Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel made smart glasses that look normal

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 263 posts

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#171

Post by majormajor »

nogridbag wrote: post #109
mjlangiii wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my two cents; I'm a father of 4 and I'm okay with not capturing those moments on film. And I mean that in two senses. One, I'm fine using my very imperfect memory to recall special moments and two, because of the logistical problems with grabbing the camera I'm not willing to risk missing out being fully in the moment. The occasionally photograph from an event or time period seems sufficient to conjure up the fe…

I don't mean to derail this topic, but we don't have too many videos of my mother because for half of her life recording a video meant carrying one of those massive VHS recorders on your shoulder. When she passed and I realized how few videos we had, my first thoughts were: "How can I preserve these moments with my daughter, not just for myself but for her when I'm no longer around?" So I started looking into 360 deg…

It's definitely something that deaths and similar events make you think about, but ultimately, I also find myself asking if it would be used at all. And if it was, would it be beneficial?

I have thousands of family slide photos from my grandparents. This is unusual, but they were big photography fans. Nobody looked at them for at least a decade. But about 10 years ago I had access to a nice scanner, so I digitized a few hundred of them, so that we could look at them more easily. Now I have thousands of slide photos nobody has looked at in two decades, hundreds of digitized versions nobody has looked at in one decade, and a handful of ones we printed or such that get looked at more regularly. I think quantity is overrated, and it just becomes write-only-memory. I still take hundreds of photos for myself every year, but I doubt my kids will ever look at them for more than a few hours, max.

And I think there's something to be said for the impermanence of memory for helping people move on with their lives. I thought I was going to die a few years ago - I didn't, which is great, obviously, but if I had, I wouldn't have wanted those who loved me to still be dwelling on me today.

Snapchat is basically the app recognition of this idea that not everything is worth saving, that for 99.99% of stuff the value today far, far outweighs any value in the future. Shame it's such a hard concept to monetize, I guess.

(I say this, but I'm not immune to the temptation, either. If you ask the people in my life, they'd definitely tell you they wish I'd follow my own advice around "remember, you're taking pictures for yourself, not for other people, and don't prioritize your pictures of others over other people themselves." :| )

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#172

Post by defterGoose »

epmaybe wrote: post #63

I watched the Verge video this morning where they tried to explain how the hologram projector works, but I am still confused. How can it ensure a sharp image shining directly through your own intraocular lens (not the glasses themselves) to the retina? If you have a "longer" or "shorter" eyeball the light ray's focus point will not be on the retina itself.

Laser light is "coherent" both spatially and temporally. Spatial coherence allows the beam to be "collimated", which basically just means that it looks like a cylinder and not a cone. That's why you can shine a laser at the moon and see the spot; most of the energy from the laser makes it to the same place, bounces back to your eyes, and you get a bright spot. Shining a flashlight doesn't work because the light spreads out too much. Technically some of the light still gets to the moon and back to your eyes, it's just below the threshold of your eye's ability to distinguish differences in brightness.

For the glasses, the laser is probably being scanned using a mems mirror (like how a DLP tv works, sorta), and modulated in brightness periodically to create the pixels. Since there's only one "point" of contact between your lens and the beam, the lens doesn't distort the beam like it would an image. That's where the idea of focus comes in. If you were looking at a photograph with your eye, there would be many sources and colors of light. Since the lens refracts incoming light based on direction, position, and color, your lens' job is to make sure the "pixels" of the photograph stay spatially organized with respect to each other. That's what being in focus means. And since the laser has only one color and one direction, all that light stays together and makes a nice dot on your retina. The only thing left to do is make a correction to the overall distortion pattern your lens introduces ,which is similar for pretty much everyone. Same reason you need to add barrel distortion before sending video to an HMD. I think that's what they were showing with that "warping" red image of the glasses' display.

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#173

Post by macintux »

nogridbag wrote: post #93
SimbaOnSteroids wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is getting a camera powerful enough to get acceptable quality pictures but small enough, and blended with the surroundings enough that you don't notice it.

Yup absolutely. For me that was Google Glasses biggest flaw. I could capture beautiful photos of family and relatives instantly, but they were beautiful because no one else in the photo was wearing Google Glasses. Another reply mentioned Snaps, which I haven't heard of. It looks interesting, but ultimately it has the same flaw. I'm not going to wear dark sunglasses with LEDs indoors to take family photos. I suppose t…

> noticeable and thus culturally acceptable

I'm not sure that correlation is inevitable.

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#174

Post by yndoendo »

malka wrote: post #166
jpm_sd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree (father of 3, here). It's just not that important to record these things. Live in the moment!

what if you could record them AND live in the moment ? that's the endgame imo

Wouldn't you then be using the moment to have the potential to live in the past and not actually living in the moment?

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#175

Post by epicide »

nogridbag wrote: post #109
mjlangiii wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my two cents; I'm a father of 4 and I'm okay with not capturing those moments on film. And I mean that in two senses. One, I'm fine using my very imperfect memory to recall special moments and two, because of the logistical problems with grabbing the camera I'm not willing to risk missing out being fully in the moment. The occasionally photograph from an event or time period seems sufficient to conjure up the fe…

I don't mean to derail this topic, but we don't have too many videos of my mother because for half of her life recording a video meant carrying one of those massive VHS recorders on your shoulder. When she passed and I realized how few videos we had, my first thoughts were: "How can I preserve these moments with my daughter, not just for myself but for her when I'm no longer around?" So I started looking into 360 deg…

I think it's a great conversation to have and one I've seen come up more and more.

I totally understand the inclination to capture as much as possible and have found myself wishing I had more photographs/videos/etc of certain things.

However, I think most of us are already past the point of useful amounts of capture. I definitely noticed it for myself when I realized I don't really ever go back and look at most of the pictures I take. When I do, it is almost always pictures of people that are gone. Even then, as the parent comment said, having one or two pictures from a time period or maybe one from a particular event is more than enough. Your mind fills in the details and that's awesome!

As far as the other side of things, I have definitely found myself spending more time trying to capture as much as possible (or capturing "just the right one") than actually enjoying the event.

I'm not saying don't take pictures. Far from it. I'm saying I don't think we have to try and preserve people via pictures. Because you can't.

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#176

Post by jwr »

nradov wrote: post #112

I think there's definitely a market for endurance athletes. Runners and cyclists would like to see time, speed, distance, cadence, power output, navigation, etc without having to look down at a wristwatch or bike computer. Those people are accustomed to spending a lot on sports equipment. There are existing products like the Everysight Raptor and Garmin Varia View but they're bulky or goofy looking or obstruct vision…

This was the idea behind https://www.reconinstruments.com/products/jet/

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#177

Post by ocdtrekkie »

lev99 wrote: post #122
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Google refused to allow you to store pictures local-only, Glass' camera was... it's least-used feature for me. I loved notifications without having to get out my phone (or look at my wrist). Google's absolute refusal to make photo sync optional on Glass was honestly the beginning of the end for my trust in El Goog.

I agree that the creepy thing about Google Glass isn't the camera or the display it's Google.

Yeah, I loved the form factor, it was the software and the cloud dependency that crippled it. I've actually been looking at a Vufine+ combined with an Intel Compute Stick to create a more customized alternative.

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#178

Post by rocky1138 »

Uhhrrr wrote: post #91

This will lead to all glasses wearers being treated with suspicion, until such time as cameras are also readily available in shirt buttons and everything else. At that point recording will become unavoidable and therefore normalized.

> recording will become unavoidable and therefore normalized

This is already the case.

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#179

Post by Angostura »

jpm_sd wrote: post #118
mjlangiii wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my two cents; I'm a father of 4 and I'm okay with not capturing those moments on film. And I mean that in two senses. One, I'm fine using my very imperfect memory to recall special moments and two, because of the logistical problems with grabbing the camera I'm not willing to risk missing out being fully in the moment. The occasionally photograph from an event or time period seems sufficient to conjure up the fe…

I completely agree (father of 3, here). It's just not that important to record these things. Live in the moment!

As a father of 2, I think the best videos I have are the ones of the kids when little doing everyday silly things. Pottering around in the living room, colouring in.

It's nice to capture these occassional snippets, and you can still be in the moment for important things.

Re: Intel made smart glasses that look normal

#180

Post by epicide »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #95
mjlangiii wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my two cents; I'm a father of 4 and I'm okay with not capturing those moments on film. And I mean that in two senses. One, I'm fine using my very imperfect memory to recall special moments and two, because of the logistical problems with grabbing the camera I'm not willing to risk missing out being fully in the moment. The occasionally photograph from an event or time period seems sufficient to conjure up the fe…

I hate that I lost it, will have to spend an afternoon on the internet achive, But these are so tired. It's the exact same things people were spouting when phones started to have cameras. That came, and it turned out, having a quality camera you take with you is pretty cool and the end of the world didn't happen. Button cameras have existed for literally decades, if someone wants to take discrete pictures of you the…

There is a subtle but important difference between trusting someone doesn't have a hidden camera pointed at you and recording vs trusting someone to not have the camera that is on their face and pointed at you currently recording.

Ultimately, yes, people have been able to take hidden photographs for a very long time. I think the concern is normalizing the removal of 90% of the steps involved in doing so.

Post reply on HN