Google shows off Android XR smart glasses with in-lens display
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
2. The popup on the bottom right corner "Gemini start translate" is black on top of light background, does that mean that these new glasses can display dark on top of light background? I thought this was impossible with current technology. Or was it faked like magic leap faked the jumping whale demo?
I presume someone has done the maths - but it's always killed my interest in these form factors.
Though I mainly bought them as a curiosity (second hand for very little). I find an xreal much more useful.
Will it take off as a general consumer product this time? Probably, for some (unfortunately).
It will create a whole new class of distracted people in traffic, that's for sure. Someone lost in a smartphone screen is at least visually recognisable (“Better look out for that smombie about to cross…”), but someone dutifully following Google Maps directions on one of these could actually look like they are aware of their surroundings, whilst their full attention is fixed on the little map widget.
As you point out, distracted people already exist, and new classes of them will appear every day. The problem exists and I don't want to minimize it, but from a driver's perspective the difference sounds minimal, and doesn't affect how you'll handle the situation (someone looking aware might not actually be)
https://youtube.com/shorts/TvL2SR33XEA?si=F_fnbcvRGrizZ0rQ
The shibuya crossing also has at least 2 giant screens, with sound, and have been there for decades now. All of them have camera, and they probably have been checking the effect of each of the ads since the screens have been setup.
There's a lot to discuss I think.
Can it arguably be more dangerous? Sure. But we'll come up with more technology and regulation to minimize the dangers. And the prejudice will eventually go away as well.
As much as I think that everyone walking around with these things is unsettling in a dystopian way, transhumanism is inevitable, and this is just another step in that direction.
Not anxiety by the way, just a healthy amount of distrust.
Speaking of which... I'm still waiting for a bike helmet with a back-facing camera/HUD that is neither vaporware nor "smart" (read vendor-dependent and barely working), and doesn't suffer from basic usability mistakes. That would be infinitely more useful and probably easier to make than this.
Good.
Why would one pay for the privilege to have everything they see overlayed with advertisements and every micro-expression analyzed for even better ad targeting?
I wouldn’t use a smartphone (or a browser on my computer for that matter) if it weren’t routed through my private DNS blocking advertising and tracking.
Whenever I see how the internet looks like for normal people, I shudder in horror.
Meta is fine with HN crowd it seems?
Yes. Transparent glasses are much worse than looking down on your phone.
> No shirt. No shoes. No augmented reality glasses. No service. Earlier this month, human cyborg and University of Toronto Professor Steve Mann, claims he was brutalized and kicked out of a Paris McDonald’s after employees objected to his headset and its ability to record photos and videos of his experiences.
> [snip]
> To draw attention to his plight, on July 16th Mann posted an account of the alleged assault on blogspot, causing an international uproar. The incident has so far been covered by more than three dozen major news outlets, including Tech Crunch, Forbes, Mashable and The Verge. A group on Reddit had more than 2,000 comments as of this writing. Sci-fi blog io9 even described the alleged attack as "the world’s first cybernetic hate crime."
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cyborg-steve-mann-det...
Even on HN we can see users saying that AI is better than a psychiatrist.
If it is cheaper than a Meta VR thing, it could be as popular as the latest iPhone.
I believe this is the most important argument in favor of local LLMs. There are industries where you can just send some info to OpenAI or Anthropic and just hope it will be safe there.
Its like Google Search. They sold a lot of books for a technology that you could learn in 5 minutes.
The fact that I am not disgusted by those new glasses is worrying me more. Privacy is really dead outside my house and there is nothing I can do about it.
At least it replaced every Google and Apple devices I own with Linux and custom OSes that I fully control, it gives some peace of mind as long as you remember to spend a few minutes to backup your stuff every week.
It's not necessary to be at the bleeding edge, two steps away is also fine, but today LLMs are just another tool in your toolbelt and I reached the conclusion it makes no sense to ignore them, in spite of how irritating the hype (or, sometimes, plain lies) can be.
Original glasses looked also more futuristic - new one like raybans looks more like sunglasses so other people less aware about being recorded.
No one wants to talk about how those headsets are used or how are usage breakdowns by regions, though.
So I'm very curious - what caused Google's CXOs to think they absolutely have to revive the dead horse everybody tries to resuscitate but nobody succeeds?
As for enclosed VR style headsets, I really think Quest must be actively being used by some non-negligible numbers of users for purposes considered career-unsafe to mention that isn't pornography, by which I mean VRChat. This pink elephant theory can explain paradoxical continued presence of Quest inconsistent with apparent total flop status, especially contrast to actual total flop of AVP.
That said, I wouldn't expect this to be a success either. People don't really like talking to devices in public. It's fundamentally embarrassing.
It used to be that in a small village everyone knew what everyone else was doing. Now with cloud connected cameras it will be impossible to have privacy on cities. A google camera will see and follow you anywhere you go. They will recognise you, they will track your movement when you go out of reach of one camera into another.
That is too much power and we should not give it to anyone, public or private.
CCTV is everywhere in UK.
The people I worked for literally tagged it in house as Panopticon.
Big brother social objections aside the one feature I like was ironing out the wrinkles on buses exchanging their most recent footage whenever they parked up at a stop or at lights within wireless range.
The driving intent, at theat time. as I was told, was to be sure to have useful footage survive in the event of another wave of:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_July_2005_London_bombings
I parted ways not long after that initial period as I expected things to drift in the direction of "Well, now that we have this, how can we use it to increasingly track people other than actual terrorists?"
It is amazing to see just how quickly they are found because of the all the CCTV cameras.
Many years ago I use to regularly be in southern UK, between London and Cardiff, I think never saw a bad parked car at least in the city center, exactly because there are always a bunch of cameras around.
No way to try out one's luck regarding if a patrol will ever happen to cross that street.
You'll only stop that future by securing a democratic government and have it protect citizens with solid privacy protection. Fighting technology is an already lost battle (we already have the means at scale)