
IRL Glasses Block All the Screens Around You - AndrewKemendo
https://www.wired.com/story/irl-glasses-screen-blocking/
======
mhandley
You probably wouldn't want to drive in these sunglasses. Normal polarized
glasses reduce glare reflecting from damp roads, etc, by blocking horizontally
polarized light, as this reflected light is strongly polarized.

The polarization on screens, including the one in your car satnav, is usually
oriented so that someone wearing polarized glasses can see it. Rotate the
polarization on the sunglasses, and you won't be able to see the satnav, and
you'll get maximum glare off the road because the sunglasses will block much
of the ambient light, but almost none of the road reflections.

~~~
mojomark
I think these are wavelength based filters vice polarized filters (see below).
However, if they are wavelength based you might have a hard time determining
whether a stoplight is red or green (yellow would be OK), so I agree -
probably not a good idea to drive with.

~~~
baldfat
If you look at Kickstarter:

By flattening and rotating the polarized lens 90 degrees, light emitted by
LCD/LED screens is blocked, making it look like the TV or computer in front of
you is off.

These won't work on phones nor Billboards.

~~~
vernie
Perhaps by LED they're referring to LED-backlit LCD displays. There's pretty
much full coverage of the visible spectrum across different LED types, so the
only way to block them is with completely opaque lenses.

~~~
baldfat
That isn't how polarization works. It isn't about the spectrum it is about how
it travels or is reflected in a more uniform way (normally horizontal. So if
you block out horizontal light you get rid of glare or in the case of panels
you stop seeing the screen.

~~~
vernie
Right, well we aren't talking about polarization since LEDs don't emit
polarized light, so you'd need notch filters to block the wavelengths LEDs
emit, but the notch required to block all LEDs would be entire visible
spectrum.

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mindgam3
This is absolutely brilliant:

“As for the design? Cash says they modeled the glasses after the 1988 film,
They Live, in which a magic pair of sunglasses exposes the subliminal
messaging in advertisements. When viewed through the special lenses,
billboards revealed messages like OBEY, CONSUME, CONFORM, placed there by
aliens to surreptitiously control humanity. It struck Cash as the perfect
metaphor—just replace the alien overlords in the film with the mind-hijacking
companies of Silicon Valley.“

------
twic
Not all the screens: in my office, everyone has multiple monitors, and about
half of them are in portrait orientation. They aren't special portrait
monitors, they're normal monitors rotated tau/4 radians. So their plane of
polarisation is perpendicular to that of the landscape monitors.

I know this because i put on a pair of sunglasses while sat at my desk, and
wondered why i could still see my email, but not my IDE.

~~~
djrogers
Today I learned that tau/4 radians is a much smarter sounding way of writing
90*. Of course it takes up more space, and isn’t any more precise, so I’ll
probably never remember or choose to use it. At least I won’t have to google
it again the next time someone smarter than me writes it!

~~~
ummonk
"90*" is unrecognizable. "90 degrees" is recognizable, but takes up more space
than "tau/4". "𝜏/4" takes only 3 characters of course, same as "90°".

~~~
dwild
> "90 degrees" is recognizable, but takes up more space than "tau/4"

You forgot the unit on one of them, it's "tau/4 radians" and not "tau/4",
which make it longer than "90 degrees".

"𝜏/4 rad" is still longer than "90°" too.

EDIT: I just found out that there is also a shorter symbol for rad which is
the superscript c, but I don't know how to write it here and it's still
longer. Wikipedia also say that it's rarely used because it's too similar to
the degree sign.

~~~
codezero
how about a new single character constant that encodes tau/4 radians?

How about Ϟʹ – the ancient greek symbol for 90 :)

~~~
Someone
Who reads Ancient Greek, and why use two characters? Just use ∟ or ⦜ (Unicode
“Right Angle” (U+221F), respectively “Right Angle Variant With Square”
(U+299C). Don’t confuse either with ⌞, “Bottom Left Corner” (U+231E))

~~~
codezero
Tau is a Greek character, which is why I jokingly suggested this. Also, the
above _is_ a single character, however, your suggestion is much more
practical. The one with the square makes more sense since it may be ambiguous
otherwise (90 or 270 degrees)

~~~
codezero
long after edit: I guess it's not technically one character!

------
djrogers
> As for the design? Cash says they modeled the glasses after the 1988 film,
> They Live, in which a magic pair of sunglasses exposes the subliminal
> messaging in advertisements.

I have come here to chew bubblegum and block screens, and I'm all out of
bubblegum.

~~~
onemoresoop
I've had the same reaction, "They live" was an unforgettable movie. These
glasses appear to have the same design as well

~~~
enraged_camel
The alley fight scene is one of the funniest scenes ever made. I watch clips
of it occasionally and it never fails to make me laugh. What is remarkable
about it though is that it's also chock full of cultural commentary.

------
craftyguy
So all they did was take some film from Steelcase and fix it on sunglasses?
I'm curious what they are doing to 'productize' this other than just choosing
some cliche sunglasses to stick the film to. Also curious how much the film
costs, since I'm interested in making myself a pair..

Edit: you can request a free sample of the film here:
[https://info.designtex.com/casper](https://info.designtex.com/casper)

~~~
morganvachon
> _So all they did was take some film from Steelcase and fix it on
> sunglasses?_

For the prototype, yes. If you read the article, you learn that they are using
their own rotated polarized lenses for production.

~~~
craftyguy
I did read the article, but somehow missed that important detail, thanks.

------
newman8r
>Right now, their lenses can block light emitted from LCD and LED screens, but
not OLED screens.

I think the only solution for selectively blocking nonpolarized light sources
would be AR glasses. I don't think they'd ever be able to achieve that with
simple filters as they appear to be doing now - although with advances in
materials who knows.

~~~
Jyaif
>Right now, their lenses can block light emitted from LCD and LED screens, but
not OLED screens.

Wired is saying "right now" as if with further development OLED screens could
also be blocked. That's the typical misleading crap that makes me hate Wired.

~~~
dreamcompiler
Glasses with optical notch filters already exist [0]. So it's not
inconceivable that glasses that block R, G, and B from at least some common
LEDs could be built.

[0] [https://enchroma.com](https://enchroma.com)

~~~
EForEndeavour
I'm no optics expert, but considering the large width of the emission spectra
of LEDs ([https://www.comsol.com/blogs/calculating-the-emission-
spectr...](https://www.comsol.com/blogs/calculating-the-emission-spectra-from-
common-light-sources/)) and OLEDs ([https://www.omicsonline.org/open-
access/exploiting-the-poten...](https://www.omicsonline.org/open-
access/exploiting-the-potential-of-oledbased-photoorganic-sensors-
forbiotechnological-applications-2150-3494-1000134.php?aid=77020)), I'd say
it's physically impossible to block their light to any acceptable degree of
specificity.

~~~
lmilcin
I am no expert, either, but it seems you could create material that will
attenuate OLED-originating light much more than other light. Ie. these glasses
would not be completely transparent, they would be somewhat grey but would be
much more opaque for OLED light than normal continuous spectrum. Even with
polarized glasses you don't block all light, you block some and due to
proximity to much more luminous sources (as seen through glasses) it appears
dark.

------
amingilani
Off-topic but I sincerely hope Steve Blew, and Ivan Cash don't form a company
that takes after their last names.

~~~
beavis2
A shame Steve Jobs isn't around to join in.

------
crispyambulance
Pretty damn cool.

Sort of reminds me of the sunglasses from the 1988 John Carpenter film: "They
Live".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI8AMRbqY6w)

~~~
moate
Exact same though. The designer MUST have had that in mind with the
shape/aesthetic he went for.

~~~
dx87
If you go to the kickstarter, they confirm that's where the design came from.

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okket
Only 'revolutionary' if you never owned polarised sunglasses and never rotated
them in front of a LCD (or similar screens with polarised filters):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQCJ1HOdePU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQCJ1HOdePU)

~~~
icebraining
Nobody said they're revolutionary.

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c0nsumer
This reminds me of Limor Freid's (ladyada) Media-Sensitive Glasses:
[http://www.ladyada.net/media/pub/thesis.pdf](http://www.ladyada.net/media/pub/thesis.pdf)

~~~
billyggruff
I came here to post this also.

Prior art.

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koralatov
I have a cheap pair of polarised aviators I got from eBay that have the same
effect as these glasses. I'm guessing when they were made, the lens material
was oriented wrong during cutting -- vertical instead of horizontal, and thus
cutting out screens. I like wearing them, though I don't entirely trust them
as sunglasses. And when I get a call, I have to lift them to be able to see my
phone's screen.

------
roywiggins
I'm still waiting for my order of Joo Janta 200 Super-Chromatic Peril
Sensitive Sunglasses.

~~~
jentulman
almost..... but not quite [https://hackaday.com/2018/10/06/challenge-your-
perception-of...](https://hackaday.com/2018/10/06/challenge-your-perception-
of-reality-with-emotional-sunglasses/)

------
theriddlr
Anti Screen Slaver (villain from The Incredibles 2) glasses have been
invented!

------
newman8r
How long before LCD is obsolete in consumer devices? I've heard a few
estimates, haven't looked into it though.

~~~
mrob
Probably decades, considering the difficulty of making large OLED displays.
This article buys into the marketing propaganda of calling LED backlit LCDs
just "LEDs", but the only real non-organic LED displays are the big outdoor
ones. "LED" displays in the deceptive marketing sense are still LCDs.

~~~
Nasrudith
Plus current OLED screens are the new plasma in that they are the expensive
high end that wears out quicker. Lower voltages help the lifetime at least.

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anuragojha
Does this block cellphone screens? Would love to use these at concert venues.

~~~
strict9
as long as it's not OLED like new iPhones.

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nakedrobot2
fun idea but meh... it's just polarized glasses, presumably using at least a
couple of polarizing filters to block multiple directions of light rather than
only one.

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eps
These would also block streetlights though, with them being predominantely
LEDs nowadays.

~~~
tyingq
I don't think streetlights have a polarizing filter on them.

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sirwitti
The wonders of HN: Yesterday I posted a link to their kickstarter and it
didn't get a single upvote :)

~~~
KirinDave
It's uh... pretty obvious that occasionally the mods will kick stuff they like
to the front page to mix it up a bit. If you observe the new page you can
occasionally see them do it.

------
_ph_
And if this ever takes off, someone is going to start a kickstarter, selling
depolarizing sheets to put in front of LCD screens.

