There are still a couple of ANSI and ASCII art groups with quite an active membership. Perhaps the most notable is Blocktronics:
http://blocktronics.org
Anyone recording me with a camera in their hat or on their lapel or a microphone embedded in their clothes would be treated in roughly the same manner as someone recording me using Glass.
Just because the act of wearing the recording device is in plain-sight doesn't make it anymore acceptable to people who find it objectionable.
Here's the difference: A camera in a hat is designed to record people without their knowledge. Glass is designed to do other things, and, in fact, is terrible at recording people without their knowledge, because everyone knows it's a camera. It even has an indicator light to show when it's recording. It just happens to be possible to record people without their knowledge with it.
If anybody actually wanted to record people without their knowledge, Glass would be a terrible tool to choose, and many times more expensive than the alternatives, too. It's just not worth being that worried about.
With a truly hidden camera, you would never know. So you're freaking out over someone who might be able to record you, ignoring the fact that everyone could be recording you without you knowing it.
Either you're wilfully ignoring the point I'm making, or you've missed it completely.
I get that I might never know if or when I'm being monitored by some device, but that in no way justifies explicitly recording someone without their permission.
I get the point you're making. But if you're in a public place in the US or UK, you have given your consent to be recorded. The difference between Glass and smaller, less conspicuous recording devices is that with Glass at least you know there's the possibility of being recorded by that person (same way with cell phones). If someone really wanted to record you without your permission, there are cheaper and sneakier ways to do it. Also, it's not that hard to pull out a phone and pretend to text while actually recording video. No one would ever know.
So the idea that people wearing Glass are assholes is a ridiculous notion because there are already numerous ways to record someone without explicit approval, you already have the right to record anyone in a public place even without explicit permission, and it's already possible (and already happens) with existing smartphones. So if you're getting mad at Glass wearers for something that people are already doing, you're the asshole. The only difference between Glass and other technology is that Glass is newer and less common. That's it.
The photography of an individual can constitute harassment even in a public place - there is no implied consent involved. Even if it were, as you implied, perfectly legal in all cases then this in no way makes the act ethical. This is especially true when concerning a new technology which makes it trivially easy to perform. I'd expect if Glass, or some descendant of it, becomes more ubiquitous, then social guideline and laws would eventually prohibit it's use in certain situations. Would you, for example, be happy with someone recording you in a public restroom?
You're also repeatedly missing the argument I've already made twice in this thread with your second paragraph,
Filming someone is rude. What are you going to do about it? Ban smartphones? It's trivially easy to pretend to use your phone while secretly recording. Ban DSLRs? I could pretend to be taking static pictures while actually running a video. Ban video cameras? They might look like they're idle, but maybe they're recording with the "recording" light turned off. Ban surveillance cameras? Hell, anyone can hang one of them on a building, and who knows where the video will end up?
I'm not missing the argument. You're just not making an argument worth refuting. "Oh no, someone has a device capable of recording me" so fucking what? Welcome to 1975, you can buy recording devices at a dollar store. No one looks twice when there's a CCTV camera or a smartphone out in public.
You hate Glass because it's unusual, not because it's capable of recording you.
I appreciate the sentiment, and no disrespect for the guy either, but it makes this site a little less like 'Hacker News' and more like the front page of Wikipedia.
Yeah I know what you mean. I sometimes start flagging the wikipedia articles when there are too many on the front page. It really does feel odd when there's too many, as if people are just desperate for karma (a la reddit).
I'm not saying that they shouldn't be on hackernews exactly... but I wish people would at least write up a blogpost or find a news article about a subject, rather than just posting wikipedia pages directly.
It's worth mentioning that Woody Allen has a fairly unique relationship in Hollywood; the studios grant him an unprecedented amount of creative control and allow him to continue making films within the system for very little returns, and Actors also voluntarily take a cut in their usual fee to appear in his films.
I'm not sure what lessons can be drawn, if any, from this stray point away from the normal distribution curve.
I was worried about that too, it looks cool, makes the text hard to read because its distracting, and ultimately might result in a bunch of pages which get less useful.
IMO, it probably wouldn't be best to put this on a page with content is the main factor. This is sort of cool for branding/marketing and can have a big impact in that arena.
Then, perhaps, it shouldn't do so on its project page and instead link to a demo. I found it extremely distracting just reading the project web page at all, never mind all the sudden fan noise.
I've got to admit this was my first thought too, but I think the scope of the business is to provide the plumbing for apps, rather the just a Twitter replacement.
