| | | Good morning! Since we had a chat last week, Meta’s annual hardware event called Meta Connect happened. I’ll of course decode what Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth alluded the live demo failures to, yet at the same time, it is important to understand what CEO Mark Zuckerberg meant when he said “Glasses are the ideal form factor for personal superintelligence, because they let you stay present in the moment while getting access to all of these AI capabilities that make you smarter, help you communicate better, improve your memory, improve your senses, and more”. This cues us in nicely with Meta’s latest hardware generation, that is headlined by the Meta Ray-Ban Display, the Oakley Meta Vanguard (this is a specific pitch for athletic intelligence) and the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2). I have a feeling we’ll chat more about the personal intelligence idea in detail next week. In fact, the first hints of Meta’s product evolution where it stands now, was first hinted at by Zuckerberg in an earnings call this summer, when he said soon people who don’t wear AI smart glasses (he’d be hoping you buy what he’s trying to sell) will be at a “pretty significant cognitive disadvantage”. I’m not entirely sure everyone will be on board that idea, with data privacy of course being a concern that I’ve talked about in my other weekly newsletter, Neural Dispatch (shameless plug: Please do subscribe and share).  | | They call it “Meta Ray-Ban Display: AI Glasses With an EMG Wristband”, and this sits at the core of Zuckerberg’s superintelligence pitch, with a display on the right (they say its been “thoughtfully placed off to the side” so that it doesn’t impede your view. The idea builds with a bundled Meta Neural Band, an EMG (or surface electromyography) wristband that translates the signals created by the wearer’s muscle activity into commands for glasses to control functionality and even apps on the phone. Quite how well this translates into real-world utility is something that’ll be interesting to see, as and when I can get to experience the Meta Ray-Ban Display. Meta AI with visuals such as how-to steps, reading messages, watching Reels (of course, the state of civilisation as it stands) and video calls, navigation guidance, and live translation as well as captions, may find more utility with the display. I had the chance to experience Google’s Android XR glasses this summer at I/O, and I see a battle brewing. | | | | | | | There’s a very specific pitch being made with the Oakley Meta Vanguard, for athletes and typical outdoor activity scenarios (not you, the casual jogger, sit down!). An action camera (videos in up to 3K resolution, from a centred 12-megapixel camera), integrations with platforms such as Garmin and Strava, and Oakley’s Three-Point Fit system, should give this a unique personality too. | | | | Then there’s the Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2), an evolution of the AI glasses that left me very impressed, the Ray-Ban Meta. As generational improvements go, this claims to have twice as long a battery life, 3K Ultra HD video recording with ultra wide HDR, and new frame styles. There is a new conversation focus feature, which will use the open-air speakers on these AI glasses, to amplify the voice of the person you’re chatting with — very relevant in a noisy environment, I’m sure. | | | | During the keynote demos, live demos mind you, there was more than one stumble. At one point, the glasses had no response to a question about a recipe, and at another point, failed to pick up a WhatsApp call. Zuckerberg noted, “you practice these things like a hundred times, and then you never know what’s gonna happen,” at the time. Later, Bosworth explained in a Q&A session on Instagram that it wasn’t actually the Wi-Fi that caused the issue in the first instance (the recipe blank) but instead was “a mistake in resource management planning”. Another failure, Bosworth explained, happened because Meta had chosen to route the Live AI traffic to its development server to isolate it during the demo. But when it did so, it did this for everyone in the building on the access points, which included all the headsets. “So we DDoS’d ourselves, basically.” For the WhatsApp call failure, Meta has apparently discovered a bug Live in the demo, wherein the glasses had gone into a ‘sleep’ state and didn’t show the call notification when they came back online. A “race condition” bug, as Bosworth called it. Tech and humans are prone to mistakes. It is only normal. Last week on Wired Wisdom: CRED matures as a fintech, Airtel spam detection delivers and iOS 26 releases. | | FREEMIUM VPN There are free VPNs which can often be dodgy, unless it’s the free version of Proton VPN. There’s another viable alternative for you, if you’d not like to pay a hefty annual fee for a VPN app (heft fees tend to be the default with these apps). A few days ago, EventVPN launched on the Apple App Store for iPhone, iPad and Mac, and is essentially a fresh spin on what a free VPN should be like. It uses the same infrastructure as ExpressVPN, one of the most secure paid VPN apps you can use. Yet, there is a clear attempt to try and break from the usual caps that dot a free VPNs utility. The headline promise is bandwidth up to 10Gbps (that's much, much faster than your internet line), something no free VPN app does at this time. Top that off with EventVPN not compromising on security. You still get essentials like a kill switch, RAM-only servers, and even post-quantum encryption, all backed by ExpressVPN’s audited no-logs policy. That’s crucial, since this follows the same methodology and ExpressVPN has been very strict with adherence to their privacy policy over the years. Server coverage is surprisingly wide too, especially for a free service. But here’s the trade-off — ads. A lot of them. Every time you connect or disconnect, or even run a speed test, expect 30-second ad breaks. It’s how EventVPN is keeping the free tier sustainable, but it can feel intrusive if you’re used to clean interfaces. The other limitation is only one device is supported on the free plan, and for now, it’s restricted to Apple devices. No word yet on when Android devices or Microsoft Windows computing devices will get the Event VPN app. | | You may like our detailed VPN space coverage…  VPNs evolve to counter quantum security risks Google Play adds verified badge for VPNs, as NordVPN’s new trick bypasses blocks Avoiding DeepSeek’s dodgy iOS app, and Proton VPNs censorship battle in numbers | | CLEAR THE AIR I promise, we will go into a detailed conversation about the iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max and the iPhone 17 next week, because I want to not clutter the chat we’re about to have about the iPhone Air. Something I noted as a “resounding statement” in my review, and I’ve gone on to explain more than one reason why I’ve said that. There were challenges with physics and conventional wisdom that Apple had to overcome in a form factor as slim as 5.6mm and having the A19 Pro chip that’s being talked about in the same breath as a MacBook’s performance. Apple iPhone Air review: A solid statement now, and slim enough to be the future The performance aspect has been resoundingly locked in, with benchmark scores from a chip sitting within the thinnest confines in any smartphone at this time, piping Qualcomm’s current Snapdragon 8 Elite flagship chip (there will be a new announcement by the time you read this) by quite some margin. A Max Verstappen-esque performance at Baku, where he could have taken a 15 second deep-breathing break, and still won comfortably. One would expect this sort of performance dominance from the iPhone 17 Pro perhaps, but for the iPhone Air to deliver this, simply dials up expectations from the A19 Pro in the more powerful guise. To have fairly good battery stamina in this scenario, is a proverbial cherry on the cake. There is one area which still would require some convincing, which is the Fusion Camera based on the 48-megapixel Fusion Camera that uses the primary wide sensor from the iPhone 17 and not the iPhone 17 Pro. That is where perhaps Apple has missed a trick. The result is, there is greater reliance on the image processing pipeline, to optimise. An Apple executive confirmed to HT at the keynote, that all iPhones tend to have varying optimisations for image processing, depending on the hardware they’re working with. The reality is, as distinct as two sides of the coin. You can click some great photos with the iPhone Air, but also, there are scenarios where you’ll need some effort to wring out good photos. More often than not, when in doubt, the image processing tends to overcompensate with smoothening as well as brightening the frame, which may take away some finer details. All said and done, iPhone Air is an absolutely resounding statement from Apple, and since I’m looking at this closely, it is easy to see shades within this slimness of a showcase for the foldable that awaits us — two of the iPhone Air, give or take a few, is expected to make the first iPhone foldable (though bring in the camera plateau from the new Pros, for good effect, and let imagination play). Secondly, I see this form factor finding its way as default for either the standard iPhone in a couple of years, or also the smaller of the two iPhone Pro models in a few years’ time. | | GEMINI ON TV Google is finally rolling out Gemini AI on the Google TV based smart TVs. If you think this is just a smarter content suggestion wrapper, it absolutely isn’t just that. Say “Hey Google” or press the microphone button on the TV remote, and converse with Gemini about all things under the sun, as you would on your phone. From “what to watch on a Friday evening” to “why do volcanoes erupt”, there’s versatility and parity. The rollout is starting with the TCL QM9K and subsequently on the Google TV Streamer and Hisense U7, U8, and UX models, and 2025 TCL QM7K, QM8K, and X11K models, and there is expectation more brands will have Gemini available on their TVs, by the time 2025 draws to a close. | | | | Were you forwarded this email? Did you stumble upon it online? Sign up here. | | Written and edited by Vishal Shanker Mathur. Produced by Md Shad Hasnain. | | | | | | | Get the Hindustan Times app and read premium stories | | | | | | View in Browser | Privacy Policy | Contact us You received this email because you signed up for HT Newsletters or because it is included in your subscription. Copyright © HT Digital Streams. All Rights Reserved | | | | | 
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