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Glasshole
- mjolk 13y agoI've been trying not to get too worked up over the whole NSA/PRISM issue, but the potential success Google Glass changes the magnitude of the issue. By proxy, every Google Glass owner will be acting as a remote recording device for government agencies. Everyone in the line of site/hearing range of the device forfeits privacy.
- cookiecaper 13y agoEveryone is already carrying a remote tracking and recording device called a cell phone, optionally including video (which may or may not be useful). Admittedly Glass gives a much better vantage point for videos, but that's the only added aspect.
- enraged_camel 13y agoCellphones are in people's pockets or purses most of the time, and even when they are being used the camera is mostly pointing at the ground or the person's lap. Google Glass will show The Watchers exactly what the person is looking at. Even when the person takes it off and puts it on, say, a table surface, it will be showing something, as opposed to a phone which either points downward or up towards the ceiling. I could go on. The point is that "everyone is already carrying a remote tracking and recording device" is hugely different in terms of both the scope and depth of surveillance that said offers when compared to Google Glass.
- Kylekramer 13y agoDoesn't the sheer amount of noise (in the intelligence agencies' eyes) produced by Glass make it a fairly useless data source? If I worked for the secret shadowy three initial organizations I rather have access to call logs and email. At least it would have some curation.
- Zikes 13y agoI think that's the key point here. The sheer amount of data being stored is surely almost completely useless when it comes to preventing crime, but would be invaluable when it comes time to investigate a crime, or if you want to target a specific individual to harass.
- nitrogen 13y agoNoise becomes data when you have the right algorithm.
- Zikes 13y agoI'm sure there is some useful information they could glean, but in large part key indicators of pre-crime are already blatantly obvious or present too great a risk of false positives. The latter is what worries me. If they come up with what they believe to be the right algorithm and run it against their data, what then? Are we then in the position where we have to a) prove our innocence in a crime that hasn't even been committed, or b) become the targets of increased scrutiny and restrictions?
- nitrogen 13y agoThere's more that can be done than pre-crime, though. For example, statistical analysis/datamining of things like ambient sound levels, vocal stress levels, positive/negative sentiment, etc. could reveal trends even before they reach Twitter, allowing them to be preempted or directed.
- cookiecaper 13y agoYeah, that's what I said. I recognize it will give much more useful video stream. But it's an incremental increase in capability -- if they can already pinpoint your location with GPS and record all surface-level interhuman information exchange with microphones, they're already getting a very large section of what one would like to keep confidential.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- atwebb 13y agoWhy are people discounting the importance of that vantage point? It's incredibly pertinent and a main issue.
- Kylekramer 13y agoThe companies implicated in PRISM already produce the software and/or hardware for the vast majority of computers and smartphones in the world. Seems like if you are convinced that PRISM is as far reaching and effective as being able to turn Glass in a remote recording device for the NSA, the magitude would hardly change much.
- marshray 13y agoYou don't see the difference between say, having a camera next to you on the seat of your car and driving the Google StreetView car everywhere you go?
- Kylekramer 13y agoGiven how ubiquitous Androids, iOS, Kinect, OSX, and Windows devices are, no. Chances are if you are in any populated area, a camera (and perhaps more importantly, microphone, given that mics are omnidirectional) associated with one PRISM company being on you is extremely high. Glass would merely be a snowdrift on top of Everest. Of course, it is important to note I don't believe PRISM is anywhere near as effective as many around here do.
- marshray 13y agoI agree with you that the ubiquity of microphones cameras without hard electrical 'off' switches is a real problem. Secret microphones have been used for eavesdropping for a century now, and malware has been found in the wild which uses the camera to take photos and make 3D reconstructions of the victim's home interior. But wearing an internet connected 3rd party controlled camera on your forehead is categorically different than one that points at the inside of my pocket almost all the time. If it were the same as what we have now then Google Glass wouldn't be a very interesting product, would it?
- molbioguy 13y agoGlass makes it so much more convenient to record others. While you can do this with smartphones, the process is so much more obvious with those devices. Most people won't know if they're being recorded or not with Glass. And by putting the device close to your face, it's less likely someone will try to move it aside or block it. It all comes back to privacy being a sense of control over what someone releases to the world about themselves. Glass helps take away that control (as does secret NSA data collection). People are uncomfortable when someone else controls the release or collection of their personal data (images, whereabouts, friends, etc).
- ironchief 13y agoHe brings up a very good point that a lot the information humans pickup is from each other's faces. The nonverbal feedback facilitates turn-taking in conversation as well as emotional feedback. Perhaps Glass causes visceral reactions because of the combination of its foreignness (unlike glasses) and proximity to the face.
- gaius 13y agoOver and above the privacy issues, you can never have the undivided attention of someone wearing Glass. That's deeply off-putting. Imagine trying to have a conversation with someone as they listened to headphones and stared at their phone the whole time.
- enanoretozon 13y agoI'm guessing when it becomes commonplace it will be far easier to whip out my phone and IM people across the table.
- apashee 13y agoI think that's going a little too far. Already we've embedded ourselves in a world where many people break open their phone in the middle of a conversation. Yes, it's rude. But it's still a change that's happening in the world. However, Glass isn't always on, at least not right now. You have to manually turn it on, which means it'll be akin to taking out your phone.
- gaius 13y agoBut can you see if someone else's Glass is displaying them something or whispering them something? At least with a phone it's obvious.
- easong 13y agoYes, actually. The screen lights up and it's pretty obvious. Most of the people I talk to while wearing glass notice it immediately when it comes on.
- Argorak 13y agoAssociated comic strip for the lazy: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/14 http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2013/06/14
- JDGM 13y agoI was amazed to see this on the front page, assuming it was a link to today's comic, which would possibly have been the first time I witnessed a non-xkcd submitted to HN. That would've been cool, it's a good one. The fact that this is actually a link to the accompanying article from Tycho is great as his pieces are usually quite interesting but I miss out because they don't come up on the Penny Arcade website until a good few hours after the comic. It's infuriating actually, as the comic frequently makes me want to read what Tycho has to say but it's not there yet. I don't understand why they do that. Anyone?
- Uhhrrr 13y agoThe Tycho essay is on the main URL and (almost?) always contains a link to the day's comic. So the essay can't come out ahead of time. I speculate that their "use model" is that you click refresh on the main site on MWF until the new essay comes up, then click through to the comic. Of course if you use an RSS feed or click refresh on the comic page, it makes less sense.
- JDGM 13y agoI think that's pretty much spot on. What I would like to see is coordination between the two by delaying the release of the comic and/or Tycho submitting his piece sooner so they're released in unison. This is going to sound extremely unreasonable but whenever I read the comic and click to the article only to see what Tycho wrote about the comic of two days ago, I find myself thinking "Gabe's done his part! This art didn't draw itself! Where's the accompanying essay then?!". JD(GM) out. ♬ Like an angry English teacher getting in a strop at a student for not bringing his coursework to class on the day I made them all write in their planners weeks ago.
- teej 13y agoThe writing on Penny Arcade has always been insightful and funny. I think being great writers is what makes them great comic artists. If you're interested in games news, I've found the Penny Arcade Report to be fantastic. It hasn't been around long, but I several articles from it have already hit the front page of HN. http://penny-arcade.com/report/ http://penny-arcade.com/report/
- enraged_camel 13y agoI think there is good discussion to be had here, but holy shit, I have never been able to get over how utterly pretentious Jerry's writing is. The comics are usually fantastic and at strange odds with the accompanying news.
- BurritoAlPastor 13y agoIt's always been my understanding that he writes that way simply because he enjoys it, and he's perpetually incredulous that he can make a living doing so.
- Zikes 13y agoI certainly enjoy reading it. I've always found his articles insightful and well-reasoned, and if I happen to learn a new word or two in the process then all the better. Generally when I read something and judge it to be pretentious, it's because the author is using words that are out of his/her depth, in an attempt to impress the reader. When Jerry writes I get the impression he's choosing his words carefully and with equal intent to entertain and to inform.
- derefr 13y agoIt has never occurred to me to call the way Jerry writes "pretentious." Most of the time I would call it "comedic" (specifically, containing great amounts of bathos)--he makes very creative, unexpected, and over-the-top use of the English language to convey relatively normal opinions on relatively boring subjects, in a way that makes me want to read his thoughts on things I couldn't otherwise care less about.
- sliverstorm 13y agoThat's pretty much the impression I've always taken. It doesn't seem like he is taking himself seriously when he speaks those words.
- stonemetal 13y agoIt never occurred to me to call the person writing Jerry. I have always thought of the writing as Tycho's. I mean that in the same way I would say Hamlet said "To be or not to be..." rather than Shakespeare said.
- alex_stoddard 13y agoIn Kim Stanley Robinson's 1993 sf novel "Red Mars" a member of the first Mars colonization mission also works for news agencies back on Earth and wears "camera glasses". I forget the exact arc of the subplot but as I recall they resign and refuse to wear the 'glasses' anymore because they were ostracized by the rest of the crew.
- lotsofcows 13y agoSnowcrash was 1992. People who are thoroughly wired are referred to disparagingly as "gargoyles".
- aeontech 13y agoHoly shit, you just made me realize Snow Crash is coming to reality (for certain parts of it) faster than expected :)
- jacques_chester 13y agoPeople who work at places like Google have been known, from time to time, read science fiction. A lot of it comes true because someone says "yes, good idea".
- jholman 13y agoIf only someone would make real-life versions of those flip-open communicators from Star Trek TOS. Maybe someone at Motorola could do that. Or, on the subject of Snow Crash, if only someone would make that thing in Snow Crash called Earth. (Though if they did make it and then Motorola bought it, I expect they'd name it Motorola Earth, which sounds dumb. Unless someone bought Motorola first.)
- jacques_chester 13y agoAnd I first read about iPads in Futuretrack Five.
- doktrin 13y agoIt will take a while before I am comfortable with others wearing Glass around me. The thought of speaking to someone wearing the device makes me a little uncomfortable. I realize that may sound a little luddite-esque to certain members of this community, but there you have it. This is a resistance that I'm sure is shared by many in the general public. It's something we all may get used to eventually, but I honestly predict a fairly grating and occasionally unpleasant transition period.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- bentcorner 13y ago> The thought of speaking to someone wearing the device makes me a little uncomfortable. I realize that may sound a little luddite-esque to certain members of this community, but there you have it. Not to me. It's the social equivalent of walking around holding your smartphone, recording everything. Sure, you might not actually be recording everything, but when you hold it up like that I have no idea if you are. An audio-only version of glass may be more socially palatable. Still though, it'll be interesting to see how this works when it is available for the common public. I personally feel that people wearing bluetooth headsets in public are sorta douchey-looking (just my personal impression), I wonder if that's going to be any different with Glass (I doubt it).
- lostlogin 13y agoYour behaviour doesn't change when someone points a camera at you? At least with a cell phone you get a few clues that someone might be recording and get a choice about whether to modify behaviour or not.
- bentcorner 13y agoSorry, I quoted poorly - I was agreeing with the parent > "I realize that may sound a little luddite-esque to certain members of this community" This does not sound luddite-esque to me at all, and entirely reasonable.
- lmkg 13y agoSo I just remembered that I actually have some personal experience with this issue. My girlfriend is getting her PhD in computer vision, and one of her labmates was working on summarization algorithms (imagine a program that could take 6 hours of continuous footage, and spit out a 1-minute highlight reel). She volunteered to wear a camera for a day to gather data for him, and she asked me permission to do so while we were out & about during a weekend. I agreed (with conditions--blurred faces in the final paper), we took the footage, he published his paper, it was fine. Like a year later, someone else who is working in a similar field reached out to her labmate to ask for the raw data. Thankfully, he asked us if we were ok with it, because I kind of wasn't. I had agreed to let one person that I kind of knew already to see footage of me. I was slightly uncomfortable with the idea of 6 hours of me conversing with my girlfriend at a brewery being passed around between who knows how many labs, and appearing in who knows how many papers, over a period of who knows how many years. Cuz I mean, once you lose control over who has access to that data, even just a tiny bit, that genie isn't going back into that bottle. Not that there was anything to care about, it was just a brewery and playing with some legos at home, but I didn't like the idea of becoming The Guy, and data sets have a way of becoming institutions in that field. And it wasn't just me, either. We were in a semi-public space, there were other people in the background. I have no idea if they would be cool with being in an academic paper. Maybe they would be, but they never even knew they were being recorded, so it seemed kind of unfair to make that call for them. We eventually decided to not allow the data to be shared. So then her labmate asked if he could just send over the audio data. To which our response was "why are we only finding out now that thing was recording audio?" That left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. So I don't know if I have a point really, I'm just sharing my experience with this. The big issue for me is loss of awareness and loss of control. I know who or what is seeing me, because I can see them back; I can be aware if someone is setting up a camera, and leave or hide my face or ask them what they're doing. I'm (approximately) aware of who can observe me, and who has or will have access to those observations in the future. The troubling aspect of Glass is that it introduces an asymmetry that I feel is to my disadvantage: if someone observes me with Glass, access to that observation is potentially unbounded. This feels to me like a loss of control, and that's why Glass makes me uncomfortable.
- ntumlin 13y ago
- hawkharris 13y agoI wonder if the news about Google's participation in PRISM will influence the way we (HN members) think about Glass. It certainly makes me feel less comfortable with passively revealing more of life to Google.
- rplacd 13y agoTangential to the actual post's content, but I'm a bit miffed at the "Microsoft is the victim of bad messaging" trope: what distinguishes "bad messaging" from the argument not made (deliberately or not) is, apparently, the existence of an argument deemed better - but that's never been any basis to determine the former. Talk about the potential of Microsoft's system (and we can do so independently of Microsoft) - but the act itself is nothing that deserves pity or accommodation. A policy of taking arguments at face value at the very least allows for consistency.
- bquarant 13y agoIn the morning! Glasshole was used first by Adam Curry on the No Agenda Show, even before it was used by Leo Laporte on TWiT.
- lsc 13y agosee, this is the thing about glass; There's a whole lot of useful stuff you can do with a HUD that doesn't involve a camera, and wearing a HUD would be a hell of a lot more socially acceptable if people didn't assume they always came with cameras. Or hell, just a 'the camera is on' indicator. a red light, or a bit of plastic you can slide over the lens or something. (I mean, clearly, both of these things can be faked, but there are a thousand other ways to conceal a camera on your person, if you are being deceitful. The important bit is to make a clear way of setting the social expectation that the camera is on/off.) Personally, I'd favor some kind of physical lens block, as it guarantees my privacy (during the times I physically block the camera) even if the firmware is compromised.
- jessep 13y agoI'm confused about the transition from Glass (Google product, no?) to discussion of Microsoft's messaging problems. Can someone explain the relationship?
- lurkinggrue 13y agoIt's a gaming comic and Xbox is major in the conversation this week. The only reason for the Glass diversion is Gabe got one this week as well and they are living with it.
- AndrewKemendo 13y agoI think I am in the minority when I say I am looking forward to continuous backup of my day to day activities whether it be through sousveillance or from others. I am not in the "if you don't have anything to hide crowd..." in the least and am certainly aware of the ability of those in power to abuse it. My take on it however is, I am going to just slough off the mores which I would have previously been concerned with privacy about. Catch me swearing when I shouldn't have? Oh well. Maybe I'll be less inclined to do it next time. What if I whisper a dirty idea to my wife? Well, what's wrong with a happily married couple doing what they like after all? After you have kids the idea of going to the bathroom in privacy slowly drifts out of the window - and why shouldn't it? It really doesn't make any ethical impact on me for someone to know if I am doing a biological process. My hope is, all of this will make us much more honest people. You can't embarrass/blackmail me if I cannot be embarrassed/ashamed.
- icebraining 13y agoI think you and I are privileged to live in relatively open societies, and to fit in well enough such that the worst that can happen is to be embarrassed for things we've done wrong. But what about people in less open societies, and who don't fit what society thinks should be the norm? For a gay man in a more conservative place, the "honesty policy" may imply great physical harm. And even if you actually fit in to the stereotype of the Good Citizen, what about misunderstandings? What happens if a clip of a few seconds gets taken out of context of a conversation (even by accident), which makes you sound like you support some terrible thing, helpfully linked to your name by Google's algorithms?
- AndrewKemendo 13y agoAs I said in my post this is me being hopeful - I don't actually think it would work that way unfortunately. Ideally in your scenarios people would be able to release their own source data from their glass (or whatever) to provide context. The constant surveillance would be able to debunk all the stupid arguments against being gay, such as they lead deviant lives etc...; someone would be able to show a normal boring day coming home and having dinner with their partner and then falling asleep in the bathtub like everyone else. The idea is that in a society that is basically completely honest and open no one will hold a "moral high ground" so it would basically be impossible for information asymmetry and thus natural variation would ensure that there is no "norm." Again this is all hopeful, if doubtful.
- methodin 13y agoI'm still unsure exactly where the story transitioned into Microsoft...
- thufry 13y agoOne day there will be a Google Glass that isn't detectable by the subject of the recording (tapped directly into the sensory system of the wearer). Then a lot of the enforcement mechanisms against "Glassholes" will become redundant.