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Comment by bsimpson | Hacker News Reader

I'm in the Explorer program, but practical issues like fashion/etiquette have had me reconsidering if I'd really be willing to spend money to put a computer on my face.

This review has gone a long way towards assuaging those concerns, but I wonder what they can do about anti-theft. Being pickpocketed on public transit is a very real concern in most cities with >500k people. Imagine how much easier it'd be to snatch a device you're not even holding and (hopefully) blends into your life so seamlessly you forget you have it on. It's been well-publicized that these things start at $1500.

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How long is the fashion thing a problem, though? Either other companies (Microsoft and Apple, mainly) will come out with their own glasses, and you'll have safety in numbers, or future iterations will make them look more and more like regular glasses. It's not like the segway, which could never have evolved to blend in.

Smart phones are ubiquitous, but people still get them snatched on BART, and they're actually holding them.

Yeah, I don't have an answer for that one.

How about:

"Ok Glass: Record the thief and transmit to police!"

I think they look pretty sharp. I especially like the blue color, although it definitely stands out a lot--it's just nice to see a product that isn't glossy black or bright white.

The best thing, I think, would be for Google to offer insurance at some reasonable rate, so you can get a replacement if someone steals your device. I'd pay $50/year to protect my $1500 device.

Or have a remote kill switch on the thing. Make them useless if they've been stolen.

It makes a lot of sense to tie the device to a specific Google account, and not allow a transfer until that account owner deactivates it.

But that's something they'd want to start advertising fairly soon. No point in having a doomsday device if you don't tell the world about it.

When the objects being stolen have GPS, wireless, and cameras, with even a modicum of well-designed anti-theft infrastructure it should really become criminally stupid to steal them.

It's kind of sad that you can steal a smart phone and get away with it.

Anything with an off-switch can be offed. Anything else can have the batter run down.

If it's a safety device on another piece of hardware, like a GPS tracker for a bike, they can always destroy the tracker separately from the item.

Yeah, but people aren't stealing a smart phone to power off and display on their mantle, or trade inert as a representational currency, and you can hardly smash the GPS out of it. People are stealing smart phones to use, or to sell to other people to use.

Local hardware access is ultimately unbeatable, but it should at least be hard.

It looks like Apple and the NYPD have been collaborating here:

http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/22/4018190/nypd-apple-squad-f...

The problem with a phone is that you can put it in airplane mode and then factory reset it. Also, it's pocketable, so it's easy to hide, even if someone found the general location of the phone.

That depends (somewhat) on the usefulness of a stolen Glass device. They require a network to be useful, contain a GPS chip and so are easy to track down, and can likely be remotely disabled by Google.

Pickpockets depend on the fact that you won't realize what they've done until they're long gone. What you're talking about is more like the old 1980's-era-New York-type chain / purse grab, and that doesn't seem to happen as often any more because it's so blatant.

It happens all the time, actually. Michael Bloomberg has attributed the rise in New York's crime rate recently to a rise in the snatch-and-grab thefts of Apple products. [1]

[1]: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/crime-is-up-and...

It depends. They also rely on the element of surprise. Everyone I know who's been mugged or seen one happen on public transit has had something grabbed right as the doors are closing, so the thief slips away before you have time to squeeze through the crowd to run after.

When someone does that, everyone on the subway car sees it. When someone gets pick-pocketed, nobody sees it. So there's a major sampling bias.

That said, I've also seen some NYT articles saying the true "pick pocket artists" are a dying breed, because younger criminals don't want to spend the time learning it and the potential take from a wallet has gone down as folks carry less cash.

If it's done correctly, such devices could be the stupidest thing you could try to steal.

For instance, it could buffer constantly (if it doesn't already, I'm not too sure) the last 5 or 10 seconds of video. If it detects the device has been snatched this buffer is instantly dumped to the paired smartphone (and from there possibly to the cloud).

So unless the thief is very skillful, there's likely a good mugshot of him or her out there.

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