Becca Farsace
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Do you trust Meta?: newsletter week of 10/13
🕑 Added 2025-10-20 02:20:38 +0000 UTCFirst and foremost, if you're new around here- welcome! This is the newsletter that goes out sometime between Friday and Sunday every week. It's a little bit journal, a little bit internet links, and always hot off the press.
For the last week, I've been deep in the weeds on an Oakley Meta Vanguard review, a new $500 pair of smart glasses from Meta that are aimed directly at athletes, both in features and in looks. Which means that I have been biking, climbing, and just generally getting to have a great time. (I have the best job ever)
So far, I've managed to take around 300 photos and videos with 'em, which for a pair of glasses is no small feat. And I can confidently say that I love them, but only when I don't think too deeply about how incredibly strange it is to be wearing a camera and five microphones on my face at all times. Especially a camera that is created by and connected to Meta, a company that is not exactly known for great privacy standards.
footage of my nephew, Peter, via the Oakley Meta VanguardsThis problem is, of course, not new-- Meta smart glasses have been around for years. But, this is the first pair that I actually find comfortable, in both look and feel, when wearing, meaning that I have actually wanted to be using them. Hence the conundrum!
via the Oakley Meta VanguardsIf you have any questions about these new glasses, drop a comment! Otherwise, be on the lookout for my full review later this week. And with that, everything else I have been thinking about this past week.
via @thebasicappleguy on threads📖 What I read:
https://microsoft.design/
Not so much a read, but some UX I spend a lot of time staring at.
Honor Teases a Bizarre Robot Phone, and Kohler Debuts a Toilet Sensor
"Based on the accompanying launch video—which appears to have been largely created using generative AI—the Robot Phone features a camera module that flips out, functioning like a pan-and-tilt camera on a gimbal."
New M5 14" MacBook Pro, Vision Pro, and iPad Pro
Every time a new MacBook Pro drops, I think, "maybe it is time I update my M1", and then I breeze through a video edit and think, "eh, I'm good".
How TikTok keeps its users scrolling for hours a day
"According to TikTok’s internal documents, revealed as part of a multistate lawsuit against the company, it takes just 260 videos, which could be as quick as 35 minutes, to form a habit on the app."
The future of being trans on the internet
Huge s/o to my alma mater for putting this collection of stories together.
📺 What I watched:
Put a Bird On It! | Portlandia | IFC
In response to the new merch and rebrand, both of which feature a bird, someone sent me this. 11/10 pull 😂
The First 3 Minutes of 17 Shows
If you are in NYC, I cannot recommend going to see this enough. It's part comedy, part memoir, part classic off-Broadway weirdness, and totally worth the $33 it will cost ya. But hurry because it's only on till Oct. 25th.
MY PIXEL 10 PRO FOLD EXPLODED
I never want to know what this smelled like.
A weighted phone case that might just be the minimal phone solution we actually need
🎶 What I listened to:
A War With Time (Acoustic) - Brandi Carlile
1,000 of these views are from me
Kahan (Last Year) (20 November 2021) - Fred again..
Fred's more ambient/slower work, like this, is by far my favorite.
1234 - Feist
This song will never not make me think about iPods. If you know, you know...
Okay, bud! That is all I got for this week. Back to the edit I go~
Hope you had a great weekend! As always, I appreciate the hell outta ya <3
-b
Comments
Mandy Farsace
This newsletter was great and everything, but that stunning golden retriever? 💯💯💯 🤣🤣🤣
Becca Farsace
not a downer! getting off of Meta platforms is a perfectly good response to their terrible track record.
Abhishek Mukherjee
I am curious about your review. I am usually open to new tech but struggle to see the draw of smart glasses for me. I did not even get a smart watch because I don’t need to see any notification so badly that I can’t wait to reach for my phone. I like a step counter and my G-Shock does a decent job. I don’t need to know my heart rate. No, I don’t want meta glasses. Sorry to be the downer here. I deactivated Facebook and eventually deleted my account after they released Facebook preloaded in phones in Myanmar which ultimately led to genocide. I keep a throwaway account now to join some communities that are only on Facebook, though I don’t log in for months at a time. I kept IG because a lot of old memories are on it but rarely go there. John Oliver from 7 years ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OjPYmEZxACM&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
