https://www.roadtovr.com/meta-connect-2026-date-announcement/

Linux folks are used to having to roll many of their own solutions, and better Linux desktop usability is a goal of the WayVR project, which aims to provide desktop control and app launching from within a VR session.

VR applications can already stream from Linux to standalone headsets with projects like WiVRn, but what WayVR does is let one launch programs and access desktop screens within VR. Put another way, instead of the headset being limited to acting as a pseudo-monitor that only receives the output of an already-running VR application, the headset and controllers can now be used to interact with one’s computer as if one were physically sitting at it. Controls and user interface are highly flexible and help users to do anything they need — including clicking, typing, and launching applications. It’s a considerable step forward for convenience and general usability.

https://github.com/wayvr-org/wayvr

In February, Meta contractors in Kenya told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten that the company required them to review disturbing and sensitive footage captured by its Ray-Ban AI glasses.

Some reported seeing wearers naked or using the toilet. Another saw a man’s wife undressing in their bedroom, after he left the glasses on a table, the joint investigation found. Other footage they reviewed included entire “sex scenes.”

“You understand that it is someone’s private life you are looking at, but at the same time you are just expected to carry out the work,” one employee told the Swedish newspapers. “You are not supposed to question it. If you start asking questions, you are gone.”

It seems their hunch was correct.

Two months after the worker’s allegations were published in the newspapers, Meta responded in highly questionable fashion. It terminated its entire contract with the Kenyan company, Sama, the BBC reports — a decision that a Kenyan worker’s organization alleges was in retaliation to the workers speaking out.

Say no to a ‘camera on your face’, says Meta smart glasses riva
https://www.ft.com/content/30390769-2dc1-4573-8d2e-2e8359b2ee39

Meta Lays Off 700 Employees, While Rewarding Top Executives
The jobs cuts and a new stock program for executives come as Meta continues to shift its focus to artificial intelligence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/technology/meta-layoffs-ai-executives.html?unlocked_article_code=1.V1A.GoAa.Bb73ytbBTorE

Charles Rollet / Business Insider:
Leaked memo: Meta’s Reality Labs is reorganizing staff into AI-native “pods” focused on specific outcomes, flattening the organization’s leadership structure — – A large division within Meta Reality Labs is undergoing an overhaul to become fully “AI-native.”

Inside Meta’s push to turn employees into ‘AI builders’ and reorganize teams around small pods
https://www.businessinsider.com/metas-reality-labs-shifts-to-ai-native-pods-efficiency-2026-3

ckerberg. Bloomberg/Getty Images
Mar 26, 2026, 1:39 AM GMT+2
Save Saved

Meta is rebranding some employees as “AI builders” and organizing them into AI-native “pods,” according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.

kerberg. Bloomberg/Getty Images
Mar 26, 2026, 1:39 AM GMT+2
Save Saved

Meta is rebranding some employees as “AI builders” and organizing them into AI-native “pods,” according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.

The memo described an overhaul of roles, titles, and team structures across a 1,000-employee team within Meta’s Reality Labs. It’s part of a broader, aggressive push by Meta to adopt small teams and use AI.

The pilot program was announced last month within the Reality Labs team that builds developer tools. Everyone in the division will now have one of three titles: AI Builder, AI Pod Lead, or AI Org Lead. That’s to encourage a shift toward a flatter organization, a structure that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has advocated.

Actually, Mark Zuckerberg didn’t burn $80 billion on the metaverse
https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-mark-zuckerberg-metaverse-80-billion-loss-ai-2026-3

Nearly five years ago, Mark Zuckerberg told us the future was the metaverse — an idea that seemed to involve all of us strapping on virtual reality goggles and interacting with digital versions of ourselves.

Now, reports say Zuckerberg’s Meta is bailing on the metaverse after losing more than $80 billion on the project.

Meta’s Ray Ban AI glasses have shot up in popularity in recent years, selling over seven million pairs in 2025 in a considerable jump over the two million it sold in 2023 and 2024 combined.

While the smart glasses have scored big with consumers, allowing them to record first-person footage through an integrated camera and microphone array, and analyzing the world around them through Meta’s AI model, the hardware has sparked a heated debate. Critics say enabling facial recognition in the glasses’ software could have dangerous implications, especially considering the militarization of law enforcement and Meta’s abysmal track record when it comes to ensuring the privacy of users.

And regardless of the wearer’s intention, much of the footage being recorded by the glasses is being sent to offshore contractors for data labeling, a widely-used preprocessing step in training new AI models in which human contractors are asked to review and annotate footage. It’s a laborious and highly resource-intensive process that tech companies often gloss over when discussing the prowess of their latest AI models.

The reality can be messy. Meta contractors based in Nairobi, Kenya, told Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten in a recently published joint investigation that they’re being told to review highly sensitive and intimate data.

“In some videos you can see someone going to the toilet, or getting undressed,” one contractor for a company called Sama said. “I don’t think they know, because if they knew they wouldn’t be recording.”

“I saw a video where a man puts the glasses on the bedside table and leaves the room,” one data annotator told the newspapers. “Shortly afterwards his wife comes in and changes her clothes.”

“You understand that it is someone’s private life you are looking at, but at the same time you are just expected to carry out the work,” the employee said. “You are not supposed to question it. If you start asking questions, you are gone.”

Buried in Meta’s AI terms of use, the company reserves the right to have the company “review your interactions with AIs, including the content of your conversations with or messages to AIs, and this review can be automated or manual (human).”

The document also warned that users shouldn’t share information that “you don’t want the AIs to use and retain, such as information about sensitive topics.”

But given the kind of information data annotators are being asked to review, many users don’t appear to be aware of that last piece of advice.

Worst of all, owners of Meta’s AI glasses simply don’t have the option of making use of the AI features without agreeing to share data shared with Meta’s remote servers. And once the data is sent, it’s already often too late.

“Once the material has been fed into the models, the user in practice loses control over how it is used,”

It’s not just Meta using offshore data annotators in countries like Kenya, Colombia, and India to train their AI models. As Agence France-Presse reported last year, workers have had to put up with reviewing often gruesome crime scene images, and even dead bodies.

The trend is reminiscent of social media content moderation

“You think that if they knew about the extent of the data collection, no one would dare to use the glasses,” one annotator told the newspapers.