbide: great material, interested in seeing it at scale
5. magnesium frame: super awesome to see this being pushed as wel
This link weights in 115MB. It loads a 30MB GIF for its hero image. That's from a company that was born on and from the Web. The people that brought you React.
Se for yourself: https://about.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/01_Why-AR-Gl...
They have since optimized it and it now weights 23.5MB. Yey.
I just converted it to MP4 and it's 1.7MB. Hire me Meta, I can make your videos load 10X faster with a single ffmpeg command.
Does it feel right when you’re selling a device for visual consumption and the main animation takes forever to load, plays at 12fps while spiking up your CPU?
So it's not that clear to me which one of these is complex and which simple.
Filtering out billboards on the highway is reducing their impressions, and thus reducing the money that ultimately goes into repairing the road you're driving on.
The modified AR device will instead filter ads, but charge 0.03 cents per ad filtered, and each advertiser will get 0.02 cents each time their ad is filtered. Facebook of course keeps the remaining 30% for facilitating the ad and anti-ad marketplace.
Eventually there will be a bidding war where advertisers will require you to pay 0.10c not to view their ad, which they'll have made increasingly unpleasant to look at, and you'll have to adjust your device's balance and payment thresholds to avoid getting hit by AR jumpscares as you drive around.
Anyway, I pay on average $0.35c per youtube video not to look at ads based on the cost of youtube premium vs the number of videos I watch in a month, so honestly the above price-point seems like a good deal.
i can't tell if this is satire or not lol
I imagine that there will be ad blocking hacks just like there are ad blockers on browsers. So not a huge difference from the current situation.
1) Try and maintain some piece of software on your device to overlay real-world adds? 2) Try and maintain some piece of software on your device to block AR adds?
I personally don't ...
It is incredibly clever, and you have to respect the technology, but the endgame here is horrific.
But to the extent you're pitching it as some sort of reactionary lashing out against the bright glorious shining future... sorry. It's not me. It's tech. There has been a real change in the tech space. I used to just be able to take nearly for granted that tech is going to benefit me. Now I can't.
I phrased it as I did on purpose; to do things against my interest. If you are not actively guarding yourself against that, you're a victim of it, probably a great deal more than you realize. To ignore that aspect of tech is sheer foolishness and getting more dangerous by the year.
Just check the website in their profile. Cryptocurrency, hell they had a role in Libra (fb coin that got shut down by the SEC i believe). Not a victim but a perpetrator.
Tech was a lot more fun when the builders were amoral ("I'm just gonna build this, and if somebody misuses it, that's not my problem") rather than straight up immoral, but here we are.
The poor bank reps haven’t got a clue what to do, mainly because absolutely no one else has ever refused before. The vast majority of people in the modern world have no grasp of what is going on, and will not until it is too late.
But that isn't the case! Snap will only rent them to you at $1200/year [0], can't imagine what the BOM is like for either of these products.
> As Meta’s executives retell it, the decision to shelve Orion mostly came down to the device’s astronomical cost to build, which is in the ballpark of $10,000 per unit. Most of that cost is due to how difficult and expensive it is to reliably manufacture the silicon carbide lenses. When it started designing Orion, Meta expected the material to become more commonly used across the industry and therefore cheaper, but that didn’t happen.
Plus Snap's core business is a mess I don't see how they could really compete with Meta on this they'll run out of money first.
It's cool to see Meta's continued work/focus in this space - a polished internal prototype is probably the right place for this hardware.
Snap is worth $20B, Meta is worth $1.5T. No comparison.
It says something that sony has the ability to fail like that and continue. Just like FB failed at the metaverse after doubling and tripling down about how it was the future of the company before it just kinda stopped talking about it.
Companies with this much cash can take risks and fail with little to no concequences, smaller companies cannot and thus often choose not compete or just HOPE that they get bought by one of these near monopolies.
While you’re correct that it does massively help, money is only a resource, which you can use to trade for a lot of things, but there are people, things and abstract concepts that money can’t buy.
Which is why it is probably better to be just constrained enough financially that your first attempt really matters to your bottom line, but have enough to be able to pull it off.
Startups have less money, but invent new fields because of the differentiated advantage that comes from being smaller and faster (among other things). This is Snap competing in the same arena against Zuckerberg who is a lot better capitalized and better at it.
It'd be one thing to do if Snap was otherwise firing on all cylinders and trying to expand into the platform of the future, but it seems like they never recovered from Apple's ATT and are blowing money on passion projects that are not competitive.
What do I know? I'm just an outsider, but I'd buy Meta and sell Snap. If you disagree, the other direction is probably a lot more profitable if you're right.
However if you want to appeal to people outside a work environment something that looks like actual glasses is the way forwards. This looks like it still has a couple of years until it reaches that goal, but it seems like Zuckerberg's ambition towards XR will pay off eventually
VRChat, of all things, has some interesting experimentation going on in this space. For example, there are avatars that will link up with your other SteamVR apps to show a placeholder screen or other indicator on the avatar when you have an overlay floating window active that's totally separate from VRChat.
Exciting work! It seems like the main problems are now in miniaturizing electronics (and not optics) into a Ray-Ban form factor? Super cool.
Neither is Snap's offering. They're renting out Devkits.
With Orion, no devkits publicly available either.
That being said I'm about the furthest thing from a fashion critic - only Kirkland Signature touches this body.
Where does Meta actually talk about things that could really be called "cool" at a society level? Or is it all just empty hype along the lines of Facebook being exploitation of social networking.
If you have a smartwatch, there's a company out there that knows every breath you take, and every move you make.
Might as well get AR in the mix now that we're here. There are lots of pure sci-fi applications that come with smart glasses.
- AR directions
- all sorts of tutorials for things where you work with your hands. Imagine how easy IKEA furniture can be!
- never forget another name
- metadata about spare parts, products, and recipe ingredients as you look at them
- incredible military applications - team awareness, situational map, aiming reticule
I'm not a fan of the data being in the hands of a large corporation, but I AM a fan of more video recordings that are not government owned (cough London, Beijing, etc) that helps shine one more light of accountability on the "powers that be".
In all seriousness, your point about Beijing and London makes sense - the horse has bolted on public filming, so every citizen having an always-on camera is probably the best and most likely outcome.
There's no good normal from some people being able to deeply track some other people using all the tools available. It should be strictly forbidden for individuals and corporations to collect and organize this information, and use by government should be strictly limited.
On the other hand, it should be perfectly normal and good for individuals to deeply track companies and governments as bodies. The lack of a society wide focus on this aspect is quite troubling.
They flooded the headset market by selling subsidized hardware at a massive loss for years which aggressively redirected funding away from abitious, interesting projects utilizing desktop levels of compute (next-gen 3D modeling and sculpting, architecture, fluid simulation) to Beat Saber level mobile game shovelware that has to be able to run on a cell phone
And you can literally use it with a PC via wifi or a cable.
Pushing normal glasses without making the subject look like dorks (nerds are unattractive) or "glassholes" (Google glass tech bros) will be a challenge.
harumph. This tech is cool, but there's a worrying trend of important tech companies creating larger than life PR announcements without anything I can actually get my hands/eyes on
It also invigorates current devs for Quest by showing them what their apps could run on in the future
Funny thing is a company called Micronics actually recently launched an actual Kickstarter campaign for something they planned to ship to consumers, then they decided to sell to some enterprise company instead and cancel the campaign.
So even stuff that was advertised as for consumers isn't safe from never actually happening
When I had a Note 2 in 2012, many found its size impractical or embarrassing. Acceptance came through clear utility, not just ubiquity.
For AR glasses to succeed, they need to prioritize seamless functionality. The more obtrusive the design, the higher the utility must be. Focus on a small set of functions— Loads can be done with voice, sound, and a simple visuals like 64x64 pixels. And offer a range of frame styles where the tech is noticeable but no more than an "ah, smart frames" from others.
*Edited for brevity of my run-ons
I hate my iPhone mini 13 because it is too fucking big for my giant hands.
However, at this point, carrying a phone is basically mandatory, and it (and the giant se3) were/are the smallest workable ones on the market.
It’s too bad you can’t cut the razr 2024 in half at the hinge and have one side still work!
I don't personally see the appeal of hands-free as a paradigm in most cases. Do we really want people talking on and looking at Zoom as they walk around the office? Or as they drive? Or as they are out shopping? I also see ESPN and YouTube, so yeah... this thing better detect when you're moving at speed and disable video apps.
I'm just struggling to see when you would be in a setting where you should use these, that you shouldn't be using a device you already have. It's like trying to sell me on using a smartwatch to take voice calls: sure, there is exactly 1 situation I can think of where that's useful, which is getting a call when I'm out running and don't want to "lug" a whole phone with me. But I sure don't want to be wearing glasses when I otherwise don't need to (and these aren't prescription, so you are), just in case someone tries to Zoom me unplanned.
Can you imagine how goofy you'd look sitting at a coffee shop and just sort of staring into the middle distance and talking, as you take a Zoom call?
* If I don't have my earbuds, I'll use them to listen to a podcast or even some songs while outside
* I use the AI assistant ALL THE TIME, it's soooo practical to have it always on, I don't need to pick up my phone it's like someone is always next to me ready to answer any questions I have
* I record videos and take pictures with it all the time, it's so much faster than taking out my phone if I need to quickly catch something, also as people don't realize your filming I have super authentic videos with my friends and family where people aren't acting weird because they realize they're being filmed (I think this is going to go away as soon as these become more mainstream, so this is THE moment to catch some memories with it IMO!)
* Mine are prescription sunglasses, so I use them by design when I'm outside during sunny days, so all of that is just additional bonus I get for free just by wearing my sunglasses
This is my personal hell.
I thought it was very gimmicky, I tried taking lots of family photos but none of them were any good, between the vertical format and, you know, not being able to frame the shot. Also I never adapted to having an LLM in my ear (big network induced lag times didn't help), so ymmv
All I want are glasses that can tell me where I left my wallet but I don't think we'll see it this decade.
AR via a phone/tablet seems to me to be just as good an interface as any headgear once you factor in the social cues when using AR around other people. Even then, I can't think of non-entertainment contexts where AR is actually worth the effort over a screen interface.
This I agree with.
> AR via a phone/tablet seems to me to be just as good an interface as any headgear
This I cannot agree with. If you've used recent VR, you know it's the "real deal". We've caught up on the computing capabilities required for full color passthrough and even fairly lightweight headsets. Right now it's a matter of miniaturization, and bringing the cost down beyond the $10,000 price tag that current experiments are running.
If AR becomes a mainstream thing, people are going to want to ditch their phones the moment a good headset is available. If it's not (and I suspect it won't be; "AR" already exists on our phones and hasn't been popular since Pokemon GO) then people will remain apathetic.
People already do that using mobile phones. With glasses there is at least some visibility of things in front of you.
And I find being on a video call with someone just on audio very creepy.
If I'm not a weirdo for that, then it's distinctly worse than a hands free voice call, which we already have
I can see this being extremely useful, especially if the person on the other can see what you're looking at. Interactive remote troubleshooting!
> Can you imagine how goofy you'd look sitting at a coffee shop and just sort of staring into the middle distance and talking, as you take a Zoom call?
No goofier than someone talking through their airpods.
Honestly, people used to say the same thing about Bluetooth hands-free devices years ago, and now no one even bats an eye when someone talks using AirPods.
Some people act like the rest of us are NPCs.
In other words: This was normalized a generation ago.
And now I feel very old.
Almost as annoying as people in airports/planes now watching their phones with no headphones. All out giving no ficks to people around them
We absolutely do. And there are certain etiquettes that have evolved around airpods/ handsfree phone calls, that can make you weird or even rude to violate.
A vastly larger screen where you don't have to crane your neck down to read the news? That sounds amazing for my daily commute, and so much healthier for my neck and shoulders.
And visible directions while cycling would be amazing, when it's unsafe to glance at your phone. (Audio directions aren't nearly as good, and wearing headphones/earbuds while cycling is illegal in a lot of places as well.) A heads-up display in your car should be safer too than looking down at the screen.
And if people are having video calls while walking, that doesn't seem any goofier or creepier from audio calls with earbuds, where it already looks like somebody talking to nobody.
A big glowing arrow is going to distract me far less than tiny street name signs.
AR is a big win here. In fact there are all sorts of safety improvements you can imagine for cycling specifically, including making you more aware of vehicles she other cyclists behind you to the side.
Well designed AR apps would definitely be an improvement over looking down at a mounted phone, too.
> A heads-up display in your car should be safer too than looking down at the screen
The HUD in a car can't play YouTube. If you only use your glasses to show directions, that's great, but that's not the issue. Distracted drivers and riders is.
The actual, safe thing to do when you don't know which streets are which, or where you need to go, is to pull over to check, whether you're in a car or on a bike.
> A vastly larger screen where you don't have to crane your neck down to read the news?
The size part could be nice (though hands-free web navigation is a pain), but why do you have to crane your neck? You can lift your phone screen up to eye-level.
It would be easy enough for safety regulations to limit permitted AR content when a person is driving. In fact, I'd be surprised if governments didn't -- I mean, the device manufacturers themselves would probably do it first. If someone died or killed someone) because they were watching YouTube while driving, can you imagine the public outcry and corporate brand damage?
> If you only use your glasses to show directions, that's great, but that's not the issue.
No, that's exactly the issue. Using glasses for their benefits. That's the part you seem to be ignoring.
> is to pull over to check
That's wildly unrealistic, not to mention full of its own safety problems. Where I live, there's literally nowhere to pull over -- there are lanes for driving and street parking. Period. And are you really going to be fulling to a full stop every five blocks or something?
> You can lift your phone screen up to eye-level.
Have you tried that? Do you realize the amount of shoulder fatigue that produces, and the resulting muscle tension that can produce long-term? Good luck holding your phone at eye level for 20 minutes. Perhaps you should try it before suggesting it.
Putting stuff in front of your phase is a more natural interface than having to hold a rectangle you look into. But the friction of phone screens might be quite healthy to society.
On the other hand in blue collar work this is invaluable. Basically the same market every other AR headset is going after: overlaying plans or live sensor data over your viewpoint, being able to share a common viewpoint when troubleshooting with people remotely, sending out low-skilled people on support calls with experts directing them remotely, etc
While I agree with you, you could also say the same thing about mashing a black square with your thumbs at a coffee shop or walking around a grocery store with little piece of plastic in your ear and talking to someone.
Yes, you can. And I would.
Never seemed to take off though.
Watching content & or working using smart glasses doesn't make sense to me but using them to ask it count how many ppl in a room, keep the score of my pickleball game or whatever game that involves using vision to keep score and many other innovative ideas are useful to exciting prospects personally.
Yet overall my Ray bans are a great pair of sunglasses that let me take pics or video either hands free or not. They need improvement when using to talk on phone and upon a year of using them smart glasses I don't think will replace the smartphone as u cant take selfies with them.
yeah, I do that daily with xreal glasses. Never met more interesting people like this. As I can see normally but with a very large screen, people sit next to me , want to try and often buy them themselves on the spot. I also don't have to carry an annoying laptop.
See, I feel like maybe this is the disconnect I'm having from others who seem to enjoy AR/ VR.
My laptop isn't "annoying" to me, it's fun. I want an excuse to use it, and it's customized out the wazzoo. Right now I'm building a cyberdeck using a FriendlyElec CM3588 and I'm making the case out of wood, after modeling it out in FreeCAD. I've been drooling over all the customization I can do with a fully bespoke setup.
...And you can't be wearing glasses, otherwise you can't pull your shades down afterwards as you shake out your mullet.
Reference cyberdeck to pull this off: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberDeck/comments/10fk91k/cyberdec...
It is funny as I do want to make a synth / compute cyberdeck in one. Nice.
Has anyone made a tool for that yet? Maybe use llama, provide all of a person’s online profiles as context and ask it to determine the persons fears, weaknesses etc.
The educational potential for AR is absolutely incredible. Imagine being able to look down at a breadboard, and have it overlay explanations, diagrams, current flows, etc.
Imagine putting a person in front of you who is juggling (mills mess, box pattern, etc) and slowing it down to exactly see how to learn it.
Imagine being able to practice drawing by putting a model of any human in the center of your room, and walk around it as you sketch on actual canvas.
Imagine being able to head to the nearest open soccer field, and throw down a bunch of ninjas throwing ninja stars at you, and you have to physically duck and weave while running full tilt down the field.
These took me 10 seconds to think of a bunch of things that I would personally want assuming the AR glasses can eventually overcome bright light, good battery life, etc.
I'd be interesting in knowing what the battery life of this thing is... I get that the compute is being done on the puck, but there seems to be almost no room for battery in those lenses... And even the puck looks small to be honest... Surely no more than a couple of hours of power, likely quite a bit less.
I also wonder what the latency is like between the puck and glasses... Latency is such an important aspect of creating a convincing AR experience and judging by the video the Verge posted it looks like latency is pretty bad. I thought the reason compute for AR/VR is typically done on device is because it's the quickest and most reliable way to do it.
> Micro LED projectors inside the frame that beam graphics in front of your eyes via waveguides in the lenses
> [requires] wireless compute puck that resembles a large battery pack for a phone
> [glasses weigh] 98 grams
> the battery only lasts about two hour
> Orion was supposed to be a product you could buy.
> $10,000 per unit [to build]
is about the worst conceivable decision a consumer could make, technology and oo ahh notwithstanding.
They have not only proven durably resistant to even their own tepid self-constraint, hostile to oversight, entirely willing to violate the law, and disinterested in basic moral restraint,
the story—literally today—is about Zuckerberg's now open disregard for ethical action, under the tutelage of Thiel.
Which is a long way of saying that even if this generation of AR devices don’t take off, they will eventually. And they will most likely become the default way most people use a computing device. I cannot imagine a future where people prefer to hold a little black box in their hands instead of putting on a pair of glasses. In a century we may look back at the screen phone model as a curious anachronism.
I actually think it may be the opposite: direct input like keyboards might be around longer simply because they don’t require you to be looking at your hands to use them. Both touchscreens and AR goggles do.
There's a reason that mice and keyboards are faster and more accurate than touchscreens, and it's that there is a physical+visual feedback occurring that our brains are used to processing when handling other physical objects. Touchscreens have no haptic component (or they have a vibration that is disconnected from the action that you're actually doing on the screen), so you're relying entirely on visual cues. It's slower and less accurate. Compare max WPM on physical vs touch keyboards, for instance.
Moving to AR/VR is even worse, because the lag time is much larger than on a touchscreen, and in the case of VR, your hands are completely hidden.
We're not, for tasks that require speed and accuracy (like typing). We're mostly using keyboards and mice/ trackpads. Touchscreens are used on low-impact, secondary devices like phones or tablets.
I've never once seen someone, whose work is digital, replace their computer with a phone as their primary work device.
You are somewhat arguing against a straw man here. I was talking about phones being unnatural and thus replaced by AR/VR.
I agree that pane-of-glass, non-reactive and non-tactile input is unnatural, but AR and VR are literally that turned up to 1000. Doing the zoom finger-pinch in midair is even less natural than doing it on a glass screen.
Generally, a large magnitude of value is created during "platform shifts" and they have now placed (really good) bets on VR/AR and AI (LLMs).
It's not just unpopular, it's just wrong.
Even if Zuckerberg's vision is good (and there's no reason to think it is, because he famously doesn't understand human beings and has never come up with a single product idea that became popular), he clearly has no ability to execute.
Spending $50B in a few years with almost no revenue to show for it has to be the biggest business failure of all time. Can you name a bigger one? Sure, Musk has destroyed roughly that much value on paper, but Zuckerberg actually set that much cash on fire building the Metaverse that no one asked for and no one uses.
This point is at least contentious. I am not going to go into weeds, but I fail to see how you can make a product that literally popularizes the term “network effects” without vision. You can say he “stole” the idea for facebook, but what about everything after? Ideas are cheap.
> no ability to execute
I see no evidence of this. How does someone scale from $0 to $1T without the ability to execute?
> Spending $50B in a few years with almost no revenue to show for it has to be the biggest business failure of all time.
I also think the metaverse was a failure. But I think they failed fast and have more experience in that area than any other company. They basically spent $50B to get data on the intial vision for the metaverse. Their stock and business has fully recovered.
It was a hedge against being “too late” and they got the timing wrong.
It’s one thing if you fail and the business goes bankrupt. It’s a completely different scenario when they recover completely. How does “the biggest business failure of all time” not end in that business going bankrupt?
Off the top of my head I am pretty sure hundreds of billions of dollars of value vanished after the Lehman Brothers collapse.
In tech (adjacent) you got worldcom, which was of a similar magnitude but in y2k dollars.
I made a bet 10 years ago with a friend that VR headsets would never gain wide adoption among the general public (back when Facebook bought Oculus), and I think it's fair to say I've won this bet. With these glasses, I'm not so sure, but if I had to, I would bet against them as well. Time will tell...
The lack of any fast head movement in all the demo videos also makes me think that they did not at all solve the latency problem, and all the slow deliberate movement is to hide that.
CTRL+F-ing for "occlusion" or "latency" has zero results, further compounding the worries
Yes, you can keep improving the hardware, but you'd think we would have figured out something that is better enough in VR or AR on current hardware. Even gamers, who are notoriously interested in buying silly peripherals, care almost zero about VR gaming. Even with huge games like Half-Life: Alyx that are universally praised and part of huge franchises from AAA developers.
* Looks very cool and more natural. (In comparison, look at Snap XR Glasses)
* No wires sticking out.
* Not a huge VR headset.
* Can see what you see through the lenses for XR capabilities.
* Controllable through eyes, hands and neural interface to cover almost all scenarios without looking awkward in public.
* Integrates with an existing app ecosystem.
Orion is very promising and appears to be in the lead for mainstream XR glasses so far.
In general, it appears that everyone here misjudged and betted against Meta and Zuck when they were at $93 with calls for Zuck to be 'fired' when the stock crashed. [0] Now the stock is at all time highs.
Remember. They didn't even mention Threads. At all. It is another way for them to monetize that if they want to.
That is true founder mode and the death of Meta Platforms Inc. has been absolutely exaggerated.
I wonder what's actually in the frames. You wouldn't put bulk there if you had any other choice.
In my experience, everyone hates Dropbox, and especially that it's always popping up asking you to sign in, and that it's preinstalled on fresh Windows installs whether you want it or not.
Would you recommend Proton maybe?
I don't use Nextcloud to have instant access, I use it for redundancy for critical data that I don't want only living on my phone or laptop (like tax and legal docs), but that's also data that I don't want to hand to a third party app willy-nilly.
The original comment about Dropbox was saying how everyone can "trivially" implement Dropbox using a network share and hence it has no reason to exist - but obviously this is wrong.
Many HN commenters are now saying how they won't ever buy anything from Meta. That's fair, but brand perceptions shift - newer generations are already at a point where they are way more comfortable sharing their lives and branding themselves than before - wanting to be a YouTuber now is what wanting to be an astronaut was in the past. A lot of the reputational damage dealt to Meta is US-centric (e.g. Cambridge Analytica), and the HN crowd, being mostly Western and privacy-aware amplifies that. The average person who's using Meta's services doesn't read HN, and is certainly much less critical of Meta.
Also, I think AR glasses has lots of potential as an eventual phone replacement. I'll give an example - virtual humans that exist in your glasses that can act as a fitness trainer, tennis coach, rock bouldering buddy that you can summon anytime. I think we are kind of all glued to the same pane of glass for too long and give it 5-10 years for the pendulum to swing, this blending of physical and virtual will become very interesting.
I don't know how anyone is excited to hear, "hey, with this you can watch videos just like on your phone, but the video is also kinda transparent so it's harder to see!" (which it has to be, or we're really gonna be seeing car accidents skyrocket).
I think there is value in doing certain things one-at-a-time, with full attention, but this makes some of those into overlays that you're now sharing with other tasks.
[1]: https://newatlas.com/vr/voxon-photonics-3d-hologram-volumetr...
Phones are here to stay, but I was hinting on how only a few years ago it's hard to envision how a person could live a modern life without smartphones, and yet increasingly products are coming out that reduce our phone reliance - from modern dumbphones [1], to cellular smartwatches, to (the failed) Humane Pin, and now this. Which in my opinion actually has the best shot at dethroning the phone.
Whether this outcome would be better I don't know, but with every new wave there's an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and fix them. Take watching short videos for example, I don't think most would agree it's the best use of time, yet people watch them out of compulsion. A form factor that discourages watching videos might actually be better in this case. Ultimately I think a lot of what people currently do on their phones will have an alternative on AR. It's not 1-to-1, but it'll be pretty damn close.
For this to work I essentially have to trust Facebook to film what's in front of me whenever I wear them. Not in a million years.
edit: though I got to admit it has advanced "not hotdog" capabilities...
Many glasses wearers have their glasses on for all their waking hours. That might even be the most common scenario. I can't see for shit without specs. I don't wear them in the shower, but that's about it.
2. "It was so challenging that we thought we had less than a 10% chance of pulling it off successfully." Definitely a targeted message to the activist investors urging FB to stick to social media haha. Love it, and believe them 100% on the specific claim! Supposedly Apple Vision came about when they finally gave up on traditional AR (for now).
3. "Zuckerberg imagines that people will want to use AR glasses like Orion for two primary purposes: communicating with each other through digital information overlaid on the real world — which he calls “holograms” — and interacting with AI." I hope to god "AI" as a term looses steam -- basically all he's saying is that this computer will be used for computing. Yes, indeed.
4. "To demonstrate how two people wearing Orion together could interact with the same holograms, I played a 3D take on Pong with Zuckerberg... Zuckerberg beat me, unfortunately." I find it somewhat hilarious how Zuckerberg, Bezos and Elon are simultaneously some of the most powerful people to ever live, and at the same time mascots for multinational conglomerates bigger than they could ever hope to truly understand or control. Zuckerberg is obviously the best mascot out of the bunch, and this is only further proof of that.
5. Wow, the Neural Wristband is insanely cool. Just... wow. I haven't seen anyone even hinting at that, but it seems incredibly obvious in hindsight. See this exploratory paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12652-020-01852-z Hilariously, it seems that the initial consumer usecase was a $200 powerpoint remote -- props to the free market! https://wearabletech.io/myo-bracelet .
6. I feel like calling EMG "neural" is a stretch, it seems to be monitoring muscle contraction events only... Is anyone else convinced that they're intentionally using the word to prepare consumers for upcoming non-invasive EEG BCI tech, now that LLM approaches like DeWave have unlocked it? They've certainly got an uphill battle ahead of them to separate it from a) scary scifi and b) scary invasive EEG BCI like Neuralink. But it's just the obvious next step; the glasses already touch your frontal cortex, even!
"neural" was a somewhat contentious term to academics, but it's the easiest way to describe to consumers. Academics consider neural interfaces to be directly touching the neurons, whether an invasive BCI, or an invasive device touching part of the peripheral nervous system. Technically this is a "neuromotor" interface, motor meaning detecting muscle, rather than neuron, activity. This makes academics happy but confuses some people, so neural it is.
If I hold your fist/fingers and you try to make gestures, how do you expect the device to behave? I.e., if you think of a movement and signal that intention, but are not capable of carrying that through, because of someone else's hand, a mug, etc.
I'm guessing this naive understanding is off the mark, from the phrasing of your question?
There are videos of people able to control virtual hands even with partial or missing fingers, be that since birth or after some event, see e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woXmJMw2lTM&t=4717s
For leisure the only thing I'd want a display on my face for is reading books and news.
Sometimes upfront demand isn't the only indicator that matters.
The smartphone enabled always-available computing. Glasses will enable always-on computing.
That's a bold claim for glasses this comically thick.
If you're interested in more normal-looking glasses with a HUD, I suggest taking a look at Even Realities G1 [1] — I have not seen them in person, but at least in photos / videos they don't scream "a piece of tech".
You could make a case that nobody needs more than a monochrome HUD but I think there will be a place for both categories of products in the future, until eventually the hologram version is miniaturized enough to make the HUD version obsolete.
That is it. I have wanted just this, for decades.
I have lived a lot of my life in places where I don't speak the local language. I have Auditory Processing Disorder and a speech impediment that, if I don't have a good 'script' to go along with, makes it very difficult for me to get by in public often. I currently live in a country where my anxiety is amplified by the fact that any mis-spoken words by me often results in straight up being berated at a faster speed than I can understand, instead of being helped. I feel like am absolute idiot every time I have to just go get something at the pharmacy or ask for something new at the bakery. I've tried for years, taking courses, to learn to listen closer and work on my grammar and vocab, but I'm aging and have just gotten worse and worse.
Most interactions would go smooth if I could just have a few key moments translated for me. I feel like this is a no brainer of tech now that we have super reliable speech-to-text in multiple languages and pretty damn good audio filtering to pickout the main converstation from background noise. I'd even let the model run on a laptop in my backpack to keep the glasses down in size to something that, again, doesn't make me look like some VR dweeb. And no cameras in the glasses staring at people making them question my motives or draining the battery. Just the essentials.
Please. I've been seeing promises of this for literally 20 years. I just need those few lines of text in ~640x200 pixels in front of me to help me get by. Fuck it, give me a 9600 bps serial-over-bluetooth to the display and make it 'dumb' and I'll write the software myself..
To just get floating text, all you need is a micro laser projector in the arm of the glasses pointed at a section of the lens that reflects and focuses the projection onto your retina, at a virtual focus so that it appears in front of you.
Google bought a company that was making a dev kit of these a few years ago (I believe it was called North and the glasses were called Focals). But, as we know, google does this all the time and then kills shit. So I was happy at first because google said they were going to use this to do exactly what I describe above as their first killer app for the glasses. But then... nothing.
Vuzix is another player in the game but with micro-led displays via waveguide instead, and they seem to actually be selling product, but at something like $800 it's just too much to try out just to do my own dev work for.
Just so we're on the same page... you do think this is a bad thing, right?
AR experiences on headsets and on phones have been bouncing around for years. There was a big push with new XR toolkits from Apple and Android a few years ago. Yet no one has ever produced anything more than a demo of something nifty. The one and only "killer app" remains Pokemon Go which is really just a clever gimmick. I think this is a classic solution in search of a problem.
For me this is such a no brainer that I always just wonder how people hold the point of view that they can't see a use for it no matter how good it gets.
While the tech is great, It should be affordable and usable, On the Interface
Voice - More and more, i feel like Voice is not a good interface as not many wants to speak aloud to get things done (see Alexa and Google home - only used as timers mostly) except for dictation.
Hand Tracking - We all know usable how touch screen on a laptop or big screen monitor is , the time and distance for travel with hand is too high compared to a mouse.
Eye Tracking - Seems to Lacks precision
Neural Link - Not sure how neural link is for using keyboard and stuff. Until we get neural link to read our thoughts, we may rely on keyboards and using multiple fingers are the fastest way.
Did they say what it is, specifically?
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
Unless someone is actively pointing their phone at you, you can reasonably assume you're not being filmed.
this thing, on the other hand, is supposed to be on all the time. So having your head pointed in someone's general direction is going to be interpreted as "actively filming that person".
This could easily lead to getting punched in the face.
This is solidly in that category. It's a good thing they don't mean to release it to the masses, but this is going to put a negative impression if the overwhelming majority of people who actually see the thing in real life.
Just a prediction, but Meta's going to regret having people wear this in the wild.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_optical_element
These are more or less "true" holographic elements, because they rely on wave optics and interference. But the pattern is fixed at manufacturing time, not varying with the image that's being displayed. And the image being displayed to each eye is still 2D, not 3D.
Basically, an HOE can act like a system of lenses and mirrors for collimating the image from each eye's display and making it appear at a comfortable viewing distance -- but is much smaller and lighter.
I think Microsoft was first using holographic buzz word for these non-holographic displays
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens
“holographic device”
I am a bit concerned to see advertising companies at the forefront. This is a great video that demonstrates some of the risks: https://youtu.be/YJg02ivYzSs?si=KOQD8RtLR1Il1ZQl
Or it's just muscle flex and show off?
I think everyone was obviously aware that "the metaverse" and VR was obviously not what the world needed, yet they pivoted the whole company to it while they totally missed AI taking over ~everything else. Yes yes llama leak/release etc, but I am not really seeing them making any product efforts in the AI space (e.g. no ChatGPT competitor). Apple fell for it too somehow and spent gazillions on a VR headset that no one will even remember in 18 months, which is interesting how two parts of FAANG totally totally totally predicted the market completely and entirely wrong. Group think? Corporate sabotage? Corruption/fraud? It beggars belief, really it does - this was so obvious to anyone yet these two huge huge tech companies went all-in on dorky VR that will go the same way as 3D TV/movies (remember that?). Amazing really.
See www.meta.ai
Meanwhile I can use ChatGPT, Copilot, Claude, Midjourney, Gemini, Huggingface...
It's crazy to me to see people in this thread calling this "bulky". It's literally the smallest this tech has ever been! Small enough to pass for actual glasses! It has a massively wider field of view than HoloLens, despite the HoloLens being like 10x bulkier! And they somehow managed to cram eye tracking and hand tracking into the thing on top of all that? This is literally the AR future science fiction has been envisioning for years, in real life, and yet this whole thread seems to be filled with nothing but cynicism!
In another category, we have PCVR and Vision Pro, which are optimized for high-end computing experiences, and compete with high-end PCs with multiple displays in terms of capability. This category pushes the boundaries of what's possible to do with computers, and has the chance to elevate productivity to a completely new level. There aren't yet any devices / software that do this, but the idea is there.
These two categories might converge into a similar form factor somewhere in the far future, but as of now they represent the polar opposites of computing experience. However, I simply don't want the "mobile" experience in my life at all, and I don't think anyone wants it.
When I'm moving or spending time with friends, I try to put away all devices, and expect everyone to do the same. Also, I hate notifications and pop ups, and definitely don't want them on my face. On the other hand, when I'm alone, I want to immerse myself in CAD, programming or games, and I want to use the most capable devices and software. Only PCVR and Vision Pro are devices which might elevate the experience beyond of what we have today.
It probably has something to do with mass-production for a mass audience (not that they'll even succeed here). Look at the success of smartphones and compare their capabilities to full powered computers. They want to make it up on volume, so you have a quantity over quality dynamic of iOS-ified lowering of productive capacity.
>When I'm moving or spending time with friends, I try to put away all devices, and expect everyone to do the same. Also, I hate notifications and pop ups, and definitely don't want them on my face. On the other hand, when I'm alone, I want to immerse myself in CAD, programming or games, and I want to use the most capable devices and software. Only PCVR and Vision Pro are devices which might elevate the experience beyond of what we have today.
Yea, very respectable usage of technology and I relate completely, but our type is a minority of the addressable market. So toy-computers is what will be produced. This is the pessimistic reality of "democratization of technology". It makes you miss the glory days when the main target market for computers was more advanced users. Offerings for that segment could be a larger portion of sales and would thus get focus from product development that would lack today's lowest-common-denominator designs.
Without new future apps, it’s just a toy but with them, it’s the next iphone.
Contrast with Apple, who do this perfectly.
I’m convinced that this is impacting their sales. The Meta Portal was an excellent product for example, but the marketing was dreadful, so it flopped.
Interesting shot at the smartphone market but you need a big “wireless compute puck” in your pocket. Apple has the most powerful hardware at the moment that fits into a pocket and they’re also working on AR.
Assuming I have the money and don't mind the looks - why should I buy these?
This would include voice interactions where possible, but i'm sure at some point i'll see people air typing in public while they type secret messages to their assistant on their virtual keyboard.
Lex: "It just feels like we are in the same room. This is really the most incredible thing I've ever seen".
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
Sometimes consumer devices don't have widespread appeal but are so useful for some groups
For example, my grandfather when basically completely blind in his 60s. When Alexa came out in his 90s it made such a different to his quality of life in his final few years.
Not that this is a bad strategy, but it's a red flag for this particular cheap arse.
I also wanted that from HoloLens and hololens2 which I worked with for a bit but both of those were just painful for me to use and I wasn’t a fan of the display
Big Tech seems determined to strap a live network-connected HD video feed with sound to everyone's head.
I think we still have some room to grow there in terms of aesthetic for the majority though.
undoubtedly a progressive achievement in the field, despite it all
So does Meta and it's the reason they aren't actually releasing this as a product. They just showed us where they're at and gave us an idea on where they want to go in the next few years.
I'll post links here that could serve as a starting point:
- The microLED display panel vendor is likely to be Plessey: https://www.uploadvr.com/facebook-plessey-microled-deal/
- The waveguides are likely being produced "directly" by a contract manufacturer working under the direction of Meta's in-house team, and reporting appears to confirm that Meta is procuring the raw materials directly: "The silicon carbide waveguides are also proving challenging to procure. The material can deliver a wider field of view than the glass waveguides used in current transparent AR headsets, but it is also incredibly expensive. Further, Ma's report explained that because the material is used in military radars and sensors, the US government imposes strict export controls on it. That means glasses using it will have to be assembled inside the US, significantly raising the production cost, despite most of the manufacturing and components coming from China and Taiwan." https://www.uploadvr.com/meta-ar-glasses-lead-claims-as-mind...
One thing I don't understand is whether the current Orion announcement is actually a new announcement or is re-announcing an already publicized project. This article from 2023 talks about Orion and its 70 deg FOV in the past tense as a line of development which Meta considered but then decided to abandon after Orion in its plans for the 2027 consumer version to be called Artemis: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/19/23800228/meta-ar-glasses-... "Meta’s Artemis glasses will reportedly use a glass waveguide, a component that allows light to travel through the glasses and into your eyes, potentially limiting its field of view to 50 degrees. According to The Information, Meta had originally planned to use silicon carbide, which allowed for a 70-degree field of view. The downgrade could make it harder for Meta’s consumer-focused glasses to stand out among the competition, as both Microsoft’s second-gen HoloLens and the Magic Leap One sport a 50-degree field of view."
Maybe the hope is that with the Orion test devices, Meta can see whether people care about 70 deg vs 50 deg FOV enough to justify the costs of US-based waveguide manufacturing for the generation after Artemis?
Disclaimer: I worked extensively on Snap Spectacles for a number of years so I'm highly biased, but credit where credit is due: I believe both Meta and Snap have done incredible work in their AR glasses and I am excited to see the competition heating up. I also hope that both company's efforts here can motivate Apple and Google to get in the game instead of sitting around doing more or less nothing really interesting or adventurous while cautiously sitting on piles of cash, while life passes us by and we get closer every day to old age. For heck's sake, either one of those tech giants could privately fund a LITERAL moon base, and they choose not to. Why should we have to live in a boring world? Life is short and I'd rather we get to see some very magical tech soon, in our lifetimes, instead of the tech companies conservatively waiting around for more of Moore's Law to happen first or something. Even Magic Leap, though a colossal failure, pursued a wonderful vision - to create innocent, whimsical literal magic in people's lives - like the world of Harry Potter - in our real world.
Pretty cool
Glasses that let you record people without their awareness / consent?
Downright creepy
I think the best play here would be to release them without any camera functionality at all, or the connotations will be that weird, sweaty guy that no one wants to sit next to on the subway (see: Google Glass).
I think in this instance it's probably "let Meta record people and associate the data to their shadow profiles". Doubly creepy.
You can put a piece of tape over it, fill it with black nail polish, let the smoke out of the LED, or otherwise keep the light from being visible.
Props to Facebook for making it less circumventable.
I did wear the Wayfarers around and only one person commented on them (a hotel manager who recognized them while checking me in) but I definitely didn't feel comfortable just taking pictures of people without their knowing, ended up returning them because I never got a picture worth sharing anyway.
Besides, if there wasn't stigma they wouldn't have to make it so stealthy.
There are few things I could care less about than what some nobody I’ll ever see again thinks.
>if I saw someone wearing these in public
If you specifically, who I don't know and likely never will saw me wearing something like this in public and did not approve, my care factor would be nil is what I meant.
If I was to wear these in a less public setting, where perhaps I have to interact with you on a regular basis, sure, my opinion may be different.
My apologies if I misunderstood what you were trying to say.
That's not to say I would wear something like this or use it, but if it's what comes to pass, eh.
Sergey Brin sitting sad in the corner after reading this
Thats basically all cameras. AR is coming, whether meta makes it work or not.
There are ways around this, but they either require a massive public backlash, or actual regulation that requires explicit and provable permission before non-anonymised pictures/captures can be taken.
I get it, it's icky. I feel the same way. Nevertheless, this is already a thing.
Two more silicon nodes (36 months 2027) and these will be the same size as regular sunglasses
AR is a super exciting opportunity for people who spend their day looking at complicated stuff in real life- mechanics, plumbers, electricians, architects, builders, steel fabricators. This tech is definitely coming, has some really exciting and uplifting demos, and therefore marketing should be focused at this segment.
AR is a super creepy opportunity for people who want to use these in social or family settings- it comes across as sad and dysfunctional, so its baffling that this seems to be the current focus of marketing. I wonder if they are deliberately trying to impress stakeholders/investors rather than actually trying to win over consumers?
A winning strategy for a V1 product imo is a minimalist augmented reality overlay for life applications that a person's phone will do most of the processing to generate.
Google Glass but proper augmented reality rather than a simple HUD.
Vaunt, not vault.
My understanding was that it was on its way for true AR, just with limited display capabilities. e.g., if I only wanted augmented information, monochrome is just fine.
I don't really need to be able to play pong badly to consider it AR.
Monochrome AR is certainly possible, and probably 90% as useful as RGB AR. I'm just saying the Vaunt hardware seems to be display-only, i.e. a HUD, without any capability to do the registration part.
Genuine question!
But I just can't muster the excitement about this sort of thing anymore, the way I used to be able to.
This is a toxin. It's going to make our teenagers sad to the point of depression. It's going to stunt their physical development. It's going to replace the warmth of human connection with a shallow surrogate that will feel like we can't do without, but never quite gets us what we really want.
Let's just each for ourselves choose not to go down this path.
Let's seek out effort instead of comfort, and let's build our reality together out there in the real world.
For me, buttery smooth animation and synchronization of the physical and projected world are table stakes.
[The display] features Micro LED projectors inside the frame that beam graphics in front of your eyes via waveguides in the lenses. These lenses are made of silicon carbide, not plastic or glass. Meta picked silicon carbide for its durability, light weight, and ultrahigh index of refraction, which allows light beamed in from the projectors to fill more of your vision.
Through careful dispersion control in the excited propagation and diffraction modes, we design and implement our high-resolution full-color prototype, via the combination of analytical–numerical simulations, nanofabrication and device measurements... Our MOE waveguide utilizes only a single glass layer for the whole RGB spectrum, reducing unwanted diffraction and with higher efficiency. Our single-layer implementation also brings compactness and lightweight operation, while simplifying the MOE fabrication and yield.
It is not enough.
While a large improvement, those are some chunky looking glasses that I do not imagine anyone wants on their face.
These things look at least twice the thickness of anything I'd ever consider wearing in public, in any circumstance.
You realize this is a prototype and not available for sale to the general public... right?
Without relying on a tether, there's only so much you can do. You have to put some compute, battery, and optics somewhere. The optics in particular will always be fairly large just due to the physics of light and lenses.
The only way I can see us sidestepping these problems is by putting the optics somewhere else and using a fiber optic tether. Even then, you still need some optics in the glasses to project onto the display lenses.
Maybe someone will figure out how to do a transparent OLED display on the lenses directly. Even then, you've cut the bulk required for optics but you still need somewhere to put the electronics. A tether is really the only way to go if your concern is form factor.
That is literally the opposite of what Meta is saying. In fact they aren't even releasing this pair because they know it's too chunky.
It’s something straight out of a cyberpunk novel, you’re going to be walking down the street getting absolutely spammed with adds.
I’m out.
No? Then its not a platform that will get my support.
Any new device in the modern era which requires permission from a third party in order for its owners to do whatever they want with it, is not a device worth supporting.
No matter how sexy it may seem, if you need permission to do something on the device, you are not the primary customer - your personal agency is being commoditized and re-sold.
Just, no. End technological feudalism, end the hegemony.
Demand development tools which free the user-developer and the platform.
It may be niche, but it's not a failure to me and I appreciate the market. Most of my gaming is in VR and has been for years. I treat it like my steering wheel and pedals or anything else. I have a dedicated room for VR/my simrig.
For the market that want's it, it works incredibly well. Could be better, but I get being a niche developments are going to come slowly. I'm in the lucky minority I suppose in that I have no issue using it. None, not so much as a hint of nausea even far back as the original devkits. I slip the headset on in under 5 seconds, I play for anywhere from 15 minutes into the hours and I slip it off again in the same amount of time. I understand not everyone is willing to entertain that, but it's no skin off my nose. It's still one of the LESS involved hobbies I have in terms of effort honestly.
I'm probably more willing to entertain wearing technology on my face because i'm a motorcyclist and my headsets are sure as all get out lighter than my helmet is. And then after the helmet I gotta get into my personal oven aka leathers etc etc. So im probably just used to engaging in less passive activities requiring more than the bare minium I suppose. Different strokes for all us different folks I suppose.
Not for the sake of planting a flag and iterating toward it, but almost like there's a grasping at a sci-fi reality that current tech can't meet and what we're seeing are a series of commercial-grade Veruca Salt tantrums.
heavy on the might
Now, there is yet another devices that manufactures BS before it hits our eyes.
Steer clear.
Except now, it's on my face, seeing and hearing everything I'm seeing and hearing. That's a hard no, and always would be in my home and in my life.
The killer feature of AR is that it can be omnipresent in your FOV, which enables a whole class of apps that just otherwise aren't possible.
I mean, did either company use cat-names-from-the-Man-In-Black-franchise in their product line nomenclature recently?
I just wonder at how unlikely it is to collide on a high-profile name out of all the millions of other one-word options.
I would love to have a set of AR glasses. I would love to have a wide variety of features that they could enable. I'd like them to be at least as open as an Android phone is, or as open as a 2D monitor is.
Standard ports / standard wireless interfaces. Install your own software, not from an app store. Ability to use with any ecosystem.
I've been wanting this for a long time now, but really just for cycling. It would be incredibly handy to have some AR glasses connected to Google Maps, showing a moving map in my field of view as I'm biking through the city and telling me where to turn. Even if it's really nothing more than a separate screen (sort of like Android Auto) for my phone, that's all I need for this. If I need to interact with the UI, I can pull over and get out my phone; I just want the glasses so I can see the moving map (along with changes when I take a different turn than prescribed).
(no results)
But I'm interested to see when they release these - how non-tech people will react. Anecdotally it seems computer/internet based technology is increasingly becoming more rejected by regular people. It seems people are so sick of the internet and screens that the idea of a new screen would be so nauseating figuratively and literally that wide adoption would be unlikely. As in - these big consumer facing tech companies like Meta have created addictive software, to the point where people don't even want to use their software but feel an impulse to or have nothing better to do because we have created a world in which screens are a way of life. Surely there must be a limit to the amount of digital drugs someone can take before they become sick.
I'm not very bullish on new internet based consumer technology. Technology in other areas like transportation, energy, and manufacturing seem to be the way the next billionaires will make their money. I wonder how long the screen based social experiment will last before either societal upheaval or a mass rejection of new technology.
I get that this kind of form factor is exciting, but all I really want is a Pimax with these lenses.
If Facebook (Meta) put out a below-average spec headset (think Quest 1 specs, or even worse) today, and put holographic lenses in it, I would buy it in a heartbeat.
AR is cool and all, but that's not the reason holographic lenses are exciting to me. The real reason is that they don't have a fixed focal depth. That alone is the single most significant limitation of contemporary VR.
Just imagine: No more IPD adjustment (that can never be perfect, because pupils move). No more godrays. No more stretched projection. No more prescription inserts. Holographic lenses are a leap forward, and it feels like these companies have just been sitting on it, absolutely clueless, for half a decade now.
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Dear Billionaire Oligopolists, please stop waiting until you have completely finished designing and building the distant future, and sell what you have today.
But this is really interesting: it sounds like the display works, and it sounds like the puck is workable, and it sounds like both can squeak above the line in terms of battery life. If those things are true I may turn out to have been completely wrong.
I don't know the first thing about silicon carbide display substrate thingy yields, so I can't remark on whether or not that's a "scale will make cost acceptable", but I bet some mega geniuses at Meta think so or they probably wouldn't be showing this much.
If it turns out that I was dead wrong on this I'll be glad I was, it would be really cool if it works.
I agree regarding the undertaking - enormously costly, but if they can make it "just glasses" it might actually end up as the "next computing format" Zuckerberg was looking for. (Even in that case though, whether it was worth the investment/Meta can stay on top I don't know.)
[1] - https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo... (ctrl+F for "silicon carbide", it's the last mention)
Following your train of thought, we can assume that even with skepticism, if the price is right, people will buy it, just as we purchase many other gadgets. While the market size may be smaller than that of mobile phones, it could still become appealing once people start seeing their neighbors and friends using it.
It’s less of a waste of money if it paints Facebook as a technology leader and distracts lawmakers, and helps give the company mind space among the tech press.
In fact the metaverse may have started out as DC strategy [1].
Facebook Inc. is old and boring, catering to a predominantly older cohort and becoming “Big Social” by buying up anything promising (Instagram, WhatsApp). But Meta Inc. is a scrappy pioneer at the forefront of American tech that’s creating the future™. Be harsh with them at your peril, is the implicit message to lawmakers.
If you look at it as a PR / Corporate defense strategy, a billion is actually cheap.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/09/24/faceboo...
In fairness, I think the GP was also being sarcastic.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/metas-threads-hits-over-1....
> Meta's Threads hits 175 million users ahead of one-year anniversary
Holo Lens hat the problem that it was both too expensive and too bulky.
If meta can make this sleek and affordable I can really see this picking up, I can think of many use cases where this would be better than both a smartphone and a VR headset:
- Navigation - Cooking - Interior design (like the IKEA app) - reading (holding a real book and 'click' on words to get definitions and translations like on an ereader) - music playing and instrument learning
A bright blue line right on the ground highlighting your path would be an easy QoL win. Albeit small hence it not being the thing that I think makes it the popularizer.
-- As you say with the ikea app, I think my point is just one example of a wide variety of situations where people have a hard time visualizing that is made literal by AR.
Additive displays do make it hard to port existing games but that was true for mobiles and touchscreen. If the platform is popular, it will have games.
This $10B bet is that they're the leader of the next wave where smart glasses replace smartphones.
On the other hand, Meta is one of the very last companies that I would trust to operate a fleet of network connected always-on cameras attached to everyone's faces. The privacy implications are pretty horrifying. Imagine if Meta decided to run facial recognition on-device and upload the results to their advertising services. Your position could be easily tracked any time you walk into the field of view of someone wearing Meta glasses without your consent.
Not to mention for users that choose to use these things voluntarily, you are giving Meta an intimate look into every waking moment of your life. You think data brokers have too much on you now, just wait.
EDIT: Looks like most innocuous comments expressing privacy concerns on this post are getting flagged. That's not how HN is supposed to work, folks.
More like when they decide to do that. They want to capture and extrapolate any and all data possible from every possible source.
IMHO, we need strong regulation of facial recognition technology. The conversation too often focuses on law enforcement use - don't get me wrong, that is also important, but it completely ignores the risk posed by private databases.
They won't just try, they'll simply do it, by default, in the absence of proactive action preventing it.
The very concept of an ad company trying to mediate all social interactions so they can sell communication and interaction with our friends and business associates back to us is such a toxic and antisocial one that I'm surprised that anyone let it happen in the first place.
Facebook delenda est.
Normalize banning anyone who wears such an ad company surveillance apparatus into your home or business.
For instance, the media never seemed to get the point of Horizon Worlds in that if VR content is going to be like the web, there has to be authoring tools that make it possible for the ordinary Joe to make content. The persona I think of is the owner of a few Thai restaurants who is very savvy about SEO and SMO and developing relationships with DoorDash and such. That person has to see the value of having a VR or AR presence that is greater than the cost of developing.
Horizon Worlds fell down in many ways not least in making you create everything with computational solid geometry and not letting you import image, video and 3d assets. Sorry but McDonalds has to put the Coca-Cola logo on the side of the drink cups. One trouble is the size of those assets has to be managed so that you don’t overload the rendering engine or the comm link. Another is that people are going to make worlds stuffed with porno images or theaters where you can watch pirated movies. As it is their authoring tools aren’t that good, people who know how to author 3-d content can’t use the tools and processes that are good at, and your world can only be so big.
There are many good games that are developed with the expensive processes used to make 3d games and a huge number of Horizon Worlds competitors, I am sure Meta wants to see one succeed but it is not an easy problem.
I like my MQ3 but for entertainment it competes with other options (sure it was fun to watch the last Star Wars movie in 3D and I like VR games but normal video and video games is hard to beat) and for creative work it is the same: in theory I could publish my stereograms in VR with A-Frame but there are so many other projects to work on.
https://www.theverge.com/24253908/meta-orion-ar-glasses-demo...
[0] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...
What a weird mission statement.
With an AR experience (in their hypothesis), the overlay nature of the content being displays does not prevent you from interacting with the real world.
Example - you are at an event and a little popup window appears above the head of the person you are walking toward, using a multi-modal AI assistant to remind you of their name and the context of how you met. This feels different from trying to subtly pull out your phone and figure out how to use some combination of linkedin, email search, etc., to figure out who they are.
Alternatively, how many times have we seen phone users trip on the sidewalk or walk into something because they are so engrossed in what's on the screen?
It is impressive to me how different our views are. Rather than looking to help with the technology addiction of society (ie people glued to their phones, ipods in ears, walking in the physical world), let’s help them to keep the addiction going but not trip over obstacles while doing so.
But since it's meta, it's mostly negative.
Same with other companies actively damaging the world around us. Tobacco, Weapons, etc.
edit: Oh wait, they are actually animated WEBPs, just renamed to .gif.
I hope people become afraid to wear this kind of thing in public because someone won’t hesitate to take it off their face and put it in the bin.