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.
By TheCraiggers 12 hours ago
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."
By wmeredith 12 hours ago
> 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.
So, the average Zoom call in 2025?
By sunrunner 10 hours ago
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:-
>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.
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.
By koolala 12 hours ago
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.
By basisword an hour ago
> 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.
By sunrunner 10 hours ago
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.
By TheCraiggers 5 hours ago
Move to the EU.
By addandsubtract an hour ago
Denmark's Justice Minister calls encrypted messaging a false civil liberty
High-powered infrared LEDs, surrounding you with a halo, blinding the sensors.
Optionally pulse-modulated in specific ways, to make the software behind those crash by inducing cyber-epilepsy.
IOACM (infrared optically active countermeasures)
By LargoLasskhyfv an hour ago
If this was possible at a reasonable price point the cops would already be wearing them.
By potato3732842 11 hours ago
This is reversed. If cops were wearing them, for a reasonable price, it would mean everyone else was already wearing them, for a reasonable price.
By nomel 2 hours ago
volume is what makes things like this reasonably priced.
By serf 11 hours ago
I wonder if any US states will ban the practice? Many states have laws in place that govern license plate reader use by individuals.
By ortusdux 11 hours ago
Yes, but people are not cars.
By mariusor an hour ago
battery usage will continue to limit the commercial->public usage.
By cyanydeez 11 hours ago
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.
By ge96 2 hours ago
The human body consumes merely ~2000 calories a day. Really not that much energy, about the same as a 100W light bulb.
Even if you can capture every single bit of extra energy from a tshirt, you'd end up with a tiny fraction of 100W. Certainly not enough to power a mobile device like this.
By jychang 18 minutes ago
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)
By sunrunner 10 hours ago
no ones playing games, recording videos, taking pictures or doing any kind of immediate activity with smart watches.
Those sensor input-only arn't what would push people to want whole-ass screens & VR overlays. It's weird you think there's a similar power profile to a smart phone and a smart watch. They are not a gradient in use cases.
By cyanydeez 10 hours ago
> no ones playing games,
I do. Many take advantage of the wheel. There are even full 3d games (it has a decent GPU, considering how small it is).
There's also uBrowser web browser, to help reduce your charge.
By nomel 2 hours ago
> no ones playing games, recording videos, taking pictures or doing any kind of immediate activity with smart watches.
This is a good point, but my point was more that if a smart watches are doing less than a smart phone and people still seem to be happy to have to charge them everyday, I'm not so convinced that having to fast-charge a set of AR glasses for time-limited use would put people off if they felt it was useful enough.
For context, I was imagining that most of the AR/VR overlays would be time or context dependent. Perhaps when travelling to aid with directions or on a commute for entertainment.
Are people really going to be walking through life with an always-on HUD? If they are then yes, completely fair point around battery usage. Perhaps once a global network of wireless charging is fully operational this will be a problem of the past...
By sunrunner 9 hours ago
Right, they're _passive_ devices that don't need active engagement.
That's not a good case to make that active devices that consume orders of magnitude more power are going to make it on the market if they can't last 8-10 hours on a charge doing active things.
Maybe people misunderstand just how much power AR/VR require and think it's similar to wireless ear phones.
There's just a huge band gap in power requirements. EVs have similar issues in the consumer confidence when it comes to matching range requirements.
No matter how much on paper you explain to people what they actually do vs what they want to do, the salesman needs to sell at what they want to do.
SUVs and Trucks are similar, except inverse: people want to do a bunch of things, but what they actually do is very little. They'd still never drive a small vehicle just because it gets them good range.
So, when I say the tech/battery isn't there for the consumer, it's recognizing the consumer is an idiot, and the nerd-requirements are different than average consumer expectations.
By cyanydeez 9 hours ago
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.
By varispeed 11 hours ago
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.
By tootie 11 hours ago
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.
By phil21 2 hours ago
I can see how this would be beneficial for you. But I also get the feeling that those people would rather you can’t remember their name than have you doing facial recognition on them. It’s one of those solutions to social problems that is so unsocial it just changes the problem. Instead of “that’s the guy that always forgets my name” it becomes “that’s the creep with the AI glasses!” (No offence). One of those is much more preferable.
By basisword an hour ago
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.
By mrandish 11 hours ago
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.
By craftkiller 11 hours ago
The thought of an airport full of people all seated with perfect posture, all looking ahead but not really seeing, tapping away at their oh-so important work, feels both worse than the current status quo but also somehow no different. Maybe it’s the posture thing.
By sunrunner 10 hours ago
You can already do this, and I did it last week on my flight with my Xreal Air.
By stavros 2 hours ago
Yes it is highly economically inefficient.
People seem to underestimate how wonderful it to be able to touch and tap an interface and how minimal effort is exerted.
By haijo2 10 hours ago
I want an HUD mini-map that displays directions for navigation. That solves an actual problem for me (having no sense of direction).
By mintplant 11 hours ago
oh i think we will see voice becoming a much more popular interface in the very near future, now that it’s actually getting very good
By whimsicalism 11 hours ago
Highly doubt it. As a species we have gotten accustomed to talking through text as opposed to voice/audio over time.
People prefer it. Pure and simple.
By haijo2 10 hours ago
I think it's helpful, perhaps even necessary, to differentiate between different kinds of text.
Let's start with text intended to convey information. Good documentation-type text that acts as a one-way communication channel is an example of this. A small number of writers and contributors to something that can be read by thousands or more can be incredibly powerful and can be incredibly information dense and valuable if written well.
Text intended to entertain? Well, that's just art and people will choose to engage in that way when they prefer the medium itself, so that's really just personal preference and enjoyment.
Text as the de-facto replacement for voice/face-to-face feels like something that's been forced into a lot of situations now. It's beneficial (or really required) when it's the only option such as for long-distance communication, and favours slow-changing content. But I think in a lot of cases we've been forced into having to use text over voice for raw human communication (thinking of course about remote working now).
I think text has a lot going for it. It can be incredibly information dense, it's easier for writers to take time to prepare something well, it's persistent, it's searchable, it's easy to make available historically. But I'm not convinced that it's a blanket replacement in every way. As the equivalent of voice it's also just slower.
As for video telephony, well David Foster Wallace had a bit to say about that [1]
Then how come in face-to-face interactions people generally communicate using speech rather than text?
Clearly there's a disadvantage to using text in that situation, and I think it's that it almost always takes longer to express thoughts/intents using text. ISTM a sufficiently advanced computer voice interface would have the same advantage.
By fragilerock 10 hours ago
People communicate with their friends more over text than in person.
Am I really having to explain basic stuff like this? Lmao.
By haijo2 9 hours ago
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.
By giobox 11 hours ago
> 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.
lol
By lovich 12 hours ago
Perhaps this is an aside, but for my anniversary my partner bought me a pair of JBL glasses that also act as headphones.
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.
By dottjt 10 hours ago
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)
Nice hardware. What a shame that any product that runs a Meta platform is completely dead to me.
By throwuxiytayq 12 hours ago
Seeing Mark caught sycophanting on the live mic sealed it for me.
By hbarka 2 hours ago
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.
By jajko an hour ago
My thoughts exactly, looks nice, waiting for a non-Meta company to move into this space so I can try it out.
By adamors 12 hours ago
Thirded
By username135 11 hours ago
Fourthed. Or should that be Forth’ed, as this is HN after all.
By sunrunner 10 hours ago
Since the article didn't seem to mention... can someone explain why this is newsworthy? My smoothbrained self just doesn't get it.
By ranger_danger 13 hours ago
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.
By modeless 13 hours ago
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.
By throw10920 12 hours ago
> 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.
By Octoth0rpe 12 hours ago
over 2mil sold since oct 2023.
By nickthegreek 11 hours ago
.... thats nothing. Id hardly call that a success when you consider Meta's resources for marketing.
Google is also finding that blasting YT with ads of Google Pixel does not work very well.
By haijo2 10 hours ago
2 million hardware devices sold is not nothing, that is a pretty significant amount of hardware to ship.
By app13 an hour ago
To be honest the best adverstisement for the Google Pixel series is GrapheneOS :-).
By palata 10 hours ago
My friend in England has a pair. They’re selling extremely well
By davedx 11 hours ago
My mate Paul says they're not.
By adhamsalama 11 hours ago
Thanks for posting, your comment was informative and didn't contain hate and boring tropes.
By _giorgio_ 11 hours ago
2 million sold in three years is hardly ‘extremely successful’.
By jamiek88 12 hours ago
Compare it to devices with similar form factors or use cases sold by competitors:
- Snapchat - has been trying for a decade and has sold ~220K Spectacles.
- Amazon Echo Frames - Reuters estimated less than 10,000 units sold.
- Humane AI Pin - the less said about it the better.
- Google Glass - neat but way ahead of its time, and barely made it to consumers before being quickly discontinued.
- Hololens/Magic Leap - both duds.
- Lengthy list of startups with smart glasses and other wearables that have gained no traction.
Meta glasses are noteworthy because there's finally a company making an AR wearable catch on among a mainstream audience.
By paxys 11 hours ago
Or they are all failures, including Meta’s…?
By rpgbr 11 hours ago
Well let's just agree to call it "the most successful smart glasses ever by a long way".
By IshKebab 11 hours ago
The original iPhone sold 1.3 million units in its first year. I suppose you consider that a massive failure as well?
By paxys 10 hours ago
It is "for a completely new consumer device form factor"
By modeless 11 hours ago
New? “wearable camera with headphones” is not exactly groundbreaking.
Even a new model with a screen would only be semi-new, other AR glasses have existed for over a decade - with Apple releasing a consumer-focused product last year.
By devmor 11 hours ago
Vision Pro is the same form factor as Meta's glasses in the same sense that a semi truck is the same form factor as a moped.
By modeless 10 hours ago
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
By 0x303 13 hours ago
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.
By mrandish 11 hours ago
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
By ericskiff 13 hours ago
Why do they call the smart glasses when they just send everything to the smart phone? Nothing is done on device.
By adrr 12 hours ago
They're also called smartwatches, when most of them are pretty useless without a phone. Even if they offload everything to the phone, they're still much "smarter" than normal glasses, which just sit there doing nothing but correcting vision.
By delecti 12 hours ago
You know, I never thought of this until I took my phone into a repair shop. I was just like “give me a call, I have my watch.”
Two seconds after I walked out … I was like, “oh, that’s not going to work…” so I just sat around for an hour.
By withinboredom 12 hours ago
If you have wifi calling enabled on your mobile account and your watch has wifi connection, you can receive calls to it. Or you can get a watch that has mobile data connection.
By adrr 11 hours ago
It's a marketing term not a technical term
By wmeredith 12 hours ago
Facebook is trying so very hard to be Innovative Online Industries.
By actionfromafar 13 hours ago
"I get that reference."
By Mr_Eri_Atlov 12 hours ago
And that's the whole book
By Octoth0rpe 12 hours ago
No deep insights there, but it was a beautiful romp while it lasted :)
By actionfromafar 12 hours ago
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.
By sqircles 12 hours ago
I'd love ad-blokcer in my glasses. Replace every billboard I see with fine art.
By wmeredith 12 hours ago
They’ve actually had this cool feature at art galleries and museums for quite a while now ;)
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