Accessibility shouldn't require giving up privacy.

The Google Glass developer terms strictly forbid building that, and it didn't take more than a few seconds of deeper thought to understand why.

Namely, if someone is using Facebook's AI-powered glasses in my vicinity, I want to get a notification (of some sort) so that I can avoid those persons

  [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_Information_Privacy_Act

Ordinary glass (as in spectacles) frames that have a near IR LED on the bridge and on the side. PWM to be efficient, bright, but erratic clock of around 10Hz.

Want a picture of me? Ask, or use film.

No, I can't really think of any situation where I'd be remotely OK with this being used. To be blunt, I kinda hope this quickly turns not into just a public shaming against people wearing public spyware, but a situation where people are physically afraid to be caught wearing them outside. I think the branch of future possibilities where it's called out as antisocial behavior to poison public spaces like this would be a happier world than one where it becomes common behavior.

Edit: In before the "do you ban cell phone cameras at work, too?" unclever gotcha: Yes. Yes, we'd definitely ban people spending the whole day holding their cell phone cameras up to their screens to record their work. We don't share confidential info with anyone other than vendors we've vetted and contracted with. If I walked by a desk and saw someone recording, I would pull them aside and explain why they're on thin ice.

- Computers can do as much work as they want to automatically, so long as none of it touches a network boundary.

- Any time a computer wants to touch the network it must be explicitly initiated by a human action. Sort of like how in browsers capturing the mouse or entering fullscreen mode requires a trusted user action and isn't something a page can do unilaterally, but broader. This also means that the extent of the network communication must be made explicit and clear with no chance of misunderstanding by the user. If what you're doing is genuinely complex beyond your ability to communicate to your target user then you shouldn't be doing it on the behalf of that user. Note that this only really applies to mass consumer products, not something built/deployed internally.

I feel like if a hard boundary is not set around this we will end up in a Panopticon. Set aside governments actively pushing for it, it seems a simple profit motive in a digital era yields this outcome. Maybe nuanced rules would produce better outcomes in theory, but humans don't seem great at sticking to nuanced and fiddly rules when there's strong incentive to bend them beyond recognition.

Feels like we're juggling with ball sized nukes these days... So amazing... until someone eventually drops a ball.

1) we were always told and legal always pushed back hard on anything face detecting.(ie haar cascade "this is a face" let alone actual this is dave/sally)

2) the FTC would audit us to make sure we weren't doing that kind of stuff

3) all of the research prototypes had inbuilt/inline face removers up until 2024(I left after that so I don't know when/if that changed)

3.1) One of the very first things I worked on was face removal, it was a central core of the entire fucking project. Like if we didn;t have any of those constraints we'd have been 2 years ahead.

4) Stella is the name for v1 rayban stories, so its very odd that they get the update when they've not had any new features since for a long time(unless I am mistaken).

The book also describes "Gargoyles": people using headsets with cameras and sensors to spy on everyone around them for the "Central Intelligence Corporation" while being also simultaneously in the Metaverse.

Funny, how the gargoyles are described in the book in a somewhat derogatory manner, and the villain of the story is an billionaire who owns a large Internet corporation.

At least the gargoyles in the book got paid.

At least in China, where face recognition is at building gates, subway gates, store checkouts...

1. Ask your local and state governments to completely ban "stalkerware" and "Big Tech surveillanceware" (like will use this and other face recognition), as well as ban using hidden cameras (including in these glasses) to photograph/video people.

2. Tell everyone, before their buy the glasses, what a "glasshole" is.

3. Social negative feedback to people who wear these. Tell your friends if they're being inconsiderate. Tell coworkers it's inappropriate in the workplace. Frown at strangers who do it. Tell apparent creepers to stop, and/or consider calling the police.

4. Social negative feedback to people who work at the companies pushing this tech. There's plenty of tech talent on the job market. Why consider someone who continued to work for one of the companies, in some cases after years of sociopathic abuses of society?

5. Be skeptical of influencers and astroturfing shills promoting the products.

Other ideas?

We need privacy regulation...

Never really grew up past middle school. I have dealt with high schoolers with better self control and moral compasses.

The rest of SV billionaire class is so abhorrent that you figure they either enjoy being the villains or they figure "it's ok if you get away with it." Sociopaths.

Imagine a world in which you could use facial recognition, have an instant summary in front of you you reminding you of someone's birthday, the names of their kids ...

Then imagine that it wasn't tracked, recorded, saved, or tied into anything at all. Just a useful service, in service to only you.

Thanks Meta et al, for pushing forward with this broken (for people) model of business and ensuring we'll never be able to have that.