📸  Smile, you’re on camera

👋  Good morning. You know what they say: You catch more flies with honey and you catch more bees with a heist. We heard that from someone in Australia, where 800k+ bees — worth tens of thousands of dollars — have been stolen in a series of thefts. The culprit is likely a professional and used specialized equipment and a small team to target brood boxes from 40+ hives. That stings. 

NEWS FLASH 

✋ It’s creepy and it’s kooky, mysterious and spooky: Researchers at Soft Robotics Lab in Zurich built a robotic hand inspired by Thing from The Addams Family — so, yeah, it walks around on its fingers. The 1.8-pound little guy is a versatile, near-perfect replica of the famous detached hand, and while it’s far from being commercialized, scientists imagine the hand-popping-off functionality being a part of future home humanoids, allowing robots to complete tasks in smaller spaces.

☕ Cool beans: Lavazza launched Grindin, a new spinoff coffee label it co-founded with Pharrell Williams and Pusha T. The stated goal of Grindin is to build a brand that lives “where music, creativity, and lifestyle converge” and offers “a dialogue across generations and cultures,” which all sounds nice enough, but what we really want to know is whether the coffee is any good.

🍎 Who needs college anyway?: That’s the basic vibe of The Horowitz Andreessen Academy, a one-year, San Francisco-based program for recent high school grads announced by VC firm Andreessen Horowitz. When the first 50 students start next fall, they’ll find no tuition cost, homework, or grades (great) but also no formal accredited degree at the end (less great). However, they’ll have a direct line to roles at the likes of Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, and Palantir, so the kids will be alright.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• If, by chance, you’re building a wrist-worn fitness tracker in your spare time… sorry to tell you Apple is reportedly working toward adding a screenless health wearable of its own to rival devices from Whoop and Garmin.

• The latest unicorn: Hubble Network, a space-based Bluetooth system that can keep tabs on your packages, is now valued at $1.6B. Hubble is effectively positioning itself to become a cheaper Air Tag rival once its 60 satellites are operational.

   

• Not all smartglasses are skeevy: EssilorLuxottica showed off its new Nuance Audio glasses, which look like fairly standard frames but double as FDA-approved hearing aids. The updated model has 10 hours of battery life and stronger audio amplification tools. 

• Oompa loompa doompety don’t: Willy Wonka-themed competition-reality show "The Golden Ticket," now available on Netflix, is going to infuriate people — it is narrated by the late Gene Wilder, reanimated by AI (with his estate’s permission, but still).
  

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM 

Can AI save our beaches?

MIT spinout Coastal Assembly is deploying hexagonal concrete reef structures off the coast of the Maldives to trap sand while letting currents flow through — and the beach has already roughly doubled in size.

The project uses AI to analyze satellite imagery and predict erosion patterns at ~900 global sites, a process that once took months and now takes a day.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

Is the camera in the room with us right now?

From Rockwell's "Somebody's Watching Me" to The Police's "Every Breath You Take," surveillance paranoia was all over the charts in the 1980s.

So, it's surprising that we don't have more current hits about being watched, given how many devices in our homes are keen on recording every breath we take.

From toothbrushes to toilet seats, cameras and microphones are popping up in unexpected places around the house — but should they be? While smart home appliances promise convenience and health benefits, they also pose potential privacy and security risks.

Cameras have become commonplace outside — and not without controversy — but they're also increasingly inside the home. A recent report by SafeHome.org found:

• 61% of US households have at least one security camera — an increase from 52% in 2024.
  
• 30% of homes have indoor cameras, up from 24% in 2023.
  
• 37% worry about who might access their footage, and 23% feel uneasy about how much technology watches their home, but 87% say it gives them peace of mind.

Big Brother... in the bathroom?

Installing cameras around the house for security, or to see what mischief your furry friend is up to, is one thing — but cameras in the bathroom?

• Dyson's new $499 toothbrush uses a tiny camera to target food bits with its "precision flosser." The company says the camera is for short-range vision only and that its app deletes images after viewing.
  
• Startup Throne Science offers a clip-on smart camera for your toilet ($399+) that scans your, um, activity with AI-powered sensors. Designed to track stool consistency and hydration, the device is one of several aimed at... where you aim.
  
• The DJI Romo robot vacuum (~$1.5k) features a camera and microphone, but raised red flags for poor security after someone remotely accessed thousands of them. A new version aims to address security flaws.
  
• Samsung's new Infinite AI Wine Refrigerator ($4.3k) keeps tabs on which bottles you add to your collection — hopefully without judgment.
  
• Camera-equipped smart fridges that remind you when you're running low on cheese and White Claws are increasingly showing up in kitchens.

Capitol Hill has taken note — a bipartisan "Spy Fridge" bill aims to require manufacturers to clarify which appliances have cameras and microphones.

Not a fan of being recorded? You could try a microphone jammer or camera detector.

Or just crank your playlist of songs about being watched.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

How are marketers actually using AI? Lucky for you, we asked 6k of them to find out. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Years since the launch of the Vespa, the globally celebrated Italian scooter whose status as a cultural icon has been cemented by classic films like 1953’s Roman Holiday and modern classics like The Lizzie McGuire Movie. Today, its round bodywork is so recognizable that the Primavera model has been granted a three-dimensional trademark — or “shape mark” — by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, according to an announcement this week by parent company Piaggio. Bravo. 

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1948, Honda Motor Co. is incorporated by motorcycle builder Soichiro Honda in Hamamatsu, Japan.

🍎  Game: You’re a snake — eat the apples.

🎨  Bored?: Learn the histories behind different colors.

📷  That’s fun: Guess the song from the snippet.

🐶  Aww: A blue-eyed puppy. 

SHOWER THOUGHT

Earth has never been invaded by aliens, but the Moon has. We were the aliens. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Singdhi Sokpo, and Danny Jensen.

Editing by: Sara "Privacy please!" Friedman.

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