That thing where your every first sentence starts with a short statement followed by an em-dash and then continues? Stop that. That's what's really annoying people. Em-dashes as such are fine — really, you can use them if you want — but that gimmick isn't helping you.
It never ceases to amaze me people do that without any prompting. Why? What is gained? We are meat puppets who occasionally shit, piss, fuck, bleed, and die. Use a thesaurus if you must, but leave the asterisks out of it.
Genetics and a bit of dice rolling. That's the biggest part of the equation it seems. I have only one specimen to work with (and I am not inclined to create more), but he was reading at 4 and currently at 6 reads at a 3rd or 4th grade level, despite still being stuck in kindergarden until September.
Sure, we read to him, and we make him read aloud to us too, but we're really just catalysts. He can make himself comfortable in a chair or on a sofa and read comics (Donald Duck, Asterix, etc.) for hours without any prompting (which, honestly, is a really nice feature to have on a child). I expect we'll be able to coerce him onto autonomously reading suitable books in addition to comics by next year too.
I do strongly believe that him seeing us read, and being surrounded by (actual paper) books helps. It means he grows up in an environment where books are normal, not just something you must grapple with because of school.
I don't like the heavy training implied by the article though. I want to raise a kid who likes reading, not one who will resent being pushed to read.
I wonder if it's merely some language or cultural difference, and I don't mean it as a snipe at all, but may I just say - software products have "features", human beings have traits! Maybe it's a confusion based on the fact that human beings as well as traits also do have "features", but that refers to things like having tiny ears.
Having a very strong liking for sitting reading books for long periods is a lovely trait, but it certainly is not a feature (I would say!).
One thing which I tried to do with my kids, after exhausting all the classics (Narnia, _The Hobbit_, _The Lord of the Rings_, Susan Cooper's _The Dark is Rising Pentalogy_ --- highly recommend the latter for folks who have not read it) was to read biographies in chronological order --- as a dry run I did American Presidents (which did great things for my understanding of the ebb-and-flow of American history, since I would try to read an adult biography in advance in anticipation of questions).
The intent was to then go back to the beginning of human history and read biographies of notable persons in chronological order --- unfortunately, my wife's work schedule changed, so that bedtime reading quit happening --- probably my kids were about to age out of this anyway, but it was an interesting endeavour, and one which I have been meaning to take up again for my own sake. EDIT: and, if I should ever have grandchildren, inflict on them.
Doesn't it just give the shop a way to fetch the full address from some public API? I don't think you can just jot down that number on a box and have it delivered.
> Under the system, users can input these seven-digit codes on online shopping websites, and their addresses will automatically appear on the sites.
I wish we had those hanko. Signing off on any parcel is complete bullshit at the moment. Most delivery drivers neglect to ask for one (or that code you are supposed to give them for some delivery services), and when they do, you just make some arbitrary squiggle on their handheld device — it's not like you can actually do a faithful reproduction of your signature on those, even in 2025, and I certainly can't using my finger instead of a pencil or pen.
Yesterday a courier brought a pallet with my new drill press costing over €500. Signature required, but when I asked he told me not to worry, there was no need…
The fundamental problem with deliveries is that you, as the recipient, are not the customer.
The merchant pays for thousands of deliveries, but you on the receiving end are at best getting a handful.
So the courier is incentivised to offer the best rates to the merchant while completely ignoring the requirements or preferences of the recipient.
Your only recourse is to complain to the shop, who might do something if the volume of complaints is high enough, but most likely they’ll just pass the buck to the courier…
The recipient getting their stuff stolen is a big deal for the merchant too, though.
Certainly for an expensive item, the customer may be out their time, but they are going to ask for a replacement or a refund or do a chargeback, the merchant is generally going to have to accede to the request, and the merchant ends up being out money.
So if the merchant decides to trade off security for delivery cost (by choosing a courier with a slack approach to verification), that's their prerogative and they are economically incentivized to make the right decision on that.
For delivery problems that don't result in a chargeback (the courier leaves it somewhere inconvenient, or claims you weren't in, etc, but it eventually gets to you) that's the situation where it becomes your problem and the merchant isn't much empowered or incentivized to fix it.
Agreed about the signing.. that's useless. But at least for some shipments with value we have to show an ID (not just any ID - I always carry my passport though), back in my home country. Just signing is worthless, in particular when that implies trying to "write" something on a touch screen using your finger.
Here in Japan there's typically this little circle where you're supposed to stamp you hanko.. but I just sign my name, with a pen, whether the parcel is for me or for my wife. But at least the delivery guy will have me read the form to verify that it's actually for someone in the household.
Not that I would prefer the hanko.. that idiocy just have to go. I can see no safety in the system, it's just a made-up stamp after all. It has no place in a modern world. And it's on the way out, as far as I understand, but I still hear stories about people forgetting the hanko when they go to the bank, and despite having passports and other IDs they're denied service. And you need to bring that thing everywhere for contracts and the like.. and everything has to be done by physical presence.
Most delivery companies enacted signature exemption rules for covid and are in no hurry to rescind them. Getting signatures takes time, which affects their bottom line.
UPS closed my local facility to the public last month. Now I can only drop packages off at third parties for a fee, and the nearest hold location is over an hour away.
UPS was very unfriendly for consumer dropoffs for ages. That changed a bit. But seems to be headed back and I rarely get deliveries of Amazon stuff via UPS any longer.
I suppose it depends on your assessment of the risk. For me, taking an extra 30-45 minutes to pick something up is a pretty high bar. I've had a couple mis-deliveries at home but it's rare and think I eventually got the items. That's versus hundreds of other deliveries.
If your drill press had been delivered to the wrong person, and the sender had chosen insured delivery (which automatically requires a signature), it would be easy to prove that the signature on file with the transporter did not match the actual signature of the recipient (i.e. you) (unless a fraudster forged your signature, that is).
Mind you, from what I understand, the seller is legally responsible up to the point of delivery in the Netherlands*. Therefore, even if your drill press hadn’t been sent with required signature, the shop would still be responsible in case it had been lost (but then the loss would come out of their own pocket, rather than that of the transporter).
Disclaimer: not a lawyer.
* Assuming you’re from the Netherlands due to your user name.
All that means is that as the receiving party there is absolutely no reason for me to sign anything, or even use my actual signature.
Indeed, if the pallet was delivered to the wrong address and someone just took it, the burden of proof would lie with the selling party. Of course, a reputable transporter will make sure the address is right (plus, people generally don't act as if they were indeed expecting a pallet delivered by lorry).
> All that means is that as the receiving party there is absolutely no reason for me to sign anything, or even use my actual signature.
Yes, but this actually doesn’t matter.
The only time when the signature on file is actually relevant is when the sender lodges a claim for non-delivery. In that case, it could be compared to your actual signature.
Conversely, if no claim is lodged, the package must have been successfully delivered.
I bought a Steam Deck off amazon and they sent me a code on the day of delivery telling me to only provide this code to the delivery person face to face while receiving the parcel.
That seems like the perfect system because if you assume Amazon isn't trying to steal from you, the system can prove if the parcel was properly delivered or not.
It's a pain in the ass here with Polish Post with such screens - my signature doesn't even resembles one on the paper. Private delivery companies just call you to see if you're at home; you also have mobile apps and most of the time is possible to redirect packages to parcel machines. And these spawn like "shrooms after rain", as we say. They cared for codes, manual signing during pandemic but now - not really.
Things have changed in the recent past, and you very rarely need your hanko. Maybe for marriage? Nowadays you cab register your signature at a bank and use it for any activity as well.
Will it take off as a general consumer product this time? Probably, for some (unfortunately).
It will create a whole new class of distracted people in traffic, that's for sure. Someone lost in a smartphone screen is at least visually recognisable (“Better look out for that smombie about to cross…”), but someone dutifully following Google Maps directions on one of these could actually look like they are aware of their surroundings, whilst their full attention is fixed on the little map widget.
I think the problem here is traffic and cars. Seems crazy to think that it’s normalised to be in alert mode 100% of the time when out of your home because of cars. Every corner, every cross, I need to stop and double check for cars otherwise my life could end.
I'm really not looking forward to (pure) humans assaulting cyborgs again.
> No shirt. No shoes. No augmented reality glasses. No service. Earlier this month, human cyborg and University of Toronto Professor Steve Mann, claims he was brutalized and kicked out of a Paris McDonald’s after employees objected to his headset and its ability to record photos and videos of his experiences.
> [snip]
> To draw attention to his plight, on July 16th Mann posted an account of the alleged assault on blogspot, causing an international uproar. The incident has so far been covered by more than three dozen major news outlets, including Tech Crunch, Forbes, Mashable and The Verge. A group on Reddit had more than 2,000 comments as of this writing. Sci-fi blog io9 even described the alleged attack as "the world’s first cybernetic hate crime."
I'm kind of anxious about checking the map when I'm riding a motorcycle in traffic. You can get away with much lower situational awareness in a car simply because you're far more predictable and not invisible.
Speaking of which... I'm still waiting for a bike helmet with a back-facing camera/HUD that is neither vaporware nor "smart" (read vendor-dependent and barely working), and doesn't suffer from basic usability mistakes. That would be infinitely more useful and probably easier to make than this.
If road conditions become intense, then passengers will notice, and stop talking to let the driver focus. People on the other end of a speaker phone can't see the road, so will continue blabbing. (Or even try to regain the driver's attention. "Why aren't you responding?") I'm not sure if podcasts are as distracting as someone on a speaker phone, but they similarly don't adapt to the road conditions.
Is that much different from people lost in their thoughts or focusing on their podcast ?
As you point out, distracted people already exist, and new classes of them will appear every day. The problem exists and I don't want to minimize it, but from a driver's perspective the difference sounds minimal, and doesn't affect how you'll handle the situation (someone looking aware might not actually be)
This is not comparable to your two examples which are passive, the new device requires active partisipation will be additionaly distracting in that there will be all of the "gotchas" of modern UI design demanding "engagement".
Face it, this is an attempt to have everything a person sees and hears projected by a corporate entity....."real time threat awareness" and instant sales opotunintues, just look at anything and find out "how much™", .....offer price determined by pulse, pupil dialation, previous comments,buying power and purchases.
good times
The shibuya crossing also has at least 2 giant screens, with sound, and have been there for decades now. All of them have camera, and they probably have been checking the effect of each of the ads since the screens have been setup.
as to the "shibuya" crossing , ya whatever, take it as a given that I have been to many different crossings in big citys and other places...not on any maps
the comanality is to create an almost overwhelming spectacle and engage people in such a way that they open up there wallets....
the internet (phones, now "specs") as an always on
jittering, jiggling, flashing, binging,bonginging, personal , tic tock, shake down street, is though
floundering a bit, as we are all now a bit world weary, short on time, and utterly lacking in a home to go back too and tell our tails of the big city and flashing lights, gaining our own brief spot, at the center of things.
yes?, no?
just check out the fearsom demand for add blockers, calm down and sleep meds, burn out stories, etc, etc ,etc
or ,the very deep sigh when someone I am doing a deal with was commenting on all of the financial shenanigans going on vs/vs trade, tarrifs, and all that, and I said yes....but maybe we will slow down and have a more circular economy, and live better....
You're right, it's not much different at all. People have been walking around with headphones for decades, and the same prejudice existed early on when Bluetooth headsets were all the rage. XR glasses simply expand this to another sense.
Can it arguably be more dangerous? Sure. But we'll come up with more technology and regulation to minimize the dangers. And the prejudice will eventually go away as well.
As much as I think that everyone walking around with these things is unsettling in a dystopian way, transhumanism is inevitable, and this is just another step in that direction.
And it will haunt the Apple efforts to get these worn advertising screens into the market as well.
Good.
Why would one pay for the privilege to have everything they see overlayed with advertisements and every micro-expression analyzed for even better ad targeting?
I wouldn’t use a smartphone (or a browser on my computer for that matter) if it weren’t routed through my private DNS blocking advertising and tracking.
Whenever I see how the internet looks like for normal people, I shudder in horror.
Why one would pay for such a privilege? Because it's the latest new gadget and it's very convenient and its users don't experience any immediate negatives of using it. That's how people will happily let you get away with (digital) murder.
Hasn't it already happened? There are doorbell cameras, CCTV, dash cams, drones, and everyone using a phone is pointing a camera. Cameras are everywhere in public already.
Holding a phone up to film something is visibly different to wearing glasses which are effectively always on. Cameras are everywhere but there's an expectation that if I meet you in a private place or invite you into my home then you will not be recording everything. In the case of a glasshole there's no way to know if this expectation is being broken.
I'm not sure why the distinction with having a dash cam on a public road needs to be pointed out again and again.
Anyone carrying a phone can always be recording audio discretely and home assistant devices exist in private homes. These have already become commonly accepted risks to privacy in the same situations you've described. I think we as a society end up just trusting others to respect our privacy. That said, the glasses have advertised features like memory that aren't all that useful unless always on. If the glasses push to be always on, then there's definitely a risk that it could invade the privacy of others without the wearer's intent.
> Anyone carrying a phone can always be recording audio
They can and that's different than the capacity of the glasses we're talking about. Again there's a distinction here and I think a good faith discussion would avoid intentionally blurring these lines. If we are going to do that then my argument becomes against mandatory livestreaming of every visit to the toilet.
> These have already become commonly accepted risks to privacy in the same situations you've described.
We routinely ask people to leave their phones behind when entering e.g. concert halls or classrooms. Glasses overlap with something necessary for accessibility and can't be so easily removed.
> I think we as a society end up just trusting others
Who are "we as a society?" There are different cultures who will approach this differently. In the United States they ended up trusting one another not to shoot each other while in other societies they legislated against the casual carrying of firearms. We don't have to accept glassholes walking amongst us just because we accept that people have smartphones.
> there's definitely a risk that it could invade the privacy of others without the wearer's intent.
I was actually arguing with the assumption that this was a certain outcome of the technology.
Avoiding phones in some classrooms and concert halls hasn't slowed adoption of cellphones, that's what I mean by society accepting the product and their privacy risks. Simply turning off cellphones is likely enough to stop glasses from being useful on their own as they tether to a phone. We have the same merging of accessibility device and recording device already with air pods which now can be used as a hearing aid and can record audio when tethered to a phone. With on device (on the phone) image processing and machine learning advances they may be able to address the privacy issues to most peoples satisfaction. The only point I've tried to make in this discussion is that I don't think the product is likely to fail due to privacy concerns anymore as we've watched our privacy steadily erode over the last couple decades this has become a much smaller concession than it once was.
> that's what I mean by society accepting the product
Yes, and gun control is what I mean by society not accepting a product. Your logic is that one product has been accepted so we must now accept this different product, but the logic doesn't hold when there are many products we reject.
> Simply turning off cellphones is likely enough to stop glasses from being useful
They will simply sync once reconnected to a phone and eventually they will have all of the telecommunicative capabilities of phones.
> a hearing aid and can record audio when tethered to a phone
I've already said that audio is qualitively different to video. I don't care if someone comes to my kid's birthday party and records them singing songs but I care if they're going to film them in the pool.
> I don't think the product is likely to fail due to privacy concerns anymore as we've watched our privacy steadily erode
It's strange to me that you frame it as an erosion of privacy while in the same breath campaigning for becoming a passive victim of that erosion win absolutely no desire to criticise what's happening to. It gives me a great pain in my heart to see that capitalism she democracy have so thoroughly failed the Western world that we have completely shed any illusion of agency in shaping society or the market to serve us rather than the other way around.
>I think we as a society end up just trusting others to respect our privacy.
No. There are elements in society who can never be trusted and we can't lock them all up. I suspect it's no coincidence that Meta won't ship their glasses to countries which have the strictest laws designed to make it harder for said individuals. As a resident of one I hope it stays that way.
Unscrupulous individuals are more likely to use cameras that are intended to be concealed to avoid suspicion rather than glasses that have a fortune in advertising to make people aware of what they are and what they do. These glasses company have tons of money to lose for mishandling user data. Meta's glasses are available in many countries considered to have strict privacy laws all around the world: (Canada, Germany, Sweden, etc.) : https://www.meta.com/help/ai-glasses/4961066940605960/
I can't shave comfortably without showering first. Get the hairs soaked for a smoother shave. I wet shave, so all shaved bits get gathered in the razor which gets rinsed of in the basin.
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