It\u2019s happening: people are once walking into public places wearing a video-recording face computer on their heads. Only this time, the faceputer is sold by Meta, not Google.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Say hello to Meta\u2019s Glassholes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Over the weekend, as buyers got their first uninterrupted stretches of time with the new Meta Quest 3 headset, some started posting videos of themselves interacting with the real world instead <\/em>of playing games. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Sure, it\u2019s cool to blast low-poly baddies breaking through your walls, but isn\u2019t it more technically impressive that Meta\u2019s new headset lets you cook a meal or sweep your floors or enjoy a fancy coffee on a beautiful day without ever taking off the machine? That\u2019s what the Quest 3\u2019s full-color, low-latency passthrough video allows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It didn\u2019t take long for people to begin pushing the limits \u2014 both technologically and socially. Jay Mayo walked the New York Comic-Con floor with the headset on, recording clips of strangers along the way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kukurio59 filmed themselves waiting for an elevator, already one of the most socially awkward spaces humanity has to offer. (They also filmed some less public demos.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n And, in the video you already saw atop this post, XR and AI booster Cix Liv went nearly full Glasshole by walking straight into a San Francisco coffee shop and placing an order, without bothering to hide the cafe\u2019s address. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Here\u2019s that video again:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I spoke to Ray Ng, co-owner of Fiddle Fig Cafe, the coffee shop in question, and he thinks it was just \u201ca stunt for laughs and giggles.\u201d Liv didn\u2019t sit down and drink his coffee with the headset on, says Ng. \u201cThey took the set off, sat down, and that was it,\u201d he tells me over the phone. The whole thing was over in \u201cmaybe 5 minutes.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n But that won\u2019t necessarily stop other attention-seekers from following Liv\u2019s lead \u2014 they might even embolden each another. \u201cNow I don\u2019t feel bad walking around with the headset during comic con,\u201d Mayo replied to Liv, after the artist who filmed themselves walking around New York Comic-Con saw Liv\u2019s cafe video.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We\u2019ve been through all of this before, of course \u2014 a decade ago, public opinion turned against Google Glass, with public business owners in particular coming out against the tech. Diners, movie theaters, casinos, bars, and other public establishments outright banned the headset \u2014 one woman was allegedly assaulted for wearing Google Glass in San Francisco, and an XR pioneer was assaulted in Paris while using a similar-looking device.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n But that was a decade ago, and I argued last year that our definition of privacy, our tolerance for public photography, and our resistance to wearable technology have all changed considerably since Google first introduced Glass. Maybe it won\u2019t be such a problem this time around? Smartphone cameras everywhere is now the norm, and small businesses often benefit from an influencer plug; Ng was fine with me naming Fiddle Fig Cafe in this story.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n I do wonder if Meta was prepared for the Quest 3 to be the glasshole\u2019s headset of choice, though. While the company has put considerable thought into making sure its glasses-like Ray-Bans don\u2019t fall into the same trap \u2014 publishing privacy explainers and guidelines on using those glasses in public, including proactively letting people know you\u2019re recording \u2014 the Quest 3 doesn\u2019t seem to have similar published guidelines.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s also a bit harder for bystanders to tell when the Quest 3 is recording. It simply pulses a white light, slowly, and it\u2019s a light that\u2019s already on by default. When I asked my wife if she thought I was recording, she said she had no clue. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Then again, if I saw someone walking into a cafe with a bulbous white object atop their face with multiple camera slits, I\u2019d just automatically assume they were recording absolutely everything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Meta didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [ad_1] It\u2019s happening: people are once walking into public places wearing a video-recording face computer on their heads. Only this time, the faceputer is sold by Meta, not Google. Say hello to Meta\u2019s Glassholes. Over the weekend, as buyers got their first uninterrupted stretches of time with the new Meta Quest 3 headset, some started …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8842,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}