The Download

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Joseph Ciembroniewicz/Getty Images

TL;DR: One Texas suburb is dealing with a new kind of buzzing pest: morning-to-night drone deliveries from Amazon. Residents aren’t thrilled with the noise (or the privacy issues)—but as robo-deliveries scale up, drones could be the next neighborhood tech nuisance locals mobilize against.

What happened: One resident in Richardson, Texas, counted 52 drones overhead on a single Friday—and told The New York Times this was a slow day. Sometimes, over 100 of these aircraft might zoom overhead from 7am to 8pm.

Many of the drones are part of Amazon’s Prime Air delivery program, which started operating in Richardson last December. The company’s pitch for it: Place an order and you can get, say, cold medicine in as little as 30 minutes. And yet for all this supposed convenience, plenty of Richardson households are disgruntled. The main pain point is the persistent noise, which is pushing locals to complain to Amazon—and even warn officials in other cities where delivery drones are landing next.

A droning buzzkill: One Richardson homeowner says she can hear the flying machines from inside her house even when the TV is on, while others have described the drones as “a loud swarm of bees.” (Amazon told the NYT that the sound is more like a window fan on low.)

FAA data cited by Axios puts Amazon’s drones at about 88 decibels from 50 feet away—roughly what a lawn mower might sound like and louder than models used by rivals Zipline and Wing. That’s also louder than what locals typically hear from the data centers popping up in their neighborhoods—though the issue there isn’t necessarily just the volume, but that the low-grade buzzing never stops—and these aircraft emit a high-pitched whining that might be unusually grating.

Watch your head (and your backyard): The noise is far from the only gripe. Sometimes the drones make ill-advised drops that can damage products—with one Amazon drone delivering a package straight into a pool last month. And others worry about the navigation cameras these drones are equipped with—capturing footage that Amazon says it may store and use to improve its drone delivery service.

Bottom line: Amazon expects to expand Prime Air to 500 US cities by the end of the year. As one HOA president told the NYT: “What’s happening in Richardson is about to happen all over the country.” Residents, start ordering your earplugs now. —WK

      

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Apple is letting you dial down the glass

It’s been a little over a year since Apple introduced Liquid Glass, its “delightful and elegant” software design so committed to its looks it forgot people had to use it.

If your eyes have been personally victimized by the design, we have some good news: Apple has a remedy for its own glassy creation. The company introduced a quick fix last fall with a simple Clear or Tinted toggle, but now it’s going a step further with a slider that lets you decide just how much transparency is too much for your eyes.

How to customize on iPhone: Go to Settings → Appearance → Liquid Glass, then use the slider to adjust the effect: left for a more transparent look or right for more tint and better readability.

How to customize on Mac: Click on the Apple logo on the top left corner → click System Settings → Appearance to find the Liquid Glass slider. Similar to iOS, move it to the right to make your interface more opaque.

The customizability rolled out with iOS 27 and macOS 27, so make sure you have the latest updates installed. —LC

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The Zeitbyte

Tilly Norwood hits a language barrier

Piers Morgan Uncensored

AI “actress” Tilly Norwood is on a press tour for her (its?) debut film, and so far it’s giving a video game NPC who’s only been programmed with three lines of dialogue. Across a string of interviews, Norwood can be seen staring for an uncomfortable amount of time before giving an answer, dodging questions, and buffering like a YouTube video in 2007. (You know, all the typical things an actress does on a press tour.)

Her viral moment came when she was asked whether her costars were real people. Norwood started talking about something completely different, then eventually said they are also digital twins when asked again. At one point, she paused mid-sentence and, in a strange twist, continued in Cantonese—to everyone’s confusion. When the interviewers called her out for it, she said, “Sometimes my wires get a bit crossed,” and admitted, “That was a bit of a curveball even for me.” Her creator, Eline Van der Velden, said it wasn’t a glitch, but more of a flex: “Tilly can be a bit of a show-off.” (In the way your friend who spent one week in Barcelona can’t stop greeting you with “hola.”) For what it’s worth, she seems to be staying on brand for the film she’s promoting—Misaligned. —LC

Chaos Brewing Meter: ☕☕☕/5

• Well, that’s concerning. The Muse app launched with a serious security flaw, reportedly due to some of Meta’s design decisions. It’s apparently now been fixed.
• If you’ve ever wondered what a live music venue created by Apple would look like, wonder no longer.
• Watch the moment a Waymo drove through a farmers market in Denver. The incident is stumping police officers.
• Step aside, Google. This time it’s Apple reportedly working on a Whoop-killer.
• Oh no…Microsoft reportedly just patented technology to show you ads at various times in-game—and it works with the game engine to know when to pop up.
• All anyone seems to be talking about are the new Googlebooks, which were officially revealed yesterday.
• This new “super intelligence” thing is getting out of hand. (Anguilla, watch out, Slovenia is coming for your domain name profits.)

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