quantumquetzal

Aren’t browser-extension ad blockers (uBlock Origin, AdBlock, etc.) not helpful for solving this problem? As far as I’m aware, by the time the ad can be blocked by such programs, you have already consumed the data.

Wouldn’t a better solution be DNS sinkholing, like PiHole or AdGuard Home?

Sign language (speaking with ASL in mind, unfamiliar with others) uses a different grammatical structure from American English. To boot, a signer can adopt different body languages to imbue their message with different tonality. Current ML models (as far as I’m aware) struggle with capturing that tonality in speech-to-text, and there’s _far_ less data for sign language recognition, regrettably.

Wow! Thanks for the response. This is exciting work, and I’m pleased to see it being iterated on.

Re: #2. I’m assuming the varying depth is manually-controlled? Or is it automated by some method? If it’s manual, can the adjustment be made while transcription is active? In other words, can I change the focal distance to match the speaker without interrupting the speaker?

All in all, cool stuff! Best of luck with the work.

There’s a significant amount of evidence pointing to the fact that “anchored” captions (a la speech bubbles, like a comic book) is a preferred way to render captions, assuming the bubbles are at the same focal distance as the speaker. This is solvable with “true” AR, but getting that compute into the lightweight form factor of the original video is an unsolved problem, and is a ways off.

I would disagree! It takes time and resources to learn ASL or even fingerspelling. This would allow people without the time/resources to communicate effortlessly, which I would say is a marked improvement. That said, you could argue it would be a one-way conversation, which is a fair point.

Background: researched this space for a graduate degree.

There are a few issues that are unanswered by this video (which isn't intended to be a technical deep dive, but I don't see any related links in the video description):

1. How do these glasses handle multiple simultaneous speakers? Based on the display I saw, it shows the speakers' words sequentially, which starts to fall apart in real-world environments, especially group conversations. This is a big problem, and wider adoption is contingent on handling this elegantly.

2. These appear to be the classic "smart glasses" display style that's pervasive in consumer head-worn displays today, where content is projected at a fixed depth in front of the wearer. Because the captions aren't anchored at the same focal distance as the speaker, the wearer's eyes will swap between the captions and the speaker's faces, which is a tiring activity, and can make the wearer feel like they're not part of the conversation or being rude.

3. As mentioned by another commenter, this is a useful idea for people who lose their hearing later in life. That said, this is less (although certainly still) useful for people who have congenital hearing loss and primarily communicate via ASL.

All in all, it's exciting to see growing interest in this space, as it's easily extendable to people learning a new language or navigating a foreign country. I think offloading the speech-to-text to a tethered mobile device is a good choice (though it would be nice to do low-latency wireless transmission).

My personal feelings on unions aside, I think some of these points a union COULD address.

- Non-competes. Your rationale for non-competes is a non sequitur here. A union can represent workers and negotiate against signing non-competes if it is legal in a state, which would make a union desirable in that case.

- Military contracts. Whether it belongs in the workplace is irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that there are many tech employees who are averse to working on certain projects, and a union representing them would be able to negotiate what kind of contracts their members would work on.

- Benefits - A union certainly is viable here.

- Outside of work - a union would certainly be able to defend their members’ right to not be terminated for reasons irrelevant to their work, expressing their opinions on a controversial matter being one of those potential reasons.

By no means am I arguing the notion that their track record of supporting products (especially hardware) is good, especially when compared to other participants in the space. It is poor, I think most of us have heard that at least once by now.

At the same time, nobody has to venerate anything in these threads either. Positive and negative discussion should be encouraged. But merely stating that "it's gonna be cancelled, place your bets" (as many of the comments at the bottom of this thread do) does not constitute meaningful or intellectually-stimulating conversation, and we as a community should strive to do better than that.

Every time a Google product release makes its way to this site, it seems as though many commenters don't read the article and instead attempt to "dunk on" Google for their history of cancelling projects, vying to express how they distrust Google because of their privacy invasiveness or their inability to commit or some anecdotal evidence dealing with support. Same with Meta products.

It's an exhausting exercise to attempt to find good-faith discussion of the products being released.

While I'm unsure of the market for Starline, I think it presents an interesting alternative to XR-based collaboration: why bother with trying to reinvent the entirety of reality or augment it, when we can insteas capitalize on existing technologies and eke every bit of computw out of them?

Who's to say which methodology is 'correct"? The technology alone is impressive. Hopefully this can see wider adoption to find out where it fits in the technological landscape.