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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, and welcome to The Verge Cast, the flagship podcast of Nosepads. I'm your friend, David Pearce, and today on the show, we're gonna talk about smart glasses. Specifically, why smart glasses are such a pervasive idea in the tech industry right now. We've talked a lot about them. We've been covering smart glasses since the days of Google Glass,
Chapter 2: Why are smart glasses considered the next big thing in tech?
And there are so many problems and challenges with smart glasses. There was the whole glass hole problem. There are huge technological problems with actually making this stuff real. There are supply chain issues. There are display things no one has invented yet. Smart glasses are going to be very hard to do correctly.
And even if they're done correctly, it's still very much in the air whether people want them and what they want them for. And yet, all of that aside, A huge portion of the tech industry, including most of the biggest hardware manufacturers, are absolutely convinced that smart glasses are the future. So the Virgis V song is going to come on. She has used all the smart glasses.
She has reviewed all the smart glasses. And she and I are going to try to figure out why the tech industry can't quit smart glasses. It's gonna be great. But first, here's everything else happening on The Verge today.
Chapter 3: What challenges do smart glasses face in the tech industry?
This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Tuesday, June 23rd, 2026. Meta is turning off, at least for now, a program that it created to log everything employees do on their computers. And I mean everything, including mouse clicks and keystrokes, all to use as AI training data. Turns out, a lot of the data being collected was very private and made accessible across the entire company. Seems bad.
More broadly, there's been a lot of reporting recently about a huge morale problem at Meta, where everything and everyone is being pivoted toward AI, whether they like it or not. Meanwhile, obviously, privacy and regulatory issues just abound at Meta. In a lot of ways, the Meta brand right now is just not great in general, which makes this next thing, frankly, very funny.
Meta launched a new pair of smart glasses today, just called the Meta Glasses. They're cheaper than the Ray-Ban models, which might be the big reason for dropping the partnership with such an expensive brand. And they come in several new fits, including one made with Kylie Jenner.
Meta also told The Verge's Victoria's Song that the company is working on better privacy systems for the glasses and on making it harder to tamper with the smart glasses in order to record without people knowing. Of course, Meta is also reportedly working on a facial recognition system for those very same smart glasses. So, you know, big grain of salt on all of that.
And finally, some very important gadget news. The HP 16C, an iconic old school calculator that was once a big hit among 1980s era programmers, is back. There's only 10,000 of them, it's $130, but now it has a faster chip and it can save and load programs. Your move, Claude Code. You can read more about all of this at theverge.com. That is 90 Seconds on the Verge for Tuesday, June 23rd.
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Chapter 4: What features might make smart glasses appealing to users?
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All right, it's time to talk glasses. The Virgins V song is here.
Hi, V. Hi.
Who are you wearing today, V?
These are the Meta Ray-Ban Optics Style Scriber.
That was a lot of words in a row.
Yeah, that was a bunch of freaking words I said. So basically, a couple months ago, Meta basically was like, hey, some of you guys have really bad eyesight and prescriptions that are not handled by the...
original uh you know meta ray-ban glasses or the ray-ban meta glasses sorry the naming convention of these glasses is very infuriating so they came out with this version of the glasses which can handle really terrible prescriptions like mine And have a slightly more ergonomic design that supposedly is better for people's faces. Like the hinges go outwards. There's modular nose pads.
So if you have like a really low nose bridge like mine, you can take this little guitar pick tool that's in the thing and pop them off and put a different pair of plastic nose bridges on there. And supposedly the fit is better. That's what I've been testing.
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Chapter 5: How can smart glasses enhance navigation for users?
And when you have everyone in Italian speaking, yelling around you mixed with English. It doesn't know who to translate when. That is a thing that's really tough. So right now, these live AI translations with these glasses and other devices, they're great for when you're in a quiet place, one-on-one with someone. Again, I was on a, I wrote about an optimizer.
I was on a train with this really cute Chinese grandma and she only trusted me. But like, I don't know why. Well, I know why I look at my face, but she went up to me and she's like, I'm so afraid I'm not going to get off.
the thing and we were using these AI translators and that was a really wonderful experience because she was so scared and I was able to help her even though I'm not the right kind of East Asian for her in that in that particular experience so I think once in a while it'll be great but it won't work quite as well as you want and there's a lot of technical challenges so two right now
I think I agree. It's a better, it's a terrific demo more than it is like a really sort of everyday mainstream product. And it probably will be that way for a while.
Everyday life is very loud. We do horrible things to language that the AI has a hard time keeping up with. So we'll have to see.
And actually, in a weird way, the behavior of like holding my phone up to my mouth while I talk and then holding my phone up to your mouth while you talk is actually kind of solves a bunch of those problems in a way that's like ambiently listening with my smart glasses doesn't. It feels awkward, but it like weirdly kind of works. Every time I've tried that, it has worked better than I expected.
It works because we understand, oh, I have to talk slower. Oh, I have to be more patient. Where if they don't know and it's just happening and it's a one-way translation where you understand what they're saying, you're Chewbacca-ing the experience.
Yes.
Yeah.
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