What if smart glasses could make you more present instead of recording everything around you? Check out MemoMind or back it up on Kickstarter.

After spending time with the MemoMind One around New York City, THE Michael Josh wanted to answer one question: Do smart glasses actually become more useful when they stop trying to be a camera?

In this video, we take a look at the MemoMind One — a new pair of AI-powered smart glasses that take a very different approach.

Smart glasses are in a weird place right now. While a chunk of the population views them as cool and innovative, another significant chunk sees them as a privacy nightmare. If you’re in the latter group but want to see what life is like on the former, DuckDuckGo has a new product: a pair of anti-surveillance glasses with no camera or AI, otherwise known as just normal sunglasses.

If it’s not obvious, yes, it’s a troll product. DuckDuckGo is a search engine famously known for pushing privacy as a priority, opposing Google’s penchant for advertising and AI. Now, the search engine is taking on the smart glasses market.

Partnering with Knockaround, DuckDuckGo released the Paso Robles, a pair of sunglasses touted as having zero cameras, an always-offline mode, and a battery life of infinity.

It’s a statement piece. The rims have a logo mark, similar to the Meta’s glasses. The packaging also states that the glasses are “designed to block the sun, not send data to the cloud.”

Now, if you want a pair, they cost only US$ 35, as opposed to Meta’s US$ 299 price tag, but they are already sold out.

Which says quite a bit about today’s sentiment against AI and for privacy. Of course, to be fair, DuckDuckGo’s supply is certainly less than Meta’s stock for their smart glasses. It does, however, prove that the sentiment is there.

As of now, the world is slowly realizing that unimpeded smart glasses aren’t such a good idea, leading to people concerned about their privacy. In fact, some states have already started banning the technology in certain public spaces.

SEE ALSO: New York becomes first state to ban smart glasses

Step on a scale at a doctor’s office and your health usually gets summed up in one number. Weight divided by height squared. That’s your BMI, and it’s been the default health metric for almost 200 years.

It was never built for that job. BMI was invented in the 1830s as a statistical shortcut for studying populations, not for telling an individual person anything meaningful about their body. It can’t tell the difference between a muscular athlete and someone who’s out of shape but happens to weigh the same. It ignores bone density, body water, and where fat actually sits in the body, which matters more than most people realize.

The metrics that actually matter are the ones BMI was never designed to catch: how much of your body is muscle, how much is fat, and where that fat is sitting.

The muscle question BMI can’t answer

Skeletal muscle is the body’s metabolic engine. It’s what keeps your resting metabolic rate up, what protects your joints, and what determines how well you move as you get older. Losing it quietly, without knowing, is one of the bigger blind spots in how people track their own health.

Fat isn’t one thing either. Subcutaneous fat, the kind just under the skin, carries far less risk than visceral fat, which wraps around internal organs and is directly linked to cardiovascular problems. A person can lose weight and still be carrying dangerous levels of visceral fat. BMI has no way of showing that.

This is also why short-term weight drops can be misleading. A lot of what shows up on the scale in the first week or two of any diet is water loss, not real change in body composition. The number moves, but it doesn’t mean much yet.

Why this is showing up in headlines right now?

Part of why this conversation is happening now, rather than five years ago, comes down to the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound.

GLP-1, or glucagon-like peptide-1, is a natural gut hormone that signals fullness to the brain. These medications mimic it, slowing digestion and dulling appetite, which lets people eat significantly less and lose weight fast.

That speed is exactly what exposed the problem. Rapid weight loss burns fat and muscle together, not just fat. Lose 20 pounds on a GLP-1 drug, and both the scale and a BMI calculator will call it a clean win.

If a meaningful chunk of that was skeletal muscle, metabolic rate drops, joint support weakens, and the risk of physical frailty goes up, none of which shows up in that one number.

Dr. Hon Pak, Head of Digital Health Globally at Samsung Electronics, has pointed out that with GLP-1 therapies in the picture, raw weight lost can’t be the metric that defines success anymore. The focus has to shift to what kind of weight is being lost.

Kevin Duffy, CEO of iFit, has made a similar point: BMI stuck around because it’s easy to calculate from just height and weight, not because it’s the right thing to track. Muscle mass and body fat percentage matter far more, they’ve just historically been hard to measure outside a lab.

What your watch can measure now

Getting real numbers on muscle mass and visceral fat used to mean an expensive clinical scan. That’s the part that’s changed.

Samsung has built Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis sensors into the Galaxy Watch, sending a low-level microcurrent through the body to estimate skeletal muscle mass, body fat percentage, body water, and basal metabolic rate, all from your wrist.

For anyone losing weight, whether through a GLP-1 medication or a more traditional route, that gives real visibility into whether the weight coming off is fat or muscle.

It’s the kind of feedback that lets someone actually adjust, adding resistance training or upping protein intake, instead of finding out the hard way months later.

Samsung pairs this with Samsung Food, which uses AI to look at what’s actually in someone’s kitchen and suggest protein-forward meals that support muscle retention.

Karthik Poriya, Head of Product at Samsung Food, has noted that people tend to fixate on small day-to-day food decisions when what actually moves the needle is the trend over weeks and months. AI is what makes it possible to zoom out and see that trend instead of getting lost in it.

Combine body composition data with sleep tracking, activity monitoring, and a broader Energy Score, and the whole framework shifts. It’s no longer about getting lighter.

It’s about getting stronger, protecting muscle, and extending healthspan rather than chasing a number that was never built to measure any of that in the first place.