Technology

So...

I inherited my grandmother's house. I'm a heterosexual bachelor, I don't give a shit about decoration, so the automotive tools and 3D printing detritus, house cat, and electronics shit from about waist down are mine, the artwork and curtains and shit at chest level and above are still my grandmother's.

Included in this is one of those "one large frame full of a bunch of individual family photos" things that ceased to be manufactured during Dubya's first term. In it is a picture of a bunch of relatives of mine hanging out in a back yard, the last of whom died last month, a black and white photo of my father when he was 7, a dageurrotype of my great grandfather's first wedding...

And a polaroid of me, age 2, scrote ass naked, riding Bradley. Who the fuck is Bradley. So, while I was a fetus, my family went to a state fair. My father decided to stop at the carnie section to play ring toss. My hilariously pregnant 5 foot tall mother wanted to play too. So Dad gave her a fistful of rings. And she got one. As my dad tells it, the second my mama cheered, that carnie took the rest of those rings from my father, chucked them in a different, empty basket presumably to inspect them to make sure they are in fact smaller than the neck of the bottles, and begrudgingly told her to pick out one of the hilariously huge stuffed animals on display, and she picked a life-size tiger. On the way back out of the fair, my family walked past a National guard exhibit, including several tanks and armored vehicles. My grandmother, the idiot that decided to carpet my bathroom, noticed the sign next to a particularly large tank-like machine said "Bradley Fighting Vehicle" and she said "Oh how cute, they named it." And lo the 6 foot long polyester tiger was named Bradley.

Three years later, I got out of a bath tub, and before some toddler sized tighty-whiteys happened I mounted that very tiger like a horse, which amused my father enough to go get the family Instamatic. My grandmother ended up owning the resulting photograph, time makes corpses of us all, I inherited my grandmother's estate to include a 37 year old picture of my own dick.

So when I build my drinks cabinet intended to go on that wall, and pull down that photo collage and give it to my parents, one of whom was the photographer of several of those family photos, am I going to be arrested for trafficking child porn?

Probably, in Trump's America.

Not true. I've had my eye on a pair for awhile that has no camera, only microphone, but has a HUD. Having navigation, an irl minimap, without having to keep your phone out is nice and has some actual positive safety implications. Also, this might mean less to Americans, but as someone living in Europe, having in line translation is really, really cool. Could almost sell it on that alone. I've heard some deaf folks are also using it to help understand people by augmenting their lip reading (which usually doesn't get all of the information across by itself) with summaries that the mic picked up.

I've only held off because the pair I was looking at seem like it isn't quite there yet in reliability, but there are definitely some pretty big use cases I can think of. I would 100% get some of these without a camera.

I’d use them to subtitle everything because i’m deaf

there's really no reason to have a screen on your face

Look around. People have a screen on their face 24/7. Currently they need their hand to hold it there.

Maybe you mean there is no need for a camera on your face. That I agree with.

Lidar, rather than a camera. Allows it to create a 3d model of what’s in front of it without being able to take pictures itself

So there are certainly some valid use cases. They could be useful for surgeries, engineering design work, surveying, etc. None of these have you wearing them all the time or in social areas through. It's a niche product they need to focus on those markets and stop trying to force mass adoption. It's the same as AI.

Get away with watching YT at work? Reclaim hours of my life, that's my end goal.