The Download

Amazon

TL;DR: Amazon is rolling out smart glasses with cameras for its delivery drivers, which could be snapping photos every few seconds, and the United States Postal Service (USPS) says it’s starting to test dashcams on mail trucks. In other words, the two delivery services that show up at nearly every home in the US are adding cameras, just as surveillance tech faces growing backlash.

What happened: Amazon’s glasses, unveiled last fall, are meant to help reduce delivery errors by guiding drivers hands-free from van to doorstep—and more than 275,000 deliveries have already been made with them. The company wants 5,000 drivers wearing them by the end of this year and more than 20,000 by the end of 2027, and it’s hoping its eyewear reads less as “pervert glasses” and more as a helpful delivery gadget.

USPS is also getting in on the camera action: it’s testing dashcams on 100 mail trucks around the Washington DC area to spot road conditions and support “community safety.” The pilot was slated to start Sept. 21 and will run for several months.

Smile, you’re on delivery cam: Amazon says the glasses’ photos will feed an AI system to map neighborhoods, and it’ll blur people and vehicle license plates before humans review the images. What it won’t blur is the private property a driver passes on the way to your door. The dashcams on USPS trucks, made by dashcam company Nextbase, start recording as soon as a truck shifts into drive and run for a whole route, scanning everything from roads to sidewalks (they can capture license plates, though they apparently don’t run software to read them).

Destination unknown: Amazon will only use the collected data to “enhance the delivery process,” the exec leading the rollout told Bloomberg. But the company won’t say how long it keeps images, and a spokesperson later confirmed police can get them with a warrant. There’s no way to opt out, either (something the company hasn’t thought about, per the exec). And you won’t be able to see the photos it takes of your place, let alone ask for them to be deleted. USPS is just as vague—it hasn’t said who gets its footage (just USPS, or other government agencies, too?), or how long it’s stored.

Bottom line: Soon, something may be recording you every time a package shows up. But USPS hasn’t shown how its cameras make neighborhoods safer, and Amazon has yet to show how its glasses make deliveries better. Basically, the sentence of the week is “trust me, bro.” —LC

      

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This tiny keyboard has upgraded my e-book game

Disclosure: Companies may send us products to test, but they never pay for our opinions. Our recommendations are unbiased and unfiltered, and Tech Brew may earn a commission if you buy through our links.

I am an avid reader (I usually have multiple books going at once), but reading an e-book has never been my favorite—mostly because it requires spending more time on a device and swiping or scrolling to keep going. But they can also be really convenient, especially when you travel a lot. After this weird little keyboard gadget kept popping up on my feed, I decided I might as well give it a go and see whether it made me enjoy e-books more.

How it works: It’s called the BOOX Tappy, and it pairs to your device with Bluetooth. From there, you can switch between three modes—Reading (go forward or back a page), Multimedia (skip track or play previous track), and Browsing (scroll up or down)—by pressing its two buttons simultaneously for a few seconds. It also has a little switch to turn it off and on so you can save the battery.

How we tested: Over the past few weeks, I’ve tried out all the modes with both my iPhone and the folding Android phone I’ve been testing. For reading, I used it with Kindle and the Books app, for multimedia I tried Spotify, and for browsing I tried both Google searches and Docs.

The Good: It works exactly as advertised on Android devices. The buttons are easy to switch out (it comes with two alternate designs). Reading on Kindle was a joy thanks to the feel of the button press and the page-turning animation. I could prop up my device and just use Tappy for controls.

The Bad: Most functions don’t work on Apple devices—the only one that did was skipping songs. There’s no way to know which mode it’s currently on without just trying it out. It can also only pair with one device at a time, so you have to unpair it before you switch. At $29.99, it’s not that cheap for something that has limited functionality.

Verdict: Signal ✅ (But only if you use Android devices and really like e-books) —SM

The Zeitbyte

People are using modded self-driving tech

Morning Brew Inc.

Things that make sense to DIY: a sourdough starter, a Halloween costume, and maybe even a haircut, if you’re feeling brave. Things that land firmly in DI-why territory: installing your own self-driving tech in your car. But some people are now apparently doing exactly that—one X user posted a video of his Model Y maneuvering itself through streets using an open-source, free-to-use program, writing, “My FSD subscription ended last January.”

The reaction was predictably swift and mostly aghast. It’s one thing to jailbreak your iPhone, and another to use MacGyvered software that lets your two-ton metal contraption speed down highways without human handling. But these modders aren’t alone in tinkering with self-driving: Employees at an AI math startup recently used the same software to give AI models a driving test, prompting them to navigate a Toyota Corolla around a parking lot (to mostly poor results).

If you’re wondering whether this is even legal, it seems like it’s a gray area, though federal regulators are now investigating the company that makes the software. We already miss the days when the scariest thing on the freeway was someone trying to merge without signaling. —WK

Chaos Brewing Meter: ☕☕☕/5

• Your hard-earned dollars could be paying for Meta’s data center buildout due to an unusual tax-avoidance strategy it’s reportedly using.
• Another day, another announcement about hackers stealing personal info from a government database.
• The FTC is opening an investigation into the big AI labs’ potential harm to consumers—whether due to rogue agents or by misusing our data.
• Do you own an older Apple device? You should update now to make sure you have the latest emergency security patch.
• The newest “most advanced” Gemini model is here and, judging by its name, it’s colorless, odorless, and tasteless—it’s also designed for four very specific careers.
• Reddit is so sick of AI bots scraping its content that it’s taking some very drastic measures to curb them.
• We hope you’re having a less intense week than Dario Amodei at the White House: His fellow AI execs reportedly grilled him over his very public AI doomerism.
• Do AI models feel pain? That’s what one GitHub project is trying to find out with an “AI torture chamber”—and you can watch the experiment in real time.

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This time last week...

Readers’ most-clicked story was for those of you who are nostalgic for classic Windows 98 Solitaire—someone rebuilt it with an unexpected twist that’s quite amusing.