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.
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..
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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?:
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.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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).
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
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
But during private meetings, private conversations, etc people are already 99.99% of the time on their phones. Smart glasses have way less battery life and recording time (I think Meta's is 15-30 seconds now?) Wouldn't it be easier to just record a conversation on your phone without knowledge? You can even have the app running in the background. I haven't seen a complaint yet about them that isn't already worse, more discrete, or already available on a phone.
Disagree. It’s very context dependent which would be more noticeable.
Maybe the reason you think it’s harder to spot when you’re being recorded on glasses is because… it’s never actually happened to you. The people who are creeps are in the minority, and they’re executing their creepy behaviour independently of the technology available to them.
It has happened to me actually with the snap spectacle things.
Idk why we’re acting like people are hysterical the dangers of always on displays and cameras versus phones that go in pockets have been debated for over a decade now with Google glass. People do not like it for legitimate reasons.
You think the phone has to be raised to be recording? How do you think perverts do upskirts, etc? Phone recording is very much less obvious, especially since everyone is already on their phones.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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"
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".
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].
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
Yes your comment is incorrect.
It’s completely free of the nuance and real moral debate that needs to be had and adds nothing interesting to the discussion.
How many people are working around the safeguards? How prevalent is harm caused by creeps secretly filming on these glasses vs doing other creepy things? Have these glasses tangibly changed the creeps doing creeping landscape?
If you can’t answer those questions, it’s reactionary. That’s that it means.
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.
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.
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 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.
Thank you for sharing this. If I get a notification about one near me, I will make sure to very aggressively search for it. If I find that whoever wore it has no practical purpose for it, I will likely humiliate them on the spot.
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.
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.
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
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.-
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.
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
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.
I downloaded and tried it. It’s a nice app. I was surprised to see 400+ other Bluetooth devices in range. I think it’s neet to explore the invisible digital world we have all been made subject to.
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.
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".
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.
Why is it smaller in volume? Sure that’s the decision of the person and has nothing to do with the device?
When phones first had cameras, and people were not aware, it would have been easier to secretly film. But news flash, where I’m sitting right now in a cafe full of tech workers, nobody would notice if I started secretly filming on my phone.
If I wanted to secretly film, I’d be more confident of getting away with it using my phone than with a set of glasses which have a flashing light on them.
Both items in scope as far as I'm concerned. I'm fine with glasses and uncovered phone cameras in picture-taking position being treated the same way from a privacy violation standpoint. Maybe we can also do something about phone speakers at max volume in inappropriate places as well.
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.
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
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.
Turns out assault and/or battery are already very much illegal too and suspecting someone is a wanker isn’t on the list of things that get you out of a charge.
Wouldn’t recommend unless you really, really like nutraloaf
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.
The nearby glasses app linked in this thread seems to be a lovingly hand coded tool to detect Meta glasses.
Are you saying you don't want to show off a "Zuck Off" bucket cap?
If it works the way it says it does, I'd be happy to buy merch as a way to support the team behind this!
so what if it is "very much LLM-aided app"?
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..
I'd love a label like that which tells me when an app has had thought put into it
You can put a lot of thoughts while using LLMs.
You are equating manual coding with more thinking, which has proven to be not the case given that it is mostly automated.
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.
You are right - my apologies. It could be a good idea given that we will end up with so many doubts and comments like this.
This comment and some of your other ones are giving off AI smells...
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.
> if the app does work and serves the utility you are after, then why not using it?
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)
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.
Sorry I don't understand your argument.
> 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.
I get it - I think there mis-communication here.
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.
It's possible to code thoughtfully with LLMs, but the process strongly encourages superficial signing-off on its activities.
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 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.
Sorry - I really don't think you know what you are taking about.
Let me leave with something we agree on at least:
"The speed alone doesn't translate to productivity and productivity alone doesn't translate to quality."
And I don't think you know what you're talking about. Good day.
you too :)
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.
I'd love for Nutrition Facts to include some kind of standardized glycemic index.
Bro wants the government to tell him when someone tried hard on an app, smdh
Damn FDA organic app users are mad about this one
People flag/downvote what they don't like without explaining much, and a lot of it are just feeling based/snap reactions.
HN is not that rational of a discussion form but there are some good articles/comments so worth being around.
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
I think that'd be a pretty weird thing to wear, personally.
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.
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.
> 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 tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
-Thomas Jefferson
I personally think the tree of liberty is probably getting pretty thirsty.
"god forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion" Thomas Jefferson
It’s been over 150 years since we killed a bunch of tyrants here, and even then a lot of the tyrants got to live.
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.
Honestly it sounds like I’m not inviting either of you to a party.
[dead]
Except any "solution" that involves AI is actually a win for big tech.
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?:
https://SimilaritiesEngine.com
Is that true if we move to local models?
Unless you intend to run your inference on a potato battery, you're beholden to AMD/Apple/Nvidia/Intel.
Yes, big tech controls them. Chinese ones will be trained to say certain things about Uyghurs and Taiwan, American ones about communism and Palestine.
Doesn’t even have to involve AI. Any tech solution is a win for big tech. Simple as that. We’re way past the point of no return now.
...except if it's certified organic open source?
Especially if it’s certified “organic” open source. To big tech open source is free labour.
It’s their game at this point, unfortunately. We hold very little say in how things go.
Are you alluding to this t-shirt: https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th/id/OIP.WxWdam38N7Uxmwqa5dFTRQHaJ... ?
...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 .
Existing, probably less sketchy app: https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses (as linked in the other thread)
This.
Not sure why you'd use this sketchy vibecoded proprietary app over the same thing that's open source and existed for a while
https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses
According to the android app store, Nearby Glasses doesn't collect any data, while ZuckOff collects app activity.
Why would I want a bluetooth scanner to phone home? Seems untrustworthy. Nearby Glasses wins from a data safety perspective.
Huh, I don't see that in the permissions list. I do see:
I also see "In-app purchases" for "$9.99 - $24.99 per item", which is more of a turnoff for me personally.It's not in the permission list, it's in the "data safety" section on Google Play
"even worse", I searched "nearby glasses" on app store, and it's 2nd, under the ad sponsored "ZuckOff"
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?
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:
https://www.interteammarketing.com/blog/how-to-target-compet...
Yep, exact same experience here. ZuckOff is paying to rank above NearbyGlasses.
I think these concerns are on topic, given the larger concern is about how bad actors can wield technology for profitable surveillance.
Nearby Glasses is also free on the iOS App Store while ZuckOff contains in-app purchases
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.
Because it works. This is at the top of Hacker News, and Nearby Glasses isn't.
It was equally popular here, it was just a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140042
Yes, but part of the reason ZuckOff is trending now is because it is also popular outside tech circles.
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.
The technical type tends to miss the power of the following algorithm.
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.
But it's not at the top because of the AI ad copy.
> This is at the top of Hacker News
Twice.
Vibecoders don't even bother to use google. They don't have a clue that there might be already better solution.
LOL, in another generation or less it couold be:
____coders don't even bother to vibe-code, they don't have a clue that there might be a better solution /s
You get downvoted but I remember the times when Google was carrying exact same sentiment, people who used Google were labeled 'lazy' etc
but the ads are nicer!
And they've got merch for sale!
[dead]
Because I read about it in a place I trust that isn't github, and only care about the perverts, not the code?
I mean, one app collect your usage data, the second doesn't.
Where?
Unless you're selling to grandparents over 50-70, nobody says yj_nearbyclasses or "Nearby Glasses".
"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.
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.
You can expect exactly HN people to read a comment saying "why would you use smth instead of" on HN.
> so a winner has already been chosen.
Decided by whom?
This feels like astroturfing. The amount of new users recommending and hyping this proprietary product seems odd.
^^ this is actually a great lesson in the power of marketing. In this case, something as simple as a product name.
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.
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?
> It's not about a winner.
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.
I'd rather use software which was made to solve a problem than software that exists to "get" people to use it.
Nearby Glasses has 100k downloads, while ZuckOff is sitting at 1k.
Why use logic when you can use ai pixie dust and marketing and of course our good friend. Bullshit.
popular != better but better == popular
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.
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).
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.
I mean I'm going to install neither of these because going about my day obsessively focusing on something like this seems weird.
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.
It was an amazing book.
Thanks for the book recom.
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).
I know Hannu, and he tells an interesting story about getting his first book published. I should write it up sometime ... in my Copious Free Time ...
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
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
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.
uhm, spoiler alert?
Don't worry, doesn't actually spoil plot of the episode, it's all spelled out for you pretty clearly at the start.
And it’s not even a good episode so, you know… nothing lost here anyways.
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 episode is 12 years old. At some point it must be acceptable to stop coddling anyone who hasn't seen something yet to allow discussion, no?
I think OP was doing a "hu-mor" there
There was a Black Mirror episode called White Christmas with similar concept.
> Shows the evidence behind every flag, so you can disagree with it
> 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?
I also like:
> 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.
I like those kinds of updates (as long as they are accurate of course)
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
I don't mind if models do that but I don't understand why a human doesn't take 2 minutes to proof and re-word/delete them
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.
And if you correct it, it will mention "a previous version said..."
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.
But during private meetings, private conversations, etc people are already 99.99% of the time on their phones. Smart glasses have way less battery life and recording time (I think Meta's is 15-30 seconds now?) Wouldn't it be easier to just record a conversation on your phone without knowledge? You can even have the app running in the background. I haven't seen a complaint yet about them that isn't already worse, more discrete, or already available on a phone.
Your phone has to be out of your pocket and raised up to record me, which I can notice.
You can't notice a bright blinking light on someone's face?
It is less noticeable in person than a phone out and pointed at you yes. And I would react similarly.
Disagree. It’s very context dependent which would be more noticeable.
Maybe the reason you think it’s harder to spot when you’re being recorded on glasses is because… it’s never actually happened to you. The people who are creeps are in the minority, and they’re executing their creepy behaviour independently of the technology available to them.
It has happened to me actually with the snap spectacle things.
Idk why we’re acting like people are hysterical the dangers of always on displays and cameras versus phones that go in pockets have been debated for over a decade now with Google glass. People do not like it for legitimate reasons.
You think the phone has to be raised to be recording? How do you think perverts do upskirts, etc? Phone recording is very much less obvious, especially since everyone is already on their phones.
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.
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).
Did the police have the appropriate license to play those disney songs in a public space?
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.
Im guessing the intention wasn’t that Disney would actually sue them in court but just getting it blocked automatically in YouTube, etc
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.
Disney seems to be taking a very hands-off approach when it comes to government use, so I doubt they'll do anything about this police case.
Pretty sure Disney can still go after real targets even if they don’t go after every children’s at home party that showed a Disney movie.
Copyright isn't "use it or lose it"
Wouldn't that constitute a public performance of copyrighted material? The police themselves could be DMCAed. Haha
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.
has died
Not DMCA, but yes, that would definitely open them to a lawsuit for unlicensed performance.
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.
Wouldn't that be covered by fair use?
Nobody who loves Disney songs would listen to them while also hearing police officers shouting, etc.
> "Wouldn't that be covered by fair use?"
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_.
https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/
You need to adopt a sensible data protection law if you don't want to be exploited.
If you look into it more carefully, you'll find this doesn't apply to social media moderation, but only more consequential AI-biased decisions.
(In the excerpt you quoted: "legal effects" / or "significantly affects").
Oh no! It's against the law. That'll definitely stop companies from doing it with impunity.
Yes. It will.
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.
GDPR penalties DO deter bad actors. It's so effective that many American companies without a European presence at all take actions
> Wouldn't that be covered by fair use?
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
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.
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.
Just to note, you can keep the data on French servers as they are a Offshore/DMCA Ignore country.
You can. YouTube doesn't. Instagram doesn't. Facebook doesn't.
When watching local network flows, almost all Facebook traffic originates from Ireland.
That's just their most local reverse proxy.
That’s an admission of guilt by the police, right there. If you have nothing to hide… etc.
“We’ve got ‘em now!”. This’ll be police brutality’s great undoing.
> 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.
> 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.
Nor should they.
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.
Some people are far too eager to build the Torment Nexus.
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.
Culture/social pressures work better than purely technical solutions
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.
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?
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.
It would make sure no websites track you.
I remember there was a patent from Apple for a QR-code which would cause devices to stop filming when it's detected...
The idea was for concert venues display these on-stage to block smartphones from filming (and redirect users to iTunes purchases instead IIRC)
> hash of your facial biometrics via Bluetooth
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.
Why not make filming opt-in rather than opt-out?
How do you opt out when someone rocks up to the restaurant you are in or the publoc restroom wearing these?
That's the point: filming should be opt-in.
This opens a huge can of worms.
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.
Perhaps one should look at the laws in place in the regions of the world where this is already true to see examples of how these worms can be handled.
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.
You can't do it with technology alone (or really at all). It has to be the law that does this.
Yes, laws and regulations are how you would make something opt-in. I don't see the problem, but thanks for the downvote I guess?
And now you’re a walking antenna broadcasting your face/biometric ID hash to anyone in range.
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.
Why do we need a standard for something that should socially be the norm?
Because some people would still smoke in restaurants and airplanes if left to their own devices.
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?
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.
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.
This. Absolutely this.
Explains a lot about why people vote for racist and right wing parties.
> and right wind parties
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.
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"
> It's good to a first-order approximation.
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.
You can't refute someone by just saying "nuh uh"
Trump is a massive disaster and you come out and say this ?
Haaaaaa.
What in the… what? Who said anything about Trump?
Dude. Seriously. I mean this in the least snarky and rude way possible: try to get off social media.
No.
Figures.
You created an identity only an hour ago. Did you just do this to tick me off on this?
Why do we need laws against stealing bikes?
(Yes, example chosen for its reputation for indifferent enforcement.)
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".
there was a black mirror episode on something similar IIRC
These are social problems not technology problems.
We want a society that does not need these workarounds.
Indeed.
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.
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].
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1065306/roomba-i...
You can't trust humans to follow the rules. They break rules all the time. Look at the HN community.
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
Which won't happen as criminals will never want themselves filmed and they are the ones you want to film to make society better and protect yourself.
Haven't you got that the wrong way around?
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.
We also want a society that is less greedy but that will never happen.
[dead]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49785429
Been around for ages for Android as "Nearby Glasses" app
Unlike other commenters, I do not mind the ai-ness of this app. This is a quick solution to a problem that we should not have had in the first place.
> Own a pair? Add them to known devices
Oh, the hypocrisy
Good to know, now I need to find my flipper zero and build a small app to use the information gained.
cool solution to a problem that shouldnt even exist I'd say. how did it become ok to be recorded at all times without prior consent??
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.
> how did it become ok to be recorded at all times without prior consent??
Incrementally, apathetically and often to gleeful offerings of tinfoil hats to those who pointed out previous steps and extrapolated them forth.
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.
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.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-re... or https://archive.is/65Fze
> 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.
I hope the Microsoft marketing dept is paying attention, because ZuckOff is amazing branding.
Instead of Copilot for Counter Spying, or Anti-Creeper.NET.
It only works while the glasses are in pairing mode. This is useless.
I'm not sure why you think that, bluetooth devices often broadcast their presence even when not in pairing mode
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.
isn't this security flaw ????
“Beacons” are a highly marketed socially acceptable thing in the advertising industry that has permeated the insides of most buildings.
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.
Probably, it's how bluetooth is used to track devices/people too.
Nah. That's standard BLE protocol.
BLE is actually pretty secure, but it does advertise, and some folks take advantage of that.
it's certainly a good reason to not carry a bluetooth device if you're trying to do something in secret
From https://about.fb.com/news/2026/07/metas-ai-glasses-your-ques...
> 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.
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.
That's a lie.
> 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...
Basic modification: Some tape over the led.
Also, you might as well hold up a sign that says “creep” with a big downward pointing arrow if you do something like that.
Think through how realistic an attack this really is…
> 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.
The LED is active when you are using the camera. It's hardwired.
cap -> gap
I think you're asking too much of a publication to do this kind of investigative reporting.
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.
This is Wired, not some random substack. What a lazy, cynical comment.
> 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?
Yes your comment is incorrect. It’s completely free of the nuance and real moral debate that needs to be had and adds nothing interesting to the discussion.
How many people are working around the safeguards? How prevalent is harm caused by creeps secretly filming on these glasses vs doing other creepy things? Have these glasses tangibly changed the creeps doing creeping landscape?
If you can’t answer those questions, it’s reactionary. That’s that it means.
> 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?
No it doesn't sound like that!
Yes, your comment was incorrect.
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.
People would generally oppose all such devices if they had a real picture of what's going on.
What is going on that I don’t know about?
Or someone can just turn off updates and never download the patch.
It's a meta product. Safe to assume that sooner or later it will be unusable unless you install the latest update so it can continue phoning home.
Cool idea, but why not spend 5 minutes to tell Claude to generate something besides the default AI UI style for your app?
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.
Meanwhile: https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-man-reveals-really-killed-clu...
I don't think that's that.
Last time I went to a club and the place just stank of piss, poo and sweat. This was at so called world class clubbing venue in London.
Then the prices. Nobody can afford that.
Then people don't fancy drinking anymore and if you prefer weed, then likely it will get confiscated and you get kicked out.
Does it beep louder as the BT signal strength changes and the camera comes closer?
Bring along a small Bluetooth speaker and call out pervs in public!
Wait, doesn't it beep for smartphone cameras too?
They could, by incorporating recent research: https://www.core77.com/posts/145408/KAIST-Develops-a-Way-to-...
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.
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?
An airtag is one device that by its nature desperately wants to be seen.
Like, desperate enough to partner with Kylie Jenner on a failed PR campaign? Meta desperately wants you to be seen in these.
Like me ex ...
...because they also are going to be selling smart glasses and don't want to trash a market they are about to join?
So they should detect all glasses but their own.
v2.0 ... auto-project two middle fingers at the recording camera, in place of the recorded subjects face.
Upvoted for the best lulz of the day.
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.
This name is so good.
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...
Are there terms and conditions for someone using something you don't like, in public?
I wonder the battery impact of discovering BT all the time..
Thank you for sharing this. If I get a notification about one near me, I will make sure to very aggressively search for it. If I find that whoever wore it has no practical purpose for it, I will likely humiliate them on the spot.
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Great name
Yes, the name is absolutely a genius move.
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.
At least one lawyer looking at it? Sure, maybe. But this is probably not even registering on Zuck's radar
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.
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
He's extremely petty and fhin skinned. Remember the seat booster?
Context https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-used-a-boost...
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.-
I'm guessing it's not even aware of it. The billionaires all live in their own reality.
What is the difference betwen this and https://www.noglasshole.com/ ?
wtf is this
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.
I have no idea, I saw it linked here and figured it would have been more or less legit. https://www.pcmag.com/news/modders-can-remove-the-recording-...
It is, however, open-source (albeit it looks dead AF) https://github.com/infinitefutureinc/nohole
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
Why do any of the device's network connections (WiFi/BT/etc) need to be on? What's to stop someone recording and uploading later?
there's no button on the glasses to turn the Bluetooth on or off, so they're basically always connecting as long as they are powered.
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.
I downloaded and tried it. It’s a nice app. I was surprised to see 400+ other Bluetooth devices in range. I think it’s neet to explore the invisible digital world we have all been made subject to.
Zucker no zucking, Zucker no zucking, Zucker no zucking! We did it, we stopped Zucker!
> Quiet is not proof that nobody is recording, and a detection is not proof that anyone is
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.
I was going to say: can't wait for EU to regulate this, but they already did!
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.
The people who need them for sight issues can paint them bright green or something.
'loud' and 'quiet' is not good terminology for this
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".
*knows when a pair of camera glasses are in the room
A better solution would be a miniaturized quadrf style device that could see radio sources and overlay them.
These glasses are amazing for capturing memories on vacations, way nicer than using my phone camera.
How convenient, so to hell with the privacy of everyone around you then.
You’ll have to explain how it’s different to recording something on any other phone or camera system…
You expect privacy in public?
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.
You’ll need to ban all cameras then. None of that is strictly related to glasses with a camera in themZ
Let's do it.
Every phone on the planet does this by default today. I don't see the delta between these glasses and someone taking a picture with their Pixel.
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.
Why is it smaller in volume? Sure that’s the decision of the person and has nothing to do with the device?
When phones first had cameras, and people were not aware, it would have been easier to secretly film. But news flash, where I’m sitting right now in a cafe full of tech workers, nobody would notice if I started secretly filming on my phone.
If I wanted to secretly film, I’d be more confident of getting away with it using my phone than with a set of glasses which have a flashing light on them.
Both items in scope as far as I'm concerned. I'm fine with glasses and uncovered phone cameras in picture-taking position being treated the same way from a privacy violation standpoint. Maybe we can also do something about phone speakers at max volume in inappropriate places as well.
So why not just take a picture with your Pixel, Mr. Bond?
Why not use an abacus to browse the web?
Yes. To an extent.
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.
Are there any decent glasses have similar features but aren't meta?
It says:
> Flags camera glasses by their manufacturer signature <
How is this guaranteed to be not spoofed?
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
Where does it say that is guaranteed? Nobody can guarantee that.
Are you really worried you might be filmed by an off-brand pair of glasses, instead of a genuine Meta pair?
Does someone want to make this into a product and selling to people?
Is this for a specific model or is this a General Zuckoff?
The Spy Glasses need to be abolished everywhere.
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.
we really need to regulate fast on those pervert glasses
Good luck with that.
love this. We need more anti-privacy gizmos like this!
Surely this is anti-anti-privacy?
Oh yes my bad. That's what I had meant but I was distracted and didn't notice. Thanks.
This is fantastic.
This is slop.
You can only fight the future for so long.
When people really understand what Meta glasses etc are, they generally don't pick "this is the future I want".
The future comes at you fast and it generally does not ask if you want it.
Good. Now what about fscking smartphones? There's 1000 times more of those, most with dual cameras and microphones.
I have "Hey Siri!" enthousiasts visiting soon. They can leave their iPhones in a nice Faraday cage at the entrance.
> I have "Hey Siri!" enthousiasts visiting soon. They can leave their iPhones in a nice Faraday cage at the entrance.
He says, deeply immersed in big tech without even realising it.
s/\ without\ even\ realising\ it//
Loved your scenes in "Call Saul".
A non-slop and non-freemium variant:
https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses
Perhaps the techbros might eventually realise that smart glasses are a shit idea. It’s not like this hasn’t been attempted before with Google Glass.
I don’t have high hopes though, listening doesn’t seem to be their strong point. If they have a strong point.
Imagine wearing Zuckoff merchandise to a Meta onsite interview or at their Connect conf :-)
pl_PL ( ｡ ♡ ‿ ♡ ｡ )
Czas dorosnąć.
Czas się odpierolić i iść swoją drogą
Czas umierać.
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Are you lost?
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Turns out assault and/or battery are already very much illegal too and suspecting someone is a wanker isn’t on the list of things that get you out of a charge.
Wouldn’t recommend unless you really, really like nutraloaf
The difference is using an app to detect hidden camera glasses is legal while beating the shit out of random people on the street is not lol
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Sorry to be that guy but:
>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
The great thing is that you did not have to be that guy or even spend time making this comment unless you really wanted to. It wasn't necessary.
Amazing. But it won't work for long, they'll patch the BT beacons with some "privacy" mode :(
And even if not - could always make another device with the same company ID and flood everyone with false positives.