| Hi from San Francisco. Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses could be a bright spot in its earnings print this week as the mashup of consumer eyewear and AI voice assistants becomes normal. But first... Three things you need to know today: • TSMC founder Morris Chang sees "most severe" challenges ahead
• Waymo raised $5.6 billion in its largest-ever funding round
• Apple is testing an app to help users manage their blood sugar Over the past month, I've been testing a pair of glasses with built-in cameras and processors that Meta Platforms Inc. sells under the Ray-Ban brand for $300 or so. They're a product which, I suspect, the company will highlight in its earnings report this Wednesday. All that money invested in artificial intelligence needs to find an expression in things people can buy, and this year every big consumer tech firm has offered something: Apple Inc. with the Apple Intelligence iPhone, Alphabet Inc. with the AI-focused Google Pixel 9, Samsung Electronics Co. with its Galaxy AI stable, and so on. Meta's move is to lean in to style and convenience. These Ray-Bans combine the Meta AI voice assistant with some basic hardware along the lines of Snap Inc.'s Spectacles, packaging them in a classic design. Answering the "why do I need this?" question starts with the cameras. There's an immediacy to capturing moments with a tap of the frame that a smartphone can never match. You can also use a voice prompt — "hey Meta" — to initiate a video or just to take a photo. I captured a clip of what recording the Bloomberg Technology show looks like from my vantage point. It's kind of a big deal that I can wear these on a broadcast or in public without drawing undue attention for their techie look. They really look like conventional glasses — and they do the basic work of glasses too, of course.  A snapshot from video recorded with Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses. The Meta Ray-Bans work well at parties, though their understated design will get appropriately flashy and signal with a light to let people know you're photographing or filming them. A software update that dropped at Meta's Connect event a month ago drew me to try them — along with a limited edition, transparent Wayfarer frame that sold out in just a week. The current edition was initially released in fall 2023, but, unlike most gadgets, the classic style means these glasses can evolve and improve without necessitating an annual hardware upgrade (and more money) from users. That's promising for a category of product that's never proven itself a winner among the masses. Smart glasses, much like augmented and virtual reality hardware, have to date only ever been a curio and a sideshow. Just take a peek at Meta's Reality Labs, whose contribution to annual and quarterly earnings so far has been billions in costs and little in return. Around the broadcast studio, asking the Meta AI assistant to describe what's near me, I found it reliable. It said I was in a well lit studio, with people and operating equipment in the background. I work for Bloomberg, it concluded from all the gear carrying that name. At home, it helped me diagnose the issue with my lawn (spoiler: it needed water in 100-degree weather). These routine things are unremarkable in isolation, but they build a sense of reliability about the tech. The battery life wasn't spectacular. The glasses won't last longer than a 12-hour day using the camera and voice assistant with regularity, but their case doubles as a charger, making it easy to top them up. Video clips are also limited to a couple of minutes at a time to prevent overheating and excessive battery drain. One particularly logical use for these is when driving. I use autonomous driving features all the time on my car, but am still required (and should) pay attention to the road and keep my hands on the wheel. These glasses make that easier than using a phone, as you can have conversations with the generative AI or grab that hands-free beauty shot out the window when crossing San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. Sometimes I ask Meta to phone people through my glasses, which works pretty much like any pair of wireless earbuds with an attached voice assistant. Though people can never tell when I'm on a call with the glasses, leading to a bit of awkwardness. There's a large set of nice-to-have features here, very much familiar to anyone already using other modern consumer electronics. That's a double-edged sword, as the Ray-Bans aren't giving you anything you've not seen or heard before — so they're not by themselves a must-have — but they insiniuate themselves into everyday life by just being there and being useful. If you take them as a normal pair of glasses that can do more, that's their best chance to stick around as a device you use and value over the long run. Achieving a sense of normalcy is Meta's first task with this technology, and I think the company is making progress. During Meta's prior earnings call, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg told investors enthusiastically that the glasses have been a bigger hit than expected since launch and, at that time, demand for them outpaced Meta's ability to build them. In response, Meta has invested in its partner EssilorLuxottica SA, the maker of Ray-Bans. In Lux's earnings this month, the European company said the strong growth of the Meta Ray-Bans was one of the biggest drivers of overall sales in the prior quarter. The glasses have also been the top-selling product in many of the company's stores in different regions of the world. The next step for Meta is to bring augmented reality to this form factor. The company is now testing a prototype it calls the Meta Orion, a chunkier pair of glasses that I tried out recently and was impressed by. The Orion will build on everything the Ray-Bans already do. If somebody said to you in the 1990s that you'd be using your phone to take photos and publish those to the entire world, you might have laughed. Now in 2024, we have that skepticism about using the glasses on our face to do similar things, but I reckon that too will melt away as the technology improves. The question is, how long until that translates into bottom-line improvement for Meta's cash-burning division building the product?—Ed Ludlow Linking immigration and voter fraud has become, by far, Elon Musk's favorite and most popular policy topic online, according to a large-scale Bloomberg analysis of his posts on X, the social network he owns. In 2024, Musk's frequent posts on immigration — including claims about the crimes attributed to migrants, the pace of their entry into the US, and the false assertion that Democrats are using them to cast votes — have received more reposts than any other policy issue he writes about.  TSMC has achieved early production yields at its first plant in Arizona that surpass similar factories back home, a significant breakthrough for a US expansion project initially dogged by delays and worker strife. Anja Manuel, executive director of the Aspen Strategy Group and former diplomat, joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow to discuss what that means for US chipmaking ambitions on Bloomberg Technology. Pacific Fusion Corp., a power company that's attempting to create a nuclear-fusion-based energy source, said it has raised over $900 million. The son of the EssilorLuxottica founder is among people under investigation in Italy over the alleged use of information stolen from national security databases. Saudi Aramco has earmarked $100 million for investments in AI. Toyota and Hyundai's chairmen made a rare joint appearance at an event showcasing the two rivals' high-performance vehicles. | 
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