What kind of idiot would buy a pen for 60 bucks though?

Oh..

They're selling them for $400?! If everyone buys a pair but never uses them they'll go bankrupt in a second. No way they're making money at that price.

The fact that this is labelled as a "flashlight" and the product listing doesn't tell you anywhere that it's actually a laser is shady as fuck. The seller is probably trying to dodge safety regulations.

There's a review on the same product from a different seller that has a close-up of the label:

https://a.co/d/0bgSPi28

This is a 50W laser, which is pretty dangerous. Just looking at the reflection spot where the laser hits something could damage your eyes, and never mind looking directly into the beam. If you're going to use something like this you should be wearing properly tested safety glasses rated for that frequency, not the cheapos that come with it.

Edit: that safety label is definitely wrong. Class III lasers are between 5 and 500 mW, so this is probably 500mW and not 50000mW, which makes a lot more sense because you'd never fit that in an object this size.

The fact that the safety label is wrong makes this thing even worse.

Shit, that looks cool just to have LMAO

And if you’re really that worried about it a regular diode might do the trick. Or just a resistor. Or just desoldering the LED. In any case, it’s fucking stupid that these glasses exist in the first place.

Me wearing my skull-protecting shirt that says "I'm going to break your fucking skull open"

Strong disagree. People fucking hate wearing tech on their faces for any extended period of time. People will push back on tech if it doesn't actually offer any benefit to users and this doesn't do anything better than what we already have.

Any killer app idea could be done better and faster and reach way more people if you just build it on a phone with your existing phone camera.

Plus there's a bunch of people who actually have to wear glasses every day aren't going to want to have pay the premium to get already expensive prescription lenses for what amounts to a novelty spy cam for Zuck.

If they came up roughly with the rise of smartphones and social media I'd agree. But tons of people have realised the harm these companies can do, so they're much less inclined to accept being recorded without consent nowadays.

Yup. I remember when cell phones first started creeping into life.

People used to get side-eye for interrupting in-person shit for taking a phone call - for example, when some asshole would get a call and start yammering away in a restaurant. At least among some people; lots of people will happily pick their nose in public and so on and so those people never even gave any kind of social niceties any thought, of course.

Same thing for when bluetooth headsets started coming on the scene. I realized things were fucked when some asshat wheeled up next to me at a urinal, apparently talking to himself, until I realize he's yammering away on his headset while taking a piss.

And now for the past several years, yeah, some people get butthurt about "boomers" calling them if they are Gen X or younger or whatever, but still...it's hard having a full conversation this day, involving eye contact with normal functioning adults without some interruptions while they start fiddling with their phone again to scroll endlessly or text someone who is not even present over some meaningless shit.

So yeah, I agree with you - the minute this has even a barely-passable use and hits some inflection point on price we are going to see this shit everywhere.

This is like the fifth time this tech has been a thing, if HoloLens, Google Glass, and Vision Pro couldn’t find a niche this thing definitely won’t. I can remember when Sony had ones that used a CD-ROM Walkman for the display software and those were going to be on the head of every engine mechanic before the end of the 90s…

Doesn't the glasses "know" if you tape it over and blocks you? I thought I remember there being a proximity sensor.

That said, usually prox sensors don't detect things like.....nail polish. Or paint.

Apps can't (normally) switch it off. That's why you need a hardware mod to disable it.

Meta has designed the glasses to not work if someone covers up the LED with tape.

I have seen my colleague look at them. And he also looked at some custom made tape, with small holes in them. So just enough light gets in, so it won't disable the recording function. But it still hides the light so others can't see it....

The Snapchat(?) glasses would turn off if you covered the LED.

Painting over the LED doesn't work. There is a sensor in there that detects this, somehow (I don't know exactly how). The pricetag is a testament to how much effort has gone into making it hard to bypass, but it's obviously not going to be impossible.

I'd say the creep is the person who designed these in the first place

Not with an archived version: https://archive.ph/3O9mw

No it won't. There's a sensor that detects covering the LED.

This is the 3rd or 4th comment about this (across the Threadiverse) - why don't people ask why this costs $60 - and then go and find out? It's right fucking there in the article (before the paywall, even).

It turns on Zuck.

Nope. It is programmed to shut off recording if light is covered, which is why this mod exists.

Edit: better phrasing.

Or a piece of electrical tape.