I'm actually somewhat interested to see something like this hit mainstream. Like smartphone-levels of mainstream. Because one of the first apps for it will likely be one that looks at people's faces and immediately digs up everything about them available online. There's already been videos of it working with older tech, so I'm sure it'll work even better now with newer hardware and AI.
Anyway, once it goes mainstream and people see what we've done to ourselves, maybe it will open people's eyes and we'll start fighting for our privacy again.
I'm reminded of the "Gargoyles" in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. These are people with wearable computers that are plugged into the VR/AR internet at all times. The relevant passage...
"Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think they're talking to you, but they're actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there measuring the length of Hiro's cock through his trousers while they pretend to make conversation."
> You think they're talking to you, but they're actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead.
Yes, and a standard dashcam/bodycam on every person's head. Right now you can see when a person is recording you, they are holding up their phone. With this, it's just a tap on the glasses (or auto-record and tap to preserve the last X minutes).
It will remember all your activities, help you find your keys and objects, remember what you bought when and if there's still toilet paper in your bathroom, etc. It will make helpful charts and statistics about your life, help to optimize it, notice if there is some product that it wants to advertise to you based on your activities etc. It's all going to be packaged and sold to ad networks. You will see AR ad objects floating everywhere, depending on what you do.
> It will remember all your activities, help you find your keys and objects, remember what you bought when and if there's still toilet paper in your bathroom, etc. It will make helpful charts and statistics about your life, help to optimize it, notice if there is some product that it wants to advertise to you based on your activities etc. It's all going to be packaged and sold to ad networks. You will see AR ad objects floating everywhere, depending on what you do.
Some big leaps being made in your argument, but I think the sentiment is where the heart of the issue with this tech lies. Privacy focused individuals will never buy a product like this, but it clearly is meant for the masses & not the typical HN user.
A privacy-first version of smart glasses running OSS would make me lean forward in my seat, at minimum.
> Because one of the first apps for it will likely be one that looks at people's faces and immediately digs up everything about them available online.
How am I meant to opt out of this? A device that broadcasts an (inevitably ignored) do not scan signal? CV Dazzle? Am I resigned to just never leaving the house again?
For now I’m hoping that the major factor against people adopting this is that you’ll look like a wanker. I’m not sure what to do once that becomes the norm though.
They will keep getting smaller and more powerful. It won't be long until they look close enough to normal sunglasses.
As for opting out? I think the only chance you have is to have zero online presence, especially with pictures. Of course, many are forced into this by their careers.
What is your threat/concern that you will not leave the house on order not to be photographed in public ?
I get it could be mildly to very annoying depending on what's available on you online - but not leaving the house ? The only things that come to mind are you have a hit on you and you did an identity change to ditch it or some thinfoil hat level theory.
The way I see this is this is all being done for over a decade now we are just making it more widespread. In some ways I find it a good thing - where previously the government could track you through security infra, now the government servants are also surveiled in all public appearances.
If we're inevitably going in this direction, might as well have the same rules for everyone.
Alternatively, the good version of that is AI giving knowledge on anything that exists naturally or artificially that we look at. To flourish we just need a distinction between general knowledge and individualized personal knowledge.
Is that a good thing? Having the answer to everything before you’ve even asked makes life boring. There’s nothing fun about talking to someone who Google’s the thing you’re trying to remember or unsure about. That on steroids sounds like a dull existence.
I used to work in the hardware side of AR until recently when I took a step back for my family. I've had hands on experience with many types of hardware, wave guide, birdbath and laser beam scanning to name a few. Technically these are all really amazing, and I miss working in this space.
Unfortunately, while I want to see the technology succeed in the mainstream, it's never going to get there. Period. The AR use-case presented by tech giants to consumers fails to solve any real world problem that a cheaper and more accessible cellphone couldn't. Sure there are niche-use cases and cool demos for consumers, but until the hardware reaches the form factor and durability of traditional prescription glasses consumers will never adopt the technology in a meaningful way.
If we actually want to drive sales of AR devices, we will replicate usecases where AR currently drives value, such as HUDs for aircraft. The same concept can be applied to other high workload environments such as EMS, truck drivers, ATC, law enforcement and handful of military applications. However sales in these domains will be somewhat limited except for military applications which is bad PR for the most of the leaders of AR tech.
So for now its all essentially vaporware to generate hype for the stock market.
>Because one of the first apps for it will likely be one that looks at people's faces and immediately digs up everything about them available online. There's already been videos of it working with older tech, so I'm sure it'll work even better now with newer hardware and AI.
The app in question[0]. I would imagine newer hardware and some Palantir APIs would be all you need to do this very reliability.
They don't let you record phone calls (at least in my country, call recording is blocked), but they'll let people look up other people etc?
I guess as long as the data is shared with three letter agencies and data mills, then why not.
With phone calls that would be tricky, so at least they disabled it to protect scammers.
When that feature did work, I was able to get money back from insurer as their sales person misrepresented the policy I paid for. I had it recorded and they had to pay up.
With call recording no longer available, I don't do any calls if I don't have a tablet with me to record it.
Similar to the Massive Attack gig that used facial recognition on the crowd - they put the captured faces (with labels against them) up on the big screens. Discussed a day or so ago on here:-
I thought while it did "facial recognition", it was to draw boxes round faces, and not to identify people. And the labels were things like "ENERGISED".
I don't actually see the difference between this and a crowdcam at a sporting event, other than many privacy-oriented publications have reposted pictures of the people at the Massive Attack event, presumably without their permission.
It's never coming back , it's over dude. There is no more privacy.
Self-driving cars, they will know absolutely everything, about everyone, all the time, combine that with delivery drones and glasses, the government, meta, google, they will know exactly where you are all the time. Even if you leave your device at home.
I remain convinced that AR glasses will never ever be mainstream no matter how good the hardware is. They just don't solve any actual problem. Interacting with UI using voice or gesture is just way too hard.
They could still be useful as a dumb display without voice or gesture. Imagine being in an airplane and wanting to use your laptop. You'll be hunched over with terrible posture. With a pair of AR glasses that support displayport alt mode, you could plug in your glasses and sit with proper posture, your screen displayed in front of you as a virtual 40" display, while you touch type on your laptop sitting on the food tray. Perhaps you're in bed and want to watch a movie. You could pop on the glasses, plug in your phone, and enjoy while while fully reclined, achieving the most comfortable least effort movie viewing experience. Maybe you're traveling and staying in hotels where you want to get some work done. Programming on tiny laptop screens sucks if you're opening more than 2 files at a time, but what if you could just pop on your glasses, plug them into your laptop, and program on a virtual 40" display?
My understanding is the current tech is not sharp enough for serious productivity, is too heavy for extended wear, and has a short life due to overdriving tiny OLEDs, so I'm not ready to purchase one yet. But some day those problems will be solved and I'm absolutely going to jump on that.
As someone who's been avidly following and sampling VR/AR since the 90s, in recent years I've changed my opinion. While I'm not as confident as you seem to be, I do now think it probably never goes into widespread all-day consumer use. Although, I do believe certain gaming, entertainment and workplace use cases will become much more common.
I always wished for AR glasses. I described it like playing a MMO with player names overlaid above their heads.
I have an incredibly hard time remembering faces and names. Close to disability level. People I have known for 20 years and interact with monthly can take a bit for me to recall their names and it requires a ton of mental tricks to do so.
I used to go to a decent number of trade shows, and the number of folks who casually knew me and my name but I couldn’t place was embarrassing. And crippling for business purposes.
I always thought if I had someway to overlay a persons name over their head it would level the playing field and allow be to avoid a lot of personal embarrassment.
Now that the future is here I’m not so sure. One of those things I want for me but not for thee.
I'm not so sure there is no problem to be solved. Being able to see the world around me annotated visually has massive potential - I for one would love the Google Translate camera feature that lets you translate text seen by the camera in real time and overlay the translated text on the document but built into a pair of normal looking glasses, freeing my hands etc.
While I accept some will take issue with calling it an "AR device", the current Meta RayBans have sold very well with major YoY growth and I only expect them to get more popular as they get more capable and add more "AR"-esque features in future versions. I see them already as a first step on road to real AR products much, much more than I do the Quest line.
They will become mainstream because the advertising industrial complex will see the opportunity to have a paid subscription model to reality with ads from the moment you open your eyes to those on the free-tier.
Realtime on-demand satnav in ar, onscreen messaging, news updates etc, the facial recognition is just one aspect, having automatic connections with people looking at you across a room signifying interest.
This is dystopian to me but I don't see how it doesn't eventually become mainstream.
> Anyway, once it goes mainstream and people see what we've done to ourselves, maybe it will open people's eyes and we'll start fighting for our privacy again.
It doesn’t seem to stop people being okay with <42 hour smart watch charges, so I’m not so convinced this will be the limiting factor unless you need the prescription version of these (which rules them out for me, I’m happy with my dumb-glasses that I’ve never had to plug in to anything)
I wonder is it not possible to transmit power through the body. It seems janky anyway how does the battery pack on your pocket connect to your body. Wireless has loss. Watch battery pack that uses a laser shooting at the glasses ha. Also clothes that harvest power maybe contacts to body.
This is how some even older people feel about smartphones :p
Some of this is the lack of a killer app and some of this will be generational. At some point the 10-30yos will be more used to being permanently plugged in than not. (we're probably already there in some senses, but will go through the same adoption cycle again for AR/VR imo)
> This is how some even older people feel about smartphones :p
I walked around listening to cassette tapes on my walkman and couldn't imagine why anyone would want an "mp3 player" with all the hassles of loading 100 songs at a time onto a computer and then onto the thing etc etc. Minidiscs seemed cool tho?
~5 years later I got an iPod with 10gig of storage and holy shit it was the best thing I'd ever encountered. All my music. Immediately. All the time.
Its pretty safe to assume all of them up there are exactly the same in this, each of them with their own little unique twist. There may be somehow magically an exception (probably not 2 though), but I am not holding my breath.
This was pretty much known since Day 1 (famous dumb fucks quote about people sharing their personal details), and as we all should know at this point people don't change, not for the better at least.
All these years later another thing from Zuckerberg to enable playing “hot” or “not” targeting the women around the office with his buddies.
Every owner will “Share your contacts” then do the work of labeling their friends and family in every which way for Meta. Even if those friends and family don’t want to be on social media it’ll be stored.
In the future Meta will just plan to attend a senate hearing, apologize for the misuse of that data and pay a fine.
Rather off-topic, but the juxtaposition of words in the headline made me think of a potentially actually cool application for 3D AR glasses — visualizing the radio-frequency fields in the surrounding environment, colors mapped to wavelengths, saturation linked to RF strength/amplitude. You could look around the house and see the hot and dead zones for your wifi, how much the microwave leaks, how the broadcast radio and TF filters through the building...
Fun for curiosity, but it could be actually really useful for techs?
The Meta Ray-Bans have been extremely successful for a completely new consumer device form factor. But they don't have a screen. Meta is releasing new glasses with a screen and this is a look into the display technology they are using. It is "newsworthy" for tech people who are interested in the development of new technology in displays and optics, and new computing devices more generally.
This is the kind of content HN was made for, much more so than the Israel/Gaza or Bertrand Russell stories I see on the front page right now for example.
Periodic reminder to flag submissions that are off-topic, and comments that break the guidelines. HN is mostly moderated by users - dang and tomhow don't do as much moderation as you might think.
> The Meta Ray-Bans have been extremely successful for a completely new consumer device form factor.
Do you have any sources on them being a successful product by any measurable standard? I honestly wasn't aware that they were even being sold, and I'm sure I don't know anyone that owns a pair. I'm not exactly their target market, but I think at least some in my social circle are.
My understanding is that this specific type of lens projection technology hasn't been available at the consumer level before, and is a step up from previous AR approaches.
Noteworthy because it's an interesting extra technical insight about a soon to be announced Meta product, if that's your kind of thing
The site’s “about us” page appears to be lorem ipsum, so
I guess it is probably just somebody’s blog. Showing up there doesn’t make it necessarily newsworthy I guess.
Lumus is just a company. So “Lumus waveguide” doesn’t seem to tell us much other than the supplier.
But I found his blog a couple years ago and have been reading it ever since. Karl follows VR/AR display tech obsessively, goes to all the shows/conferences and talks with all the companies - then does highly technical, in-depth write-ups of what's new and notable - which often includes his unvarnished opinions. His blog is read by basically everyone in the industry, so all the companies give him briefings and demos despite the fact he'll call it like he sees it. Which is why he's pretty much my go to source when any new VR/AR display tech gets announced.
Even more valuable to me, he'll mention when companies are lagging or falling short of expectations and he'll even speculate about where things could (or should) go. His blog is basically like having a buddy who's an expert industry insider who'll tell you what he really thinks over a beer - which is pretty invaluable if you're someone who's interested and technical but doesn't follow this space that closely. That doesn't mean Karl's opinion is always correct but it is certainly well-informed and usually supported with technical data - although he did say this post was just a quick note that a video was leaked. He'll probably have a real post after it's announced and a deep dive once he gets his hands on one.
Interesting fact: Karl's career was as a chip architect. He designed key parts of the the Texas Instruments 9918 - the first general purpose video display processor which was used in dozens of 80s computers and game systems including Sega Master System (and coined the term "sprite"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS9918https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_%28computer_graphics%29https://kguttag.com/2025/07/01/tms9918-the-first-sprite-chip... So yeah, he's just "some random retired guy with a blog" but a guy with 150 patents and dozens of published technical papers. But being some random retired guy with a blog, he makes little effort to be accessible to first-time visitors or do design, marketing, etc. You just have to read-in and when you do, you pretty quickly figure out this guy knows his stuff.
Folks have been predicting that the next big shift in computing will be onto glasses that we wear and away from our phones.
The tech just hasn’t been there yet and most of the devices that do this are heavy clunky and hot
Meta is investing billions to get out ahead of this shift and to own the entertainment and data (and thus advertising) layers that sit on top of the real world through these glasses
The rumor mill is abuzz that Facebook finally making a play for it in the next set of smart glasses after a few years of sticking to VR headsets and audio/camera only glasses
The "old man yelling at the sky" part of me can only hope the side effects of something like this gaining traction might be that physical-world advertisements fade away.
Readit News
Anyway, once it goes mainstream and people see what we've done to ourselves, maybe it will open people's eyes and we'll start fighting for our privacy again.
"Gargoyles are no fun to talk to. They never finish a sentence. They are adrift in a laser-drawn world, scanning retinas in all directions, doing background checks on everyone within a thousand yards, seeing everything in visual light, infrared, millimeter wave radar, and ultrasound all at once. You think they're talking to you, but they're actually poring over the credit record of some stranger on the other side of the room, or identifying the make and model of airplanes flying overhead. For all he knows, Lagos is standing there measuring the length of Hiro's cock through his trousers while they pretend to make conversation."
So, the average Zoom call in 2025?
That is very wishful thinking and will backfire. What will actually happen is normalisation and increased erosion of privacy.
It will remember all your activities, help you find your keys and objects, remember what you bought when and if there's still toilet paper in your bathroom, etc. It will make helpful charts and statistics about your life, help to optimize it, notice if there is some product that it wants to advertise to you based on your activities etc. It's all going to be packaged and sold to ad networks. You will see AR ad objects floating everywhere, depending on what you do.
Presumably only if you wear it.
A privacy-first version of smart glasses running OSS would make me lean forward in my seat, at minimum.
In a functional society, these always on, corporate controlled devices would be outlawed.
The highest bidder. And then the next-highest bidder, and the next highest bidder, and the next highest bidder…
How am I meant to opt out of this? A device that broadcasts an (inevitably ignored) do not scan signal? CV Dazzle? Am I resigned to just never leaving the house again?
For now I’m hoping that the major factor against people adopting this is that you’ll look like a wanker. I’m not sure what to do once that becomes the norm though.
As for opting out? I think the only chance you have is to have zero online presence, especially with pictures. Of course, many are forced into this by their careers.
Optionally pulse-modulated in specific ways, to make the software behind those crash by inducing cyber-epilepsy.
IOACM (infrared optically active countermeasures)
I get it could be mildly to very annoying depending on what's available on you online - but not leaving the house ? The only things that come to mind are you have a hit on you and you did an identity change to ditch it or some thinfoil hat level theory.
The way I see this is this is all being done for over a decade now we are just making it more widespread. In some ways I find it a good thing - where previously the government could track you through security infra, now the government servants are also surveiled in all public appearances.
If we're inevitably going in this direction, might as well have the same rules for everyone.
Unfortunately, while I want to see the technology succeed in the mainstream, it's never going to get there. Period. The AR use-case presented by tech giants to consumers fails to solve any real world problem that a cheaper and more accessible cellphone couldn't. Sure there are niche-use cases and cool demos for consumers, but until the hardware reaches the form factor and durability of traditional prescription glasses consumers will never adopt the technology in a meaningful way.
If we actually want to drive sales of AR devices, we will replicate usecases where AR currently drives value, such as HUDs for aircraft. The same concept can be applied to other high workload environments such as EMS, truck drivers, ATC, law enforcement and handful of military applications. However sales in these domains will be somewhat limited except for military applications which is bad PR for the most of the leaders of AR tech.
So for now its all essentially vaporware to generate hype for the stock market.
Reminds me of my single girlfriends who put every single person they talk to on online dating into facecheck.id.
The app in question[0]. I would imagine newer hardware and some Palantir APIs would be all you need to do this very reliability.
[0]https://gizmodo.com/this-facial-recognition-experiment-with-...
I guess as long as the data is shared with three letter agencies and data mills, then why not.
With phone calls that would be tricky, so at least they disabled it to protect scammers.
When that feature did work, I was able to get money back from insurer as their sales person misrepresented the policy I paid for. I had it recorded and they had to pay up.
With call recording no longer available, I don't do any calls if I don't have a tablet with me to record it.
https://www.gadgetreview.com/massive-attack-turns-concert-in...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45255400
I don't actually see the difference between this and a crowdcam at a sporting event, other than many privacy-oriented publications have reposted pictures of the people at the Massive Attack event, presumably without their permission.
Self-driving cars, they will know absolutely everything, about everyone, all the time, combine that with delivery drones and glasses, the government, meta, google, they will know exactly where you are all the time. Even if you leave your device at home.
Deleted Comment
My understanding is the current tech is not sharp enough for serious productivity, is too heavy for extended wear, and has a short life due to overdriving tiny OLEDs, so I'm not ready to purchase one yet. But some day those problems will be solved and I'm absolutely going to jump on that.
I have an incredibly hard time remembering faces and names. Close to disability level. People I have known for 20 years and interact with monthly can take a bit for me to recall their names and it requires a ton of mental tricks to do so.
I used to go to a decent number of trade shows, and the number of folks who casually knew me and my name but I couldn’t place was embarrassing. And crippling for business purposes.
I always thought if I had someway to overlay a persons name over their head it would level the playing field and allow be to avoid a lot of personal embarrassment.
Now that the future is here I’m not so sure. One of those things I want for me but not for thee.
People seem to underestimate how wonderful it to be able to touch and tap an interface and how minimal effort is exerted.
While I accept some will take issue with calling it an "AR device", the current Meta RayBans have sold very well with major YoY growth and I only expect them to get more popular as they get more capable and add more "AR"-esque features in future versions. I see them already as a first step on road to real AR products much, much more than I do the Quest line.
Realtime on-demand satnav in ar, onscreen messaging, news updates etc, the facial recognition is just one aspect, having automatic connections with people looking at you across a room signifying interest.
This is dystopian to me but I don't see how it doesn't eventually become mainstream.
lol
Absolutely love them. They're not absolutely essential, but they're a nice-to-have and they're a lot more convenient than putting in ear buds.
The problem though is that I would never have thought to ever buy them myself. I feel this way about these AR glasses.
Some of this is the lack of a killer app and some of this will be generational. At some point the 10-30yos will be more used to being permanently plugged in than not. (we're probably already there in some senses, but will go through the same adoption cycle again for AR/VR imo)
I walked around listening to cassette tapes on my walkman and couldn't imagine why anyone would want an "mp3 player" with all the hassles of loading 100 songs at a time onto a computer and then onto the thing etc etc. Minidiscs seemed cool tho?
~5 years later I got an iPod with 10gig of storage and holy shit it was the best thing I'd ever encountered. All my music. Immediately. All the time.
Deleted Comment
This was pretty much known since Day 1 (famous dumb fucks quote about people sharing their personal details), and as we all should know at this point people don't change, not for the better at least.
Every owner will “Share your contacts” then do the work of labeling their friends and family in every which way for Meta. Even if those friends and family don’t want to be on social media it’ll be stored.
In the future Meta will just plan to attend a senate hearing, apologize for the misuse of that data and pay a fine.
Fun for curiosity, but it could be actually really useful for techs?
This is the kind of content HN was made for, much more so than the Israel/Gaza or Bertrand Russell stories I see on the front page right now for example.
Do you have any sources on them being a successful product by any measurable standard? I honestly wasn't aware that they were even being sold, and I'm sure I don't know anyone that owns a pair. I'm not exactly their target market, but I think at least some in my social circle are.
Noteworthy because it's an interesting extra technical insight about a soon to be announced Meta product, if that's your kind of thing
Lumus is just a company. So “Lumus waveguide” doesn’t seem to tell us much other than the supplier.
But I found his blog a couple years ago and have been reading it ever since. Karl follows VR/AR display tech obsessively, goes to all the shows/conferences and talks with all the companies - then does highly technical, in-depth write-ups of what's new and notable - which often includes his unvarnished opinions. His blog is read by basically everyone in the industry, so all the companies give him briefings and demos despite the fact he'll call it like he sees it. Which is why he's pretty much my go to source when any new VR/AR display tech gets announced.
Even more valuable to me, he'll mention when companies are lagging or falling short of expectations and he'll even speculate about where things could (or should) go. His blog is basically like having a buddy who's an expert industry insider who'll tell you what he really thinks over a beer - which is pretty invaluable if you're someone who's interested and technical but doesn't follow this space that closely. That doesn't mean Karl's opinion is always correct but it is certainly well-informed and usually supported with technical data - although he did say this post was just a quick note that a video was leaked. He'll probably have a real post after it's announced and a deep dive once he gets his hands on one.
Interesting fact: Karl's career was as a chip architect. He designed key parts of the the Texas Instruments 9918 - the first general purpose video display processor which was used in dozens of 80s computers and game systems including Sega Master System (and coined the term "sprite"). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS9918 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_%28computer_graphics%29 https://kguttag.com/2025/07/01/tms9918-the-first-sprite-chip... So yeah, he's just "some random retired guy with a blog" but a guy with 150 patents and dozens of published technical papers. But being some random retired guy with a blog, he makes little effort to be accessible to first-time visitors or do design, marketing, etc. You just have to read-in and when you do, you pretty quickly figure out this guy knows his stuff.
The tech just hasn’t been there yet and most of the devices that do this are heavy clunky and hot
Meta is investing billions to get out ahead of this shift and to own the entertainment and data (and thus advertising) layers that sit on top of the real world through these glasses
The rumor mill is abuzz that Facebook finally making a play for it in the next set of smart glasses after a few years of sticking to VR headsets and audio/camera only glasses