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The Military Is About To Get New Augmented Reality Spy Glasses
schwit1 writes in with this story about some interesting new eyewear purchased by the Defense Department. Getting secret information to specific people, like the location of the nearest nuclear power plant, in a way that doesn't draw attention from outside is a classic spy problem. Another one is giving agents the ability to match names to faces in the real world, at blackjack tables and fancy soirees and other places spies frequent. The Defense Department is buying some new spy specs to give spooks in the field an intelligence edge over everybody else. The glasses, called simply the X6, are from San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group. They look like the lovechild of Google Glass and the Oculus Rift, providing more information to the wearer than the small window on Google's much-maligned headset but not obstructing vision like the Oculus Rift. (Admittedly, for spy glasses, they lack a certain subtlety.)
Augmented reality glasses sound awesome, and these look much more interesting than Google Glass, but I'm not sure spies are the market here.
From the article: "Admittedly, for spy glasses, they lack a certain subtlety." A bit of an understatement, I'd say.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
now that is funny, even a basic non-smart net10 phone with primative browser can pull up that info, it's quite public. Information about people and resources moving in and out of one might be better example of something that might be transmitted
if this were an education project or something i could have at my library id think this is awesome, but we spend more on defense than the next 4 largest spending countries combined. we're constantly sold on the idea that america is broke, so broke that an entire party of the government often times refuses to increase our debt limit. nearly every american highway is riddled with potholes, highschool kids have to pay a portion of their textbooks in many cases, and the entire city of detroit is about to cut off water service to a quarter of its population. The only thing that ever seems to happen in america is war. we dont have the cash to keep street lights on anymore, but we sure as shit have cash to burn for training some syrian rebels. it didnt work the first or second time, but we sent troops back to iraq for a third round of 'father knows best' diplomacy by the gun, and now we have augmented reality for the troops? How about this:
we give them augmented reality but it is designed to simulate a life after 2 tours with stop-loss, a GI bill that no longer pays for college, a medical system thats underfunded and crooked, the hallucinations and nightmares from PTSD, and the constant struggle of putting a shirt on with only one remaining arm. and in 5 years when the defense department finds a way to sell it to civillians like they did the hummer and the barret 50 caliber rifle, it can be recalibrated. here it will simulate a reality where the user has a well paying job, affordable housing, healthy food to eat, clean air and water, social healthcare system, and a highway as nice as the one we built in afghanistan.
Good people go to bed earlier.
OR you could go to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's website (www.nrc.gov) and get the street address of every the nuclear power plants in the US, then look at them on Google Earth. If that doesn't do it, go to nukeworker.com and get driving directions from the nearest airport and the recommended hotels. Nuclear power plants are BIG. We don't rely on anonymity. We rely on walls, fences, and a LOT of people with guns.