To clarify I listed here behaviors that I believe is common. I’m NOT listing behaviors that somebody privacy conscious is. That same person could around the neighborhood with a hoodie, glasses, hygiene mask just the same way.

What I was trying to highlight wasn’t extreme behavior, one way or another, but rather typical ones.

Yes, I didn’t say this was OK. What I’m saying rather is trying to highlight the lack of novelty.

See my earlier answers. I’m not justifying any of that infrastructure or behavior, only trying to highlight that this information, namely that OP is walking around the neighborhood, where and when, is already available to numerous of the actors including :

• neighbors, just visually seeing him with their eyes
• mobile operator via their 5G/4G towers
• mobile OS via their positioning data
• WiFi hotspots
• ISP via WiFi hotspots
• any app with geolocation tracking and any of their commercial partners purchasing that information
• connected devices via BT scanning potentially sending back data to their manufacturer, assuming most are connected
• governments with abilities to get information from ISP, mobile operators, mobile OS maintainers

So… the question IMHO is : is there are NEW data with or without the camera network? I’d argue marginally more.

Sadly not the only one https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx23ke7rm7go

Well I get why you stick to a hardware device you like… but honestly that’s 15 years old. You can get something better and cheaper delivered to your door tomorrow.

I personally went down a similar path while discovering https://www.rockbox.org/ was still a thing, looking for old iPod or Archos I could refurbish, checking 2nd hand market, etc. As much as it pains me to say, unless you are a collector it’s not “worth” it. You can get something ridiculously smaller, with more memory, more features, etc for the price of a meal.

IMHO it’s better to get rid of Windows by purchasing new hardware that is genuinely interroperable by supporting standards.

Ideally you’d check something like https://www.hanselman.com/blog/how-to-update-the-firmware-on-your-zune-without-microsoft-dammit but it might be more work than you want to put it. Maybe your local HackerSpace could help though.

My point finally is that freedom is quite important and feeling trapped daily is not worth ~$50.

Related article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx23ke7rm7go on how such glasses are actually used, sadly.

Good to know, any VPS provider that scaffold for YUNOhost then that you’d recommend?

Nothing you (nor I) know of but that doesn’t mean it’s the case. I can’t evaluate but https://www.openimagedenoise.org/ is publishing by Intel and in 2026 so maybe it’s good.

Right, then I can’t help you.

To clarify for others though as I guess I wasn’t clear based on the downvotes : I’m not suggesting a single piece of software is a viable alternative to Lightroom. Rather I’m saying Lightroom itself is a collection of algorithms dedicated to photo editing wrapped in a UX one is familiar with. On the other hand ImageMagick (just to pick one I know relatively well) is a set of command line tools for image editing. It’s mostly used as a backend with other tools as interface. I imagine there are plenty of alternatives to ImageMagick too, probably some that can include arXiv STOA algorithms for photo editing, maybe some even with a GUI but my point again is to reconsider the workflow to understand how the tools one rely on actual work.

So to hopefully express myself better this time, ImageMagick + Gimp + Krita + some script in a Github repository based on an arXiv publication + I don’t know what + … all together or in part might be better for some people but no I don’t know an all-in-one open source alternative that cover ALL needs without them being expressed first.

Ugh, hopefully they fix this. Or maybe then don’t and the whole glasses get banned, I’m fine with that.

That being said, as I mentioned in my other answer building such glasses is pretty trivial. Sure it might not look as inconspicuous as the Meta ones (or at least popular… which might lead to people better identifying them in fact) but recording covertly is indeed now trivial.

It’s wrong though and AFAIK in the EU at least it’s illegal without consent, you can’t publish the recording so the technical implementation is not really the problem, it’s the usage.

If at any point it seemed like I justified the usage of such glasses for covert filming let me clarify : no, it’s wrong, regardless of how technically feasible it now is, without or without Meta.

In fine it is about the threat model, always.

That being said I never said “I have nothing to hide” nor do I believe we as a society should accept the permanent surveillance of civilians. In fact I do believe the opposite and that the chilling effect, as highlighted here by OP, does have a toll on everyone.

Neat, did you write a short blogpost about it? I’d be curious to learn about the pitfalls, if any, and good things onboarding for somebody without prior experience went.

I’m particularly interested to see if my own open source project (VR for pedagogy) should stick to what I know well (e.g. Docker/podman) but isn’t very practical for newcomers, to something more inclusive like YUNOhost.

Edit: eh… ssh to a remote server? Damn sure that’s correct but I wouldn’t expect somebody with no self hosting experience to manage that https://doc.yunohost.org/en/admin/get_started/install_on/remote_server did I miss a step?

Sure, I’ve even made my own with a RPi0 and 3D printed frames at home https://twitter-archive.benetou.fr/utopiah/status/1449023602079240194/ so my point isn’t that Meta is fine (it definitely is bad) or that finding workarounds isn’t easy, solely that they seem to legitimately try to prevent circumvention measures despite picking bad designs, like removing a flashing red LED lights like ALL cameras did until now.

Goes against https://duckduckgo.com/privacy which is basically also their main selling point. If they don’t have that, they have nothing. So… FUD until you do have data. You clearly did run an experiment, show us the proof.

Not.

Now to be slightly more helpful (apologies for the provocation) I suggest you consider alternatives to Lightroom. I know that instantly you will receive countless comments on how alternatives are just nowhere near as good as Lightroom… and that’s OK. IMHO it’s OK because I bet YOUR usage of Lightroom isn’t the usage of others. So… I recommend you forget the brand “Adobe” or the product “Lightroom” and instead you list here the actual function of a tool you need.

This way, by listing actual needs rather than a bundle product with branding and specific UX, you go back to the root of your problem, namely WHY do you need such a piece of software in the first place.

Sure, you might end up with an entirely different workflow. Sure it will probably be absolutely alien at first… but so was learning how to use that piece of software in the first place too. Right now you do have the concepts, so replacing one click by a command line tool, or 1 piece of software by 10, is IMHO acceptable. What you will hopefully have in the end if YOUR workflow that is even more adapted compared to what you had first. It will be “weird” and maybe nobody else will get it but for you it will be exactly what you need.

I’m not saying that it’s not feasible, I’m saying the hardware changed since those first “hacks”.

Are you saying you tried on the latest version and covering the light sensor within the LED allow recording?

Because my best is that the videos are showcasing this on older models which precisely did not included that sensor. Here is a 404 episode on that https://www.404media.co/how-to-disable-meta-rayban-led-light/

Behaviors changed a lot but even then according to

that’s an incorrect stereotype. According to this dataset for example since 1990 to 2021 France always had lower share of deaths attributed to smoking than e.g. the US.

Source https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-deaths-smoking from broader https://ourworldindata.org/smoking

you might be used to that as a European

FWIW really depends where in Europe, in France and Belgium at least the law radically changed where

• you can’t smoke in a restaurant, bar, club (that’s been for a while now)
• you can’t smoke in FRONT of a place (like you need to be far from the exit)
• you can’t smoke even outdoor in a public place (e.g. train station by the tracks, beach in France)
• advertisement is forbidden
• cigarette packs have absolutely disgusting warnings (e.g. lung cancer, throat cancer) with graphic photos

… so yes there are still some people who smoke but it’s a LOT less public, in Western Europe, than just a couple of years ago.

To be clear some people still ignore those laws but if you compare to just a decade ago it’s radically less popular.

there’s a good chance they’re smarter than you.

Not really BUT they are definitely more specialized and have a lot more dedicated resources, including other dedicated people, who are paid to get information on you and your behavior. One does not have to be “smart” to excel in security compared to a normal user who cares very little.

That being said, no matter how smart and how much resource they have, they also can’t break encryption. They can though ask a cop to come to your place and incarcerate your regardless. So… do with that what you will.

I don’t think that works anymore because I believe the LED is also a sensor that when covered (no light in) prevents recording.