The Vision Pro is a different class of device than the smart glasses. It’s more like the Meta Quest and other VR headsets. It’s a very odd inclusion on a piece like this. Also several of these,...
The Vision Pro is a different class of device than the smart glasses. It’s more like the Meta Quest and other VR headsets. It’s a very odd inclusion on a piece like this.
Also several of these, especially the Snap and Warby Parker ones, just look like fairly normal glasses. Whether they look tacky or not depends more on how they’re culturally coded. Like the style of normal glasses that’s popular now look a lot like what used to be standard issue military spectacles that were regarded as SO ugly they got the nickname “Birth Control Glasses.” Tastes change.
Now the bigger question is, are smart glasses useful for anything people want to do? Unless you’re the sort of creep who takes up skirt photos, the answer seems to be “no.” So focus on that.
I recently met up with an old friend who has low vision. He is nearly blind. He wears smart glasses and claims that they significantly improve his quality of life and allow him to more easily...
I recently met up with an old friend who has low vision. He is nearly blind. He wears smart glasses and claims that they significantly improve his quality of life and allow him to more easily interact with the environment. It's not a typical use case, but it exists.
Yeah, the mother of a friend is nigh-blind, and she appreciates being able to ask her glasses to tell her what the random things that come in the mail are. Being able to get an immediate verbal...
Yeah, the mother of a friend is nigh-blind, and she appreciates being able to ask her glasses to tell her what the random things that come in the mail are. Being able to get an immediate verbal description of a thing in your hands is rarely needed, but for the people who need it, it's literally lifechanging.
Ah yeah disability/accessibility uses are different. I imagine for a blind person it’s the cameras that are the game changers? Like it can probably narrate everything you’re looking at. I’ve...
Ah yeah disability/accessibility uses are different. I imagine for a blind person it’s the cameras that are the game changers? Like it can probably narrate everything you’re looking at. I’ve listened to how screen readers “read” and it’s incomprehensibly fast to me.
This kind of tech is undeniably useful for people with disabilities. The problem is that this public is almost a side effect of the real big tech ambition. They don't want to solve issues that...
This kind of tech is undeniably useful for people with disabilities. The problem is that this public is almost a side effect of the real big tech ambition. They don't want to solve issues that people with disabilities have; they want to create a new mass market product.
This is the entire thing. People are already less comfortable living in public because of the prevalence of camera phones. AR glasses crank that dynamic up to 11. It's not only the upskirt creeps,...
This is the entire thing. People are already less comfortable living in public because of the prevalence of camera phones. AR glasses crank that dynamic up to 11. It's not only the upskirt creeps, it's also the influencer-lite peeps that feel the need to record each experience and post it online. It makes other people uncomfortable.
Many of us want a broader expectation of not being recorded; these devices promise the opposite. We need to do more than resist the proliferation of new surveillance tech (including smart glasses), and push back on the stuff that's already out here.
Eh having a "Screen" you could pop up for things AR style would be nice, it's just that you still need a control interface and most people scream about moving their 10key let alone teaching a new...
Now the bigger question is, are smart glasses useful for anything people want to do?
Eh having a "Screen" you could pop up for things AR style would be nice, it's just that you still need a control interface and most people scream about moving their 10key let alone teaching a new form of input (although I think I see a lot of potential in that land).
And of course the inherent issue of "well we have garbage privacy laws so now everyone is recording everything constantly" being a main feature.
I think you hit the nail on the head. These glasses will always look tacky until this is no longer the broader context of their existence, which may never happen. These things have been on the...
Now the bigger question is, are smart glasses useful for anything people want to do? Unless you’re the sort of creep who takes up skirt photos, the answer seems to be “no.”
I think you hit the nail on the head. These glasses will always look tacky until this is no longer the broader context of their existence, which may never happen. These things have been on the market in some form or another for years now, but there's still no obvious gamechanging everyday use case. It's not like smartphones where "the internet, readily available in your pocket" was a huge leap in convenience.
Wait, if smart glasses are for creeps who want to take upskirt photos, wouldn't that mean they'd have to get their heads down to get an angle up a skirt? These are smart glasses, after all. I'm...
Wait, if smart glasses are for creeps who want to take upskirt photos, wouldn't that mean they'd have to get their heads down to get an angle up a skirt? These are smart glasses, after all. I'm just imagining some weirdo laying on the ground, eyeglasses pointed up some woman's skirt thinking to himself, "Yes! Nobody suspects a thing!"
I would imagine it's more like they can capture moments where there's some brief incidental moment of exposure. Then it's captured forever and available for sharing online.
I would imagine it's more like they can capture moments where there's some brief incidental moment of exposure. Then it's captured forever and available for sharing online.
In that case, how is it much different than a smartphone? Creeps gonna creep and all. I'm not at all excusing anyone for being a sex pest, it just seems like kind of an odd line to draw that...
In that case, how is it much different than a smartphone? Creeps gonna creep and all.
I'm not at all excusing anyone for being a sex pest, it just seems like kind of an odd line to draw that cameras worn on the head are verboten, or at least a sign of deviance, while nearly everybody has a concealable camera on their person 24/7.
I see them as methods of harassment both in the moment and online later. It's less that people can't do this already, and more that glasses make it socially acceptable and easier to conceal...
I see them as methods of harassment both in the moment and online later. It's less that people can't do this already, and more that glasses make it socially acceptable and easier to conceal without going the full hidden camera route. People who record with phones mostly don't hide them or barely do, and the glasses have become popular among online personalities, including those who record others without their consent - often service workers or say women at the gym.
You can lie to yourself with the glasses - if you buy an explicitly hidden camera then you've lost the deniability and socially I see less approval for people who do that.
I personally dislike the social acceptability of recording people without their permission for your content.
Ok, but smartphones though? We've already reached market saturation on tiny cameras that can be used to take creepshots. I don't see how cameras on glasses are this whole other class of thing.
Ok, but smartphones though? We've already reached market saturation on tiny cameras that can be used to take creepshots. I don't see how cameras on glasses are this whole other class of thing.
I know that if I ever tried to wear something like these, I'd tear them off my face and stomp on them within three days of having them. In theory it's an interesting idea, having access to...
I know that if I ever tried to wear something like these, I'd tear them off my face and stomp on them within three days of having them.
In theory it's an interesting idea, having access to information whenever I want. In practice, so many annoying little piece of shit technologies compete for my attention basically every minute of the day. My phone pings me with notifications, my computer at work makes a bloop sound when teams messages and emails come in, my tv whines that it needs to be updated, my computer at home "helpfully" tells me when new windows features or video card features or my fucking mouse's software has new features available. I absolutely detest it, and I've avoided smart watches like the plague because of the same reason.
Any time I talk about this problem online, a deluge of people chime in with "but your notification settings!" Like clockwork, which is a disingenuous response and I'm pretty sure everyone that says it knows it. Applications update themselves and silently change their notification settings all the time, and every time a new one is installed, those settings need to be reviewed. It's like a second job that I need to take on just to not being driven insane which I never signed up for.
So in theory, yeah, cool, ar glasses let me pretend to be iron man and... I don't know, check to see if the noodle place I want to go to is open without the excruciating labor of reaching into my pocket for my phone. In the real world where technology concepts are absolutely ruined by greed and incompetence, having a cloud connected ad machine on my face at all waking hours constantly annoying me with notifications literally sounds less desirable to me than Chinese water torture.
Neil Stephenson predicted exactly that problem in Diamond Age. There was a throwaway reference to a man who got a virus on his eyeballs' screen that showed roach motel ads 24 hours a day until he...
Neil Stephenson predicted exactly that problem in Diamond Age. There was a throwaway reference to a man who got a virus on his eyeballs' screen that showed roach motel ads 24 hours a day until he killed himself. Having some space from our technology is vital.
The notification settings thing is like telling someone to walk around with an air purification mask if they complain about toxic smog. Like yeah it technically solves the problem, but...
The notification settings thing is like telling someone to walk around with an air purification mask if they complain about toxic smog. Like yeah it technically solves the problem, but notifications are supposed to be useful. If I am being nagged so much it makes me turn them off how is this not framed as a profound failure of design?
The core problem is that companies feel entitled to my time and attention. If I am using a tool they’ve given me they feel like their purpose of the tool is to facilitate my use of the tool (e.g. “Did you know you can now do. . .?”) But the point of the tool isn’t to use the tool, it’s to accomplish the task I picked it up to do. Software developers, and the tech industry in general, have completely lost the plot.
Obviously I’m not the target of this article, since I have many prototype AR glasses and am still excited about the prospect of overlaying a Halo style HUD on my reality. It’s unfortunate that...
Obviously I’m not the target of this article, since I have many prototype AR glasses and am still excited about the prospect of overlaying a Halo style HUD on my reality. It’s unfortunate that nothing has hit the market that actually provides the experience I want.
See, the idea of a Halo or Iron Man HUD really appeals to me, but when I think about what I would actually put on the HUD I find it hard to justify. I don't want a constant information stream...
See, the idea of a Halo or Iron Man HUD really appeals to me, but when I think about what I would actually put on the HUD I find it hard to justify. I don't want a constant information stream about what I'm looking at, I don't have a quantifiable health value to keep track of, and I generally know how to navigate to most places I'm trying to go.
If we can come up with genuine everyday utilities, then I think the appeal will grow. As it is, I can only see getting occasional use out of smart glasses, like identifying plants and bugs on a hike, and even that is a harder task than you would think.
That XKCD comic was true when it was written in 2014, but has been pretty well surpassed by the work research teams have done in the past 12 years. Machine learning tools remain far from perfect,...
That XKCD comic was true when it was written in 2014, but has been pretty well surpassed by the work research teams have done in the past 12 years. Machine learning tools remain far from perfect, but "is there a bird in this picture" is now about as routine as the GPS lookup.
Yes, but accurately determining which bird (or bug, or specific tree species) seems like an extra challenge. Do you know how many yellow and black spiders there are in the midwest?
Yes, but accurately determining which bird (or bug, or specific tree species) seems like an extra challenge. Do you know how many yellow and black spiders there are in the midwest?
There’s an iOS app called “Seek by iNaturalist” you should try playing with. This problem has been solved. Not perfectly, but very substantially. I walk my 4-year old to school every morning and...
There’s an iOS app called “Seek by iNaturalist” you should try playing with. This problem has been solved. Not perfectly, but very substantially. I walk my 4-year old to school every morning and we spend most of the stroll identifying various plants and insects along the way. He’s been developing an encyclopedic knowledge of the local flora and whatever fauna can sit still long enough for me to scan it.
One of the keys is that when it identifies the species it pops up a profile page full of photos including that plant, bug, or animals’ various developmental stages. That way you can directly confirm if it matches the reference pictures.
The main drawback is that it takes time to ID something accurately so it’s difficult to get an ID on things that move a lot. Birds can be tough if you don’t have a telephoto zoom lens, many flying insects as well. I have a bunch of beetles but good luck catching a gnat or fly. It’s spotty as to whether it can ID my breed of dog because he never sits still, but even if it doesn’t have it down it still gets in the neighborhood of canid and speculates he might be a jackal or coyote (he’s a kelpie, so at a distance even a human with poor vision could get confused).
Not sure if you already know of it but for identifying birds I find Merlin way better than Seek! It’s also got a song recording ID mode for when you can’t see a bird hiding in a tree. Plus it’s...
Not sure if you already know of it but for identifying birds I find Merlin way better than Seek! It’s also got a song recording ID mode for when you can’t see a bird hiding in a tree.
Plus it’s got a cool “life list” feature. Makes it feel like updating your Pokédex when you find a new bird!
Well, I guess I stand corrected. I haven't played around with AR much recently, just a constellation viewing/id app, but that's just taking location and accelerometer data to figure out where...
Well, I guess I stand corrected. I haven't played around with AR much recently, just a constellation viewing/id app, but that's just taking location and accelerometer data to figure out where you're pointing your phone. I'm glad that it's easier to ID nature now, but I worry because that also makes it easier to ID people from footage.
See, that’s why I like when my gun displays my ammo type and counts in a way that I can see at a glance, and my wrist computer shows my health and armor. Overlays take me out of the experience of...
See, that’s why I like when my gun displays my ammo type and counts in a way that I can see at a glance, and my wrist computer shows my health and armor. Overlays take me out of the experience of being a drudge living in the crumbling empire of a miserable dystopia.
There’s almost no situation where I would want a HUD like that 24/7. There’s an endless number of particular scenarios where I can think of a HUD being useful, though. But as I said in my other...
There’s almost no situation where I would want a HUD like that 24/7. There’s an endless number of particular scenarios where I can think of a HUD being useful, though. But as I said in my other comment, modern tech overlords think the purpose of technology is to make us use and engage with the technology. Their brains just aren’t wired to think in terms of technology as enabling us to engage more deeply with the world instead.
Most AR use cases I can think of would benefit from having something that wears more like ski goggles or welding goggles. Having a HUD overlay while I’m riding my bike for turn-by-turn directions and safety warnings would be great. If I’m trying to fix an appliance or something being able to overlay a schematic over my view would be amazing. But I don’t need to wear something 24/7 to do that.
The one case I can think of where I’d maybe want to wear something and walk around as I do normal stuff would be like if I’m in a foreign country and would like a thing that can live-translate signage or things people are saying to me. But that’s SUCH a narrow use case and I imagine carrying something for that would be more like having reading glasses (or clip-ons to normal glasses) than the kind I use to see.
Re. genuine everyday utilities, I put some thought into this at a previous gig. Shortlist was: Real-time subtitles, IRL Integration with autofocals, since you already need eye tracking...
Re. genuine everyday utilities, I put some thought into this at a previous gig. Shortlist was:
Real-time subtitles, IRL
Integration with autofocals, since you already need eye tracking
Picture-in-picture digital zoom
(no one liked this one, but it's one of my favourites) Gesture-driven smarthome control. E.g. setting blinds to the correct height/rotation with a hand gesture, pointing at lights to turn them on, etc.
I'm no longer in the tech industry, but I would've also put down navigation and accessibility purposes (another commenter above noted this too), and a continuous recording feature that can be saved + recovered only with a subpoena and the user's consent (for handling interpersonal disputes or accidents where a recording could trivially dismiss/back up a claim).
(admittedly that last one could be contentious; I have thoughts on how to do it relatively securely, but ultimately it touches upon the same concerns re. rights to privacy which inform the wide variety of opinions on one party vs. two party consent laws around recording)
Even if the glasses can do it perfectly, how much more convenient is it to perform this task on your glasses than it is with your smartphone? It's certainly slightly less cumbersome than pulling...
As it is, I can only see getting occasional use out of smart glasses, like identifying plants and bugs on a hike
Even if the glasses can do it perfectly, how much more convenient is it to perform this task on your glasses than it is with your smartphone? It's certainly slightly less cumbersome than pulling something out of your pocket, but is enough so for the average person to justify spending hundreds of dollars on an extra device?
I frequently would like my heart rate showing in my field of view. I don’t like checking my watch for it. This is only a concern for about 30 minutes of my day but it would be cool. When I’m...
I frequently would like my heart rate showing in my field of view. I don’t like checking my watch for it. This is only a concern for about 30 minutes of my day but it would be cool.
When I’m travelling I would love the directions but even more I would like at a glance information on what buildings and statues I’m looking at, historical notes, etc.
In my day to day life, I would like my slack, Claude code, reminders, todo lists, and other notifications streaming in my peripheral view. I’m already spending hours a day looking at my phone for this information.
The CEO part would seem to be the relevant point then rather than their gender. I suspect you would not have written "tacky women" if the CEOs happened to be women.
The CEO part would seem to be the relevant point then rather than their gender. I suspect you would not have written "tacky women" if the CEOs happened to be women.
Hmmm I don't like this line of thinking, it does sound sexist, if i wouldn't like this said about women. And also, while a lot of rich jerkwads are men, there are a lot of rich men who aren't...
Hmmm I don't like this line of thinking, it does sound sexist, if i wouldn't like this said about women. And also, while a lot of rich jerkwads are men, there are a lot of rich men who aren't jerks, and a lot of women who are terrible people rich or poor.
Especially if people are already thinking tacky CEOs are one shaped already, then singling out men is both hurtful to all men who aren't tacky CEOs, and also reinforces that CEOs are men, which hurts women
I've never met one. Also unknown to me. It's not reinforcing a narrative nor “singling out men” if it's a fact, as one can comb through wide available data, such as: McKinsey: “For the 11th...
there are a lot of rich men who aren't jerks
I've never met one.
all men who aren't tacky CEOs
Also unknown to me.
Especially if people are already thinking tacky CEOs are one shaped already, then singling out men is both hurtful to all men who aren't tacky CEOs, and also reinforces that CEOs are men, which hurts women
It's not reinforcing a narrative nor “singling out men” if it's a fact, as one can comb through wide available data, such as:
McKinsey: “For the 11th consecutive year, women remain underrepresented at every level of the corporate pipeline—especially in senior leadership, where they make up just 29 percent of C-suite roles, unchanged from 2024.”
From here: “In this quarter’s data [2025 Q4], about 83 percent of IT leaders are White, and just over three percent are Black. Roughly four out of five IT leaders are men, with women representing just over 21 percent of leadership roles.”
Most of the discourse around smart glasses is missing the mark. I don't think having FaceBook notifications about your uncle's most recent racist rant is particularly valuable or will make anyone...
Most of the discourse around smart glasses is missing the mark. I don't think having FaceBook notifications about your uncle's most recent racist rant is particularly valuable or will make anyone a lot of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of use cases that are interesting or plausible for smart glasses. I would be interested in having sunglasses that had running information, directions, and traffic monitoring for instance. Or in a in industrial context, it might be useful to have directions for replacing a piece of equipment displayed. There's a bunch of use cases that are valuable and this article and Meta's approach both got stuck on FaceBook notifications instead of thinking about the real value of the technology.
The Vision Pro is a different class of device than the smart glasses. It’s more like the Meta Quest and other VR headsets. It’s a very odd inclusion on a piece like this.
Also several of these, especially the Snap and Warby Parker ones, just look like fairly normal glasses. Whether they look tacky or not depends more on how they’re culturally coded. Like the style of normal glasses that’s popular now look a lot like what used to be standard issue military spectacles that were regarded as SO ugly they got the nickname “Birth Control Glasses.” Tastes change.
Now the bigger question is, are smart glasses useful for anything people want to do? Unless you’re the sort of creep who takes up skirt photos, the answer seems to be “no.” So focus on that.
Back in my day, creeps used to harass strangers for the love of the game. Now everything is for content. Smdh
I recently met up with an old friend who has low vision. He is nearly blind. He wears smart glasses and claims that they significantly improve his quality of life and allow him to more easily interact with the environment. It's not a typical use case, but it exists.
Yeah, the mother of a friend is nigh-blind, and she appreciates being able to ask her glasses to tell her what the random things that come in the mail are. Being able to get an immediate verbal description of a thing in your hands is rarely needed, but for the people who need it, it's literally lifechanging.
Ah yeah disability/accessibility uses are different. I imagine for a blind person it’s the cameras that are the game changers? Like it can probably narrate everything you’re looking at. I’ve listened to how screen readers “read” and it’s incomprehensibly fast to me.
Yeah I didn't really follow the details, just received a clear message that the glasses work for him.
This kind of tech is undeniably useful for people with disabilities. The problem is that this public is almost a side effect of the real big tech ambition. They don't want to solve issues that people with disabilities have; they want to create a new mass market product.
Molly Burke made a video showing how she uses them.
This is the entire thing. People are already less comfortable living in public because of the prevalence of camera phones. AR glasses crank that dynamic up to 11. It's not only the upskirt creeps, it's also the influencer-lite peeps that feel the need to record each experience and post it online. It makes other people uncomfortable.
Many of us want a broader expectation of not being recorded; these devices promise the opposite. We need to do more than resist the proliferation of new surveillance tech (including smart glasses), and push back on the stuff that's already out here.
Eh having a "Screen" you could pop up for things AR style would be nice, it's just that you still need a control interface and most people scream about moving their 10key let alone teaching a new form of input (although I think I see a lot of potential in that land).
And of course the inherent issue of "well we have garbage privacy laws so now everyone is recording everything constantly" being a main feature.
I think you hit the nail on the head. These glasses will always look tacky until this is no longer the broader context of their existence, which may never happen. These things have been on the market in some form or another for years now, but there's still no obvious gamechanging everyday use case. It's not like smartphones where "the internet, readily available in your pocket" was a huge leap in convenience.
Wait, if smart glasses are for creeps who want to take upskirt photos, wouldn't that mean they'd have to get their heads down to get an angle up a skirt? These are smart glasses, after all. I'm just imagining some weirdo laying on the ground, eyeglasses pointed up some woman's skirt thinking to himself, "Yes! Nobody suspects a thing!"
I would imagine it's more like they can capture moments where there's some brief incidental moment of exposure. Then it's captured forever and available for sharing online.
In that case, how is it much different than a smartphone? Creeps gonna creep and all.
I'm not at all excusing anyone for being a sex pest, it just seems like kind of an odd line to draw that cameras worn on the head are verboten, or at least a sign of deviance, while nearly everybody has a concealable camera on their person 24/7.
I see them as methods of harassment both in the moment and online later. It's less that people can't do this already, and more that glasses make it socially acceptable and easier to conceal without going the full hidden camera route. People who record with phones mostly don't hide them or barely do, and the glasses have become popular among online personalities, including those who record others without their consent - often service workers or say women at the gym.
You can lie to yourself with the glasses - if you buy an explicitly hidden camera then you've lost the deniability and socially I see less approval for people who do that.
I personally dislike the social acceptability of recording people without their permission for your content.
Stairs.
Ok, but smartphones though? We've already reached market saturation on tiny cameras that can be used to take creepshots. I don't see how cameras on glasses are this whole other class of thing.
I know that if I ever tried to wear something like these, I'd tear them off my face and stomp on them within three days of having them.
In theory it's an interesting idea, having access to information whenever I want. In practice, so many annoying little piece of shit technologies compete for my attention basically every minute of the day. My phone pings me with notifications, my computer at work makes a bloop sound when teams messages and emails come in, my tv whines that it needs to be updated, my computer at home "helpfully" tells me when new windows features or video card features or my fucking mouse's software has new features available. I absolutely detest it, and I've avoided smart watches like the plague because of the same reason.
Any time I talk about this problem online, a deluge of people chime in with "but your notification settings!" Like clockwork, which is a disingenuous response and I'm pretty sure everyone that says it knows it. Applications update themselves and silently change their notification settings all the time, and every time a new one is installed, those settings need to be reviewed. It's like a second job that I need to take on just to not being driven insane which I never signed up for.
So in theory, yeah, cool, ar glasses let me pretend to be iron man and... I don't know, check to see if the noodle place I want to go to is open without the excruciating labor of reaching into my pocket for my phone. In the real world where technology concepts are absolutely ruined by greed and incompetence, having a cloud connected ad machine on my face at all waking hours constantly annoying me with notifications literally sounds less desirable to me than Chinese water torture.
Neil Stephenson predicted exactly that problem in Diamond Age. There was a throwaway reference to a man who got a virus on his eyeballs' screen that showed roach motel ads 24 hours a day until he killed himself. Having some space from our technology is vital.
The notification settings thing is like telling someone to walk around with an air purification mask if they complain about toxic smog. Like yeah it technically solves the problem, but notifications are supposed to be useful. If I am being nagged so much it makes me turn them off how is this not framed as a profound failure of design?
The core problem is that companies feel entitled to my time and attention. If I am using a tool they’ve given me they feel like their purpose of the tool is to facilitate my use of the tool (e.g. “Did you know you can now do. . .?”) But the point of the tool isn’t to use the tool, it’s to accomplish the task I picked it up to do. Software developers, and the tech industry in general, have completely lost the plot.
Obviously I’m not the target of this article, since I have many prototype AR glasses and am still excited about the prospect of overlaying a Halo style HUD on my reality. It’s unfortunate that nothing has hit the market that actually provides the experience I want.
See, the idea of a Halo or Iron Man HUD really appeals to me, but when I think about what I would actually put on the HUD I find it hard to justify. I don't want a constant information stream about what I'm looking at, I don't have a quantifiable health value to keep track of, and I generally know how to navigate to most places I'm trying to go.
If we can come up with genuine everyday utilities, then I think the appeal will grow. As it is, I can only see getting occasional use out of smart glasses, like identifying plants and bugs on a hike, and even that is a harder task than you would think.
That XKCD comic was true when it was written in 2014, but has been pretty well surpassed by the work research teams have done in the past 12 years. Machine learning tools remain far from perfect, but "is there a bird in this picture" is now about as routine as the GPS lookup.
Yes, but accurately determining which bird (or bug, or specific tree species) seems like an extra challenge. Do you know how many yellow and black spiders there are in the midwest?
There’s an iOS app called “Seek by iNaturalist” you should try playing with. This problem has been solved. Not perfectly, but very substantially. I walk my 4-year old to school every morning and we spend most of the stroll identifying various plants and insects along the way. He’s been developing an encyclopedic knowledge of the local flora and whatever fauna can sit still long enough for me to scan it.
One of the keys is that when it identifies the species it pops up a profile page full of photos including that plant, bug, or animals’ various developmental stages. That way you can directly confirm if it matches the reference pictures.
The main drawback is that it takes time to ID something accurately so it’s difficult to get an ID on things that move a lot. Birds can be tough if you don’t have a telephoto zoom lens, many flying insects as well. I have a bunch of beetles but good luck catching a gnat or fly. It’s spotty as to whether it can ID my breed of dog because he never sits still, but even if it doesn’t have it down it still gets in the neighborhood of canid and speculates he might be a jackal or coyote (he’s a kelpie, so at a distance even a human with poor vision could get confused).
Not sure if you already know of it but for identifying birds I find Merlin way better than Seek! It’s also got a song recording ID mode for when you can’t see a bird hiding in a tree.
Plus it’s got a cool “life list” feature. Makes it feel like updating your Pokédex when you find a new bird!
Well, I guess I stand corrected. I haven't played around with AR much recently, just a constellation viewing/id app, but that's just taking location and accelerometer data to figure out where you're pointing your phone. I'm glad that it's easier to ID nature now, but I worry because that also makes it easier to ID people from footage.
It'll display your shield, ammo, and how many grenades you're carrying, obviously.
I hate having to check that stuff manually.
See, that’s why I like when my gun displays my ammo type and counts in a way that I can see at a glance, and my wrist computer shows my health and armor. Overlays take me out of the experience of being a drudge living in the crumbling empire of a miserable dystopia.
There’s almost no situation where I would want a HUD like that 24/7. There’s an endless number of particular scenarios where I can think of a HUD being useful, though. But as I said in my other comment, modern tech overlords think the purpose of technology is to make us use and engage with the technology. Their brains just aren’t wired to think in terms of technology as enabling us to engage more deeply with the world instead.
Most AR use cases I can think of would benefit from having something that wears more like ski goggles or welding goggles. Having a HUD overlay while I’m riding my bike for turn-by-turn directions and safety warnings would be great. If I’m trying to fix an appliance or something being able to overlay a schematic over my view would be amazing. But I don’t need to wear something 24/7 to do that.
The one case I can think of where I’d maybe want to wear something and walk around as I do normal stuff would be like if I’m in a foreign country and would like a thing that can live-translate signage or things people are saying to me. But that’s SUCH a narrow use case and I imagine carrying something for that would be more like having reading glasses (or clip-ons to normal glasses) than the kind I use to see.
Re. genuine everyday utilities, I put some thought into this at a previous gig. Shortlist was:
I'm no longer in the tech industry, but I would've also put down navigation and accessibility purposes (another commenter above noted this too), and a continuous recording feature that can be saved + recovered only with a subpoena and the user's consent (for handling interpersonal disputes or accidents where a recording could trivially dismiss/back up a claim).
(admittedly that last one could be contentious; I have thoughts on how to do it relatively securely, but ultimately it touches upon the same concerns re. rights to privacy which inform the wide variety of opinions on one party vs. two party consent laws around recording)
Even if the glasses can do it perfectly, how much more convenient is it to perform this task on your glasses than it is with your smartphone? It's certainly slightly less cumbersome than pulling something out of your pocket, but is enough so for the average person to justify spending hundreds of dollars on an extra device?
I frequently would like my heart rate showing in my field of view. I don’t like checking my watch for it. This is only a concern for about 30 minutes of my day but it would be cool.
When I’m travelling I would love the directions but even more I would like at a glance information on what buildings and statues I’m looking at, historical notes, etc.
In my day to day life, I would like my slack, Claude code, reminders, todo lists, and other notifications streaming in my peripheral view. I’m already spending hours a day looking at my phone for this information.
Don’t mind me, just popping in to drop the link to the mobile version of that comic…
There are also plenty of tacky women wearing this crap.
The “tacky men” on the title refers to CEOs that pushes this kind of thing to the general public.
The CEO part would seem to be the relevant point then rather than their gender. I suspect you would not have written "tacky women" if the CEOs happened to be women.
It's not a coincidence that all of them are men, my friend.
Hmmm I don't like this line of thinking, it does sound sexist, if i wouldn't like this said about women. And also, while a lot of rich jerkwads are men, there are a lot of rich men who aren't jerks, and a lot of women who are terrible people rich or poor.
Especially if people are already thinking tacky CEOs are one shaped already, then singling out men is both hurtful to all men who aren't tacky CEOs, and also reinforces that CEOs are men, which hurts women
I've never met one.
Also unknown to me.
It's not reinforcing a narrative nor “singling out men” if it's a fact, as one can comb through wide available data, such as:
McKinsey: “For the 11th consecutive year, women remain underrepresented at every level of the corporate pipeline—especially in senior leadership, where they make up just 29 percent of C-suite roles, unchanged from 2024.”
From here: “In this quarter’s data [2025 Q4], about 83 percent of IT leaders are White, and just over three percent are Black. Roughly four out of five IT leaders are men, with women representing just over 21 percent of leadership roles.”
Most of the discourse around smart glasses is missing the mark. I don't think having FaceBook notifications about your uncle's most recent racist rant is particularly valuable or will make anyone a lot of money. On the other hand, there are a lot of use cases that are interesting or plausible for smart glasses. I would be interested in having sunglasses that had running information, directions, and traffic monitoring for instance. Or in a in industrial context, it might be useful to have directions for replacing a piece of equipment displayed. There's a bunch of use cases that are valuable and this article and Meta's approach both got stuck on FaceBook notifications instead of thinking about the real value of the technology.
The last what? Did something get edited out of this paragraph?
I mean, the last company to entry that market. Edited this sentence to more clarity. Thanks!