Cree-eepy. I pulled my shades after watching this video.

I mean, this technology has existed for decades but only in the hands of governments; while no more trustworthy than anyone else, its limited availability meant the ordinary citizen was unable to be the target of close surveillanec. Now it's available to any consumer with a few kilobux to waste. In a decade or so we'll probably see this sort of resolution on our smartphones.

Privacy really is dead.

Now... if this had been about how texting and smartphones are destroying life and culture...

As opposed to the videographer, who quickly switched on their smartphone!

Note to self:
NEVER BUY A SMARTPHONE AND DATA PLAN IN THE US

What they're showing certainly is ridiculous, but I'd be pretty happy with a monochrome green projection. That said, in all likelihood some sort of flexible OLED patch or wrist band would probably be practical long before this is. Probably even some sort of fluorescing tattoo.

I do like the possibilities of short throw pico projectors combined with machine vision for user interfaces though. You could take Newtboy's dual projector concept and have something the size of a couple marker pens that unrolls like a scroll, with the screen in the middle.

When it comes down to it, though, what I really want right now is something about the size of a smartphone, with minimized thickness an e-ink display and a limited feature set (phone, text, e-mail, and basic web surfing), the whole design optimized for battery life and performing just those four functions adequately. An easily replaceable battery would be nice too.

MS has a free Fresh Paint App, that's pretty cool if you have a stylus. Haven't found any others worth endorsing...

MS just wanted consistency between the Desktop OS, tablets, and smartphones. Unfortunately they forgot that people use desktops for production, not consumption. Windows 10 sounds more like Windows 8.2, but who knows.

As far as password, you could try to set a PIN instead (it's fast to type 4 digits to unlock). Or in desktop mode, right-click on Computer and choose Manage. Local Users and Groups snap-in will let you change password, etc.

Yeah there are slap bands out there, but they don't work like this is presented to work. The arms would have to bend in multiple dimensions, and then straighten out and be able to provide a stable flying platform. The closest thing I think of for doing something like that is the "bendy" character toys where the metal wire is co-molded inside the body. That is a very heavy solution.
I misspoke on the 2" square, it is 2" x 2", so 4" square. I'm not sure that I agree that theirs is 6" x 3", but even if it is that would mean that the prop size would have to be about 1.25" and that doesn't work for a 6" x 3" vehicle. There isn't enough thrust and the motors at that size don't provide enough RPM's for that kind of weight.
On the electronic side, they show it connecting to a smart phone with video feedback. That means you have to have bluetooth at least, or a 5.4ghz video system if you want more than 30' range. or it has to have a Wifi TX on it. All of those thing require power. Sure it could analyze the video signal to determine subject matter, and provide guidance but you have some very serious issues there. If you do it on board it requires some processor power (More drain), if you do it on the smart phone app it will create lag.
Your phone has over 1,000 mAh in it (1440 in Iphone 5), that is a TON (4-10x) more than what this thing would have. Battery technology may be a big research project right now, but there isn't anything on the horizon that will get them to where they need to be. Most of the tech research is in sub 1C rated batteries for things like full size cars. Something like this needs a 10C rating minimum if not a 20C rating. Unfortunately most of the upcoming technology can not handle drains that fast. Things tend to go "Boom!". When you do something small, and even 6" x 3" is small, you have very serious power vs weight issues. It all comes down to issues of power density, and nothing exists today that will give it to them as they would need..

So right now these guys need to figure out:
1) A new light weight material that can lock rigid but also bend as needed in multiple directions.
2) A new battery technology that allows them to get the power they need, for a 6 axis gyro, 4 motors, control board,a RX, a HD camera and some sort of VTX while reducing weight. How long it powers all of that would be open, but if it is under 10 minutes I think people would be a little disgruntled. Right now people are wanting the video quads to get about 30-45 minutes of flight time on the 5200+mAh batteries.
3) Write code that allows them to analyze video in real time so as to provide object tracking and avoidance without lag while capable of running on a smartphone. It would also need to return to home when the battery runs low. That would be a little tricky on a cliff face, or if you are riding a bike through a forest. Another issue is that they tilt the camera down, they don't say if this is actuated, or done by hand, but it could lead to serious issues with programming object avoidance if you can't see anything above you.
4) Since they show the image as HD on the phone screen, they would also need to come up with a new way to broadcast HD video wirelessly. Right now that system costs $40K and is rather large.

All in all it is a dream product that people are going to get suckered into funding it. Some tech may come out of it that could be monetized, but I don't see the item coming out in this format, at least not in the next 3-5 years. You'd be better off going with AirDog.

Yes, automation is inevitable.
But I have no idea what shape an automated economy would take.

Let's assume this comes to pass and in 100 years only the very best and brightest humans (i.e. 0.001%) are employable. If there's no point in employing humans and they don't get paid.... who will drive demand? No point being able to super efficiently produce cars, smartphones, hell even coffee if no-one can afford it.

Essentially in an economy like this, the capitalist model completely collapses.

The bots will probably eventually realise the futility of this, wipe us all out and head off to explore space.

It's pretty easy to laugh at glass users as inconsiderate dickheads with stupid looking technology. Ya know, the same way everyone did with cell phone users back in the 80s.

I don't particularly like glass or the concept of everyone recording all the time, but it is going to happen. And what's more, it's going to impossible to tell.

What happens when the camera/display aspect of glass becomes small enough that it's just a contact lens. Or projecting a bit further, when we have neural interfaces that can directly record vision? Yeah, it all sounds a bit sci-fi, but then so would a smartphone back in the 80s.

History has shown that almost every outright dismissal of new technology as a fad has been wrong.

@newtboy, by the way, I believe glass does have a visible recording indicator.

NSA knows what's best for you.

I mean, surely their filtering algorithms have already analyzed a more accurate profile of you, than what your psychiatrist ever could? What with all the years of records of your internet searches, emails and videosift comments..

Seriously though, about this nice video, if you have a popular smartphone, no matter how you trust that fruit, droid or window logo, there's seriously no real guarantees that your activities are not recorded in whichever way, whenever. Any data on 'customers' is precious to these companies, or the NSA for that matter.

To be a bit cynical, I'd say that most people don't mind, they can't perceive anything strongly negative to come out of any of these privacy breaches. After all, so far the system has kept them relatively safe from the other ones, the evil ones.

To be even more cynical I'd say this hip guy, 10k likes on FB and all, seems to be quite smoothly riding the next generation's "My mom uses FB" disdain to .. I don't know? Maybe try to gain respect among this, certainly most sought after viewer demography, the younger generation, about to become consumers?

It could even be that he makes money on ads on YT views? But certainly Youtube, or their parent company, would never breach anyone's privacy, or make questionable sudden changes to their TOCs? Say, they wouldn't use the Chrome browser's or the Android OS's capabilities to use a connected mic to sift through recorded data?

Well, in any case, I've got to appreciate anyone who makes these matters more public and talked about, what ever their motives might be.

On another topic, as a loyal user of Google's mostly brilliant services, and mobile operating system, I was quite surprised to realize that I could see where I (or my phone) had been about, through their service here: https://maps.google.com/locationhistory

Luckily the feature can be turned off from the same site. I mean I'm sure it's off now, because I can't see any data there anymore..

Wouldn't deleting the Facebook app from your smartphone destroy their microphone hijacks?

I never heard of rand-net modem cartridge, nor the video capture cartridge, but did know about most of the other factoids. I was sad that they never released Mega Drive in the US, but with only 6 titles I don't miss it.

It's crazy to think smartphones have way more graphics power and at least 60x as much ram. But what iOS or Android game comes close to Mario 64, DK64, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, or Conker's Bad Fur Day ?

I do not have a smartphone and the phone i have averages about one or two texts a day and maybe one phone call a day. My life just doesn't necessitate it.

Do you really not have a smartphone?

...how do you live?