Great, soon it won't be enough to block browser cookies. I'll have to avoid glancing at actual cookies lest my search results start filling up with Snackwells coupons and special offers from the local gym.
Er, versus already carrying around a phone with built-in GPS and camera? Carrying around a networked computer is a new thing? That's why privacy policies exist (and why they should be monitored and enforced).
That is, if you're an internet company. To find out that AT&T is logging your location indefinitely (since 3.5 years ago), you need the FOIA:
Man, you've been around here for two years longer than I have. You know that there's no value added by blatant sarcasm. If you're actually afraid that Google will use your captured images to serve you unwanted ads (and, btw, revolutionize computer vision in the process), then say exactly that. Crackin' wise about snackwells isn't getting anyone anywhere.
Is sarcasm always unwanted here? I actually chuckled at the beginning until it turned too serious toward the end.
There was a great TEDx talk on the (well-executed) use of humor, and satire in particular, to get points across when they would otherwise be disregarded, or to make bland points more viral: http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_bliss_comedy_is_translation.h...
I don't see a reason to discourage sarcasm out-of-hand, or any other form of humor. Based on the merits of the individual comment, sure.
I would never claim that sarcasm is always unwanted, but it's probably used an order of magnitude or two more frequently than is useful.
The problem is part of a larger one, people seem to be generally more interested in pithy, memorable one liners than in starting a discussion -- the easiest way to do this is to say something vitriolically sarcastic. People who agree with you will up-vote you, and you'll get some measure of affirmation from that.
The issue with that approach is that Hacker News should be a place where discussion flourishes. If the parent had said something to the effect of "This presents a troublesome, albeit interesting, avenue for further data aggregation, which could be used to target ads or sold to third parties," it would have likely kicked off an interesting discussion (both about the feasibility of such data aggregation (computer vision, mobile aggregation, etc.) and the societal costs of allowing such aggregation).
Instead, he went for the funny one-hitter, which framed the debate in such a way (by suggesting that it was inevitable and going to be used for evil) that anyone with even a slightly differing opinion is prevented from saying anything.
I don't mean to single out mechanical_fish specifically, many people here are guilty of this, but it essentially makes Hacker News more of an announcement/sharing forum (like twitter) than a discussion forum, which was one of the things that attracted me (and I'm sure many others) to it in the first place.
So I guess my larger point is that we should be more mindful of this stuff. It's more important to frame a relevant discussion than it is to "be right," and we should embrace that by posing interesting questions and answering them deliberately (being careful to stick to facts and being careful with the speculation, which easily morphs into FUD).
For the record, "This presents a troublesome, albeit interesting, avenue for further data aggregation, which could be used to target ads or sold to third parties" is a lousy comment too. The problem is not the form, it's the content. What do you mean, it's "troublesome, albeit interesting?" That is totally devoid of insight.
The reason I read a comment thread is because I want to find things that experts have to say. If grellas has some comment about the applicability of privacy law to the monitoring of someone's immediate surroundings, then great, let's hear it. But if I don't walk away from the comment having learned something, I would rather it not be there.
"I don't see a reason to discourage sarcasm out-of-hand, or any other form of humor."
I would argue that +1 Funny is uniquely responsible for the decline of comments at /. throughout the years. While I agree that high quality content can rescue a humorous post, the previous commenters are right to be critical of humor for humors sake.
Bless you, because it was while trying to figure out if I agreed with you that I looked up "sarcasm" in Wikipedia and found this awesome quote:
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, on the other hand, recognized in it a cry of pain: Sarcasm, he said, was "usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded."
Beautiful. So, based on that: If what I wrote wasn't technically sarcasm, that's not because I wasn't trying. ;)
And now I'm afraid I must reiterate my clearly-signalled disinterest in yet another lengthy debate about Google's privacy policies. There are plenty of older threads on HN that cover these things, and this week I have more urgent things to do, like try to make up my mind whether or not my past and future YouTube viewing history is bound up with the privacy of my soul.
Wow. The great and storied "hacker news". I came here expecting great discussions on the technology of hmd's and am instead subjected to yet another chapter in the Google soap opera internet hate a thon. What a fucking joke.
Not saying this is what they're selling, but: Real-time overlays are still impractical, right? My intuition is--without a really high speed camera and high fidelity environmental cues--the overlay will have a lag and high uncertainty wrt where you're actually looking... or has the state of the art moved on? Or are their labs advancing the state of the art?
Any idea how they're making the screen usable at that focal length? Don't VR headsets usually need optics much more bulky than sunglasses for comfortable viewing?
Anyway, even if it's smartphone-like functionality in a more convenient form factor, I'm looking forward to being an early adopter.
The current state of camera based AR is not compelling, primarily due to unimpressive displays (low resolution and small field of vision), but also because of lag as you mentioned. Most solutions are based on Kopin display components which are really screens for handycam viewfinders.
Vuzix is doing something really interesting with transparent displays using waveguide technology (http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/12/vuzix-augmented-reality-s...). This, to me, is the future of HUD glasses. A solution with a screen blocking one eye, as it seems Google is doing - I can't see that working out, unless they are sitting on some breakthrough display technology.
I mean... depending on big the frames are... maybe the state of the art being advanced is designing really, really skinny and long high-end ARM chips down the arms.
I am horrible at remembering names. The day these things can do facial recognition againt my address book, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles and pop up a little box with the person I'm looking at's name is the day I will never go without glasses again.
Here is a TED 2009 demo of MIT's "Sixth Sense" wearable computer. It's like Minority Report but operates on any wall. It's features include visual overlays of social profiles for the person you're talking with. :)
That would be amazing, and really useful at tech conferences.
One could imagine something like Klout running in the background and telling you who's important, who has similar interest to you, etc... The social implications are mind blowing.
That's a big idea... Although I would feel a bit bad bringing the online social hierarchy / totem pole into the real world. We already care _too_ much about Klout and Karma scores, the last thing we need is twitter gods parting the seas at tech conferences.
Season 1 episode 3 of BBC4's 'Black Mirror' anthology series, titled "The Entire History Of You", is also a great look at at the implications of in-eye, always-on recording/playback devices.
Absolutely loved that miniseries and recommended it to everyone I know. The second episode also deals with a high-tech future, while the first one explores a more social angle of our current connected world.
Also loved them all, with episode 2 ("15 Million Merits") my favorite. It was almost like a modern update of THX-1138, and as good or better than any classic 'Twilight Zone' or 'Outer Limits'.
Of those, I've only read Halting State, but it is a really cool novel (although written in something of an odd perspective). I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it yet, and who generally likes cyberpunk'ish fiction.
Yes. _Rainbows End_ and _Halting State_ were the first things that went through my mind when I saw this headline. :) I personally find a lot of inspiration for my work in such stories.
I'd add Daniel Suarez's Daemon and FreedomTM to that list, at least if you're interested in this technology's ability to mobilize an army of nerd-assassins to remake society.
My biggest concern is if this is executed poorly it could undermine future attempts to bring wearable computing to the mainstream. It still feels a bit early for this to work well. Google can pull off the technical challenges, surely, but the usability hurdles here are outside of their comfort zone.
I don't really see this being an issue... First generation emerging technologies always have big problems, and early adopters know it. Think about pre-iPhone smartphones - they (largely) sucked, but that fact hasn't had any effect on the market for well-engineered smartphones today, as far as I can tell. If anything, Google releasing a product with major deficiencies that early adopters still find valuable will spur further development in the same space by competitors.
You could arguably say that early attempts anchored the industry (into a certain way of thinking about what a smartphone was and how it worked) until Apple came along to pull it out of that rut...
That's arguable. I'm pretty sure there are many more ways to 'do it' which are both wrong, and have not been attempted.
Granted, I'm not putting Apple up on a pedestal or anything. They just came along at the right time, with the right leadership to combine existing technology into a better (and more useful) configuration.
And there may need to be someone in Apple's position in the future. Will it be Apple? Maybe, maybe not. It didn't take Apple to change smartphones for the better, it took a better smartphone that Apple was the first (by a long shot) to realize.
Even though early smartphones sucked in comparison to modern smartphones, I wouldn't trade that development for the world. Bring on the smartglasses.
The article makes it sound like this is more an 'opt in through purchase' experiment rather than a serious product launch - perhaps that is to mitigate this particular concern.
I remembering reading somewhere that they might actually test this like they did with Chromebooks (Cr-48) and distribute them to people to get feedback.
Because this won't be valuable until there is serious data that they can statistically infer different things on (like how Google Translate and other services get better over time). It also sounds like (perhaps wishful thinking) that it would be an open experiment, i.e. with open software and APIs for third-person development.
Does anyone see this actually catching on in the next five years and becoming something more than a gimmick?
I'm as excited about the prospect of viewing the world through a HUD as the next guy, but I can't imagine these glasses looking sleek in the slightest, and they will likely be rather bulky.
But beyond ugliness, it seems to me that someone would rather pull out their smartphone than put on a pair of HUD glasses for any given use case for this product. Augmented reality is "cool" but I've never used an AR app more than two days after I downloaded it.
I think for it to catch on, this technology would have to be baked into glasses that are designed to be worn all the time, not just put on when needed. People aren't going to carry around AR glasses in their back pocket with their phones and wallets. So a place to start might be enhancing the glasses used by people with vision trouble, rather than creating a whole new glasses product.
I can think of two markets that this may do well in: motorcyclists and runners.
Motorcycle HUDs have existed for quite some time now, but more competition especially from someone as big as Google will inject some much needed innovation.
I can also see this being popular with running enthusiasts. During my races I wear a paper band around my wrist with my ideal times for each mile, and then have my GPS watch set to show instantaneous pace. A race involves constantly looking between watch, paper printout and your surroundings. If I had a HUD, I might even enjoy the race a bit :) (that was slightly sarcastic)
I've been waiting for this for a long time. I wear glasses currently and have always felt that some kind of overlay could provide tremendous value.
From simple reminders, augmenting my environment with meta data, or giving access to real time updates about almost anything the possibilities are almost endless.
Batteries are going to truly be the limiting factor IMO. Forget plastics, the future is batteries. I assume version 1 of the product will require some kind of external battery pack, I'd think it was certainly worth it if the tech is what it should be.
If they're lightweight enough you could have the lenses replaced and just wear the digital pair. That's what I'm planning on looking into, once the technology matures a little.
Have Google figured out a way to solve the accomodation/vergence problems inherent in screen based 3D displays (http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=6402...)? Because if not, these things are going to suffer from the same dismal failure that every other 3D display product has over the last 30 years.
It's not clear they're going for a 3d experience. My guess is it's just a hud without eye tracking. A camera for labeling the world a'la virtual light would be cool, but still laggy. Does not matter. I would insert the picture of a kitten with the text "want" but this is not reddit.
It needs to be 3D to pitch text. Hold a piece of text 3 inches away from your eyeball and try reading it. Then imagine how painful it would be to have that there 8 hours a day.
I disagree. Every single consumer 3d tech is a fixed focal length. Neither the 3d tv, nor the movie screen changes distance. there's nothing special in the glasses to change distance, it's simply blocking out images from one eye.
I think you mean something like the image needs to appear some distance away from the eye. Yes, i agree with that. There are old solutions to that problem.
You could show each eye a different image, and get a depth effect... but that has all of the problems you pointed out.
Exciting news! Just yesterday I was watching John Carmack's interview from 2011's QuakeCon and at the end he mentioned that he was going to soon start playing with display glasses to see if anything interesting would come out of it (for id, I imagine).
Driverless car, now digital glasses. I'm positively impressed that Google keeps pushing the envelope in all these different fields.
"""A HMD without head tracking is counter-productive – the view feels like it swims opposite every tiny head motion."""
This guy knows his pixels. :-) Tweet was just this week, I believe. He's had a few others w.r.t. head tracking, FOV / display issues with fancy new displays. Definitely interesting to see his challenges.
i saved this, becuase thw imagry of a man sitting jyst his boxrs and a virtyal realitu device, contraposed by your commebt of a man not doing anything but sittinf on the bed!
Even the smallest smartphone chipsets still need big batteries, I suspect it's going to be a pocket device with a wire or bluetooth of some kind going to the glasses.
Unless I've missed a big recent announcement, wireless energy transfer, even over a short distance like pocket-to-glasses, is a long way off from being feasible. My money is on a tiny battery built into the glasses themselves, and a screen/CPU optimized for using miniscule amounts of energy. The problem is that wireless data transfer still requires quite a bit of power, so they will either need to do lots of optimization to only transfer data when absolutely necessary (and turn the transceiver off the rest of the time), or come up with a system in which the glasses talk to a central device in your pocket using a low-energy data transfer scheme, and the central device talks to the network over WiFi/3G.
(On second thought, maybe that's what you meant by "bluetooth to a central pack")
With no wires, it's going to be a battery that also has glass on the front. What IS the feasible distance for induction? Even the copin displays require 5v.
i find this very hard to believe. it seems obvious to me that smartphones and tablets have completely filled the niche invented by the HUD glasses of yesteryear's science fiction. they will never be popular, because they are too invasive. people like to be able to put the internet in their pocket and take it out again when they need it.
i wouldn't be surprised if google has a bunch of engineers working on the technology that could be used in HUD glasses, but i would be very, very surprised to see anything ever come to market. google will not enter the hardware market with such a risky product.
They'll never be popular? I think the main impediment to wearable computing has been how socially awkward it is. If someone actually came up with a discrete, well-designed glasses-based computer, I think it would be immensely popular.
AR won't really come into it's own until such a platform exists. Holding a phone in front of your face is just too awkward.
- read any language
- never forget names
- navigational aids (obviously)
- identify any bird, plant, etc.
- a whole raft of products just geared around augmenting the museum experience
- look at a printed equation and see it solved
- look at a printed question and see it answered (within certain constraints obviously)
- look at binary, hexidecimal, etc. and see it converted to decimal
- look at a color and see pantone and hex color codes
- read existing printed books, but with access to immediate dictionary lookup, references, etc.
I could go on and on... if this ever hits, the ramifications will be extraordinary.
Your second-to-last point seems like a wonderfully simple, life-changing application- you can negate many of the problems of colorblindness by textually identifying the colors of objects and selectively enhancing the contrast between objects. (Perhaps overlaying textures or something?)
i thought the same of hands free cell phones... and I found people all day long with headphones, sometimes listening music, sometimes just in case the phione rings.
On a second thought. Some people already use glasses all day long. It would be great for most of them to have a little display with the current time, mail status, incoming calls, and along... At least, for me sounds nice.
I can't imagine them not looking hideous, but i want them. i've wanted them for pretty much two decades now. I'm sure they will suck. I will happily give google a pile of money for the few weeks of usage i'm guaranteed to get out of them. It's just a bonus if they're actually useful.
I wonder if this will eventually intersect with the gamification trends. This article had me imagining a crude augmented reality MMO, routine tasks are assigned point values and so are items for purchase. Walking through the store you could see that Sara Lee white bread nets you 100xp, paying your mortgage on time, Bank of America has awarded you 1000xp. A look at someone and the HUD displays their level and point value along with their various badges. Of course check-ins will be automatic.
I doubt this iteration will be very advanced, but the article definitely made me think.
I”m really surprised that no-one’s talking up the accessibility benefits of something like this. Imagine a version for blind users that dumped the screen in favour of a headset and mic. A little voice recognition and your glasses could tell you where you are, what you’re facing, and even do basic hazard avoidance. That sounds invaluable.
Most scanners to date have been moderately vulnerable to blocking devices. Say, a backscatter laser of some sort. And if personal identifiers are based on you carrying a broadcast device (e.g.: an info-leaking phone), one simple solution is ... don't do that.
I suspect that both the technology and its countermeasures will first be utilized by government (and corporate) "security forces".
Hrm ... related query: is it possible to build a simple device which would short out RFID scanners? If it becomes trivial enough to destroy the readers, then ubiquitous, obnoxious uses might at least become more expensive.
The tags are cheap. The scanners somewhat less so (especially when you add the labor cost of repair/replacement).
I'm not talking about killing in-store scanners and the like. However if I was aware of privacy-stealing roaming scanners in places they had no business to be in ... well. Raising the cost of data acquisition might be an entertaining hobby.
I think Google is usually pretty forward about their privacy policies and letting you customize what data they store. (See those recent "this stuff is important" popups on virtually every Google property)
Here's hoping they thought of issues like: Guy wears his new "Google Goggles" to a racy late-night sales meeting, and Gmail serves how wife ads for divorce papers.
I think the real issue is how to respond to my wearing a camera that records everything I do and, incidentally, everything that everyone around me does. Even if the data's never sent to a third party, there are still privacy concerns. They're just a lot harder to address, unless "ban lifelogging" strikes you as a reasonable response. (It doesn't me.)
Sounds like a more generalized, urban version of the Mod Live ski goggles (http://www.reconinstruments.com/products/mod). The Mod Live googles look amazing, but pretty bulky (plus, I don't ski). If the Google glasses end up being half as cool I'd definitely be interested.
Is this article implying the glasses will work like a HUD, with the image displayed on a transparent surface that you can also see through? Or is it an opaque screen off to the side? Or it couldn't possibly be an opaque screen over your eyes that redisplays what you would have seen behind it?
I wonder what the field of view is? That's been my main problem with HMDs in the past. Maybe now I'll finally be able to build my wearable computer from COTS components.
Exercise: taking the hardware as a given, what would you do with it, what software do you need?
If anyone hasn't read Daemon & FreedomTM by Daniel Suarez I highly suggest it. His use of tech like this in the novels was pretty well thought out. Can't wait until Google uses these to integrate a MMORPG with RL.
After their Safari tracking system fiasco they announce this: the ultimate form of tracking. It shouldn't come as a surprise that Google would make this considering the rest of their products.
I love Google and their products, but I feel this takes it over the line. At what point will Google be satisfied with the amount of information they're able to collect? Maybe the world will become some strange Utopia where products like these glasses are acceptable and Google made the right call, but Google should take a step back and realize they're making technology for humans, not robots.
If this trend continues I bet we'll see Google Children roaming our street. Ok, that's pretty hyperbolic but you get my point.
I definitely checked the date a few times, but this makes an awful lot of sense given Google's position. At this point it's really just hardware to bridge the accessibility gap.
But can they look good? Those oakleys linked to are awful. If they look stupid then I doubt they will work... Until apple steps in and does it right, that is ;)
"... One Google employee said the glasses would tap into a number of Google software products that are currently available and in use today, but will display the information in an augmented reality view ..."
How is the reading experience? Can you get 80 chars into it?
I hope there isn't a good one hand keyboard interface (chording?) so you can write email/code while bicycling/driving/etc -- with my simultaneous capacity, it would be my death...
Yeah so everything I look at is going to go through Google's servers, and be processed and display Google ads constantly no matter where I'm looking. Yeah right. Google is flat-out lunatic if they think consumers want this level of invasion into their lives. They're taking the Orwellian computing idea, big brother always on everywhere, to the absolute extreme here.
