These things are undermining not just our public spaces but the very nature of being human. Let’s shame them off the streets

So far I am yet to be tempted into purchasing a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses. To a certain extent this is a function of possessing a large, misshapen and comically convex head upon which no pair of sunglasses has ever looked remotely appropriate. Nor am I one of those consumers who professes to be “really into gadgets”, a preference I’ve always found weirdly unspecific. It’s subtly telling when people claim to be into “gadgets”, because they’re never talking about, say, a tin opener. What they really mean is something gimmicky and expensive that almost certainly requires the services of a datacentre and enough water to irrigate Kent.

And even if I were to surmount these two obstacles, you then get into the ethics of the thing. I’m nobody’s idea of a PR expert, but if your shiny new product keeps requiring patches and updates to prevent people from using it to do degenerate things to women, perhaps it might be worth walking it back to the research and development stage.

Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist

Smartglasses with cameras can benefit the vision impaired but companies might pit ‘accessibility benefits against safety and privacy’, eSafety says

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Australia’s online safety regulator has urged smartglasses companies to automatically blur people’s faces filmed on the devices, and make it clearer when someone is filming, as the federal government faces pressure to ban the technology.

In advice to industry published on Monday, the office of the eSafety commissioner warned that while smartglasses with cameras, such as Meta’s Ray-Ban, can offer accessibility benefits to low vision or blind people, companies might pit “accessibility benefits against safety and privacy considerations”, and noted there was already a backlash to the technology.