Tried this on a Pixel 9, after allowing permissions the Start Scanning button does nothing, and there's nothing in the debug log. I do like the idea and might try again in the future if it gets updated. Seems like a good candidate for F-Droid instead of Google Play.
Currently detects via Meta, Essilor or Snap company ID.
So it won't detect my XReal's. I purposefully bought my XReal now because it feels like they might be one of the last models released without cameras.
But theoretically I could have the XReal Eye attachment on my glasses, and could be taking video through that. I don't, but the XReal user next to me might.
Of course the USB wire hanging from my ear probably makes me look suspicious enough already that the warning probably isn't necessary either way...
Looking at this almost unanimously negative comment section, on a tech website, it appears you should be concerned about your safety while wearing anything that could be seen as being "smart". I imagine a non-tech crowd would be even more negative.
> for identifying creeps nearby
> I recently had to interact with an idiot wearing meta glasses.
> Would renaming to ”Nearby Glassholes” be acceptable as a PR?
> If you're wearing these glasses and recording people in public, you're asking for a sweet punch in the face.
Tried this on my moto g 128GB - 2025 (XT2513V) running Android 16. Here is some rapid fire feedback.
I opened this in a pretty heavily populated area in Baltimore. There wasn't anyone likely near using glasses and no detections were made, but the debug log flew by absurdly quickly likely because there are a ton of Bluetooth devices nearby.
The start scanning button doesn't change to stop scanning, but it does seem to toggle scanning.
The top bar is overlapping with the notification bar area.
The bottom is truncated slight by my 3 button gesture bar thing. I am old and use the very ancient back, home and multi task buttons that are always visible because I am old.
When I first granted permission the app seemed to just lock up and wouldn't do anything until I restarted it. I gave it both the permissions it wanted and tried fiddling with stuff, but it didn't seem to redraw and I couldn't get the settings to open until after I restarted.
When I first started I think I was connected to my headset, which then disconnected after the permission request?
This is really neat, I gotta find an android device to try it. Reminds me of the good old days of wardriving with kismet and netstumbler.
I am surprised there isn't an existing BT/BTLE fingerprint table that takes more into account than just what is provided. I would assume each device, or atleast each chipset has subtle quirks that could be used to weed out some of the false positives.
the link in the readme for the identifiers doesn't work because it's relative to the repo, so it is below. I like that they did this, it's so much better than the OUI table for mac addresses, because some companies (cough cisco) keep getting new ones.
Add satellite imagery, nearby self-driving vehicles / Google maps cars, line-of-sight ring doorbells, peripheral street surveillance cameras, police equipment, people in your proximity with a smartphone camera, and various-purpose drones and then you'll have the perfect paranoia alerter.
The fact that people dislike so strongly only a subset of these recording devices also means something. Part of it is people being unaware. But also: wearers of smart glasses have a reputation. I guess the question is, is the glasshole reputation deserved.
Projects like this are useful not only for identifying creeps nearby, but also for highlighting a broader issue: once AI glasses become common, everyone nearby becomes part of the experiment.
I recently switched away from my usual brand when they started shipping AI-enabled glasses. That was my small way of opting out.
I just re-watched Ghost in the Shell SAC Laughing Man last night, and wouldn't mind seeing these things get hacked with the Laughing Man logo replacing any face it was looking at, re-writing signs, etc.
there's always room for another software arms race. the personal area network is not ready and the evolution will be painful and good for someone - us, or them, without regard for what those divisions are, it's going to hurt.
But as someone who can really use the features for daily use - visual assistance (low vision), alwyas worn set of speakers (no need to futz around with airpods everytime i want to listen to audio without looking like a dork)... I really can't wait for android XR smart glasses (sans display)
I believe the problem is not smart glasses per se, but spyware that runs on a lot (if not most) of such devices.
Shame the language makes people intrinsically hate the former by associating it with the latter without even questioning it. The idea of smart glasses is cool, the implementations are not.
Bought my first pair of Meta glasses in Oct 2023 and overall I really enjoying using smart glasses! They are great for quickly/easily capturing life experiences. Also, while traveling or wherever asking and getting information on things your looking at - it's cool & useful. Tho Meta makes trash as my 1st pair died after 14 months of use after a software update and then my 2nd pair only lasted 4 months after some water splashes. I called Ray Ban for tech support and the lady on the phone agreed they are trash per how many calls she gets.
I don't care to take pics of strangers tho lots of people who havent adopted them are concerned about such.
Overall no more Meta glasses for me Im waiting for Apple's. They have tons of stores to get your glasses fixed and they don't manufacture trash that breaks! Also, maybe Apple will add a privacy feature so your pics and vids anonymize faces not in your personal network.
Do you have children? I frequently want to record things my daughter does but I find that my phone is not close at hand. I am curious if the latency to record is low-enough and I don't want to distract my daughter while she's doing whatever she's doing. I just want to capture the moment for later without interrupting the moment. They advertise it as this but I am curious what it's like in actuality.
Are you making a counterpoint to the author's premise that smart glasses are an "intolerable intrusion?"
I'm having trouble understanding the purpose of your comment since it seems like you're just saying the ray ban glasses are bad for a different reason.
Aside from the project itself: They are eusing a "Polyform License" I haven't encountered that before. So it's not "open source" as many people might expect from GitHub and Polyform licenses seem to inherit the "what exactly is the boundary between non-commercial and commercial" issue as do CC licenses.
I use CC for most of my "work", and it's pretty clear to me what "commercial" means. If someone uses my work to earn any money, then it's commercial. Unless they contact me and explain why it isn't, then i can grant them a license that allows them that.
This is only relevant if the CC is CC-NC, otherwise commercial use is "ok". it's pretty straightforward.
We are really getting into the cyberpunk dystopia now. Adversarial tech in everyday wearables, hardware cat and mouse. Next step is offence as defence, ICE daemons counter hacking autonomously in the background.
But I think very soon the whole detection won’t be enough, because most people will have glasses, phones, CCTV, etc., I think the best is protecting yourself, so a cloak mask or similar, where for humans it’s barely visible but for machines it blocks you from being scanned or recorded.
The Quantum Thief series by Hannu Rajaniemi depicts a society where the protection point in "smart glasses" is addressed by making shared info opt-in and handling that centrally (vulnerability of which is a major plot point), so people see a non-distinct blob instead of a person if they don't have access. There's more to it in the books, but I won't spoil, I highly recommend reading these instead.
an invisibility cloak! crazy times, maybe we can make anti-smart-glasses glasses that detect smart glasses and have an invisible beam that can target and blind the cameras
> Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who is presiding over the trial, ordered anyone in the courtroom wearing AI glasses to immediately remove them, noting that any use of facial recognition technology to identify the jurors was banned.
I am not a believer in Zuckerberg's idea of humanity's future.
I was actually hoping it could be paired with speech to text very well and help along with hearing aids when the latter do not perfectly work. There are legitimate use cases.
> I am not a believer in Zuckerberg's idea of humanity's future.
I don't know what Zuckerberg's idea of humanity's future is but I believe it's basically inevitable that most people will be wearing always on cameras on their face in the future. The same way they carry always on phones today.
The use cases will be too compelling. There have already been demos. Ask the AI watching over your shoulder anything about your past and present and have it act on it.
I'm sure as a hater of that future you don't beleive. For me, I'd pick 2040 as the latest that people wearing always on cameras will be as common as smart phones in 2010 and grow at or faster than smartphones when they get it to actually work and be stylish. I'm not saying I'll enjoy being watched by all of those cameras. I'm saying I don't believe I'll have a choice any more than I have a choice of people having smartphones today.
That's because you are intentionally not included in it. Only him and his rich owning class buddies are, the rest of us are only profit-generating NPCs.
I might be misreading your comment so that being said:
If you wear a body cam because you feel threatened, hopefully you tell others that you're potentially recording them. The other catch is that the smart glasses do more than simply record video such as facial recognition and so on. Often these are things that have privacy ramifications that neither the wearer or the observer know exactly.
This is a real issue. I met up with someone for lunch today and we have both been harassed and stalked by the same individual. She has called the police about him before, and he is likely a psychopath. He would love to get his hands on a set of these. He already uses multiple phones and other tech to track people.
I don't think those are contradictory. Say each notification has a 90% chance of being true, so it's reasonable to say "probably". After 10+ notifications, each of which was individually probable, it is still very likely that at least one of them was a false positive.
Sooo technically this is on the edge of legal/not legal, depending on your intent and what the judge had for lunch that day. ID'ing devices without consent is a grey area at best.
> Sooo technically this is on the edge of legal/not legal, depending on your intent and what the judge had for lunch that day. ID'ing devices without consent is a grey area at best.
It's looking at the BLE advertising packets that they send out to everybody. The only thing stored is manufacturer ID, not a device ID (which you wouldn't be able to get anyways).
You might as well try to press charges against Apple or Google for putting readable names for nearby devices that aren't yours in the bluetooth pairing screen.
Filming/video and lookups of people filtered through a corporate data mining operation without their consent should also be illegal. I'll take my chances, thank you.
I recently had to interact with an idiot wearing meta glasses. There should be a mandatory consent requirement AND an "on air" red led.
What region has laws that you're not allowed to look at a packet that was broadcast from a device? This sounds prima facie absurd, but I know a lot of strange laws exist out there.
This would be a criminal matter, so a jury would have to decide if you're guilty. I feel like you'd have a hard time convincing 12 jurors that you're doing something wrong here.
I'm a bit torn on this because (at least in the sci-fi utopia stories) when a critical mass of people are recording full time then interpersonal crime and anti-social behavior is strongly discouraged. It's like an honor-based culture at scale.
Except the basis of that culture would not be honour, would it? A critical mass of people scrutinizing and reporting others' actions might lead to a compliance-based culture. It's different IMO. i.e. intrinsic motivation to behave well (honour, morality, decency) versus extrinsic motivation to behave well (fear of unpopularity, law enforcement, mob reaction, etc.)
Which sci-fi utopia stories exactly are you referring to? Please remind me, because all the scifi with ubiquitous surveillace I recall are about dystopias instead.
It will be a delight for anyone who ever wished there existed footage of every time they vomited in public or face-planted after tripping on a cobblestone.
Honor culture is what happens when there's no reliable institutions or evidence, so people have to defend reputation themselves - usually with retaliation and interpersonal violence. Always-on cameras are the opposite idea: enforcement moves outside the individual, which is basically how honor cultures stop being a thing.
from my recollection in most of the stories that is the primary starting point of the narrative but as the story goes along it turns out what you have is a dystopia, which is what it looks like we would actually get.
Firstly, fear and honor are far from being the same thing. Second, we already have this in our society today via smartphones and things have not changed for the better. If anything, society is more torn than ever.
burkaman|5 days ago
Morizero|5 days ago
zoklet-enjoyer|5 days ago
bryanlarsen|5 days ago
So it won't detect my XReal's. I purposefully bought my XReal now because it feels like they might be one of the last models released without cameras.
But theoretically I could have the XReal Eye attachment on my glasses, and could be taking video through that. I don't, but the XReal user next to me might.
Of course the USB wire hanging from my ear probably makes me look suspicious enough already that the warning probably isn't necessary either way...
nomel|5 days ago
> for identifying creeps nearby
> I recently had to interact with an idiot wearing meta glasses.
> Would renaming to ”Nearby Glassholes” be acceptable as a PR?
> If you're wearing these glasses and recording people in public, you're asking for a sweet punch in the face.
ddtaylor|4 days ago
I opened this in a pretty heavily populated area in Baltimore. There wasn't anyone likely near using glasses and no detections were made, but the debug log flew by absurdly quickly likely because there are a ton of Bluetooth devices nearby.
The start scanning button doesn't change to stop scanning, but it does seem to toggle scanning.
The top bar is overlapping with the notification bar area.
The bottom is truncated slight by my 3 button gesture bar thing. I am old and use the very ancient back, home and multi task buttons that are always visible because I am old.
When I first granted permission the app seemed to just lock up and wouldn't do anything until I restarted it. I gave it both the permissions it wanted and tried fiddling with stuff, but it didn't seem to redraw and I couldn't get the settings to open until after I restarted.
When I first started I think I was connected to my headset, which then disconnected after the permission request?
SunboX|4 days ago
xlii|4 days ago
dec0dedab0de|5 days ago
I am surprised there isn't an existing BT/BTLE fingerprint table that takes more into account than just what is provided. I would assume each device, or atleast each chipset has subtle quirks that could be used to weed out some of the false positives.
the link in the readme for the identifiers doesn't work because it's relative to the repo, so it is below. I like that they did this, it's so much better than the OUI table for mac addresses, because some companies (cough cisco) keep getting new ones.
https://bitbucket.org/bluetooth-SIG/public/src/main/assigned...
mrbluecoat|5 days ago
nickorlow|5 days ago
thih9|4 days ago
Nition|4 days ago
randallsquared|5 days ago
hedayet|5 days ago
I recently switched away from my usual brand when they started shipping AI-enabled glasses. That was my small way of opting out.
catoc|5 days ago
heyheyhouhou|5 days ago
micw|5 days ago
jelder|4 days ago
webdoodle|4 days ago
digitalsushi|4 days ago
there's always room for another software arms race. the personal area network is not ready and the evolution will be painful and good for someone - us, or them, without regard for what those divisions are, it's going to hurt.
Slapping5552|5 days ago
But as someone who can really use the features for daily use - visual assistance (low vision), alwyas worn set of speakers (no need to futz around with airpods everytime i want to listen to audio without looking like a dork)... I really can't wait for android XR smart glasses (sans display)
drdaeman|5 days ago
Shame the language makes people intrinsically hate the former by associating it with the latter without even questioning it. The idea of smart glasses is cool, the implementations are not.
unknown|5 days ago
[deleted]
paul7986|5 days ago
I don't care to take pics of strangers tho lots of people who havent adopted them are concerned about such.
Overall no more Meta glasses for me Im waiting for Apple's. They have tons of stores to get your glasses fixed and they don't manufacture trash that breaks! Also, maybe Apple will add a privacy feature so your pics and vids anonymize faces not in your personal network.
arjie|5 days ago
cole-k|5 days ago
I'm having trouble understanding the purpose of your comment since it seems like you're just saying the ray ban glasses are bad for a different reason.
johannes1234321|4 days ago
https://github.com/yjeanrenaud/yj_nearbyglasses/blob/main/LI...
https://polyformproject.org/
genewitch|10 hours ago
This is only relevant if the CC is CC-NC, otherwise commercial use is "ok". it's pretty straightforward.
cpeterso|5 days ago
piskov|5 days ago
pavel_lishin|5 days ago
qmr|4 days ago
fortran77|4 days ago
qmr|4 days ago
ehnto|4 days ago
alt187|4 days ago
OrangeMusic|3 days ago
- People can film you with a hidden miniature camera
- People who want to discreetly film people without their knowledge won't use smart glasses, because they're too obvious
tamimio|5 days ago
But I think very soon the whole detection won’t be enough, because most people will have glasses, phones, CCTV, etc., I think the best is protecting yourself, so a cloak mask or similar, where for humans it’s barely visible but for machines it blocks you from being scanned or recorded.
Klaster_1|4 days ago
luxuryballs|5 days ago
heyheyhouhou|5 days ago
fusslo|5 days ago
> Judge Carolyn Kuhl, who is presiding over the trial, ordered anyone in the courtroom wearing AI glasses to immediately remove them, noting that any use of facial recognition technology to identify the jurors was banned.
I am not a believer in Zuckerberg's idea of humanity's future.
newyankee|5 days ago
duxup|5 days ago
socalgal2|4 days ago
I don't know what Zuckerberg's idea of humanity's future is but I believe it's basically inevitable that most people will be wearing always on cameras on their face in the future. The same way they carry always on phones today.
The use cases will be too compelling. There have already been demos. Ask the AI watching over your shoulder anything about your past and present and have it act on it.
I'm sure as a hater of that future you don't beleive. For me, I'd pick 2040 as the latest that people wearing always on cameras will be as common as smart phones in 2010 and grow at or faster than smartphones when they get it to actually work and be stylish. I'm not saying I'll enjoy being watched by all of those cameras. I'm saying I don't believe I'll have a choice any more than I have a choice of people having smartphones today.
latexr|4 days ago
It gets worse.
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/02/meta-zuckerberg-ai-bots-fri...
unknown|4 days ago
[deleted]
Refreeze5224|5 days ago
toomuchtodo|5 days ago
elcapitan|5 days ago
dwighttk|4 days ago
m0llusk|5 days ago
duxup|5 days ago
If you wear a body cam because you feel threatened, hopefully you tell others that you're potentially recording them. The other catch is that the smart glasses do more than simply record video such as facial recognition and so on. Often these are things that have privacy ramifications that neither the wearer or the observer know exactly.
itishappy|4 days ago
nephihaha|5 days ago
LlamaTrauma|5 days ago
umairnadeem123|5 days ago
[deleted]
strathmeyer|5 days ago
[deleted]
yunnpp|5 days ago
[deleted]
p_ing|5 days ago
burkaman|5 days ago
scotty79|5 days ago
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
catoc|5 days ago
Nothing contradictory there.
Even “…when the app alerts you, smart glasses are likely nearby” might be reasonable.
mathfailure|5 days ago
qotgalaxy|5 days ago
[deleted]
btbuildem|5 days ago
magicalist|5 days ago
It's looking at the BLE advertising packets that they send out to everybody. The only thing stored is manufacturer ID, not a device ID (which you wouldn't be able to get anyways).
You might as well try to press charges against Apple or Google for putting readable names for nearby devices that aren't yours in the bluetooth pairing screen.
davidee|5 days ago
I recently had to interact with an idiot wearing meta glasses. There should be a mandatory consent requirement AND an "on air" red led.
cloudfudge|5 days ago
IncreasePosts|5 days ago
yonatan8070|4 days ago
NoahZuniga|5 days ago
This would be a criminal matter, so a jury would have to decide if you're guilty. I feel like you'd have a hard time convincing 12 jurors that you're doing something wrong here.
pluralmonad|5 days ago
driverdan|5 days ago
tantalor|5 days ago
emptybits|5 days ago
Except the basis of that culture would not be honour, would it? A critical mass of people scrutinizing and reporting others' actions might lead to a compliance-based culture. It's different IMO. i.e. intrinsic motivation to behave well (honour, morality, decency) versus extrinsic motivation to behave well (fear of unpopularity, law enforcement, mob reaction, etc.)
pityJuke|5 days ago
(hint: smart glasses encourage anti social behaviour for online clout.)
phoronixrly|5 days ago
burkaman|5 days ago
roughly|5 days ago
AlecSchueler|5 days ago
jibal|5 days ago
toomuchtodo|5 days ago
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Glasshole
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
thomassmith65|5 days ago
Klaster_1|4 days ago
bryanrasmussen|5 days ago
Etheryte|5 days ago
unknown|5 days ago
[deleted]