My wife loves bone conduction, but to me it sounds terrible. Makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong or if my bones just suck

I think of bone conducting headphones as the most realistic foundation for augmented reality on the market. Hearing things without plugging your ears up, weighing you down or taking you out of your surroundings is underrated and underutilized. To match the weight of an Oculus Quest 3 on my head, I'd have to wear seventeen pairs of Shockz OpenMove. Compare the dread of a video ad over your eyes to the dread of an audio ad in your ears.

We really should have a broader conversation about the practical applications of this stuff.

I deeply disagree here. Bone conduction headphones sound significantly worse then the Ray-Bans. You can hate Meta but its untrue that its the same audio experience.

What brands still make bone conduction headphones?

Watch Zuckerberg proudly showing how his hand gestures are hardly noticeable. So, so creepy.

I wouldn’t be surprised if people wearing these would get confronted, denied entry or beaten up regularly. I can even totally see them ray-banned legally. At least in the EU. Much less with external video processing.

Although I love the idea of AR and the cyberpunk flair, I don’t think these will be a thing because of privacy implications. Nothing has fundamentally changed since Google Glass failure.

Exactly. The real danger is how they turn every wearer into a walking surveillance camera, creating a permanent, searchable record of your life without your consent, simply by being near them.

This fundamentally rewrites the rules of social interaction, creating a panopticon where you have to assume you're always being recorded, forcing self-censorship and destroying the trust essential for any authentic relationship.

And because our antiquated consent laws and pathetic safeguards like a tiny indicator light are completely unprepared for this, you have no real way to opt out of their surveillance network.

I put my hands over my ears if I need to use them in a noisy environment. Not perfect but it works

I wouldn't want to wear earbuds while doing anything active, the chance of them falling out is too high.

A friend of mine got a pair, they get this light when theyre in use but you can't quickly tell what's happening. Are they taking a picture, a video, or just conversing with the AI?

I find it annoying, ofc, he's my friend so I could tell him not to take "candid pictures" of me (I generally just don't like people taking pictures of me).

But you would have no control whatsoever on the street and it would be very difficult to know that someone you've passed on the street has or hasn't taken a picture of you.

I don't really use them that way. I don't wear them 24/7, just specific situations. Also, there's an LED light on them that clearly indicates when the camera is recording vs. when it isn't.

Nobody cares, and everyone loves the candid videos I take with it

So Canadians and Russians shouldn't buy them is what you are saying?

The advantage for me is being able to snap video without holding anything in my hands. Sure, I could do that with a Go Pro but with these I just throw them on. I find the video quality to be good enough... the few moments I've captured have been so outstanding that I don't really care that it's not 4K.

Agreed, hopefully that changes as things are more ironed out

I've never had a problem with loudness, in fact I only use them around 50% volume even walking outside next to a busy road. But I agree the audio quality is about the same as a phone speaker.

Mine sound decent for what they are and I'm fairly into audio stuff.

Same.

They're about Meta the company.

They're also about the product category, which is poised to obliterate the last shred of privacy a citizen still has.

*fewer* screens.

Taking pictures of small kids is a different thing altogether.

Many of the shots you want are very fleeting moments that you won't get after you took your phone from the other room. Then holding a phone will often redirect attention on the phone or hide your face, and again you'll have lost the moment.

The best alternative is someone else taking the picture (that can include auto photographing devices, like the one Google made and discontinued), the second best is you taking the pictures/videos with the most intrusive and practical device you can get. Smart glasses sound pretty good for that.

On the music part, I see a niche where glasses are unbeatable: most buds need to either stick into the ear canal or hook on the external ear, or both. If you hate things in your ears and also wear glasses, having the glass act as headphones is the best of both world.

None of that is mainstream IMHO, but there will be a sizeable public clamouring for these.

In 10 years the mentality evolves.

It used to be considered extremely rude to pull out your phone during a conversation, now all the under 20 do it.

I have the first generation of these, and as far as I know there isn't a screen. The sweat issue is sensitivity to the side controls — the glasses think I'm changing the music, volume or whatever and I'm just wearing them and doing nothing. This was an issue early on but recently I went on a ride for 90 minutes and didn't have this issue.

> And surely workplaces will ban these?

For all but the most security-conscious companies, that ship has probably sailed. Bringing a camera into many companies used to be an exercise involving forms, approvals, and so forth. Now everyone has camera, video, and audio recording in their pocket.

Most of the people in this thread are agreeing with you. You are not even close to the only one.

Grateful to be living in Germany where this will not be allowed due to strict data privacy rules.

Hookup culture or any space (bars, clubs, festivals) where some level of shenanigans are expected will be destroyed by this even further than what smartphones has already done.

Imagine you take your kids to the beach and people are wearing these things. So even the beach won't be safe anymore.

Forget friends - random strangers in public. The slightest hesitation to "praise DJT" and you'll end up on the dox/fire/harass list.

Perhaps or maybe they will require them?

As someone with a very opinionated 11 year old nephew (so he grew up in the time of ubiquitous social media and he is getting to the age where he starts to understand its upsides and downsides) - I dare say that most children don't hold any grudges against their parents for making digital images and videos of them as babies and storing those on cloud platforms.

I don't have the cloud processing features enabled for photos/video on these. As far as I understand, the photos and videos aren't used for training data. I also don't publish these photos anywhere on social media.

Because kids sure hate putting pictures on instagram...

Thats such a ridiculously extreme viewpoint. What exactly did the user “do to them?”

No

Honestly, as someone who is not particularly pro Apple but bought (and returned) the Vision Pro, I cannot stress enough how much you need to try it out.

The issue with the product is entirely the lack of an ecosystem - the interface is unbelievably polished. The eye tracking & finger touch to click feels absolutely perfect. It really did feel like living in the future.

I returned it because the security policy at my work didn't allow me to pair it with my macbook, otherwise I would be using it all day every day.

In every popular thread there are tons of people optimistic and pessimistic about the subject. Saying “users here” shared an opinion is always wrong. Just look at the commend thread, there are all kinds of opinions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36201593

You can't attack another user like this on HN, and if you continue to break the site guidelines and post aggressively, we will ban you. We've already asked you twice:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45141433

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45054986

I don't want to ban you because you've also posted good things, but we can't have people posting egregiously like this here, so please fix this.