I would bet my money that there's a dozen lawyers at work, right now, in Meta's HQ, to get a sense of what options they have to harass, shut down, or do something else to the creator of this app. And I would also bet that Zuck is furious about it.
You'd be surprised. They banned Christopher Wylie from Facebook. People routinely report their entire team (building some product for Facebook) getting their accounts banned
Zuckerberg takes things personally. It's his entire history
I can't claim to know more than you; but I think I know enough about corporate america and Meta and Zuck that the idea of multiple lawyers, instead of just one, is at least plausible.
Somewhere deep in the central European woods, a lonely dev fights for his life, against a dead man switch. Accidentally, a NATO drone flattened his house into glass a week ago. Now, he evades drones, rabid lawyers, train accidents, Starlink honey traps, sudden internet blackouts of unknown origin, regular honey traps, poisoned whiskey, social media bans and dowvotes ...
... if you can find him, you can hire him, and restore privacy and sanity to your apps. he is ... the ZuckOff dev.-
Anyone can get a $5 bluetooth-capable ESP32 and set its bluetooth mac to one in the range used by smart glasses. Not sure why you'd do that though.
The other direction is trickier. You'd have to modify the firmware of the smart glasses to set a different mac, or at least gain arbitrary code execution with hardware access on the glasses. That's well beyond what the average smart glass user will do
And at that point, it'd be mostly about the heads-up display anyways. Somebody who is determined to record you without your knowledge has far easier paths available to them. Just get one of those lighters or ear-rings or car key fobs with built-in camera
Reading this inspired me that it would be nice if there were a do-not-film-me standard: your mobile phone sends out a do-not-film-me request with a (rotating) hash of your facial biometrics via Bluetooth. All cameras (glasses, phones, etc.) then blur your face in recordings.
Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
If we have to come up with a technological solution to grant anonymity when people are filming, criminals can use it.
If we as a society don't go around filming everyone all the time, we don't need that technical solution available, so we can film the criminals when they are doing something criminal.
Humans adapt and will always break the rules, but that’s not something that can be solved with tech. Think: prohibition vs public anti smoking campaigns/healthcare support/and then increasing prices
The tricky part is that social peer pressure requires a lack of anonymity - not just in terms of detecting whether people are recording without consent at the time - but also the posting of content online.
The lines blur between actively taking photos and passively recording for augmented reality, AI assistance, etc. People might not be aware that they record. This standard would also be useful to extend to robots. For example if you visit friends who have a roomba [1].
> All cameras (glasses, phones, etc.) then blur your face in recordings.
that requires too much goodwill and effort from the makers of such devices. They know their audience wouldn't want that. They don't give a shit about what people being filmed think.
Think about it some more. It's all fun and games, until same technology is used against you. There was literally a Black Mirror episode about this very thing.
There are just two makers of devices, Google and Apple, both proprietary and user hostile and they'll do anything the government tells them. Remember how quickly they implemented that covid tracking bullshit? Yeah.
Wasn't there a "standard" that phones in south kora had to make a shutter noise when you took a picture because they had such a huge problem with men doing up the skirt photos of strangers?
Not sure why you think social norms are positive. Negative amoral behaviors can become norms. I'd argue the west has tons of amoral behavior that is normalized.
Not sure about the noise, but Japan did something likr it with a constant light when the device was recording. I believe it was combatting the same kind of issues though.
It's good to a first-order approximation. Haven't seen many cases where it fails. You do get right-wing parties pretending to be left-wing (never the reverse) though, like the German one that called itself "worker's socialist"
Things happening does not mean it a social norm. It was never acceptable to take underskirt pictures in Japan. They also did not put the onus on women to wear special camera-disabling underwear.
Likewise, it's not acceptable to shove a camera to everyone's face, and it shouldn't be on people to opt-out of it.
You're getting this wrong. We don't need a standard to signal you don't want your bike to be stolen. The social expectation is that a bike can't be taken.
What the parent comment is suggesting is to invert the onus. "I can film you by default, unless you tell me not to".
Technical and legal norms are implementation of social norms. “obviously everybody knows that you are supposed to do it that way” doesnt hold up well at court, or during an argument about any decision that costs big bucks.
There already are privacy laws that govern what can be filmed where. Why do we need a standard to pretty please ask some glasshole to respect the law if it's not too much of an inconvenience?
Police unions would love for cameras to standardize on that.
There was an article on HN that one city's police force, when there were protests going on, took to playing Disney songs from loudspeakers; so that any recording of their interactions would be impossible to publish on any significant internet platform (or at least, the audio would be muted, by IP protection filters).
its basically equivalent of them punching you in the face and running away. Yeah you're right and they're wrong, but what would you do about that and your nose is bleeding. Nasty tactics.
It doesn’t matter if it’s wrong or illegal if they know nothing will happen to them. The rule of law is dying because it’s becoming only selectively enforced.
I bet Disney's lawyers can squeeze a lot more money out of municipalities for playing the music publicly in the first place than they can out of random citizens who are uploading to Youtube.
Of course that was the point. But malicious broadcast of copyrighted material to trigger automated enforcement systems sounds pretty far from "fair use" to me. Say nothing of the bad publicity when some video is just so bad it hits the news and now your IP is the soundtrack to a cop beatdown.
When you look at it from a legal "use it or lose it" and corporate risk perspective it's quite surprising that Disney didn't even sent cease and desists.
Edit: Of course you don't lose the copyright but your ability to litigate someone else's unfair use is a lot weaker when their lawyer can trot out a million examples that you were fine with.
You’re right. Tech companies will surprise us all and suddenly start obeying the DMCA to the letter instead of just taking the shortcut of “rights holders upload content, it’s fingerprinted, user content that matches fingerprint is taken down”. Then, we’ll link arms and sing kumbaya.
There's no human to appeal to in social media platforms. It's automated, algorithmic enforcement; and when it's wrong (or someone exploits it to be wrong, like this), you're powerless to do anything. It means nothing if you're technically in the legal right: the platforms are risk-averse and don't care about your false positive.
> It's automated, algorithmic enforcement; and when it's wrong (or someone exploits it to be wrong, like this), you're powerless to do anything.
Ahem...
In the UK/EU Let me introduce you to article 22 of the GDPR
The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
i.e. If subjected to an algorithm making decisions, you have an automatic right of appeal to a _human_.
Though presumably you would prefer the alternative; that such companies are unrestrained in what they may do and the population at large must simply bend over and grab their ankles with both hands?
Nope, I don't want that at all. What I want is a law with actual enforcement behind it and penalties that actually deter bad actors. You don't just write a law and then stop there declaring job done.
Theoretically, yes, absolutely. Practically, no, they would be taken down by automatic filters and you'd have to be willing to face Disney's lawyers to try to get them reinstated.
This has never once prevented a DMCA notice from being issued, and I'm sure you can guess how easy it is to get a person at YouTube to review your appeal
Sounds like a swift way to be included in "Need constant observation" list.
Or we can even build a special surveillance for such folks along with plausible Parallel construction scenario constantly refreshed.
What does that even mean? You have to opt in to film?
If you meant to say "to being filmed", how do you implement that? People have been filming crowds since the 1950s; "Candid Camera" famously made covert filming mainstream.
"Should be" is a dream of the Good Ship Lollipop. Here IRL, laws and regulations are the only thing that will discourage it.
Not too dissimilar to the Black Mirror episode "White Christmas" where you can block other people in real life. Except in this case it's glasses and in Black Mirror retinal implants. We're getting there.
Yes. And an app could render the same thing on your screen via the same tech currently used to robustly watermark generative AI image output, and now not only you won't be able to screenshot the app, you also won't be able to take a photo of it with another device, and on the off chance you found some pre-202X camera that still could, no other computer would display the resulting photo either.
Yes, let's keep coming with more of these great ideas.
To cut this short: the whole overall idea is just universal DRM writ large. A big, principled no fucking way, ever from me.
But what about the personal privacy / venue rights ...
That's a social problem, it should not be used as excuse to give unilateral control over other people's technology to groups or individuals with special interests.
Great idea, we could also have a standard in browsers that signals you don't want to be tracked. We could call it the "Do not track" header, short for DNT.
And what happens when some bad actor actively monitors for that signal and seeks out the people who have it? And why does it require carrying my surveillance device to tell others I don't want to be surveilled?
> All cameras (glasses, phones, etc.) then blur your face in recordings.
Rendering security cameras useless for identifying any criminals?
Maybe some of these commenters aren’t old enough to remember when fighting for your right to take photographs and videos in public places was one of the frequent topics in online places like Slashdot and BoingBoing. There have been waves of attempts to restrict freedoms to take photos in many countries. When they pass there’s a significant loss of personal rights and freedoms.
> Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
Do you really want this? An off-button for all cameras nearby? Please purchase your official photographs from the gift shop or from the $5 Photo Booth.
This would be a dream for bad people who don’t want to be recorded or photographed doing something, like a bad police officer. Just keep a device around that broadcasts the “do not record at this venue” signal and you can shut down recordings all around.
First they filmed the celebrities, then the politicians, then the cops, then came the ring cameras. It was a slow erosion over decades, the justification drifting from "they are a public figure" to "they are standing near me"
I never knew why the paparazzi could harass celebrities and a few decades later we are all being secretly filmed for a Meta perv database.
A major factor is that the companies pushing for this technology are spending significant resources into making sure your consent isn't relevant. From this article [1] about Meta and smart glasses:
> Five years ago, Facebook shut down the facial recognition system for tagging people in photos on its social network, saying it wanted to find “the right balance” for a technology that raises privacy and legal concerns. Now it wants to bring facial recognition back.
> (…) The Silicon Valley company has been conferring since early last year about how to release a feature that carries “safety and privacy risks,” according to an internal document viewed by The New York Times. (…) Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.
> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.
> We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns
And if there's no dynamic political environment or fitting concerns to steal focus at hand, we'll sure as hell fund their creation.
1838 for still photography. Shortly after 1888 for movies.
Despite the pearl-clutching in this thread, filming rando strangers without consent has always been legal and socially accepted.
It's the prospect of being filmed frequently, and especially in more intimate situations than walking down the street, that is making people uneasy. Flock cameras agitate us because of the frequency of their use. Recording glasses enable the off-the-street problem.
I... don't know how I feel about this. I mean, the concept, sure, good idea. Is it reliable? Perhaps. But... I get a "buy merch" popup the moment I open the page, and there seems to be a pro option for what seems to be a very much LLM-aided app? ...IDK, rubs off a bit wrong IMO. Just my personal opinion.
I like the idea of this type of merch that normalizes anti big tech sentiment. But I personally would also opt for something more dramatic, possibly involving a guillotine...on the t shirt I mean
The following is 100% vibe coded by me, (except for the algorithm that actually makes the music recommendations, which is about 5 lines of code I wrote 30 years ago.)
I created it in two months using Claude Code. It would have taken me three years without it. I would have never done it.
What about this free service is a win for big tech?:
Social media has tuned people to be unable to think in non-hyperbolic ways. To these constantly wound-up people, every problem, no matter how big or small, can only be solved by brutal violence and savagery.
> To these constantly wound-up people, every problem, no matter how big or small, can only be solved by brutal violence and savagery.
well, the idea of democracy was to offer a viable path for people's discontent to be heard and remediated.
Unfortunately in most Western countries, dysfunctionality and corporatism have taken it over, and that is why you're seeing authoritarians on the rise across the world. They paint democracy and "legacy" figures as the scapegoat and themselves (plus handing them allllllll the power) as the only solution - just look at Milei and the chainsaw.
The longer people see issues that are not being solved via peaceful means, the more accepting they become of non-peaceful means.
I'm not advocating for those means, but I understand how people are feeling more helpless than ever to just "let the system work it out" when the system appears to be bought and paid for by a small concentration of corporations and people with an increasingly disproportionate share of wealth.
I wouldn't see myself as constantly wound up, but I get your angle. I also was at most half serious, alluding to a time not long ago in a country not far away, where this instrument had its moment.
And in retrospect, the French revolution is not considered a dark episode of modern history, on the contrary.
We are going to have the organic label soon on apps with this mindset..AI assisted development is evolving by the day and at the rate most apps will be built that way..
It did make it easier to generate thoughtless apps, I agree.
But this process is new, and not every AI assisted app is thoughtless. In fact, I'd argue that if a person put more thoughts and amplify their abilities with AI assisted coding, then the total sum of mental labour exceed that of any manually coded app by huge margins.
I'm not sure about this particular app, haven't looked into it. But I was merely commenting about the mindset of the parent comment.
If the developer can't be bothered to not make it look vibecoded I assume there's a minimal amount of thought and effort put into it. And in that case I'm not going to bother using it.
Maybe this developer didn't bother I didn't even look frankly.
My point was that you can have very well designed and thoughted apps with LLMs. In fact, I'd argue you can go way further and deeper than any manual coded application paired with AI assistance.
But maybe this instance is not the case. But even if it turns out to be not the case, if the app does work and serves the utility you are after, then why not using it? People use many things in everyday life without thinking about what thought was put into it..in fact, most people don't think at all about what it took to build anything, and how it was built..
Do you really know or care if the shoes you wearing was handmade or built by a factory in china using robots? you probably don't know and don't care.
> My point was that you can have very well designed and thoughted apps with LLMs.
If that were the case here, then a user of the app probably would not come away with the impression that it was a "very much LLM-aided app."
You're talking about how LLMs can be used in such a way that they help production of an app but remain invisible to the end user. But the beginning of this thread was someone using the app and coming away with the impression that it was heavily LLM influenced, which suggests that it was not done thoughtfully and did not remain invisible to the user.
I get it, and frankly I don't know about this app.
But the parent comment positioned itself against all "LLM-aided apps", the author didn't say a slop or poorly coded. And even if it looks like LLM coded, we still can't tell about the level of thought that went into it. Developers had many poorly coded UIs and yet the apps functioned well and served it's purpose.
So the entire chain of reasoning is a form stereotype forming. Looking at this specific app, I can see that the author thought about the marketing/business and functionality, more than other alternatives, maybe because they had more mental bandwdith to do so.
To be fair, I personally only said that I'd like a label that indicates whether an app has "had thought put into it". That could involve e.g. another human reviewing the code and architecture and giving it a stamp.
I hand written each one of them, I think they are full of typos and grammatical errors as well since English is not my first language.
I assume you are saying that because I apologized. I apologize for sounding like AI, I assure you it was hand written and I put thoughts into those comments.
I don’t see how this comment is “against all LLM-aided apps.”
> But... I get a "buy merch" popup the moment I open the page, and there seems to be a pro option for what seems to be a very much LLM-aided app? ...IDK, rubs off a bit wrong IMO. Just my personal opinion.”
Again, if the user of the app comes away with the impression that the app “seems to be a very much LLM-aided” then the LLM usage has affected the end product.
I think people are judging mainly the UI of the app. This is closed code app so they don't know, but they are judging by patterns in the UI and/or wording of documentation. And I think it is mainly tech or artists or whoever else is impacted by the AI usage.
That is not say there are really mindlessly produced apps out there. But the comment made it sound that anything LLM-aided is negative.
But what does this has to do with LLM-assisted coding? I wouldn't trust this app even it was manually coded.
In fact, given the recent reports, in terms of security, one is better off consulting LLMs on the exposure surfaces. Something a solo developer can now do cheaply but in the past required a lot of specialized knowledge.
> But what does this has to do with LLM-assisted coding?
What does "LLM-assisted coding" have to do with the question I answered? Here's that question again:
> if the app does work and serves the utility you are after, then why not using it?
Note that this question does not contain any reference to "LLMs". Indeed, an LLM-generated product can contain adware, spyware, or trojan horses just like a human-written one.
For additional context, this app in question seems to actually contain adware and spyware, and has a closed source codebase, so might contain a trojan horse as well.
Those seem like pretty good reasons to not run this totally-vibe-coded software, so I'm sorry, but I don't understand your argument that LLMs make this okay or not okay or whatever.
My comment was about not equating every LLM assisted app as poorly thought of. Your comment is about this specific app, and I personally would not install this app regardless of how it was coded.
But again in terms of security since you brought it, I'd argue that having LLM assisted coded app might be secure than manually coded application given the recent advancements. Again, this is a generic statement, not specific to this app.
The original discussion was not about every LLM assisted app, it was specifically about vibe-coded apps, particularly ones with so little human input that experienced coders can tell they were vibe-coded.
Your later comments generalizing to "every LLM assisted app" seem like a bit of insecurity you might be feeling for using LLM assistance. No need to feel that way. LLM assistance is okay. We're discussing something different from mere LLM assistance.
That is the original comment: " for what seems to be a very much LLM-aided app? "
The author mentioned LLM-aided app, not even AI assisted; nor vibe coded hence my reaction. I don't have insecurity from using LLM nor from coding manually. But I noticed a trend in people thinking and biases and it threw me off hence the comment.
My original comment was heavily downvoted and furthermore some of my comments were accused of being written by AI meanwhile I'm writing it by hand. Again, people are taking tribes/camps, if you speaking of insecurities, it actually the opposite clearly, many programmers are worried of being displaced and automated. And I do understand the concern, I'm just stating the fact that one can have very deeply thoughted LLM-aided app.
If one person knows how to code, they don't need an LLM. I've tried using all of them on my job, and I will give them a second chance time by time (to see if the claims made by these big tech hold up) and ALL of the time I've didn't noticed any speedup compared to coding manually.
If you are an experienced programmer (not someone that did an online course and calls like this) with YEARS of experience in coding in multiple languages really, the only real limitation is the speed at which you can type on the keyboard, that is usually way faster than what the even good LLM is able to emit tokens.
This not considering token expense: if we see at the point of view of the company, it's way cheaper an experienced programmer, that in my country costs you 4000 a month tax included, than the tokens that an LLM would use to do the same job.
On top of that there is the environmental impact of all of this, and why they are almost making me not use my car because it's euro 5 and now there is euro 6, these AI companies are emitting tons of CO2 to do stuff that human beings can do with 1/1000 the energy that these AI companies use.
"if one person knows how to code, they don't need an LLM. I've tried using all of them on my job, and I will give them a second chance time by time (to see if the claims made by these big tech hold up) and ALL of the time I've didn't noticed any speedup compared to coding manually."
I mean, have you truly tried? do others thing this is true? I'm truly astonished if that is majority experience, I think we need to get surveys on this.
The entire draw of coding with LLMs is that you can generate programs without knowing how to code. That's literally what "vibe coding" is. Why would it surprise you that people who do know how to code, and don't hate the process the way a lot of AI enthusiasts seem to, might not find them useful?
You'll find plenty of people on HN who have this experience,but they just tend to be ridiculed or told they just haven't used AI correctly or enough. Admitting you don't use LLMs for everything, or god forbid at all, is like telling Christians you don't want to be saved.
Because they can easily get outcompeted by those who care about software/output and use the latest tools? might as well code in assembly and brag about it.
I'm not here condemning people who use or not use. We have a new tech, for anyone who have been in the field long enough, it is nothing short of magic was has been accomplished in the last few years.
I could turn around 10K lines of code per day (I know it's not the best measurement but it does capture size to some extent) when I was not able to pull more than a 100 LOC. Let us say that most of it work, and there are few rough edges, a senior programmer can follow the shape of the code, and understand where to tweak and where the LLM get stuck. So this is basically like having racing engine compared to running.
Companies get outcompeted, individual coders don't. And not everyone wants to be the Thomas Kinkade of coding, just cranking product out as fast as possible. And products that "use the latest tools" don't always "outcompete" those that don't. Most of what gets vibe coded - as demonstrated by what gets posted to Show HN - is qualitatively worse than the equivalent human-written software. It certainly isn't better, and there's no indication that velocity to market leads to market dominance.
To metaquote a recent thread - where is the vibe-coded replacement for Photoshop that outcompetes it? or Word? Why aren't vibe-coded games dominating Steam?
The speed alone doesn't translate to productivity and productivity alone doesn't translate to quality.
Imo it depends on the type of change required. If it involves churning out 1000 line of new boilerplate, an LLM will win every time. If it means tracing a subtle edge-case bug and carefully planning a deep one-line change in a 100k codebase that leaves all other behaviour unaffected, I would still expect an experienced dev who's deeply familiar with the code to do it at least as fast and more correctly first time.
It sounds more like you are equating a totally-vibe coded product with no verified code, with a product thoughtfully written by a human with LLM assistance.
> The camera is disabled when people try to do this. Beginning with our second generation of glasses, the camera is automatically disabled if we detect that the capture LED has been blocked. No photos or videos can be taken until we detect that the light is unblocked.
> Since the introduction of this safeguard, we’ve seen some people go beyond using tape to sophisticated efforts to modify or destroy the capture LED. We are continuously improving our ability to detect tampering, and now we’re updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed. No other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward.
The problem is the LED isn’t enabled currently when live streaming content to Instagram or Facebook. Most live streams can just be captured and recorded by someone else. This is a huge cap in privacy and safety even if the LED was fully functional without tampering.
> Does everyone know when you're live streaming? Yes. A white LED on the front of the glasses lights up while you're streaming to let people around you know the camera is active.
> Beginning with our second generation of glasses, the camera is automatically disabled if we detect that the capture LED has been blocked. No photos or videos can be taken until we detect that the light is unblocked.
Until it's hard enough people figure out how easy it is to fit a camera in a regular glass flame, and how much cheaper it is over paying Meta for the privilege.
> Since the introduction of this safeguard, we’ve seen some people go beyond using tape to sophisticated efforts to modify or destroy the capture LED. We are continuously improving our ability to detect tampering, and now we’re updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed. No other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward.
Yes it's true people have figured out how to disable the safeguard, but we all agree the important thing as we try to sell millions more of these is that we tried, right?
Seeing these reactionary Reddit-like takes on HN sucks. No, it's not easy for the average person to disable the camera on these glasses. They do continuously make it harder to do so. At this point anyone interested in spy glasses is better off buying one of the many other glasses with cameras in it.
Alternatively, sounds like you're a user of the glasses and don't like what these comments might reflect on you if more people agree with them?
Was my comment incorrect? You admit it's both possible to work around it, people are actually doing that, and the comment does indeed give themselves a little pat on the back for working hard to unsuccessfully solve a problem with the product they themselves choose to make and market? So what's the reactionary part?
What exactly is your threat model? "It is possible to work around" every single security control that has ever existed. Saying it "is possible" to work around a control is an utterly meaningless statement. At what budget? With what skill level? With what frequency and likelihood?
If the intent is to deter the typical weirdos that would try to disable the blinking light, then yes, their mitigations have been extraordinarily effective and most of these weirdos now just buy other cheaper and more discreet camera glasses.
I think this will go like this:
- Resistance. People don't like being "secretly" filmed.
- Most people will realise it does not affect their lives.
- People will ignore it
- New generation will accept as something normal to do. Everyone recording everyone.
The live music image in their collage is hilarious: it's blurring the backs of people's heads, and presumably blurs the faces of the band, as how would it know the difference
Eta: and in their demo video there's a person walking by who's face doesn't get blurred lmao. Bang up job, Claude
the demo video really looks ai generated — several weird artifacts, but what bugs me the most is that at the end the alleged glasses-wearer goes through two men between whom clearly there is no space for a third person.
Dunno why I remembered "The Quantum Thief" by Hannu Rajaniemi.
Basically, you had fine-grained control over what others perceived of you.
Your friends can see you completely, while strangers can only see a blur.
BTW, I will also recommend 'a hero of our time' by Lermontov. In it, you will get an updated view of what the meaning of 'friends' will be. :)
EDIT: since this is getting upvotes, I will also mention that Lermontov is a descendant of the Learmonts, who were British folk.
Also, the book is small but it's jampacked with a lot of wisdom--street and abstract both-- and presented using a language that shines with poetry, it shines even through translation (Penguin Classics trans. is best).
Makes me think of a Black Mirror episode where similar technology ends up with unlucky/unwanted people becoming inaudible blurs in perception of everyone.
As digital dystopias go, this is one of the worst I've seen; the episode ending with this happening to the protagonist shook me to the core.
Judging by how many people in this thread seem eager to reinvent the hellhole presented in that episode, it's good enough to recommend as required watching.
The 1st 2 were great but I didnt like the 3rd one. Its like the author was in a hurry to finish the book and just started killing characters to make his wordcount.
The 1st 2 are independent, I recommened people stop after 2nd book
So google can already figure out if you're being followed by an air tag, why can't they natively scan Bluetooth for smart glasses and do what zuckoff does without a third party app?
It's not about a winner. This isn't CNN, there's no reason, (if you know better) to use the vibe coded sketchy software like he said. We're better than this. Do you really think popular = automatically better?
Untrue for sails, untrue for dinghys, untrue for foils, because price discrimination. I thought it might have been true for catamaran, but I looked it up and it seems that Hobie Cat 16 are still more popular than Nacras for some inimaginable reason, as for once it's not price related.
If I go on another subject I invested time in, RPGs, D&D is the most popular system while inferior imho to a lot of others. Even if we have to keep the very flawed d20 system, the way forgotten chronicles handles everything is superior (and if in your bad opinion it's not the case because weirdly you like the class system, you probably would prefer pathfinder instead of dnd).
It's a better marketing indeed, but that doesn't answers the op's question.
Between something opensource and trusted, and a proprietary potential backdoor that can send the data back to the Zuck himself you'd probably want to choose the former (cause you never know with closed sources).
I'm glad that he has shared the link as for me it's definitely useful. It's not a competition and I don't care what media talk, that's not about money.
There isn't any hope for something called "yj_nearbyglasses" if nobody outside of technical people know about it so OSS is kind of a moot point here.
Outside of that, this project giving scary warnings is something I cannot recommend to others.
> Between something opensource and trusted and proprietary backdoor that can send the data back to the Zuck himself you'd probably want to choose the former.
Only HN veterans care about this, not people in the real world.
Forgive me using your comment as a madlib, but one potential ending:
(something as simple as a product name)... is enough to make someone ignore the actual point about software trust and instead argue that good marketing is what's important :)
Depends on the implied meaning. What technical reason? There isn't one, obviously. But what about the practical reason for the behavior we observe? That's explained by the name and marketing. And if your goal is to understand "why are people doing this" then indeed marketing is what's important and software trust only barely enters into it.
Of course the irony there is palpable. Worry about the glasses while disregarding everything else.
Your comment shouldn't be downvoted for misunderstanding the hypothetical; you give a correct answer why "people" would choose ZuckOff. The question was why "you" (an individual from the Hacker News audience) wouldn't use yj_nearbyglasses instead.
True, but as far as that goes the question was a pointless one. Whereas the one that was answered has the potential to lead to productive conversation.
Huh, I don't see that in the permissions list. I do see:
- run foreground service with the type "connectedDevice"
- discover and pair nearby Bluetooth devices
- run foreground service
- control vibration
- Google Play billing service
- run at startup
- Google Play license check
- have full network access
- view network connections
- ask to ignore battery optimizations
- prevent phone from sleeping
- connect to paired Bluetooth devices
- show notifications
I also see "In-app purchases" for "$9.99 - $24.99 per item", which is more of a turnoff for me personally.
I love how even all the copy on the site is clearly AI generated. We're starting to completely lose even our ability to write a single paragraph of descriptive text.
The name is also much more engaging. As we all know, naming things is hard. While NearbyGlasses is simple and descriptive, it's not emotionally charged like ZuckOff.
Google has been doing this sleazy practice since forever, and yes, they even promote 'competitor campaign articles' through Google search, just google 'google competitor campaign' and you'll get articles like this:
I was, however had, quite surprised when I saw them used by "auditors" (here, I refer to e. g. "auditors" on youtube specifically). Now this brought a problem for me, because auditors on the one hand, bring interesting encounters, even if they (or some of them) meta-jabait and provoke (again, only some of them at best, in many cases they don't really). But when they use spy glasses to serve greedy mega-corporations, this totally shifts the whole "audit" instantly, because then they also support evil Facebook, Google or what not. And that kind of runs counter to the whole audit-idea. So far I only saw one use the facebook spy glasses, but I wonder whether he even gave any thought to this. I understand why he uses spy glasses, but I don't understand why he does it to benefit Facebook. That IMO puts the whole idea behind audits instantly in a wrong angle. I haven't seen others use it, so perhaps it just was one or few, but they don't seem to really think anymore. Some audit channels were also censored by Google in the last weeks, others were not, but this just amplifies the whole problem here. Imagine if the spy glasses were made by Google. And the auditors depend on Google money. It's really strange. The whole setup does not work well. I understand that they want to make money, but why would I want to support facebook-agents using spy glasses at all? That makes no sense, so I decided when an audit-channel uses facebook spy glasses or anyone else's corporations spy-glasses, I won't watch anything from there. Same with AI content - anyone using AI content I instantly add to a perma-ban list. I recently saw more and more people use AI slop images and AI filters. This is soooooo horrible. These people don't seem to understand that AI slop kills interest. Yet some swear by it - it is fascinating. Those who use AI slop, can not be convinced that using AI slop is detrimental. They have been converted into AI skynet servants.
As much as I despise Meta and concerned about privacy, I’ve not found anything better for recording snippets of my glider flights than the Meta glasses.
I don’t post them anywhere (except occasionally to friends or family in direct messages).
I fly club gliders and can’t really attach a camera easily. And in any case the PoV is a useful learning tool. I can check I was doing lookout properly, I can see the instruments clearly and so forth.
I have a second pair of normal glasses that I always swap to when I’m back on the ground.
The principal is a very cool bit of technology. There are authoritative blindness and eyesight medical institutions that are claiming this technology is great for people suffering from eye issues.
The shouting match is being loudly won by people decrying the technology however, people can receive physical and verbal abuse on the streets for wearing them which is pretty scary.
I feel as though it’s inherent in the models, as part of “alignment” or whatever. I’ve noticed whenever having an LLM help with data analysis, especially Claude, it just can’t help itself from putting caveats and guides and documentation inline or in footers.
> Nothing leaves your phone and there is no account.
This is good to know, but it's the exact type of thing Claude is obsessed with putting everywhere once you tell it NOT to do something. For example, if I tell it to commit but never push changes to GitHub, it can't help but leave "Changes committed; nothing was pushed." to EVERY SINGLE MESSAGE. The model just can't help but report back about everything it's NOT doing, and it drives me crazy.
In the novel "The Mountain in the Sea" (great read, very pertinent as well for the discussion of AGI and what is consciousness), an "abglanz" is like a digital identity shield that hides a person's face behind a shifting weird pattern of colours. I wonder how far off we are from everyone just retreating into higher privacy settings and opt out.
Remember when flip phone cameras were forced to add an un-mutable "click" sound when somebody snapped a photo, in order to try to stop creep shots? We've sure come a long way since then.
A comment on the design of this site: I was super confused about what this actually is. How do I use "ZuckOff"? Is it a piece of hardware? A website that I just leave open? Do I download some software, or maybe fork a repo? Where is the fucking download link? Cmd-F for "download" and "install" fail.
I scrolled down. Only the newsletter and contact info at the bottom. Do I have to email them? I scrolled up. Just a list of features and description of what it does, but not how do I use it. What's the first step? Please for the love of God.
I see a big blue button that links to "the shop". Oh, maybe that's where I buy it? No it's just "merch". I'm not sure why some random piece of tech would be offering tote bags for $28 (!) but okay.
I go back to the website and keep hunting. Then I see a row of buttons squeezed in a random location, seemingly out of place, like the designer had a stroke at this point in the process. They don't match the visual style of the rest of the site, so they are easy to just ignore as clutter. One says (in very tiny letters) "download on the app store".
There's a bright blinking light on my face telling them they're being recorded - and they have their phones out and are recording anyways! There are a lot of assumptions baked into your comment.
What's with HN becoming so saturated with snarky cynical one line quips? I don't think I've ever seen a worse comment section.
Its not a battle you are going to win, This is pretty much the state of things but everyone old enough remembers when the same was said about camera phones, Drones and Uber being unsafe. Eventually usage means these comments will fall and then everyone will forget as it becomes normal.
Why not? Something that can do facial recognition + location tracking + keep and instantly transmit related digital records to a third party should be considered an invasion of privacy even if in public.
Someone capturing a single frame with a phone is smaller in volume, and more easily spotted and socially punished than someone recording video with glasses.
I think the panic around smart glasses cameras is so strange, it's SO much easier to be a creep with a phone recording. You'll see it all the time if you're paying attention. Everyone is already on their phones anyhow, and especially with "creep shots" your head is a massive giveaway; with a smart phones, not so much, it can be placed anywhere. What practically could someone record without their knowledge that isn't already widely and more easily available through a smartphone? I just don't get it.
I do understand recording maybe during a sexual act or something without knowledge, but even that is probably just as easy with a phone. Feels like everyone is focusing on the wrong thing, given that level of privacy has already been eradicated and no one is going to give up their phones.
There is no "panic". It is more a realization that it is becoming difficult to notice recording devices.
I assume the most problematic scenarios are private. Private meetings. Private conversations. Private encounters of every kind in general. Environment in which ordinary people used to have good enough confidence that, unless they see a phone or a camera, they are not being recorded. It no longer is that simple.
Confirming, at least to some extent, that there is no recording going on may now require confronting the other person. And asking them to remove their glasses or hand them over for inspection might be considered rude.
As a result, I think that it might make people more suspicious and less trusting, especially when meeting new people for the first time.
It would be cool to see an individual US State pass a law to say that recording glasses have to have a visible logo on the front indicating recording capabilities.
itqwertz | 11 hours ago
simonebrunozzi | 11 hours ago
I would bet my money that there's a dozen lawyers at work, right now, in Meta's HQ, to get a sense of what options they have to harass, shut down, or do something else to the creator of this app. And I would also bet that Zuck is furious about it.
etskinner | 10 hours ago
alex1138 | 10 hours ago
Zuckerberg takes things personally. It's his entire history
simonebrunozzi | 10 hours ago
throwaway85825 | 10 hours ago
orsorna | 8 hours ago
Bluestein | 10 hours ago
... if you can find him, you can hire him, and restore privacy and sanity to your apps. he is ... the ZuckOff dev.-
pferde | 10 hours ago
voidUpdate | 11 hours ago
bdavbdav | 11 hours ago
wafflez | 7 hours ago
pluc | 11 hours ago
captn3m0 | 11 hours ago
Aboutplants | 10 hours ago
amelius | 10 hours ago
KellyCriterion | 10 hours ago
> Flags camera glasses by their manufacturer signature <
How is this guaranteed to be not spoofed?
dubcanada | 10 hours ago
wongarsu | 10 hours ago
The other direction is trickier. You'd have to modify the firmware of the smart glasses to set a different mac, or at least gain arbitrary code execution with hardware access on the glasses. That's well beyond what the average smart glass user will do
And at that point, it'd be mostly about the heads-up display anyways. Somebody who is determined to record you without your knowledge has far easier paths available to them. Just get one of those lighters or ear-rings or car key fobs with built-in camera
IAmBroom | 9 hours ago
ldes | 10 hours ago
Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
kingkongjaffa | 10 hours ago
We want a society that does not need these workarounds.
airstrike | 10 hours ago
pasc1878 | 10 hours ago
rawling | 10 hours ago
If we have to come up with a technological solution to grant anonymity when people are filming, criminals can use it.
If we as a society don't go around filming everyone all the time, we don't need that technical solution available, so we can film the criminals when they are doing something criminal.
w4yai | 10 hours ago
rpastuszak | 10 hours ago
DrScientist | 10 hours ago
The tricky part is that social peer pressure requires a lack of anonymity - not just in terms of detecting whether people are recording without consent at the time - but also the posting of content online.
Naming and shaming requires names.
ldes | 10 hours ago
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...
soapdog | 10 hours ago
that requires too much goodwill and effort from the makers of such devices. They know their audience wouldn't want that. They don't give a shit about what people being filmed think.
rpastuszak | 10 hours ago
TeMPOraL | 9 hours ago
Think about it some more. It's all fun and games, until same technology is used against you. There was literally a Black Mirror episode about this very thing.
cwnyth | 9 hours ago
encom | 7 hours ago
lbreakjai | 10 hours ago
physicallyIllfr | 10 hours ago
Not sure why you think social norms are positive. Negative amoral behaviors can become norms. I'd argue the west has tons of amoral behavior that is normalized.
Avicebron | 10 hours ago
mrlonglong | 10 hours ago
Explains a lot about why people vote for racist and right wing parties.
kdjdkcneixj | 9 hours ago
Now I get the racists, but you, quite literally, just boiled down all politics to: left wing parties = good; right wind parties = bad;
And, honestly, that’s gotta be the single most childish and naive take anyone could ever make about politics.
It’d be funny if it weren’t so sad that you think you’re “fighting big tech” when this is probably the most “I’m a social media junkie” take ever.
mrlonglong | 9 hours ago
Haaaaaa.
kdjdkcneixj | 9 hours ago
Dude. Seriously. I mean this in the least snarky and rude way possible: try to get off social media.
mrlonglong | 8 hours ago
kdjdkcneixj | 8 hours ago
mrlonglong | 8 hours ago
pocksuppet | 8 hours ago
idjcjdjdjskdj | 8 hours ago
It… really is not.
People thinking in such binary terms (good vs evil) is exactly how we get to where we are today.
Nothing is as black and white as it seems to be. Especially politics.
lbreakjai | 8 hours ago
Likewise, it's not acceptable to shove a camera to everyone's face, and it shouldn't be on people to opt-out of it.
bch | 10 hours ago
bell-cot | 10 hours ago
(Yes, example chosen for its reputation for indifferent enforcement.)
lbreakjai | 8 hours ago
What the parent comment is suggesting is to invert the onus. "I can film you by default, unless you tell me not to".
tifik | 10 hours ago
lbreakjai | 8 hours ago
peri-cl | 10 hours ago
There was an article on HN that one city's police force, when there were protests going on, took to playing Disney songs from loudspeakers; so that any recording of their interactions would be impossible to publish on any significant internet platform (or at least, the audio would be muted, by IP protection filters).
the_other | 10 hours ago
UqWBcuFx6NV4r | 10 hours ago
nathanaldensr | 10 hours ago
zdragnar | 10 hours ago
vincnetas | 10 hours ago
nkrisc | 9 hours ago
pocksuppet | 8 hours ago
DrScientist | 10 hours ago
cucumber3732842 | 10 hours ago
victorbjorklund | 10 hours ago
cucumber3732842 | 9 hours ago
When you look at it from a legal "use it or lose it" and corporate risk perspective it's quite surprising that Disney didn't even sent cease and desists.
Edit: Of course you don't lose the copyright but your ability to litigate someone else's unfair use is a lot weaker when their lawyer can trot out a million examples that you were fine with.
DrammBA | 8 hours ago
pocksuppet | 8 hours ago
victorbjorklund | 45 minutes ago
amelius | 10 hours ago
Nobody who loves Disney songs would listen to them while also hearing police officers shouting, etc.
UqWBcuFx6NV4r | 10 hours ago
0x10ca1h0st | 10 hours ago
someonebaggy | 9 hours ago
peri-cl | 10 hours ago
There's no human to appeal to in social media platforms. It's automated, algorithmic enforcement; and when it's wrong (or someone exploits it to be wrong, like this), you're powerless to do anything. It means nothing if you're technically in the legal right: the platforms are risk-averse and don't care about your false positive.
GJim | 9 hours ago
Ahem...
In the UK/EU Let me introduce you to article 22 of the GDPR
The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her.
i.e. If subjected to an algorithm making decisions, you have an automatic right of appeal to a _human_.
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
You need to adopt a sensible data protection law if you don't want to be exploited.
ryandrake | 6 hours ago
GJim | 5 hours ago
Though presumably you would prefer the alternative; that such companies are unrestrained in what they may do and the population at large must simply bend over and grab their ankles with both hands?
ryandrake | 5 hours ago
peri-cl | 6 hours ago
(In the excerpt you quoted: "legal effects" / or "significantly affects").
simiones | 10 hours ago
queenkjuul | 10 hours ago
This has never once prevented a DMCA notice from being issued, and I'm sure you can guess how easy it is to get a person at YouTube to review your appeal
eunos | 10 hours ago
Sounds like a swift way to be included in "Need constant observation" list. Or we can even build a special surveillance for such folks along with plausible Parallel construction scenario constantly refreshed.
amelius | 10 hours ago
Avicebron | 10 hours ago
cwillu | 9 hours ago
IAmBroom | 9 hours ago
If you meant to say "to being filmed", how do you implement that? People have been filming crowds since the 1950s; "Candid Camera" famously made covert filming mainstream.
"Should be" is a dream of the Good Ship Lollipop. Here IRL, laws and regulations are the only thing that will discourage it.
thesuitonym | 8 hours ago
cwillu | 8 hours ago
Sohcahtoa82 | 2 hours ago
Dash cams would effectively become illegal.
Someone just wanting to record themselves and some friends doing something would need to ask explicit permission from everyone in the background.
It's just not a tenable option.
kandros | 10 hours ago
rainelli | 10 hours ago
TeMPOraL | 10 hours ago
Yes, let's keep coming with more of these great ideas.
To cut this short: the whole overall idea is just universal DRM writ large. A big, principled no fucking way, ever from me.
But what about the personal privacy / venue rights ...
That's a social problem, it should not be used as excuse to give unilateral control over other people's technology to groups or individuals with special interests.
kdjdkcneixj | 9 hours ago
Sounds a lot worse. The possible applications of this alone are infinitely more scary than perverts filming others without their consent.
This is THE nightmare scenario. Think about it for a second and you’ll see why.
63stack | 9 hours ago
It would make sure no websites track you.
rickdeckard | 9 hours ago
The idea was for concert venues display these on-stage to block smartphones from filming (and redirect users to iTunes purchases instead IIRC)
thesuitonym | 8 hours ago
Aurornis | 8 hours ago
Rendering security cameras useless for identifying any criminals?
Maybe some of these commenters aren’t old enough to remember when fighting for your right to take photographs and videos in public places was one of the frequent topics in online places like Slashdot and BoingBoing. There have been waves of attempts to restrict freedoms to take photos in many countries. When they pass there’s a significant loss of personal rights and freedoms.
> Similarly, a venue could request a do-not-film-this-venue setting and make sure no photos are taken at a party.
Do you really want this? An off-button for all cameras nearby? Please purchase your official photographs from the gift shop or from the $5 Photo Booth.
This would be a dream for bad people who don’t want to be recorded or photographed doing something, like a bad police officer. Just keep a device around that broadcasts the “do not record at this venue” signal and you can shut down recordings all around.
eqvinox | 10 hours ago
tkw01536 | 10 hours ago
LightBug1 | 10 hours ago
mrlonglong | 10 hours ago
asar | 10 hours ago
hermannj314 | 10 hours ago
I never knew why the paparazzi could harass celebrities and a few decades later we are all being secretly filmed for a Meta perv database.
probably_wrong | 10 hours ago
> Five years ago, Facebook shut down the facial recognition system for tagging people in photos on its social network, saying it wanted to find “the right balance” for a technology that raises privacy and legal concerns. Now it wants to bring facial recognition back.
> (…) The Silicon Valley company has been conferring since early last year about how to release a feature that carries “safety and privacy risks,” according to an internal document viewed by The New York Times. (…) Meta’s internal memo said the political tumult in the United States was good timing for the feature’s release.
> “We will launch during a dynamic political environment where many civil society groups that we would expect to attack us would have their resources focused on other concerns,” according to the document from Meta’s Reality Labs, which works on hardware including smart glasses.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-re... or https://archive.is/65Fze
wartywhoa23 | 10 hours ago
And if there's no dynamic political environment or fitting concerns to steal focus at hand, we'll sure as hell fund their creation.
wartywhoa23 | 10 hours ago
Incrementally, apathetically and often to gleeful offerings of tinfoil hats to those who pointed out previous steps and extrapolated them forth.
IAmBroom | 9 hours ago
Despite the pearl-clutching in this thread, filming rando strangers without consent has always been legal and socially accepted.
It's the prospect of being filmed frequently, and especially in more intimate situations than walking down the street, that is making people uneasy. Flock cameras agitate us because of the frequency of their use. Recording glasses enable the off-the-street problem.
ageitgey | 10 hours ago
h1fra | 10 hours ago
brap | 10 hours ago
>Quiet is not proof that nobody is recording, and a detection is not proof that anyone is
Is such claudespeak it’s not even annoying it’s just funny at this point
irl_zebra | 9 hours ago
bwnkl | 10 hours ago
Oh, the hypocrisy
user_7832 | 10 hours ago
bwnkl | 10 hours ago
vitorfblima | 10 hours ago
UpsideDownRide | 9 hours ago
someonebaggy | 9 hours ago
bigyabai | an hour ago
kdjdkcneixj | 9 hours ago
rob74 | 8 hours ago
idjcjdjdjskdj | 8 hours ago
It’s their game at this point, unfortunately. We hold very little say in how things go.
BubbleRings | 7 hours ago
I created it in two months using Claude Code. It would have taken me three years without it. I would have never done it.
What about this free service is a win for big tech?:
https://SimilaritiesEngine.com
joenot443 | 10 hours ago
GaryBluto | 9 hours ago
ofjcihen | 9 hours ago
mschuster91 | 9 hours ago
well, the idea of democracy was to offer a viable path for people's discontent to be heard and remediated.
Unfortunately in most Western countries, dysfunctionality and corporatism have taken it over, and that is why you're seeing authoritarians on the rise across the world. They paint democracy and "legacy" figures as the scapegoat and themselves (plus handing them allllllll the power) as the only solution - just look at Milei and the chainsaw.
jawilson2 | 9 hours ago
-Thomas Jefferson
I personally think the tree of liberty is probably getting pretty thirsty.
RobotToaster | 8 hours ago
p_j_w | 7 hours ago
stetrain | 8 hours ago
I'm not advocating for those means, but I understand how people are feeling more helpless than ever to just "let the system work it out" when the system appears to be bought and paid for by a small concentration of corporations and people with an increasingly disproportionate share of wealth.
bwnkl | 2 hours ago
And in retrospect, the French revolution is not considered a dark episode of modern history, on the contrary.
rob74 | 8 hours ago
...which refers to the song https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Plans_for_Nigel; the most well-known person called Nigel in the UK currently being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Farage .
hallway_monitor | 10 hours ago
brettgo1 | 9 hours ago
aogaili | 9 hours ago
We are going to have the organic label soon on apps with this mindset..AI assisted development is evolving by the day and at the rate most apps will be built that way..
n4r9 | 8 hours ago
aogaili | 8 hours ago
You are equating manual coding with more thinking, which has proven to be not the case given that it is mostly automated.
n4r9 | 8 hours ago
aogaili | 8 hours ago
But this process is new, and not every AI assisted app is thoughtless. In fact, I'd argue that if a person put more thoughts and amplify their abilities with AI assisted coding, then the total sum of mental labour exceed that of any manually coded app by huge margins.
I'm not sure about this particular app, haven't looked into it. But I was merely commenting about the mindset of the parent comment.
justacrow | 8 hours ago
aogaili | 8 hours ago
My point was that you can have very well designed and thoughted apps with LLMs. In fact, I'd argue you can go way further and deeper than any manual coded application paired with AI assistance.
But maybe this instance is not the case. But even if it turns out to be not the case, if the app does work and serves the utility you are after, then why not using it? People use many things in everyday life without thinking about what thought was put into it..in fact, most people don't think at all about what it took to build anything, and how it was built..
Do you really know or care if the shoes you wearing was handmade or built by a factory in china using robots? you probably don't know and don't care.
stetrain | 8 hours ago
If that were the case here, then a user of the app probably would not come away with the impression that it was a "very much LLM-aided app."
You're talking about how LLMs can be used in such a way that they help production of an app but remain invisible to the end user. But the beginning of this thread was someone using the app and coming away with the impression that it was heavily LLM influenced, which suggests that it was not done thoughtfully and did not remain invisible to the user.
aogaili | 7 hours ago
But the parent comment positioned itself against all "LLM-aided apps", the author didn't say a slop or poorly coded. And even if it looks like LLM coded, we still can't tell about the level of thought that went into it. Developers had many poorly coded UIs and yet the apps functioned well and served it's purpose.
So the entire chain of reasoning is a form stereotype forming. Looking at this specific app, I can see that the author thought about the marketing/business and functionality, more than other alternatives, maybe because they had more mental bandwdith to do so.
n4r9 | 7 hours ago
aogaili | 7 hours ago
clear0250 | 3 hours ago
aogaili | 3 hours ago
I assume you are saying that because I apologized. I apologize for sounding like AI, I assure you it was hand written and I put thoughts into those comments.
stetrain | 6 hours ago
> But... I get a "buy merch" popup the moment I open the page, and there seems to be a pro option for what seems to be a very much LLM-aided app? ...IDK, rubs off a bit wrong IMO. Just my personal opinion.”
Again, if the user of the app comes away with the impression that the app “seems to be a very much LLM-aided” then the LLM usage has affected the end product.
aogaili | 3 hours ago
That is not say there are really mindlessly produced apps out there. But the comment made it sound that anything LLM-aided is negative.
ImPostingOnHN | 7 hours ago
Take a step back and think about your question in the context of privacy and software security.
For a few example answers, look at:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adware
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spyware
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)
aogaili | 7 hours ago
In fact, given the recent reports, in terms of security, one is better off consulting LLMs on the exposure surfaces. Something a solo developer can now do cheaply but in the past required a lot of specialized knowledge.
Sorry I don't understand your argument.
ImPostingOnHN | 7 hours ago
What does "LLM-assisted coding" have to do with the question I answered? Here's that question again:
> if the app does work and serves the utility you are after, then why not using it?
Note that this question does not contain any reference to "LLMs". Indeed, an LLM-generated product can contain adware, spyware, or trojan horses just like a human-written one.
For additional context, this app in question seems to actually contain adware and spyware, and has a closed source codebase, so might contain a trojan horse as well.
Those seem like pretty good reasons to not run this totally-vibe-coded software, so I'm sorry, but I don't understand your argument that LLMs make this okay or not okay or whatever.
aogaili | 6 hours ago
My comment was about not equating every LLM assisted app as poorly thought of. Your comment is about this specific app, and I personally would not install this app regardless of how it was coded.
But again in terms of security since you brought it, I'd argue that having LLM assisted coded app might be secure than manually coded application given the recent advancements. Again, this is a generic statement, not specific to this app.
ImPostingOnHN | 6 hours ago
Your later comments generalizing to "every LLM assisted app" seem like a bit of insecurity you might be feeling for using LLM assistance. No need to feel that way. LLM assistance is okay. We're discussing something different from mere LLM assistance.
aogaili | 3 hours ago
The author mentioned LLM-aided app, not even AI assisted; nor vibe coded hence my reaction. I don't have insecurity from using LLM nor from coding manually. But I noticed a trend in people thinking and biases and it threw me off hence the comment.
My original comment was heavily downvoted and furthermore some of my comments were accused of being written by AI meanwhile I'm writing it by hand. Again, people are taking tribes/camps, if you speaking of insecurities, it actually the opposite clearly, many programmers are worried of being displaced and automated. And I do understand the concern, I'm just stating the fact that one can have very deeply thoughted LLM-aided app.
alerighi | 7 hours ago
If you are an experienced programmer (not someone that did an online course and calls like this) with YEARS of experience in coding in multiple languages really, the only real limitation is the speed at which you can type on the keyboard, that is usually way faster than what the even good LLM is able to emit tokens.
This not considering token expense: if we see at the point of view of the company, it's way cheaper an experienced programmer, that in my country costs you 4000 a month tax included, than the tokens that an LLM would use to do the same job.
On top of that there is the environmental impact of all of this, and why they are almost making me not use my car because it's euro 5 and now there is euro 6, these AI companies are emitting tons of CO2 to do stuff that human beings can do with 1/1000 the energy that these AI companies use.
aogaili | 2 hours ago
I mean, have you truly tried? do others thing this is true? I'm truly astonished if that is majority experience, I think we need to get surveys on this.
krapp | 2 hours ago
You'll find plenty of people on HN who have this experience,but they just tend to be ridiculed or told they just haven't used AI correctly or enough. Admitting you don't use LLMs for everything, or god forbid at all, is like telling Christians you don't want to be saved.
aogaili | 2 hours ago
I'm not here condemning people who use or not use. We have a new tech, for anyone who have been in the field long enough, it is nothing short of magic was has been accomplished in the last few years.
I could turn around 10K lines of code per day (I know it's not the best measurement but it does capture size to some extent) when I was not able to pull more than a 100 LOC. Let us say that most of it work, and there are few rough edges, a senior programmer can follow the shape of the code, and understand where to tweak and where the LLM get stuck. So this is basically like having racing engine compared to running.
krapp | an hour ago
To metaquote a recent thread - where is the vibe-coded replacement for Photoshop that outcompetes it? or Word? Why aren't vibe-coded games dominating Steam?
The speed alone doesn't translate to productivity and productivity alone doesn't translate to quality.
n4r9 | 2 hours ago
ImPostingOnHN | 7 hours ago
phoghed | 8 hours ago
Damn FDA organic app users are mad about this one
aogaili | 3 hours ago
HN is not that rational of a discussion form but there are some good articles/comments so worth being around.
joquarky | an hour ago
josh_carterPDX | 4 hours ago
cubefox | 10 hours ago
> Can’t people just cover up or disable the LED?
> The camera is disabled when people try to do this. Beginning with our second generation of glasses, the camera is automatically disabled if we detect that the capture LED has been blocked. No photos or videos can be taken until we detect that the light is unblocked.
> Since the introduction of this safeguard, we’ve seen some people go beyond using tape to sophisticated efforts to modify or destroy the capture LED. We are continuously improving our ability to detect tampering, and now we’re updating the glasses to disable the camera if they detect the LED was physically tampered with or destroyed. No other kind of camera has done this and we’re proud to lead the industry forward.
blondie9x | 10 hours ago
cubefox | 10 hours ago
> Does everyone know when you're live streaming? Yes. A white LED on the front of the glasses lights up while you're streaming to let people around you know the camera is active.
https://actionstreamer.com/blog/how-to-live-stream-on-meta-r...
snvzz | 8 hours ago
cubefox | 7 hours ago
snvzz | 6 hours ago
chrisweekly | 9 hours ago
solenoid0937 | 8 hours ago
ourmandave | 10 hours ago
chmod775 | 9 hours ago
magicalist | 9 hours ago
Yes it's true people have figured out how to disable the safeguard, but we all agree the important thing as we try to sell millions more of these is that we tried, right?
solenoid0937 | 8 hours ago
knowaveragejoe | 7 hours ago
magicalist | 7 hours ago
Was my comment incorrect? You admit it's both possible to work around it, people are actually doing that, and the comment does indeed give themselves a little pat on the back for working hard to unsuccessfully solve a problem with the product they themselves choose to make and market? So what's the reactionary part?
solenoid0937 | 6 hours ago
What exactly is your threat model? "It is possible to work around" every single security control that has ever existed. Saying it "is possible" to work around a control is an utterly meaningless statement. At what budget? With what skill level? With what frequency and likelihood?
If the intent is to deter the typical weirdos that would try to disable the blinking light, then yes, their mitigations have been extraordinarily effective and most of these weirdos now just buy other cheaper and more discreet camera glasses.
cubefox | 4 hours ago
No it doesn't sound like that!
bko | 9 hours ago
Their job is to scan the app store for any app that is anti-tech and has at least 1k downloads and write an article about how there's huge backlash.
bonsai_bar | 8 hours ago
varispeed | 10 hours ago
cwillu | 8 hours ago
throwaway85825 | 10 hours ago
dmaa | 10 hours ago
gitowiec | 10 hours ago
omuborze | 9 hours ago
krige | 9 hours ago
gitowiec | 3 hours ago
ebtebt | 10 hours ago
queenkjuul | 10 hours ago
Eta: and in their demo video there's a person walking by who's face doesn't get blurred lmao. Bang up job, Claude
ealhad | 10 hours ago
the demo video really looks ai generated — several weird artifacts, but what bugs me the most is that at the end the alleged glasses-wearer goes through two men between whom clearly there is no space for a third person.
ebtebt | 9 hours ago
ebtebt | 9 hours ago
niemandhier | 10 hours ago
VeejayRampay | 10 hours ago
wafflez | 7 hours ago
flanked-evergl | 10 hours ago
knowaveragejoe | 7 hours ago
tuzemec | 10 hours ago
It was an amazing book.
jan_m_savage | 10 hours ago
BTW, I will also recommend 'a hero of our time' by Lermontov. In it, you will get an updated view of what the meaning of 'friends' will be. :)
EDIT: since this is getting upvotes, I will also mention that Lermontov is a descendant of the Learmonts, who were British folk.
Also, the book is small but it's jampacked with a lot of wisdom--street and abstract both-- and presented using a language that shines with poetry, it shines even through translation (Penguin Classics trans. is best).
TeMPOraL | 10 hours ago
As digital dystopias go, this is one of the worst I've seen; the episode ending with this happening to the protagonist shook me to the core.
treszkai | 9 hours ago
Permik | 9 hours ago
kdjdkcneixj | 9 hours ago
TeMPOraL | 6 hours ago
silisili | 3 hours ago
linkregister | 3 hours ago
cavoirom | 10 hours ago
ColinWright | 9 hours ago
This comment box is too small to contain the story.
* The Quantum Thief
* The Fractal Prince
* The Causal Angel
Actually, most of the story is on his WikiPedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannu_Rajaniemi
shantnutiwari | 9 hours ago
The 1st 2 are independent, I recommened people stop after 2nd book
nubinetwork | 10 hours ago
functionmouse | 10 hours ago
Bluestein | 8 hours ago
iAMkenough | 7 hours ago
jclardy | 10 hours ago
someonebaggy | 9 hours ago
anonreplier | 10 hours ago
flexagoon | 10 hours ago
https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses
colesantiago | 10 hours ago
"ZuckOff" is a better quality marketing name for an app like this, vibecoded or not.
The media and already consumers have talked more about "ZuckOff" than "Nearby Glasses" so a winner has already been chosen.
gelly321 | 9 hours ago
colesantiago | 9 hours ago
And it is not about being first here. ZuckOff is just a better packaged app, that's why it took off.
> Do you really think popular = automatically better?
If it gets the point effectively across better than the original.
Yes.
It is more supported than something that is OSS that will die in under a year.
There are features that ZuckOff has that are more useful than the suggested one IMO.
For a vibecoded app, it is well packaged with a great name.
That is how you get people to use your app.
pentaphobe | 9 hours ago
justacrow | 8 hours ago
getpokedagain | 3 hours ago
pocksuppet | 8 hours ago
If you see something that is popular but you think it is worse, then your better/worse axis is not aligned with the majority.
For example, X is better than Mastodon because you don't have to pick a server to use.
orwin | 7 hours ago
If I go on another subject I invested time in, RPGs, D&D is the most popular system while inferior imho to a lot of others. Even if we have to keep the very flawed d20 system, the way forgotten chronicles handles everything is superior (and if in your bad opinion it's not the case because weirdly you like the class system, you probably would prefer pathfinder instead of dnd).
dmantis | 9 hours ago
Between something opensource and trusted, and a proprietary potential backdoor that can send the data back to the Zuck himself you'd probably want to choose the former (cause you never know with closed sources).
I'm glad that he has shared the link as for me it's definitely useful. It's not a competition and I don't care what media talk, that's not about money.
colesantiago | 9 hours ago
Outside of that, this project giving scary warnings is something I cannot recommend to others.
> Between something opensource and trusted and proprietary backdoor that can send the data back to the Zuck himself you'd probably want to choose the former.
Only HN veterans care about this, not people in the real world.
dmantis | 9 hours ago
XorNot | 9 hours ago
nomilk | 9 hours ago
pentaphobe | 9 hours ago
(something as simple as a product name)... is enough to make someone ignore the actual point about software trust and instead argue that good marketing is what's important :)
fc417fc802 | 6 hours ago
Of course the irony there is palpable. Worry about the glasses while disregarding everything else.
BonerWiener | 9 hours ago
Decided by whom?
This feels like astroturfing. The amount of new users recommending and hyping this proprietary product seems odd.
axus | 8 hours ago
fc417fc802 | 6 hours ago
olkalakam | 9 hours ago
phoghed | 9 hours ago
orwin | 7 hours ago
cute_boi | 9 hours ago
RoryH | 8 hours ago
____coders don't even bother to vibe-code, they don't have a clue that there might be a better solution /s
smugglerFlynn | 7 hours ago
mcdonje | 8 hours ago
Why would I want a bluetooth scanner to phone home? Seems untrustworthy. Nearby Glasses wins from a data safety perspective.
tadfisher | 4 hours ago
Trasmatta | 8 hours ago
pocksuppet | 8 hours ago
rplnt | 8 hours ago
Twice.
burkaman | 8 hours ago
netdevphoenix | 8 hours ago
dylan604 | 7 hours ago
pixl97 | 7 hours ago
marketing > technical ability
It's been this way ever since I've worked in the industry and will probably never change because of human behavior.
rob | 6 hours ago
wyclif | 7 hours ago
CryptoBanker | 8 hours ago
grimgrin | 8 hours ago
and so I leave this comment as off topic, but, is it pretty easy to get your new app to appear in that ad slot, above the main contender?
lynndotpy | 8 hours ago
I think these concerns are on topic, given the larger concern is about how bad actors can wield technology for profitable surveillance.
jacquesm | 7 hours ago
https://www.interteammarketing.com/blog/how-to-target-compet...
zobzu | 7 hours ago
jdiff | 6 hours ago
ourmandave | 10 hours ago
Instead of Copilot for Counter Spying, or Anti-Creeper.NET.
markvdb | 10 hours ago
I have "Hey Siri!" enthousiasts visiting soon. They can leave their iPhones in a nice Faraday cage at the entrance.
kdjdkcneixj | 9 hours ago
He says, deeply immersed in big tech without even realising it.
markvdb | 7 hours ago
IAmBroom | 9 hours ago
jan_m_savage | 10 hours ago
ChrisRR | 9 hours ago
jan_m_savage | 8 hours ago
shevy-java | 9 hours ago
I was, however had, quite surprised when I saw them used by "auditors" (here, I refer to e. g. "auditors" on youtube specifically). Now this brought a problem for me, because auditors on the one hand, bring interesting encounters, even if they (or some of them) meta-jabait and provoke (again, only some of them at best, in many cases they don't really). But when they use spy glasses to serve greedy mega-corporations, this totally shifts the whole "audit" instantly, because then they also support evil Facebook, Google or what not. And that kind of runs counter to the whole audit-idea. So far I only saw one use the facebook spy glasses, but I wonder whether he even gave any thought to this. I understand why he uses spy glasses, but I don't understand why he does it to benefit Facebook. That IMO puts the whole idea behind audits instantly in a wrong angle. I haven't seen others use it, so perhaps it just was one or few, but they don't seem to really think anymore. Some audit channels were also censored by Google in the last weeks, others were not, but this just amplifies the whole problem here. Imagine if the spy glasses were made by Google. And the auditors depend on Google money. It's really strange. The whole setup does not work well. I understand that they want to make money, but why would I want to support facebook-agents using spy glasses at all? That makes no sense, so I decided when an audit-channel uses facebook spy glasses or anyone else's corporations spy-glasses, I won't watch anything from there. Same with AI content - anyone using AI content I instantly add to a perma-ban list. I recently saw more and more people use AI slop images and AI filters. This is soooooo horrible. These people don't seem to understand that AI slop kills interest. Yet some swear by it - it is fascinating. Those who use AI slop, can not be convinced that using AI slop is detrimental. They have been converted into AI skynet servants.
marcosscriven | 9 hours ago
I don’t post them anywhere (except occasionally to friends or family in direct messages).
I fly club gliders and can’t really attach a camera easily. And in any case the PoV is a useful learning tool. I can check I was doing lookout properly, I can see the instruments clearly and so forth.
I have a second pair of normal glasses that I always swap to when I’m back on the ground.
PUSH_AX | 8 hours ago
The shouting match is being loudly won by people decrying the technology however, people can receive physical and verbal abuse on the streets for wearing them which is pretty scary.
Eisenstein | 8 hours ago
puelocesar | 9 hours ago
Singletail | 9 hours ago
micromacrofoot | 9 hours ago
it's even on the site
> Most pairs keep advertising while worn, so you can usually hear them, but a few standalone models stay silent.
tonyhart7 | 9 hours ago
Saris | 8 hours ago
tylerchilds | 8 hours ago
Standing too long in one aisle lets them know where you like to browse in the grocery store.
When they first rolled these out in the US at least a decade ago I used to get notifications all the time.
Stuff like “Near Well’s Fargo? Balance your checkbook.” As notifications.
ChrisMarshallNY | 7 hours ago
BLE is actually pretty secure, but it does advertise, and some folks take advantage of that.
micromacrofoot | 6 hours ago
phyzome | 9 hours ago
rootsudo | 8 hours ago
dirkc | 9 hours ago
So, you might sometimes know that someone might be recording?
I don't want to dismiss that as useless, but that is a difficult signal to incorporate into behavior.
lordnacho | 9 hours ago
metchio | 7 hours ago
rafram | 8 hours ago
> Logs every Bluetooth device it hears, glasses or not
How much AGI is required before LLMs stop putting totally irrelevant technical details into marketing copy?
edot | 8 hours ago
soco | 8 hours ago
Trasmatta | 8 hours ago
> Nothing leaves your phone and there is no account.
This is good to know, but it's the exact type of thing Claude is obsessed with putting everywhere once you tell it NOT to do something. For example, if I tell it to commit but never push changes to GitHub, it can't help but leave "Changes committed; nothing was pushed." to EVERY SINGLE MESSAGE. The model just can't help but report back about everything it's NOT doing, and it drives me crazy.
phoghed | 8 hours ago
What’s annoying is the stuff it decides to put into user facing copy, details that they’d never give a shit about, calling everything real, etc
cristoperb | 7 hours ago
world2vec | 8 hours ago
baggachipz | 8 hours ago
tantalor | 8 hours ago
I scrolled down. Only the newsletter and contact info at the bottom. Do I have to email them? I scrolled up. Just a list of features and description of what it does, but not how do I use it. What's the first step? Please for the love of God.
I see a big blue button that links to "the shop". Oh, maybe that's where I buy it? No it's just "merch". I'm not sure why some random piece of tech would be offering tote bags for $28 (!) but okay.
I go back to the website and keep hunting. Then I see a row of buttons squeezed in a random location, seemingly out of place, like the designer had a stroke at this point in the process. They don't match the visual style of the rest of the site, so they are easy to just ignore as clutter. One says (in very tiny letters) "download on the app store".
drbojingle | 8 hours ago
solenoid0937 | 8 hours ago
gspr | 8 hours ago
solenoid0937 | 8 hours ago
What's with HN becoming so saturated with snarky cynical one line quips? I don't think I've ever seen a worse comment section.
Urahandystar | 7 hours ago
Ylpertnodi | 7 hours ago
RiverCrochet | 6 hours ago
solenoid0937 | 6 hours ago
gspr | 5 hours ago
JsonDemWitOster | 4 hours ago
gspr | 5 hours ago
eecks | 8 hours ago
thiago_fm | 7 hours ago
ZuckOff!
I wish they'd just make them illegal, it would be easier.
Like, if people want to use it on their private property, alright, legal.
But in public? I never accepted any terms and conditions for it...
Ylpertnodi | 7 hours ago
badgersnake | 7 hours ago
I don’t have high hopes though, listening doesn’t seem to be their strong point. If they have a strong point.
partiallypro | 7 hours ago
I do understand recording maybe during a sexual act or something without knowledge, but even that is probably just as easy with a phone. Feels like everyone is focusing on the wrong thing, given that level of privacy has already been eradicated and no one is going to give up their phones.
mattnewton | 7 hours ago
solenoid0937 | 6 hours ago
mattnewton | 6 hours ago
pbasista | 6 hours ago
I assume the most problematic scenarios are private. Private meetings. Private conversations. Private encounters of every kind in general. Environment in which ordinary people used to have good enough confidence that, unless they see a phone or a camera, they are not being recorded. It no longer is that simple.
Confirming, at least to some extent, that there is no recording going on may now require confronting the other person. And asking them to remove their glasses or hand them over for inspection might be considered rude.
As a result, I think that it might make people more suspicious and less trusting, especially when meeting new people for the first time.
knowaveragejoe | 7 hours ago
https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses
BubbleRings | 7 hours ago
swrrt | 7 hours ago
seany | 3 hours ago
QGQBGdeZREunxLe | 9 minutes ago