Almost all blind people usually wear a dark shade of glasses. So, instead of the phone doing the camera’s work, what about a tiny Google-Glass-esque snap-on to the Blind person’s glasses that feeds to the phone for processing?

A few companies are trying it. Last weekend, I tried one, and it was not yet polished, but good enough to start. It recognized me (my friend already has me on his phone contact).

I’m trying to help a friend with his non-profit initiative, bringing the cost to about a third or even a-fourth of Google Glass[1]. After reading the article and the other First Impressions with GPT-4V(ision)[2], it is apparent that this can be possible much simpler and soon enough. The rumor about Ive[3] and Sam[4] talking about AI in Hardware has already given me some good hope.

If anyone else does AI-enabled hardware assistance for blind people and has devices that will be less than $500 a piece in retail, I’d love to talk and introduce them to the right people.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Glass

2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37673409

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jony_Ive

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Altman

Let me tell you about one of my personal stories.

The project I got transferred to was the thing of nightmares.

Not deterred, I hacked into it a shitty solution and shipped it very fast. I shipped it so fast that suddenly I had everyone's attention. And I shipped another thing super fast and got more attention. One day, I said "this needs to go", and everybody listened, architects and directors alike. 6 months later, most of the code was replaced by my code or something originating from it. Every projects and features delivered on time with great appreciation of the clients.

You have to make it like software development is not a problem at all in the eye of your client and never never go behind the line where this is not true. The day software development is a problem, you lose. You must deliver software like you're delivering a book from amazon, no matter what. Because then, you got credit to make things better, which creates a positive loop. In that particular instance, I used some rushed victories to get more credits to make things clean later on. The guys who say they can make things clean but never ship and never win any battle against a deadline are just funny anyway.

To be honest, I took some fights in my career. I was fighting some dudes in every project. But don't fool yourself: if you're not really capable of making things better, then fighting is useless, just improve. You win the fights because the managers are on your side and you get them on your side by making software development not a problem at all.

edited