[nogridbag]

Despite all the negativity around Google Glasses' camera, that was actually the best feature. You could really capture some great moments directly from your eye's perspective at the wink of an eye. My mother recently passed and out of all the photos and videos, my favorite was a 10 second video of me handing her flowers shot from Google Glasses. It looks like she's staring right back into my soul.

I have a three month old daughter now and I find myself fumbling about with my phone trying to take photos of her. Just last night I dropped my Pixel phone while trying to capture a photo of her. Phone is fine, but she wasn't too happy with the loud noise of my phone hitting the wood floor :) I kind of miss Google Glasses simply for the camera feature.

Instead of a minimal heads up display, I would much rather have a minimal wearable camera without all the extra functionality Google Glasses offered. Google Clips seems to be an alternative hands-free camera with different pros and cons (+I can be in the photo. -Can't capture the same type of photos from my eye viewpoint).

[mjlangiii]

Just my two cents; I'm a father of 4 and I'm okay with not capturing those moments on film. And I mean that in two senses. One, I'm fine using my very imperfect memory to recall special moments and two, because of the logistical problems with grabbing the camera I'm not willing to risk missing out being fully in the moment. The occasionally photograph from an event or time period seems sufficient to conjure up the feelings from that time.

Regarding an always on camera - I'll second other comments in warning there are just so many concerns with abuse, I don't see how to get around those.

[nogridbag]

I don't mean to derail this topic, but we don't have too many videos of my mother because for half of her life recording a video meant carrying one of those massive VHS recorders on your shoulder. When she passed and I realized how few videos we had, my first thoughts were: "How can I preserve these moments with my daughter, not just for myself but for her when I'm no longer around?" So I started looking into 360 degree video cameras and that sort of thing and that's when I remembered Google Clips. It's not ideal, but it may be one of the better solutions for preserving moments that doesn't require you to miss anything. I seem to take 90% of the photos of our family, which means I'm not in 90% of the photos.

I hope that doesn't sound strange, but you start thinking about these things during these times.

[majormajor]

It's definitely something that deaths and similar events make you think about, but ultimately, I also find myself asking if it would be used at all. And if it was, would it be beneficial?

I have thousands of family slide photos from my grandparents. This is unusual, but they were big photography fans. Nobody looked at them for at least a decade. But about 10 years ago I had access to a nice scanner, so I digitized a few hundred of them, so that we could look at them more easily. Now I have thousands of slide photos nobody has looked at in two decades, hundreds of digitized versions nobody has looked at in one decade, and a handful of ones we printed or such that get looked at more regularly. I think quantity is overrated, and it just becomes write-only-memory. I still take hundreds of photos for myself every year, but I doubt my kids will ever look at them for more than a few hours, max.

And I think there's something to be said for the impermanence of memory for helping people move on with their lives. I thought I was going to die a few years ago - I didn't, which is great, obviously, but if I had, I wouldn't have wanted those who loved me to still be dwelling on me today.

Snapchat is basically the app recognition of this idea that not everything is worth saving, that for 99.99% of stuff the value today far, far outweighs any value in the future. Shame it's such a hard concept to monetize, I guess.

(I say this, but I'm not immune to the temptation, either. If you ask the people in my life, they'd definitely tell you they wish I'd follow my own advice around "remember, you're taking pictures for yourself, not for other people, and don't prioritize your pictures of others over other people themselves." :| )

[setr]

>I think quantity is overrated, and it just becomes write-only-memory. I still take hundreds of photos for myself every year, but I doubt my kids will ever look at them for more than a few hours, max.

My mother has a habit of taking a bunch of photos of an event, and posting all of them to fb, disregarding quality. Blurry shots, photos of people mid-scarfing down food, etc, it all goes up.

These kinds of collections are utterly worthless, and to a degree, kind of disgusting to go through. But the events themselves are perfectly worthy of being photographed, posted, and whatever.

The problem is the lack of curation. Its fine that she took many photos, as long as she only shared the two that actually looked good.

In the same way, I doubt you'd have the problem having many unseen photos if you selected, and shared, the ones that were worth sharing. I doubt all of the thousands should be shared; instead you're forcing the filtering process on every individual you pass the collection to.

And collecting all of your experiences in video would be fine, if you only actually shared the 0.01% of it actually worth sharing. Of course no one wants to do it on your behalf.

[majormajor]

> In the same way, I doubt you'd have the problem having many unseen photos if you selected, and shared, the ones that were worth sharing. I doubt all of the thousands should be shared; instead you're forcing the filtering process on every individual you pass the collection to.

That's kinda the point, isn't it? Hardly anybody actually spends their time curating their possessions for future generations, yet nobody is super sad about this missing inheritance. If we thought we'd value it more, there'd be more of a market for products to manage it - instead, things like Lightroom are a small nice. "On this day..." type reminders from Facebook and the like seem to be enough.

I don't think I have a problem: I have a bunch of pictures I look at, for me. It's just nothing more than that.

[setr]

I would think you also don't want thousands of random photos in your archives: you'd ideally have filtered through it already, and whatever remains is likely worth looking back on

An archive of 10,000 images, i think, should be an impressive work; a grand feat of labour, through years of collection and curation. Even if you don't care about the content, you'd have to care about the effort spent. For personal use, or for sharing.

>Hardly anybody actually spends their time curating their possessions for future generations, yet nobody is super sad about this missing inheritance

I think ideally, you wouldn't have to curate for the future generations, just the future you, to create a valuable collection. But people often don't even curate for themselves, maintaining a mostly worthless collection. (With maybe a few hidden gems)

And I think curated collections, even those that never leave the basement, are assigned an inherent value. The attic used as a dump can burn and no one will care.

And in the same fashion, constantly recorded lifespans will also have little value (except maybe to historians), if it stays as a data dump. The value of that feature is lost if left alone, as is the collection of objects dumped in the attic. But the act of collecting gives you the chance to derive value that you otherwise couldn't (say because you didn't expect that particular moment to be noteworthy before it occurred for example), by curating it. A found, used but unprocessed film roll has no value; a gallery of selected photos can be extremely valuable.

[epicide]

I think it's a great conversation to have and one I've seen come up more and more.

I totally understand the inclination to capture as much as possible and have found myself wishing I had more photographs/videos/etc of certain things.

However, I think most of us are already past the point of useful amounts of capture. I definitely noticed it for myself when I realized I don't really ever go back and look at most of the pictures I take. When I do, it is almost always pictures of people that are gone. Even then, as the parent comment said, having one or two pictures from a time period or maybe one from a particular event is more than enough. Your mind fills in the details and that's awesome!

As far as the other side of things, I have definitely found myself spending more time trying to capture as much as possible (or capturing "just the right one") than actually enjoying the event.

I'm not saying don't take pictures. Far from it. I'm saying I don't think we have to try and preserve people via pictures. Because you can't.

[jpm_sd]

I completely agree (father of 3, here). It's just not that important to record these things. Live in the moment!

[Angostura]

As a father of 2, I think the best videos I have are the ones of the kids when little doing everyday silly things. Pottering around in the living room, colouring in.

It's nice to capture these occassional snippets, and you can still be in the moment for important things.

[malka]

what if you could record them AND live in the moment ? that's the endgame imo

[yndoendo]

Wouldn't you then be using the moment to have the potential to live in the past and not actually living in the moment?

[kbenson]

No, not when recording is as simple as noting after the moment that you might have liked to capture that, and then telling your smart device to preserve that last 30 to 60 seconds of buffered video.

I have little to no recording of my children by myself because getting the phone out is always a pain and seems to take too long and make me miss the moment. That doesn't mean the few videos I have aren't appreciated.

The best tools enhance our natural abilities, not replace them. Having an enhanced recall function would be appreciated by many, I'm sure.

[jpfed]

As a parent with a terrible episodic memory, having more convenient ways of augmenting my memory would be a huge plus.

[spike021]

Those are fine two cents for you, but I don't know why it should matter that you mention them in this thread. The parent comment clearly shows he/she appreciates the ability to take photos/videos at his/her leisure. If that works for them then why bring your opinion to the conversation?

[JustSomeNobody]

Conversation - the informal exchange of ideas by spoken words.

Opinions are ideas [0].

> ... but I don't know why it should matter that you mention them in this thread.

Is this not an opinion?

[0] loosely.

[spike021]

I can understand that. I just think it was a case of the parent comment already having a method/process that worked for them. I'd say there are a couple of different schools of thought when it comes to committing things to memory nowadays (more photos or more living in the moments) and if one works for someone then it's a bit unnecessary for someone else to come in and simply say that the other way works better for them.

[lordCarbonFiber]

I hate that I lost it, will have to spend an afternoon on the internet achive, But these are so tired. It's the exact same things people were spouting when phones started to have cameras. That came, and it turned out, having a quality camera you take with you is pretty cool and the end of the world didn't happen. Button cameras have existed for literally decades, if someone wants to take discrete pictures of you the means are there and it's a hell of a lot less awkward than staring at someone while your HUD camera grabs them.

A heads up display with no way of taking in data from the outside world is gimped to the point of uselessness and I think you really need to sit down and logic through the "concerns of abuse". There's no opportunity for privacy violation that isn't easier with another form of tech; at least Ive never heard one that sounds remotely plausible.

[cryptoz]

> That came, and it turned out, having a quality camera you take with you is pretty cool and the end of the world didn't happen.

It's a little early to say that, given that we're talking about things that take 50 years to transpire. You're telling people right now, in the midst of the smartphone explosion, that it's all said and done and over - you won't regret it at any point in your life, you'll always be glad of that smartphone, etc. But you don't know that yet.

And I will say that for some people it has already happened. I have missed countless things in the last 10 years because I was looking for my phone to take a picture. Events that happened and I never witnessed them to even get a memory of, just because I was looking down for my phone.

I already regret having the camera nearby but not quite ready to go for the last 10 years. Your examples are already wrong, and actually quite offensive in your tone, suggesting that you know better than everyone and that you know how everyone will feel in 50 years.

The concerns are real and justified, even if you personally don't share them.

[lordCarbonFiber]

So it's your phone's fault you've "missed experiences". I have to say, I've never heard that one.

Obviously no one can take away anyone's concern; however it's a larger leap to say all concerns are justified. I really don't understand your point, 50 years seems incredibly arbitrary. The smart phone explosion has come and gone; 95% of adults in the US have a cellphone and 77% have a smartphone[0]. Next to none of today's tech even existed 50 years ago can we not comment on any technological progress? I am nearly certain opinions will change over the next quarter century, and not in the way the luddites predict.

[0] http://www.pewinternet.org/fact-sheet/mobile/

[cryptoz]

> So it's your phone's fault you've "missed experiences".

I did not say that, don't twist my words like that. It is my fault I missed the experiences - I was busy looking for my phone.

> The smart phone explosion has come and gone; 95% of adults in the US have a cellphone and 77% have a smartphone

Sounds like we're at the start of people having smartphones. I don't see how you look at those numbers and think it's gone. The explosion and cultural changes are just starting, as backed up by those numbers.

> Next to none of today's tech even existed 50 years ago can we not comment on any technological progress?

I'm not sure where you got this. Of course we can comment on technological progress. But it's ridiculous to talk about the smartphone explosion and its societal effects like its the distance past. This stuff is happening now, nothing is "settled" or "said and done". It's all starting, really.

[KirinDave]

It is regrettable that you're being downvoted so hard because I too recall these discussions. I also recall discussions about how toxic digital cameras would be with an "explosion of photography" "diluting the art" and causing an end to privacy. It's weird how prohibitionist people here are about cameras, but how other types of prohibition are axiomatically bad.

Turns out that there is a big difference between capability and intent, but no one really wants to talk about that in those discussions. If a thing COULD be used for a purpose but almost no one does, it seems difficult to really blame the tech for empowering people who breach the social contract.

Nevermind that in fact the proliferation of private cameras actually brings more parity between governments (which have proven the world over that they refuse to be trustworthy with that data) and private citizens (who can hardly do a worse job).

[lordCarbonFiber]

I think people love the idea of bad actors taking their picture because it intrinsically validates them. That guy with google glass is clearly out to take pictures of me. Oh the humanity.

[epicide]

There is a subtle but important difference between trusting someone doesn't have a hidden camera pointed at you and recording vs trusting someone to not have the camera that is on their face and pointed at you currently recording.

Ultimately, yes, people have been able to take hidden photographs for a very long time. I think the concern is normalizing the removal of 90% of the steps involved in doing so.

[lordCarbonFiber]

As a thought experiment, what I'd like you to do tomorrow, is the first stranger you see spend 30 seconds staring at them. Not discretely, square on staring at them, keeping your head ideally still to prevent (hypothetical) camera jitter. You'll quickly discover why effectively no one that owns heads mounted devices has ever used them to take video of consenting people (ignoring the fact that why bother anyway, when there's essentially no social stigma for whipping out your phone to take a video/picture and it's considerably more comfortable to try to be discrete since your head doesn't need to be directly facing your subject).

I own a pair of glass, and while the thing has loads of problems (unergonomic , thermal issues, and terrible developer's experience being the main ones) nothing breaks my heart more than people just repeating back click bait about the end of privacy, because as wearables go I think there's a lot more potential in HUDs than smartwatches and the like.

[epicide]

I don't think the camera angle matters here. If I am talking to somebody with a camera on their face, wondering whether they are recording or not becomes a constant concern.

Having shaky or off-centered video of me is still video of me.

[pavel_lishin]

Yup, another father here: I'd love an always-on camera that I can tell to save the last 30 seconds of playback. There are a lot of moments I'd love to have on video or camera that are there-and-gone - even if I had my phone in my pocket, by the time I pulled it out, it would be too late.

[maltalex]

Would you love that camera if it was pointed at you?

The trade-off between the convenience of having an always-on camera and living in a society in which everyone has an always-on cameras seems like a no-brainer to me.

There's even a Black Mirror episode like that - "The Entire History of You".

[konart]

>Would you love that camera if it was pointed at you?

I'm pretty sure humanity is already past the point where this question is timely. We have many cameras watching us all day long and ten years from now there will be even more. For what it's worth, maybe this will finally teach people to thing before they act.

[maltalex]

> I'm pretty sure humanity is already past the point where this question is timely. We have many cameras watching us all day long and ten years from now there will be even more.

Really? Do you have cameras looking at you all day at work? Or at home, while interacting with your family? I hope not. I also hope that you'd object to any attempts to put such a device.

It's true that society by and large accepts CCTV cameras in public places. But that's not the same as equipping everyone with an always-on camera and having every human interaction recorded. That's just dystopian.

> For what it's worth, maybe this will finally teach people to thing before they act.

That's the oldest argument in the book. And sure, it's true. If you point a camera at people, they will behave "better". But that's insane, that's like saying that since children are most likely to be abused at home, then we should outlaw parenting, and have the state raise all kids using only state-certified™ personnel. Sure, that might work, but it kinda seems like we're losing something important along the way, no?

Having everyone "act better" is a good cause. But surveillance comes at a huge social cost, not to mention the potential for abuse by the watchers or those who decide what "better" is. Your "act better" might be a long way off the government's idea of how it would like citizens to behave.

[com2kid]

> Do you have cameras looking at you all day at work?

Anyone who works in an office complex does. Anyone who works in a retail store does. Bus drivers have cameras recording the entire time the bus engine is on.

Aside from a farmer in a field, I'm hard pressed to think of a job that doesn't take place under a security camera. Taxi Driver, delivery agents, street food vendors, and people who work at home remotely.

[khedoros1]

> Anyone who works in an office complex does.

Maybe change that to "many people"; "anyone" isn't accurate. For example, at my workplace, there are security cameras at a couple of the doors, but none in the office itself. I don't think I'd stay long if there were a bunch of cameras here.

[vkou]

> Anyone who works in an office complex does.

My office is full of cameras.

None of them are pointed at my workspace.

It's the difference between having the street full of cameras, and having them pointed at my living room window.

[cr0sh]

> Aside from a farmer in a field

While not constant, farmers probably do have cameras "pointed on them" in their fields - land surveys using aerial and satellite photo capability are common. I'm sure competitors also overfly each other's fields using drones and whatnot to keep tabs on who is growing what and when. Plus there's the fact that some farmers use drones on their own fields for a variety of reasons (though this last doesn't really count).

[viraptor]

Taxi drivers have cameras pointed at the customers often.

But I'm surprised you can't find other examples. The bank I go to has a camera. Maybe the supermarket at the exits. That's pretty much it for the town - almost everyone I interact with has no cameras. Some never will - for example doctors.

[nightski]

Many of us remote/home office workers do not. I'd like to keep it that way.

[konart]

>Really? Do you have cameras looking at you all day at work? Or at home, while interacting with your family? I hope not. I also hope that you'd object to any attempts to put such a device.

Okay, this was a generalization and exaggeration on my part (to a certain extent that is), but at the same time - how many cameras (notebook, smartphone etc) do you have at home at any give time? At the office? Security cameras are everywhere, any modern business center have dozens of them on each floor.

>That's just dystopian.

Sounds dystopian. And you don't need to equip everyone with them. Police, CCTV, transport (busses, taxis etc) will cover most of it. http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-42248056/in-your... - this will be everywhere soon enough.

>that's like saying that since children are most likely to be abused at home, then we should outlaw parenting, and have the state raise all kids using only state-certified™ personnel.

Two differenct things here. If we are to compare those to IT support - parenting is the last line of support (in fact parents are the developers in this case). But you also need to make sure that kids who happen to be born into a bad family\neighbourhood also behave. Yes, you shouldn't just put a collar on them, but instead try to help them somehow - that's the 2nd line of support. 1st line of support is the CCTV's AI that will monitor them to keep things under control.

In other words - I'm not trying to say that one should be replaced by the other.

>potential for abuse

This risk in always out there. Gun control, police, drug stores you name it.

[throwaway2048]

This is a common tactic in normalizing stuff people are uncomfortable with "its already been that way for X years why are you complaining now".

Besides the fact this statement is inaccurate (there are not infact security cameras everywhere, footage is not centralized and analyized by huge powerful parties), It in no way somehow justifies the situation as it stands, or will stand if these become popular.

[konart]

>there are not infact security cameras everywhere, footage is not centralized and analyized by huge powerful parties

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-42248056/in-your...

You just wait.

>there are not infact security cameras everywhere

Well, depending on where you live of course. You won't find a single one in Somali most likely.

Anyway, as I've already said - I'm not trying to justify anything.

[starsinspace]

> maybe this will finally teach people to thing before they act.

I think it'll rather lead to a homogenization of behavior. A dystopia I don't want to live in.

[dwighttk]

some people don't have "many cameras watching" us all day.

[gpm]

That camera is already pointed at me, via security cameras, strangers cell phones, etc. This just makes the situation symmetric.

So yes, I would be fine with that.

[dsfyu404ed]

No all of us live in the UK or some city that has cameras everywhere. Private CCTV footage and most government footage not part of a dragnet collection program is usually discarded after a few weeks or months if it's not needed. Cell phones are not always on.

I agree that everything being recorded all the time is somewhat inevitable considering the way things are going. While this does make the situation symmetric to some extent as far as the capacity to record interesting things goes. However, I believe that in the foreseeable future the negatives outweigh the positives.

You might be able to get the clerk at the DMV to be nicer if they're on camera but your ability to influence society with the ability to record video doesn't extend much beyond there.

Only the incumbents (tech giants and the government) have the ability to store and mine this sort of data for interesting things that are only interesting in retrospect. You do not have access to a big chunk of the data set. Your bank, insurance company and government do. They can mine that data to punish you or others for whatever behavior they deem bad and to extract compliance to their whims. You, neither as a individual nor as part of a group do not have the capacity to do the same analysis, the means to use what you learn to manipulate individuals. Even if you did you don't have access to a large enough chunk of the data set.

Until the power to access and draw meaning from this sort of data is in everyone's hands the situation is not symmetric. I hope you and those who agree with you reconsider your opinions.

[gpm]

The proposal wasn't dragnet surveillance. It was everyone walking around with a rolling 30-second video buffer that they can chose to save. There is no giant record for someone to datamine.

Not living in the UK doesn't change much, it goes from "in public I'm always possibly on camera" to "in public I'm always possibly on camera" everywhere, not just the Uk.

My ability to influence society with a camera is far beyond "the DMV clerk being nicer". It's being able to hold the cop who pulls me over accountable. Being able to get video of the van that hit a parked car and sped off. Being able to submit proof that the person I saw trying to open the doors on a bunch of parked cars was actually trying to do that. The second two are real examples that have happened to me within the last 6 months, the first one is a real example that you can easily see the utility of via verifiable stories on the internet.

And even if you think my ability to influence society is minimal with it, that's fine, ability to influence society wasn't why people above were asking for it.

[dsfyu404ed]

>There is no giant record for someone to datamine.

It's laughable to think there won't be cloud integration. Having automatic or one click upload is probably one of the most powerful features. People want to be able to post stuff on snapchat, store it in drive/dropbox, etc. The data sets will be mined just like existing social media is mined.

>Not living in the UK doesn't change much, it goes from "in public I'm always possibly on camera" to "in public I'm always possibly on camera" everywhere, not just the Uk.

The UK goes particularly far (for a western country) when it comes to mining the data to recognize and track people. That's why I chose it as my example.

>My ability to influence society with a camera is far beyond "the DMV clerk being nicer". It's being able to hold the cop who pulls me over accountable. Being able to get video of the van that hit a parked car and sped off. Being able to submit proof that the person I saw trying to open the doors on a bunch of parked cars was actually trying to do that. The second two are real examples that have happened to me within the last 6 months, the first one is a real example that you can easily see the utility of via verifiable stories on the internet.

Same general idea, multiple implementations. All the things you listed are about on the same order.

>And even if you think my ability to influence society is minimal with it, that's fine, ability to influence society wasn't why people above were asking for it.

I agree. Having a "record the last 30sec of my life" button would be super useful. Every time I see something funny, I could scroll back , take a screenshot and post it online so my buddies can get a laugh. That's useful. I think it would also be incredibly dangerous at scale because it will be easy for the incumbents to use to influence society.

Basically everything I'm saying here has been said about Facebook/Google, etc. The difference I see in this case is that I think that by reducing the friction of recording/uploading to near zero the effects will be magnified.

[PJDK]

I think one of the reasons people don't like the idea is this very reason.

It's coming from the position "someone is likely to do me wrong and I will be collecting evidence with that in mind". That in itself is a pretty aggressive position to take - but once you interact with someone it then says "_you_ are likely to do me wrong".

[briandear]

> No all of us live in the UK or some city that has cameras everywhere.

For now. The UK wasn't always covered in surveillance either.

[shpx]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society

[naasking]

> Would you love that camera if it was pointed at you?

If the camera had a light indicating when it was actually recording, that seems better. There are probably many small changes to make such cameras more acceptable.

[oarsinsync]

Google for “activate webcam without light”

Ever noticed people have covered their laptop cameras even though they have a light to indicate if it’s on?

How do you do that to someone else’s camera that has been remote activated with the light disabled?

[naasking]

You don't make it software controlled, you hardwire it so it can't be hacked.

[nogridbag]

And from my short experience even if you manage to pull out your phone or DSLR quickly to capture that special moment, the baby immediately stops cooing/smiling and instead is staring at this black object you're sticking in their face.

I think Google's onto something with Google Clips. But I think there's more to this concept. Would definitely be interested in a v2 that is able to capture video.

[tlrobinson]

GoPros (and other action cameras, I assume) have a feature like that.

But please don't be "that guy" constantly recording unwilling subjects (except in your own home, of course)

[JustSomeNobody]

> ... unwilling subjects (except in your own home, of course)

Not even.

[tlrobinson]

Well, not secretly, but otherwise people are free to leave your home if they find your recording obnoxious.

[keville]

You have described the exact use case the Google Clips [0] camera seems to have been designed for.

[0] https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips

[thaumaturgy]

That's all well and good, and I don't think many people are disputing the value of having more and better memories of loved ones.

The trouble is in resolving that against the kind of culture that has fostered things like the "creepshots" subreddit.

Smartphones (and GoPros) have already shown the value of being able to film and share more of our lives, but they've also shown the downsides of having our graceless moments broadcast to the world, or the many events that are now impossible to enjoy in a sea of smartphones held aloft, or, if you're an attractive woman, far more of you put online for other people to gawk at.

Until those abuses are resolved somehow, people are going to resist having a little camera attached to everyone's face.

[ocdtrekkie]

Given Google refused to allow you to store pictures local-only, Glass' camera was... it's least-used feature for me. I loved notifications without having to get out my phone (or look at my wrist). Google's absolute refusal to make photo sync optional on Glass was honestly the beginning of the end for my trust in El Goog.

[lev99]

I agree that the creepy thing about Google Glass isn't the camera or the display it's Google.

[ocdtrekkie]

Yeah, I loved the form factor, it was the software and the cloud dependency that crippled it. I've actually been looking at a Vufine+ combined with an Intel Compute Stick to create a more customized alternative.

[lev99]

The Vufine+'s battery life kills that option for me. Wearables need to have a long enough battery life that you can use them most of your day without taking them in and out.

[ocdtrekkie]

Definitely true. My impression is that I'd use it cabled with a battery pack (that could also power the Compute Stick), but since I already need micro-HDMI running off of it, that's two separate cables.

I've mentioned this idea to the Vufine team, but if they removed the battery (to lighten up the unit significantly), and switched the cable type to a USB-C that delivered both video and power, it could reasonably offload battery to an external pack, and run video along the same cable, and I'd maybe clip something on my belt and be rocking.

That being said, Vufine's current hardware isn't designed to be a day-use wearable, it's intended to be used for things like seeing the camera on a drone you're flying (which also has a very short battery life).

[lev99]

I'm not sure that the USB-C cable buys your much that some electrical tape couldn't provide. Besides usb-c being a more elegant solution.

Offloading the battery would be helpful for longer sessions. I wonder if you could either completely remove it and use pass through power or replace it with a smaller/lighter battery.

[stcredzero]

Despite all the negativity around Google Glasses' camera, that was actually the best feature

The negativity around Google Glasses amounted to a mismanaged launch. iPhones were introduced to a public already familiar 1st-hand with cell phones, camera phones, and digital cameras. The public was already passingly familiar with smart phones. Google Glasses were introduced with maximum hype to as many early adopters as possible, with no thought as to how it could backfire, and how to navigate those pitfalls. In retrospect, is it any wonder that there were so many inadvisable actions, all adding up to a societal backlash?

Google Glasses should have been rolled out to far fewer people, and in a form factor almost indistinguishable from ordinary eyeglasses.

[azinman2]

Snap’s glasses?

[xPhobophobia]

Except Google Clip is like the camera in the movie "The Circle" and is a rabbid privacy violation. The discontent with Google Glasses was likely because it was ahead of its time.

[nogridbag]

I'm not familiar with that movie, but how does Google Clips violate your privacy? As far as I understand, everything is local on the Clips device (including the AI). You can view pictures on your phone and choose the ones to save.

This is completely different from a device like Echo which sends your voice (and everything it hears in the background) to Amazon for processing.

[starsinspace]

I don't think anyone cares if you use such a glasses camera in your private space, with people who know you and are fine with it. The problem is when it becomes normal and everyone has them on all the time, in public spaces too. Then nobody can opt out anymore.

[SimbaOnSteroids]

The trick is getting a camera powerful enough to get acceptable quality pictures but small enough, and blended with the surroundings enough that you don't notice it.

[nogridbag]

Yup absolutely. For me that was Google Glasses biggest flaw. I could capture beautiful photos of family and relatives instantly, but they were beautiful because no one else in the photo was wearing Google Glasses.

Another reply mentioned Snaps, which I haven't heard of. It looks interesting, but ultimately it has the same flaw. I'm not going to wear dark sunglasses with LEDs indoors to take family photos.

I suppose there really is no ideal solution. It's either going to be noticeable and thus culturally acceptable or hidden and be bashed for being used by creeps. I suppose a device like Google Clips is probably a better solution for my needs, but it lacks that killer "wink to take a photo" feature.

[macintux]

> noticeable and thus culturally acceptable

I'm not sure that correlation is inevitable.

[magic_beans]

It's ok to not have pictures of every single minute of your daughter's development.

It's probably better for you -- and for her -- not to have so many photos.

[bluntfang]

this is how we turn into simple rick.

[craigsmansion]

> You could really capture some great moments directly

That should be, "you could really capture some great moments directly on film..."

You already captured these moments; you were there; they are ingrained in your memory.

> My mother recently passed and out of all the photos [..] staring right back into my soul."

First of all, my sincere condolences.

Again, you were there. That moment, that specific wonderful moment you witnessed, nice as it is to have something to remember it by, it feels very personal, not something you could share unless you were there, and you were you.

Back in the days of photo-lab development, there existed magic moments caught on camera as well, but it was the luck of the draw. Since they were so rare, there was no fear of missing out, but any such moment caught on camera was all the more special for it.

Maybe this fear of missing out on your own life, pushing one to commit everything to camera, comes at the cost of actually missing out. Life is made better by witnessing these magic moments, but I'm unsure the drive to capture them all enhances the experience, witnessed and remembered in that particular fashion by no one but yourself.