Google Glass Makes an Official Return (cnbc.com)

Alphabet's Google has officially launched the "Enterprise Edition" of its smart glasses hardware, which is now available to a network of Google partners. From a report: The company's developer partners range from logistics and manufacturing to patient care. These apps have long-been involved with Glass through the business-focused "Glass at Work" program. In a blog post Tuesday, Google Glass project leader Jay Kothari said partners such as GE Aviation, AGCO, DHL, Dignity Health, NSF International, Sutter Health, Boeing and Volkswagen have been using Glass over the past several years, and make up just a sampling of 50 companies using the wearable. Wired said several of these companies found the original Google Glass to be very useful in factories and other enterprise environments. Google discovered this and began work on a product built by a team dedicated to building a new version of Glass for the enterprise. According to Kothari, the Google Glass Enterprise Edition glasses are lighter and more "comfortable for long term wear." They also offer more power and longer battery life and, offer support for folks with prescription lenses, Wired said. The glasses, too, are stronger and do double duty as safety glasses. Further reading: Google Glass 2.0 Is a Startling Second Act.

Comments

Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[MachineShedFred]

Honestly though - the workplace, and particularly manufacturing and industry, is where this product makes a whole lot of sense. Do you really want people reaching for a phone or tablet (or even looking away from what they are doing) when operating an industrial press, or some other dangerous machinery? And, because this product is likely completely controlled by the company that provides it, the worker wearing it is far less likely to be distracted by non-work text messages and other banal content not related to the hazardous activity they are performing.

Google Glass for every day knuckleheads on the street just wasn't a useful thing, which is why it died. It was a solution looking for a problem that nobody had. This seems like a good use for that R&D, especially if the companies using it are seeing marked improvements in productivity and product quality, which TFA claims.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly though - the workplace, and particularly manufacturing and industry, is where this product makes a whole lot of sense. Do you really want people reaching for a phone or tablet (or even looking away from what they are doing) when operating an industrial press, or some other dangerous machinery?

What you said is a nice idea but it isn't really practical or safe to use in that environment. I do with lathes, mills and welding and you wouldn't even use these glasses while operating a machine. If I have to look at a design I step away from the machine and check the design. I'm not going to have a whirly machine of death running while I am looking at the design.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just that it wasn't that useful, it's that it was actively infringing on people's increasingly limited ability to disappear into a crowd.

Ultimately, if they didn't have a camera attached, I don't think people would have had so much trouble with it. But, the included camera meant that there was no way that people could tell if it was being used for that or for just doing augmented reality. Which is a shame.

I'd love to see an iteration of Google glass without the camera. Something that could do things like pop up navigational information or perhaps the next item on the schedule.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[houghi]

Less distracted if you have a screen in front of you? What you think is if it only pops up sporadic i.e. once or twice per day at most.
What will happen is that you get spammed by your manager to increase productivity and the numbers of the day and how close we are to target if we just give a bit extra we will get the CEO a new Bentley.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Martin Blank]

And that's your particular case, but not everyone's. Here are some things that could work:

  - A surgeon could monitor vital signs during surgery merely by glancing up at a display.
  - A factory worker could have a list of steps to follow to complete an assembly
  - A floor supervisor could monitor progress of the line before or after their location
  - Even you could step back a safe distance, triggering a reappearance of the display that you can check, which then disappears when you approach the machine to ensure that you have no visual distractions.

All of this could also be recorded or streamed for training, troubleshooting, or performance checks.

Glass was just ahead of its time and suffered from being the first to market, as many such efforts do. The same privacy complaints occurred as soon as cameras began appearing in phones, and got louder as smartphones became more common. Underskirt photos led to attempts to require that all devices make a sound when a picture is taken, even when the device is silenced. Now, no one bats an eye at smartphones. I could record everything in front of me just by putting the phone in my chest pocket, and you'd never know, compared to Glass with its LED. With augmented reality becoming easier to process and the applications growing, it's only a matter of time before Glass, HoloLens, and a dozen other products that rely on cameras are ubiquitous. The first app with universal appeal will be a game, but GPS directions will follow soon, and then you'll be able to pop menus out of restaurants in your field of vision.

It's going to happen. It will probably be a few years yet, but it's going to be come the norm.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[RobinH]

I do industrial automation. You're talking about non-automated machines like lathes, drill presses, band saws, and hand mills. Typically any machine that doesn't start automatically isn't covered by machine safeguarding regulation, particularly if it's used by a skilled worker, like someone with their tool & die maker's certificate. On the other hand, production presses, robot cells, assembly cells, and even a production mill need to have proper category 4 safeguards in place that would prevent someone from sticking their hand into rotating equipment. As a licensed engineer I'd be perfectly comfortable allowing computer, tablet, or google glass use around such a machine. These machines are intrinsically safe by design.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[William Baric]

In 1988 or 1989, a friend of mine wanted to get a cell phone in his car. Everyone told him that a cell phone was a useless gadget for ordinary people. Except for very few business people, no one needed a cell phone.

Only twelve years ago, I remember a lot of people saying that smartphones were useless. Everyone agreed it could be useful to some business people, but not to ordinary people. Blackberry phones were called "crackberry" as a way to mock ordinary people using those smartphones.

Only five years ago, I remember that someone using his cell phone to check his message or to check something on the Internet in the middle of a meal at a restaurant was considered extremely rude. Now, more and more people do it without any kind of shame. That behavior is slowly becoming the norm.

I strongly believe that 30 years from now, things like Google glass will become as ubiquitous as cell phones. Sure, we feel we don't need them now, the same way we felt we didn't need a cell phone in the 80s, but we will. As for the "glasshole" thing, our aversion to being recorded will gradually disappear. Being constantly recorderded will become the norm. It is instead those who will not want to be recorded who will become suspect.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Glass was just ahead of its time and suffered from being the miss-marketed, as many such efforts do.

Fixed that for you. This is the sort of thing that Glass should have been aimed towards from the start.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Only five years ago, I remember that someone using his cell phone to check his message or to check something on the Internet in the middle of a meal at a restaurant was considered extremely rude. Now, more and more people do it without any kind of shame. That behavior is slowly becoming the norm.

It's still considered rude by most. I'm not the only one who's ended dates early because the other party wouldn't put their phone away and give the meeting their full attention.

So many young women do this and then complain that only assholes are willing to put up with them. Well that's because the more polite and respectful guys have written you off already as disrespectful and self-centered.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Martin Blank]

No, you didn't fix it. You changed it to something completely different. It wasn't a matter of mismarketing, but of no one having an understanding of where it would have fit. It's not that these ideas weren't there, but that they couldn't be done at the time. The capabilities just didn't exist, and they only barely do now. Google just kind of threw it out into the world to see what people would come up with, but that turned out to be a very small list. It wasn't until they had the real-world failure that they pulled back into a targeted lab, looked at new hardware, and figured out some new ways to do things that it started to become marginally useful. That use will grow over time as others get into the arena (HoloLens could be a big player) and the tools become easier to use.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

it's that it was actively infringing on people's increasingly limited ability to disappear into a crowd

But what you do in public can already be recorded by anyone, easily without your knowledge. You can't easily tell if person #8398193 looking at their phone is recording you: a wee spot of electrical tape over the LED takes that out of the picture.

That ship already departed port and is 500 miles out to sea.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[LifesABeach]

My concerns:
1. Does it work?
2. Will I get my ass kicked wearing it in a bar?
3. I wear glasses, can I have my prescription installed?
4. I fly light aircraft, could this help me spot other oncoming aircraft?
5. I drive a car, could this help me make a better decision?
6. Taking my eyes of a mad dog will get me bit, is there another way to communicate to it?
7. And dogs don't like people that wear glasses.
8. Is the interface open source?
9. Not under $150? I can wait.
10. Can I connect it to my Raspberry Pi? I can wait.

I've grown bored listening the all the various forms of Elite. At this point, I'm more curious about what happens to them after they walk off a cliff, than before they do.

Google, good luck, good hunting.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

"our aversion to being recorded will gradually disappear."

The sad part is people are already being filmed (or potentially filmed) near continuously in their public routine but fail to comprehend/acknowledge it. Dashcams, body cams, phones, CCTV, street cameras, ATMs, etc probably catch your average person on video/audio for a good chunk of the day. Your average "glasshole" probably added less than percent to your daily filming log if they were even recording. Cognitive dissonance really is amazing and scary at the same time.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[IRGlover]

It wasn't a matter of mismarketing, but of no one having an understanding of where it would have fit.

Sounds like mismarketing to me - the marketing should have told people where it would fit. Having tried it, I was extremely unimpressed, however it was called the 'Explorer Edition' for a reason. Google were hoping that a few people would buy them, work out what they were useful for and then Google could refine them for an actual commercial product. It seems like that may be what has happened.

On a side note, I tried Hololens recently and that has real potential if they can increase the tiny field of view so that you can get augmented peripheral vision.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember seeing something in an automotive magazine a LONG time ago, I think it was called the Nomad. It did roughly the same thing but it was advertised as being able to give you wiring diagrams/schematics at just a glance, rather than from a book/screen. I was excited but it never really panned out. I really wanted to have wiring diagrams in front of me any time I wanted.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[BarbaraHudson]

The #1 use case in the future will be personal security - so that even if the police "forget" to turn their body cams on, they'll know they're being watched. Give it 15 years.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[sexconker]

And that's your particular case, but not everyone's. Here are some things that could work:

  - A surgeon could monitor vital signs during surgery merely by glancing up at a display.

  - A factory worker could have a list of steps to follow to complete an assembly

  - A floor supervisor could monitor progress of the line before or after their location

  - Even you could step back a safe distance, triggering a reappearance of the display that you can check, which then disappears when you approach the machine to ensure that you have no visual distractions.

You can already do all this and more with regular ass displays. There's no need to wear it on your face, and no benefit to doing so. You still have to switch your focus physically and mentally.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Zak3056]

What you said is a nice idea but it isn't really practical or safe to use in that environment. I do with lathes, mills and welding and you wouldn't even use these glasses while operating a machine. If I have to look at a design I step away from the machine and check the design. I'm not going to have a whirly machine of death running while I am looking at the design.

As far as welding goes, here's a slashdot story from five years ago. The demo video is fantastic.

Just because you can't see the use immediately doesn't mean there isn't one.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just that it wasn't that useful, it's that it was actively infringing on people's increasingly limited ability to disappear into a crowd.

I'm sure you're right, I'm just not sure that ability was ever a good thing anyway.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a solution looking for a problem. Take this one:

A surgeon could monitor vital signs during surgery merely by glancing up at a display.

A surgeon doesn't monitor the patient's vital signs. That's what the anesthesiologist does. Which works much better than what you suggest.

At work, something like 20 years ago, a coworker insisted that we buy a head-up multi meter. We all argued it was useless, so he desperately came up with some niche "problems" it would help with, because he wanted the toy.

I've never seen it actually used. Every now and then we pull it out of the box and try it on for laughs. We tell everyone, if they want it, they can use it. Everyone agrees a simple multi meter is easier.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[aaarrrgggh]

I'm no machinist, so excuse the analogies, but what about validation data while welding-- temperature, flow, speed tracking, etc. adding information that you cannot ascertain visually. Could help with learning the trade at a minimum, and manage complex tasks where thermal management and distortion comes into play.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[MangoCats]

But.... putting it into the hands of the knuckleheads on the street was probably the fastest way to get it introduced into the industrial settings where it makes sense.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[thegarbz]

A factory is bigger than your toy. Just because you work with one piece of equipment doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense in a factory especially where the equipment is interconnected as part of a larger system. Plant context is something every industry is working towards.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

What will happen is that you get spammed by your manager
What will happen if you get hammered by you manager? will that mean that a hammer a wordless tool?, no it just mean that it is being misused

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I never noticed it being marketing primarily to young women, but admittedly, they *did* figure in a significant portion of its photographic depictions.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, that's awesome.
Especially if they could do the "review" overtext in real time - the spot to follow, distance warnings... Great stuff.

Re:Ah the return of glassholes

[Martin Blank]

There are a lot of things we can do with regular displays, and yet we choose to carry tablets and phones with us to handle them instead. It's lighter and more convenient to do so. The same thing will happen with this tech: it will become the lighter, more convenient way to do things, plus it will provide a free hand that's currently used to manipulate a device. There's also a difference between moving your head to look over at a monitor and glancing up with your eyes to see what's projected.

You're also missing out on the augmented reality possibilities. The surgeon could get an overlay of information from the latest MRI or CT scan; the factory worker could see how the parts should go together, perhaps getting an artificial coloring for the next part needed; the floor supervisor could get an overlay of component flows with immediate data of what the last parts were to move merely my looking in that direction.

Glass was an invention without a market, but that's not the same as a useless invention. The concept will become part of our everyday life.

Well, maybe not yours. But almost everyone else's.

Law Enforcement.

[sycodon]

Seems like these upgraded glasses would be perfect for Law Enforcement. See what they saw in High Def.

Of course it has scary implications such as Face Recognition as they look at people...almost like portrayed in the Terminator movies.

Actually, that'd be kind of cool if you were the one wearing them.

Re:Law Enforcement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that'd be kind of cool if you were the one wearing them.

If they can pop up the person's name, when and where I met them, and a few of the conversational items we discussed, then I'm in.

Re:Law Enforcement.

[grumbel]

Battery life makes them useless. Glass lasted only something like 30min when recording video, a Taser Axon can lasts 12 hours in comparison.

Re: Law Enforcement.

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the most pathetic and lazy thing I've ever heard in my life (close, anyway). You are not exactly disowning the glasshole moniker, there, man. Then again, I'd imagine your narcissism prevents you from caring much.

Re:Law Enforcement.

[sycodon]

This is why they will ultimately move to Imperial Storm Trooper Helmets.

Re: Law Enforcement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Little picture, yeah, he's probably a dick and I want nothing to do with him.

Big picture, it can be useful to have someone to conceive things that actually add [tech] value to user life WITHOUT upfronting time to make it "save" time.

Even though most things so-conceived are impossible to make magically convenient, or too expensive to do so. Best case scenario, you have some guessy AI with poor accuracy at assuming precisely what you want.

Maybe that's the crux. A program, an algorithm, needs to explicitly know your parameters, your needs, the scenario. It doesn't know what'll you want to eat this Tuesday, if you barely don't. It doesn't know how much tabasco you want on it. This goes up the scale to bosses who learn workers can't read minds and tasking is hard.

Re: Law Enforcement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you insult a guy for having the decency to want to find a way to remember people? At least he cares.

Re: Law Enforcement.

[NEW22]

You're the one assuming the parent is pathetic, lazy and a narcissist. Who is the asshole, really?

Re: Law Enforcement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit! You're right, about EVERYTHING!

Re: Law Enforcement.

[sexconker]

He wants to appear as if he cares so he can fake normal social interaction. He's a sociopath.
A normal person would either have this shit come naturally or would avoid pointless smalltalk and bullshit.

Re:Law Enforcement.

[MangoCats]

Police body cams are already getting facial recognition, whether supplied by Google or others.

Re:Law Enforcement.

[Anonymous Coward]

That will happen
customer front facing desk jobs will find it useful to pull client stats and pertinent info , e.g your GP, Bank manager, hotel front desk attendant, then there are BtoB uses PR, Diplomacy employers....
Then everybody else

Re: Law Enforcement.

[Troed]

(I'm not the GP)

Hi, my name is Troed, and I suffer from prosopagnosia.

For various degrees of the definition, I'm not a "normal person". Between 2-10% of the population suffer from it, to various degrees. In the severe cases, like mine, it's a cause for many social mishaps.

I long for the day when my glasses can do the facial recognition for me, the one that your brain provides and mine doesn't.

/pathetic and lazy, apparently

It's the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm considering getting these, it would be a convenient way to make my apparent IQ drop by about 30 percent.

Re:It's the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta fit in with the natives, eh.

Re:It's the future!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well if you can't beat them....

Re:It's the future!

[sinij]

You can beat them, refuse to be early adopter and tech will die in a cradle.

Re:Now, with bigger strap

[Anonymous Coward]

you sound bitter, bro

Re: Now, with bigger strap

[Anonymous Coward]

Lol, exactly. Why, God, why?? Oh, that's right, because, 'Apple'. Seriously, I doubt Appholes are going to storm the popular consciousness anymore than Glassholes did. How Google became a company that anyone takes seriously is a mystery worthy of Scooby-Doo.

Your Safety Glasses Will Monitor Your Co-Workers

[Bing Tsher E]

Now put them on, because the timeclock is integrated into them, too.

Google glass

[Anonymous Coward]

up your arse

Great. More glassholes

[sinij]

This is exactly what we needed, more glassholes continuously uploading video feed to the largest data aggregator company in the world that has facial recognition, geo location, reads our email, and knows about our web searches.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

public privacy is dead. time to move on.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[sinij]

Privacy is dead and I should move on you say? OK. I would move on, but I got distracted by watching your sex tapes. She is faking it.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[LordWabbit2]

I think your tin foil hat might have slipped off.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[mark-t]

Or..... you might be less arrogant and not assume that people who have such recording devices are in any way interested in aincafing anyone's privacy, but are, in fact, simply using it to augment and enhance their own memory of the things that they happen to see throughout the day. For example, if you happen to witness an accident, your eyewitness testimony, if needed, will be greatly enhanced by the presence of accompanying video. I can't count the number of times in a week I wish I had been videoing something that I just happened to coincidentally see. If I were wearing the video equipment as simply a regular part of what I would otherwise have worn, I have that fallback if I ever need it. Granted, google glass is not yet at the point of being an effective whole-life recorder, but as I get older and find that my memory is regretfully not what it used to be, technological enhancements such as this kind of thing seem ideal.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[mark-t]

Incafing=invading. Stupid autocorrect

Re: Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, fish tits!

Re:Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly what we needed, more glassholes continuously uploading video feed to the largest data aggregator company in the world that has facial recognition, geo location, reads our email, and knows about our web searches.

Google already has Youtube, along with Google Plus. They have a lot of video. And they have Google Photos for your smartphone photos.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[sinij]

It doesn't matter what your intentions are, the end result is that you are uploading videos of me to the data aggregator. Celebrities have to deal with paparazzi following them everywhere they go. They get compensated for this by high earning potential and other perks of fame. Glassholes are equivalent to these paparazzi, only I don't get paid for the hassle.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Glassholes? I thought they were called Millennials...

Re:Great. More glassholes

[ausekilis]

Yes, but these are Enterprise Glassholes. They have blue-er collars.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[bill_mcgonigle]

This is exactly what we needed, more glassholes continuously uploading video feed to the largest data aggregator company in the world that has facial recognition, geo location, reads our email, and knows about our web searches.

So, don't go into a business that is using Enterprise Glass in their operations. Derp, what part of this is hard?

Re:Great. More glassholes

[PoopJuggler]

You might as well just give up and resign yourself to being on the losing end of this fight, just like the dummies who thought wristwatches were for assholes and would never catch on. Once the tech is miniaturized enough, smart glasses will be indistinguishable from ordinary glasses, and you and your kids and their kids and everyone else will have them.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[mark-t]

Glassholes are equivalent to these paparazzi

Only if the 'glasshole' had any intention to profit in some way from what they were photographing or videoing.

I would positively love it if "whole-life" records were a viable thing right now as an aid to human memory, and I see concepts like Google Glass as a step in that direction.

It doesn't matter what your intentions are, the end result is that you are uploading videos of me to the data aggregator.

Anyone could be uploading information about you to an agrgegator just by writing everything they see down and uploading that later. . The only decidedly objective difference between them is that the accuracy of the latter may be disputed... but being that it is entirely possible to accurately record an event with pen and paper, the mere fact that one form happens to be done by hand and the other uses mechanical aid is actually entirely irrelevant. At it's core, video is just one form of historical record that is fundamentally no different than audio-recordsings, the written word, or even cave drawings. Why would you want to deny people who simply wish to have an accurate historical record of their own perosnal experiences simply because you think that they would try to, like papparazzi, exploit the imagery that they collect?

Fundamentally, I believe that taking this view is no different with regards to the effect on law-abiding citizens than the politicians that would like to outlaw strong encryption just because bad guys might use it to get away with shit they may not otherwise, in that you stop innocent people who may have a legitimate and non-infringing use for the technology just because of the assholes that would abuse it.

Re: Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, fish tits!!!

Re:Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything that helps to increase efficiency happens basically because if you don't do it your competitor will, like any other technology there is the need of some kind of regulation to prevent abuse and misuse, e.g by employers misusing it in their employees, by corporations or any other case you may think of, just because you can use a electrical drill to kill someone doesn't mean it is legal to do so, or just because you can create a computer virus doesn't mean computers should be banned
Abuses and misuse will happen, just like with any other kind of tech

Re:Great. More glassholes

[sinij]

I think your comparison is deeply flawed. Better analogy is signing you up for Facebook and posting into your timeline against your will.
I am opposed to pervasive surveillance, by wearing Google glass around me you are removing that choice from me.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[sinij]

If you believe that this is unavoidable, have you considered societal implications of always being recorded?

Re:Great. More glassholes

[mark-t]

I am opposed to pervasive surveillance, by wearing Google glass around me you are removing that choice from me.

By extension, you must be similarly opposed to anyone looking at you who happens to remember what they saw. As I said, video is simply one form of historical record. The written word, audio recordings, and even human recollection are other forms, some of which are considered less reliable than others, but at their core they are no different, since it does not violate any physical laws of this universe to retain an accurate recollection of some experience.

Better analogy is signing you up for Facebook and posting into your timeline against your will

No.... because the purpose of that directly targets *you*, specifiically... it involves directly using your identity in ways that may be undesirable to you. When I suggest using always-on video to augment my memory of my daily experiences, it has absolutely nothing to with you, or any other particular individual I may happen to see. Fundamentally, all that it really amounts to is a simple historical record of the experiences I have had. Full stop. Suggesting that because some people might or would use such technology for other purposes, it should be prohibited or otherwise frowned upon regardless of intent is absolutely *NO* different at its core from the attitude that some politicians hold, who think that strong encryption should be outlawed just because it can also be used by criminals. You object to use that invades your privacy, and I understand that... but you cannot prohibit it without also prohibiting use that would not have been used to invade your privacy because the person who was using it had no interest in trying to use any actually private information about you. Similarly, some politicians object to strong encryption, but you cannot prohibit it without prohibiting its use by people who wouldn't have been using it to hide illegal activity. To be consistent, one must either accept both, or reject both. Given your stance on Google Glass, I can only assume that you are similarly taking the side of such politicians, and suggest that law enforcement should have backdoors into all legally usable encryption, which is fine if that is your opinion... but you can be damn well sure that I'm going to disagree with you.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[sinij]

I understand that your intentions are benign, this still doesn't change the fact that you are doing harm to me. Your memories stay in your skull, they are never extracted, aggregated, passed through pattern-recognition and attribution algorithms and then distributed as data points in the giant database.

That is, if you happen to pass me on the the street, and you don't know me, you will never know I was there. Even if you know me, unless something memorable happened, you will quickly forget it happened. If you pass me on the street, and you happen to be recording with your glasshole, you and anyone with access to the feed (so Google and anyone willing to pay or subpoena) can know I was there and this information unlikely to ever go away.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, fish tits.

Re:Great. More glassholes

[mark-t]

I understand that your intentions are benign, this still doesn't change the fact that you are doing harm to me. Your memories stay in your skull, they are never extracted, aggregated, passed through pattern-recognition and attribution algorithms and then distributed as data points in the giant database.

So it's not my intentions that bother you, it's the intentions of those who might use the database...

Right.

Exactly like how it's not the intentions of developers like Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman when they developed public key cryptography that bother politicians, it's the intention of people that *use* their technology to conceal their activities from law enforcement in irrecoverable ways.

Do you not see the striking similarity between these positions?

Essentially, you are saying that the bad, just because it could happen to *YOU*, outweighs absolutely any and all potential for good.

Let that sink in for a minute... and consider this.

People that make video logs of their adventures often upload them to youtube, and there may be frames where there are other people in the scene, but nobody cares about them, and I would consider it improbable to the extreme that every single person in every single scene was asked before the video was uploaded.

I would be more sympathetic to your objectons if it were the case that everything that gets uploaded to the cloud were always automatically shared with everybody and publicly viewable. This may be the case with some services, but it's not necessarily universally true for all. Of course it is still viewable by anyone else that attains sufficient authorization (through a court order, for example), but then even private information is obtainable from a person's own private home with a search warrant as well, so there's not really any diffference there. While information that is entirely inside of your own brain cannot be extracted without your permission, there are no agents that can truly prevent someone else from volunteering any information that they may happen to have about you if such information is asked for.

I understand you object to the potential for invasion of privacy, and I do not mean any disrespect here, but even if your imagery were uploaded to the cloud that *WAS* publicly accessible, the reality is that you (and me, for that matter) probably aren't interesting enough for anyone to care that either of our names or faces were on a public database, or even bother to look.

Re: Great. More glassholes

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, fish tits.!

Re:Great. More glassholes

[sinij]

I do not see any similarities and your attempts to draw analogies are logically flawed. Your encryption does not take away anything from me. You recording me and uploading it to data aggregators takes away my privacy.

add an Apple logo on it

[Anonymous Coward]

move all the electronic and batteries into a pod.
hide the camera and display in a nice looking frame of glasses.
link the pod and frame by a cable pretending to be a headphone cable.
add an Apple logo on it.

profit.

This should have been the initial release

[Applehu Akbar]

Glass is a great idea for surgeons, mechanics, and any worker who needs a hands-free way of looking at reference material while working inside a motorcycle or a human heart. Niche applications would have given Glass a cool factor to take into the larger world, rather than having acquired an asshole factor in the outside world first and having to overcome that in the workplace.

Re:This should have been the initial release

[thegarbz]

Best I can see the only people who contributed to the "asshole factor" was the media. For all the name calling the only people actually acting like asshole were the ones without Google glass.

Re:This should have been the initial release

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love Google Glass with an asshole factor. More to the point, an asshole cam. I'm always missing that perspective during sex. But then again, who would want to have sex with me when I wear those ugly glasses?

Re:Now, with bigger strap

[Anonymous Coward]

The fat narcissistic fraud literally thinks he's god.

https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10869785&cid=54832567

Re:Now, with bigger strap

[Anonymous Coward]

you're jealous of a successful fat man... how sad...

Re:ITT internet tough guys

[aicrules]

Can you please live stream this happening?

Tin foil hat

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your tin foil hat might have slipped off.

You might want to borrow it, you know, to keep anymore of your brains from falling out.

Re:Tin foil hat

[bill_mcgonigle]

You might want to borrow it, you know, to keep anymore of your brains from falling out.

OMG, when the stupid GP replies to a criticism of his stupid comment as AC. Like anybody is being fooled. Better to be seen as an asshole than a coward.

Re:Tin foil hat

[sinij]

You really don't know me if you think I'd have any problems with being seen as an asshole. Fuck you, and you are wrong here on attribution.

Cooking

[tskaife]

I know if I had the money to throw around, I'd love to have these while cooking. I waste so much time looking back at the recipe, trying to find my spot again. Would also be great instructions of any kind.

New tech haters on /.

[TiggertheMad]

Google Glass for every day knuckleheads on the street just wasn't a useful thing, which is why it died.

No the reason it 'died' was because luddites like yourself were being abusive about it. 'Glassholes', really? What did technology ever do to you? I bet there were a bunch of old people that said the same thing about cell phones when they came out a few decades back.

I dont know any better than you what will become the killer app for this hardware, but there will be something cool that people do with this. I am going to keep an open mind and wait and see.

Re:New tech haters on /.

[Anonymous Coward]

He's the luddite? At least learn to interpret the decade-old comment system on here to attribute words to the person that wrote them.

Hint: He replied to the guy that used the term "glasshole". You replied with bile and douchebaggery that was completely misplaced and unjustified.

Re:Now, with bigger strap

[Anonymous Coward]

Good grief, you are a pathetic little man.

Done that, part duo

[Dross50]

Been there, done that, about 20 years ago. The issue is the killer app. PC's had spreadsheets. What's google glasses killer app? A lot of comments here betray a lack of understanding of displays. The FOV (FOV is proportional to resolution therefore data density) is small and its a see through display. I have yet to see a "I gotta have it". All the above has been addressed, years ago. Never took. There is just not a "gotta have it". What is a google glass going to let you do, what you can't do now? Or do so much better you gotta have it? Mine was a military application. And even the Army dropped the idea. I did do a preliminary design for commodity pit traders. I've built 6 head mounted displays. Hey I love the technology. I wish there was a killer app.

Did you forget again the first law of tech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn. It's first widespread use will be for porn. First person POV porn, to be exact.

Use Them At My Job

[Vince Ferg]

In healthcare industry and we have been using a couple of pair that were provided to us with the purchase of some medical equipment. Since its very frequent to call in to the company to troubleshoot issues with these instruments the company has this service plan where you can talk to a tech on the line and they will see what you see and they can tell them exactly what to do over the phone instead of describing things back and forth. It was a really clever idea and showed some reasons to actually use this device. We have had it for several years but I do not work in the department that manages them so I have no idea how well it actually worked out for them.

This is such bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

The first and only reason Google glass failed the first time is because it was private beta. I couldn't get a pair even if I was willing to pay for it.
Fuck you Google.

Would be nice to see them available to Rest of Us

[sethstorm]

It's one thing to have them available to the few, it's another to have them available to the rest of us.

The concerns are too overblown to not allow mere mortals access to Glass in non-business settings.

You're part of the problem.

[sethstorm]

Ubiquitous facial/object recognition isn't a bad thing. What is a bad thing is not having it and refusing to figure out how to integrate it with regular individuals.

Hated only by a few.

[sethstorm]

The only "assholes" that are around are the ones that oppose Glass.

Re:Hated only by a few.

[Applehu Akbar]

What we discovered with the public beta of Glass was that sousveillance, watching other people from within a scene, is deemed creepier than surveillance, monitoring a scene from outside it. Credit Google with discovering something new about human nature. Now we know how to do Glass, or its successor, right.

Fuck this "Alphabet" nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

"Alfubutts guuguu" "guuguus pawent cumpuny aphabet"

Just call it "Google", they're only changing their name to avoid their disgusting reputation.

Glasses will be huge as soon as

[rhyous]

The normal glasses I wear now for either my vision correction or as sunglasses have the tech with no added size or shape or noticeable by anyone else change to the lenses. Basically smart glasses that look like our normal glasses.

Augmented reality will be awesome . . . but remember how Palm Pilot was around for a fifteen years and just never made it huge (never reached everyone's hands) and then Apple killed Palm with the release of the iPhone in '07?

Google Glass will likely be like Palm. It will sit around for a decade or more before other break-thrus in the industry will allow someone to make it so every pair of glasses or sunglasses sold will be smart glasses.

Re:Glasses will be huge as soon as

[ferret4]

Microsoft look like they're onto a good thing with HoloLense - it fully jumps into the Augmented Reality space, which is where I think the Killer App of these wearables is really at, not email status updates in the corner of your eye. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

8 ball pool hack

[Anonymous Coward]

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