[HN Gopher] Ray-Ban Meta glasses have sold 2M units, production ...
___________________________________________________________________
Ray-Ban Meta glasses have sold 2M units, production to be increased
Author : achow
Score : 51 points
Date : 2025-02-18 11:30 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uploadvr.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uploadvr.com)
| Clubber wrote:
| I remember people getting beat up for wearing Google glasses in
| public. What a difference 10 years makes.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/i-was-assaulted-for-wearing-...
| memhole wrote:
| Yeah, the shift in acceptance is really interesting to see.
|
| This documentary has always stood out to me:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Live_in_Public
| Isamu wrote:
| I would argue it has more to do with conventional styling and
| what that signals rather than some wider acceptance.
|
| The Google Glass look tended to draw attention in a negative
| way, such god awful styling that narrow minded people might
| conclude you were an asshole for wearing one.
| netsharc wrote:
| Instagram shows me too many videos of "pick up artists" doing
| POV videos of their douchey interaction with girls, recorded on
| these. I wonder if it's too stealthy that the people being
| recorded don't notice. Slash, maybe they have release forms and
| the videos published are just the ones where they consented to
| being recorded (heh, as if the pick-up scene cares so great
| about consent...), and the failed ones are where they
| immediately say "Is that a camera? Fuck off!".
|
| It does have a glowing LED: https://youtu.be/X95mWoTgjaE?t=105
| but I feel like they're easy to hide with some black tape.
| xGrill wrote:
| If you put black tape over the light, it will not allow you
| to turn on the camera, however, I believe someone found a
| hack that said if you started recording and then put black
| tape over the recording, it would allow you to continue to
| record, but only for 3 minute increments.
| chuckwolfe wrote:
| Could you just replace the led with a uv led or a resistor?
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| If "just" requires ordering specific electronic
| components and soldering, it's not "just" for most
| people.
| chillacy wrote:
| Also not the easy kind of 1990's LED soldering, like tiny
| surface mount soldering.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| I suppose that really depends on how hard they're trying
| to prevent you from doing that...
|
| * They could measure the forward voltage of the LED when
| driven by a known current. Bonus points for measuring at
| multiple currents. Remember that the forward voltage
| depends on color.
|
| * They could measure the reverse leakage current at a
| known voltage, and compare that to the illumination from
| the camera's exposure feedback. Remember that every LED
| is also a photodiode.
|
| * They could vary the LED driver current to heat it up,
| then measure that both of the above measurements are
| compatible with the higher temperature. Remember that
| most semiconductor properties have a strong temperature
| dependence.
|
| So it would be pretty easy to detect most simple mods if
| they really wanted to.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You could replace the led with an IR led. That should
| have mostly the same electrical characteristics of an LED
| but emit no visible light
| asdff wrote:
| Being introduced to something in adult hood vs being primed for
| it from your first moments of thought. That is the real mark
| between generations. What sensibilities marketing departments
| have propagandized within this cohort of youths. They will hold
| those views to some degree for the rest of their lives.
| prepend wrote:
| Google glass looked stupid. So I think the biggest pushback was
| on people looking different, and not in a good way.
|
| These look very close to normal, so I think most people don't
| even notice.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| all the picked on glasses wearing nerds got programming jobs
| and are about to flip the whole script on society. only ones
| not wearing glasses now are the wierd ones
| yownie wrote:
| >Google, for all the backlash it's gotten over gentrification,
| last year's NSA revelations, and personal data collection for
| ads, still looks like a company that gives a damn.
|
| this one didn't age very well did it?
| __s wrote:
| Odd story given your comment. Story is about being mugged for
| wearing a device. 15 years ago a fellow student had someone
| walk up to them, ask to see their phone, then bolt off with it.
| Tho that student was pretty tall so he laughed it off since the
| guy didn't get far
|
| & as for internet laughing at someone's misfortune, that's
| normal. He says they wouldn't say he had it coming if it was
| jewelry, but people are laughing saying this rapper had it
| coming singing "ice on my neck" before going for crowd surfing:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VocdUpfuepY
| tw04 wrote:
| Maybe Zuck can team up with Larry to complete our transition to a
| surveillance/police state.
|
| It's insane to me that anyone would do this knowing how little
| Facebook respects privacy.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's insane (but not surprising, sadly) to me that so many
| people have such a level of disdain for their fellow humans
| that they're willing expose them to Facebook's, or any tech
| company's, spying ways.
| gfkclzhzo wrote:
| My company's IT director, who's main function is
| cybersecurity compliance, wears these at work.
|
| So much of the modern world has me feeling like I'm taking
| crazy pills.
| mgh2 wrote:
| Most people don't care or are oblivious, not as "tech
| informed or savvy", is not out of bad intent. Plus, most tech
| companies control the media they consume.
| Gigachad wrote:
| People are quite happy to smoke and operate combustion
| engines in public spaces which literally gives everyone
| around you cancer. Having someone record you is very low on
| the disdain scale.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| They appear to be fantastic for those with limited vision.
|
| Same thing with voice assistants like Alexa, for the average
| person having a live speaker listening 24 7 is kinda silly, but
| for someone who's legally blind it's a life changer.
|
| Say at 90 you can't see well, you can say, "Hey Alexa, play
| some John Coltrane". It would be better for this all to run
| locally, but let's not let perfect be the enemy of good.
| walterbell wrote:
| Amazon has many device variants, they can even be used to
| guide vision-impaired users indoors, e.g. navigating via a
| sequence of audio breadcrumb prompts across multiple devices.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| definitely not listening in on your phones microphone and
| definitely wont be watching either, but you might be interested
| in this cat food
| prododev wrote:
| It's wild that people buy these, let alone feel comfortable
| wearing them. I'm already pretty strongly anti Meta, I can't
| imagine buying a mic and camera they control and bringing it with
| me everywhere.
| Spivak wrote:
| So your phone? If Alexa is any model mic data is garbage and
| unmonetizable.
| qwerpy wrote:
| I would never buy one because I also try to avoid anything Meta
| or Google but I received one anyway as a birthday gift. Wife's
| thought process was "he likes tech, he wears sunglasses, he'll
| love it". They're fine glasses and the video recording is
| surprisingly good quality. But I don't need AI enabled, video
| recording glasses.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Putting aside the obviously dystopian qualities of this
| product... I find it strange that I know zero people who own this
| device which has sold supposedly over a million units.
| bamboozled wrote:
| I know one person who has a pair, they're are an investor and
| were given a pair for free, naturally they have to tell you how
| good they are all the time as well.
| chillacy wrote:
| 2M units globally, so maybe generously 1M in the US (assuming
| you're from there but multiply by some factor proportional to
| your country's consumeristic tendencies), divided by the
| population is only something like a .3% rate of ownership. So
| not quite as prevalent as gopro, which has sold something like
| 35M in the US over the past 10 years [1]
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/688306/number-of-
| gopro-u...
| m463 wrote:
| Maybe people buying this don't want to creep out their friends
| and admit it.
|
| It might be interesting if people will be able to tell the
| glasses are being used, like "How are you today Charles?"
| "don't you remember I go by chuck?"
| gfkclzhzo wrote:
| Better learn to touch type or Meta will have all your passwords.
| GuestFAUniverse wrote:
| Touch typing won't help.
|
| https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/new-acoustic-...
| blakeburch wrote:
| Is there anyway to bypass Meta on these? Or is there an open
| source version in the works?
|
| Interested to see what could be done locally with always-on
| visual capture + LLMs. Not interested in sending that data to
| Meta.
| magixx wrote:
| A bypass is not possible. I believe the raybans meta have an
| "always on" AI mode/session now.
|
| To be honest, the biggest issue with the glasses is battery
| life and I don't see that changing any time soon. It doesn't
| matter what LLM processes your data if it can only do it for
| one hour per charge.
| zhengiszen wrote:
| Marketing bull*
| light_triad wrote:
| Know some people who have these and apparently the AI is very
| limited. They were standing in front of the Golden Gate bridge
| and the glasses had no idea what they were looking at.
|
| I'm sure the AI will improve quite a bit but given the hype it
| was a surprise.
| m463 wrote:
| this makes me think of people who say "my refrigerator/bbq
| grill/air purifier smart features are really not worth it"...
|
| when that's not the festure and they're not the customer, the
| other data and people buying the data are.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| I know someone who has a pair and authentically loves them. He's
| blind. It's easy to pooh-pooh their utility if someone doesn't
| need assistance to know what's in the room with them, but
| hopefully we can all understand the clear value proposition for
| those who do.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I understand the value proposition. My problem is that people
| using them are offloading the cost onto others who have not
| agreed to be so exposed.
|
| If it were possible to use something like these without
| throwing everyone they interact with under the bus in terms of
| privacy and security, I'd have no problem with them.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| I guess I'm not comfortable with the idea that a blind person
| should proverbially "take one for the team" while everyone
| else should not.
|
| An equivalent device not attached to meta would be great.
| Does one exist?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Yes - xreal
|
| I use mine all the time for mostly watching movies or
| gaming but sometimes work
|
| They are legitimately one of the best devices I have and
| I've been in AR a long time
| wilg wrote:
| I mean there is no cost for others, though. You don't have a
| right to not be "exposed". If you think the way we handle
| laws around photography or whatever should be changed, we
| have a whole democracy for brokering that. (Or at least we
| did until very recently.)
| walterbell wrote:
| Value to vision-impaired users would increase with an SDK,
| https://communityforums.atmeta.com/t5/General-VR-MR-Developm...
| maeil wrote:
| The second they make this and make it useful in any way,
| immediately the apps people create will lay bare exactly how
| bad of a privacy invasion they are, tons of bad press
| ensuing.
|
| It's definitely not technical hurdles preventing them from
| making one.
| walterbell wrote:
| Already done without the SDK,
| https://www.engadget.com/wearables/students-used-metas-
| smart...
|
| Censorship and alignment (speech, LLMs, glasses, drones,
| ..) rarely stops negative scenarios, but it slows positive
| scenarios from existence and competition with negative
| scenarios.
|
| They did partner with BMW, CMU and some universities,
| https://www.projectaria.com/research-kit/
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| I agree with you, but "could this be better" is a different
| question than "does this help people".
|
| I'm sure everyone would welcome competing devices. Well, Meta
| and EssilorLuxottica are showing that a profitable market
| exists.
| walterbell wrote:
| https://archive.is/L9jY6
|
| _> Meta's Reality Labs unit, which oversees the product as
| well as its virtual- and augmented-reality goggles,
| reported losses of nearly $5 billion in the fourth
| quarter._
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Reality Labs is much much bigger than this product. It's
| unreasonable to point to their aggregate losses here
| unless you have some indication that those losses are due
| to this product.
| itishappy wrote:
| I get it, but I'm still uncomfortable with it.
|
| The same value proposition surely applies to locking GPS
| collars. A clear value for individuals managing dementia
| patients, but it's a privacy nightmare for everyone and most of
| the customers aren't nurses.
|
| Accessibility doesn't need to come at the expense of privacy.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| Dont sorry. Accessibility os DEI, so i expect them to only
| have privacy implications
| ein0p wrote:
| Pretty soon we'll be walking around with electronic warfare
| backpacks on our backs to disable all this bullshit within 300
| foot radius. I thought no one would want Zuck's ad platform on
| their face. Apparently I was underestimating the stupidity of the
| public.
| alberth wrote:
| Dumb question, what makes this "VR"?
|
| Isn't this just a voice activated camera, in a form factor that
| you can wear on your head.
|
| (Genuinely curious, not hating on the product)
| namanaggarwal wrote:
| It's not a VR device. It has a camera, mic and speakers, that
| allows you to take photos/videos and talk to an AI agent
| carabiner wrote:
| Yes, exactly. If you don't need corrected vision or sunglasses,
| you could pop out the lenses and have 100% of the
| functionality. There is no display so it does not actually use
| the lenses for anything. The primary function of glasses,
| altering your vision, is not enhanced.
| TransAtlToonz wrote:
| I got a pair as a gift and they've been sitting around unopened.
| I can't say I have any clue what to do with them--I like cheap
| sunglasses and I don't like talking to chatbots.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-02-18 23:01 UTC)