For me at least, the killer feature is going to be tagging faces with names. Face blindness sucks.
Submitted 14 hours ago by mesamunefire@piefed.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://hackaday.com/2025/09/22/metas-ray-ban-display-glasses-and-the-new-glassholes/
Comments
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 25 minutes ago
Hi, uh, “note to self: look name up to tag”.
Fizz@lemmy.nz 13 hours ago
These glasses are actually insanely cool. I’d pay so much for an open source pair and the band.
It sucks that no matter what cool new hardware meta comes out with will always be ruined by them stuffing in “meta integration”.
QuadratureSurfer@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Seriously, an open source version would be awesome. You could connect it to your own server running whatever local models you want without needing to worry about that audio/video being processed by some large corporation willing to sell you out along with your data.
thehatfox@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
An open source smart glasses platform would be a much better direction.
But that only provides security assurances for the wearer of the glasses. Anyone else interacting with them doesn’t know how they are configured, and what is being recorded and/or shared.
melfie@lemy.lol 9 hours ago
Agreed, I’d totally buy a Meta Quest as well if they didn’t zuck up all their devices with spyware that can’t be removed.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
It would be really nice if every country would enact digital privacy laws so that Meta’s business model was just forced to be better. They genuinely have some of the best and most accessible VR/AR hardware available.
It would of course be nicer if a more ethical competitor stepped up in a serious way but no one seems that interested. It’s interesting that the vast majority of Meta’s business model is being extremely good at copying or buying out competitors but with VR they’re basically the only ones actually sinking serious money into making it a thing.
verdi@feddit.org 4 hours ago
If I find you wearing these around me tey’re getting smashed while still attached to your face. Fucking STASI loving idiots.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 20 minutes ago
They are not allowed by default here. Possessing yes, recording of faces in public not.
Cybersteel@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Oh man I’m wearing ray bans. I should get a new pair else I’d get lynched for it… again…
masterspace@lemmy.ca 7 hours ago
I understand the gripes about Meta, but I don’t understand how everyone clowns on this like the core concept is stupid or unwanted.
Easy $1000 sell: cycling / escooter accessory. People already regularly buy expensive sport glasses just for sun and wind protection. With a smart version of them like this, you add open ear headphone, and you add the potential for navigation directions, or even a Bluetooth rear view camera on the back of your helmet to get a virtual mirror.
horse@feddit.org 2 hours ago
To me it seems like a thing that sounds kinda cool on paper, but is not actually that useful in practice. We already have the ability to do real time translations or point the camera at something to get more information via AI with our smartphones, but who actually uses that on the regular? It’s just not useful or accurate enough in its current state and having it always available as a HUD isn’t going to change that imo. Being able to point a camera at something and have AI tell me “that’s a red bicycle” is a cool novelty the first few times, but I already knew that information just by looking at it. And if I’m trying to communicate with someone in a foreign language using my phone to translate for me, I’ll just feel like a dork.
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 hour ago
real time translations or point the camera at something to get more information via AI with our smartphones, but who actually uses that on the regular?
Anybody living in a foreign country with a different language.
OrgunDonor@lemmy.world 4 hours ago
As a cyclist, this is a terrible sell. I already have tech which does all this, and probably does it better, for less.
I don’t need a HUD constantly in my face obscuring the beautiful views. I have sun glasses which fit well with a helmet and wrap around my face to keep the wind out.
I have a cycling computer, which offers GPS turn by turn, and pairs to power meters, heart rate and radar light. It is mounted on the handlebars in an easy to view place.
I have bone conducting headphones for music.
All of this is significantly less than $1000, and if something breaks, I can replace it all individually. I also don’t have to wear ridiculous looking sunglasses to listen to my bone conducting headphones.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
I agree that head mounted displays can be useful, I’m contemplating getting something like it, but just no cameras, please. not in the frame, not backwards, not anywhere.
FreedomAdvocate@lemmy.net.au 6 hours ago
If you don’t have cameras you instantly lose a tonne of potential amazing functionality.
If you’re in public you have no expectation of privacy, so someone being able to photograph you or record you with glasses is no different to being able to do it with a camera or phone.
thehatfox@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
The core technology is impressive, and has legitimate use cases.
But that doesn’t outweigh the enormous privacy concerns these devices raise. They aren’t being angled as an accessory for specific activities, but as everyday wearables. If smart glasses like these became common they would be unavoidable, creating leave of intrusion that’s concerning even without Meta being involved.
FishFace@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
most people do not generally wear glasses
I don’t know about other countries but about two thirds of Americans wear glasses. A good number of them will be older adults with age-related long-sightedness for which they may only wear reading glasses, but this is a basic mistake.
Telorand@reddthat.com 10 hours ago
…but this is a basic mistake.
They just fell prey to one of the classic blunders!
felbane@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well known is this: Never go in against a septuagenarian when blindness is on the line!
thatonecoder@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
I never thought I’d hear someone mentioning the Bosnian Ape Society, on Lemmy.
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
There are also plenty of people who wear glasses who don’t need them. It’s weird to act like Plano lenses don’t exist.
shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 13 hours ago
I can think of one useful function. I have a lot of friends who are totally blind, and there’s an app called Be My Eyes, where a sighted person can take a look at something through your phone’s camera. But, being blind, a lot of blind people are absolutely terrible at aiming cameras, because they can’t see what they’re aiming at.
In this case, the object ends up out of the camera’s field of view, or at an angle, or upside down, etc. etc. etc. Whereas, I think having a pair of smart glasses on your face would make the camera platform be much steadier.
eldebryn@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I can imagine that haptic/soft vibrations could also be used to steer a blind person towards an object that needs more focus by the camera.
As you say, it has a lot of potential for accessibility and people with handicaps like that, but it’s not direction that tech, the economy, or the world itself is interested in right now…
FishFace@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
but it’s not direction that tech, the economy, or the world itself is interested in right now…
Zak@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
Smart glasses also raise many privacy concerns, as their cameras and microphones may be recording at any given time, which can be unnerving to people.
This reaction has always struck me as, at best ill-informed. If I search for spy camera glasses on Amazon, I can find much cheaper and less obvious options to record people without their knowledge. If glasses are getting extra scrutiny lately, maybe I’d be better off with a spy camera pen or something like this which can be disguised as part of a button-up shirt.
Of course actually using any of these to record people without their consent in most situations makes you an asshole, but that capability already existed and is continually expanding.
JustTesting@lemmy.hogru.ch 12 hours ago
sure, but there the spying is the purpose, whereas with the glasses it’s incidental.
you don’t buy such gadgets if you don’t intend to spy, but people would buy meta glasses for other reason, and meta being able to spy on you is just a side-effect. Plus it’ a matter of scale, this has the potential of being much more prominent than some spy camera.
Zak@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Meta spying is its own issue, and I think a very legitimate concern.
I’m understanding the concern the article mentions about smart glasses in general (independent of who manufactures them) being the user recording people. That’s what people seemed to be upset about when Google Glass launched as well.
Telorand@reddthat.com 10 hours ago
“Incidental”—this is Meta we’re talking about, and you can exchange them with any other technofacist and it still applies.
But I wholly agree with you that they know exactly what they are doing. This is how they get people to “participate” in their platforms and algorithms, whether they want to or not.
bufalo1973@piefed.social 12 hours ago
Not spying other people. Spying the owner of the glasses.
Zak@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
This was never the concern that caused people to call users “glassholes”.
FishFace@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
If the last fifteen years have shown us anything it’s that very few people care.
popjam@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
I wonder what the result of mass adoption of these will be on society - surely there will have to be “no smart glasses” rules set up in places where you would expect confidentiality like hospitals and classrooms. Also what the ability to instantly watch video content or listen to anything with the click of your fingers (without anyone knowing) will do to people’s attention spans. Things in public will have a much higher chance of being recorded by someone, for better or for worse. If someone like Elon Musk makes his own with his own “woke free” xAI (which he has so far been unsuccessful in moulding to his viewpoints), people could have an immediate propagandized perspective and answer for anything they see in real life.
vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 4 hours ago
Maybe “smart” electronics is a bubble. Understandable that some people want their puppet controller devices in every piece of reality. What’s not understandable is the motivation to buy those. Though I think Nazi courts did sometimes put the cost of investigation (and surveillance) upon the “criminal”, sometimes even make them pay for the bullet to execute them.
I mean, it’s not until superprofits from oligopolized companies with their hands in everything exist. Because those superprofits go to clueless VC that also wants to take part in new superprofits.
It’s going to fade very slowly, if oligopoly isn’t broken.
On an unrelated note, I’ve just yesterday read about a German company going to produce fully optical general-purpose computers. For all bad things about optical computers (not much history, less density possible) some are very good, and it’s not even delays and fields and heat being not a problem - it’s production of these being less demanding for enormous very precise foundries like TSMC. And the fact that it’s a German company is refreshing, because, well, not USA and not China.
And among alternative bases for computers I like optics more than DNA computing, because DNA computing is good for parallel equations and bad for response, which means it benefits big companies and big data processing if it happens. While for optical computers it’s the other way around, volatile memory is a bit of a problem to make cheap, but response is better than anything. So if optical computing boom happens, it might get us back to functional programming and conscious design as opposed to big data processing. I mean, well, that’s about plausible general purpose optical computers, while dedicated ones are usable for this “AI” thing too unfortunately.
And I’m probably atrociously simplifying things, just - have read a couple of articles yesterday, one of them describing a general purpose optical computer design.
zingo@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
I read “the new assholes” instead of glassholes.
How improper!
JackDark@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
That’s intentional.
Smart glasses also raise many privacy concerns, as their cameras and microphones may be recording at any given time, which can be unnerving to people. When Google launched their Google Glass smart glasses, this led to the coining of the term ‘glasshole‘ for people who refuse to follow perceived proper smart glasses etiquette.
FaceDeer@fedia.io 12 hours ago
Ah, yet another bit of technology I've been looking forward to for years.
Let's see @technology dump all over it.
stickly@lemmy.world 33 minutes ago
I’ll take a crack at it:
- It’s a massive privacy/surveillance concern. Look at the issues that come with doorbell cams and now multiply the number of cameras and scatter them all over
- It’s another platform for mega corporations to track and sell data to advertisers or any malicious actors, but at an entirely new intrusive level. They no longer have to approximate what’s getting your attention when they literally know what has your attention. Good luck anonymizing or hiding your usage when you can’t spoof the real world in front of you.
- It’s unnecessary e-waste, at best providing the exact same functionality you’d get from your phone with the added benefit of… not reaching into your pocket? You still need a free hand to use it…
- It’s a distraction in a way that other tech can’t touch. Pedestrians/drivers getting notifications shoved directly into their eyes won’t end well.
- It probably has all the same inherent problems as previous generations of smart glasses. Primarily: your eyes aren’t designed for extended/repeated focus on an image less than an inch from your face and at the edge of your vision
artifex@piefed.social 13 hours ago
I love this image. I think it should be required on the any smartglasses packaging like the surgeon general’s warning is on a pack of cigarettes (for now).
jaschen306@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Both my wife and I own the gen 1 version and we love it. Listening to music and taking POV shots without taking your phone out keeps you engaged in the moment and not focusing on recording.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 22 minutes ago
Cool… now everyone can be a part of their respective surveillance states. While Meta makes a buck on selling your feedback to governments and law enforcement.