GoKawiil
Tech News
Fast Company named Google a winner in its 2026 Innovation by Design Awards for the way it is shaping AI-powered interfaces. The recognition points to Google's role in redefining user interaction patterns beyond the classic search box it introduced decades ago.
Fast Company has released its 2026 Innovation by Design Awards, with Google topping the design company of the year category. The recognition credits Google's work redesigning interfaces across its widely used products to weave in AI features while keeping the experience user-friendly. The full list also includes other honorees recognized for design that spans products, services, and overall customer experience.
Conway's Arcade is a modernized arcade cabinet that doesn't run classic pre-programmed games, but instead uses Google's Gemini 3.0 AI model to create games and their underlying rules in real time. The project has been named a winner in Fast Company's 2026 Innovation by Design Awards.
Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards named Conway's Arcade, built by Special Guest X for Google, the winner in its artificial intelligence category. The project is an AI-driven arcade cabinet that continuously generates new variations of classic games such as Space Invaders and Breakout, alongside a list of other honorees in the category.
Beyond the usual OS and security update settings, Android devices include a distinct, less visible menu for updating individual system services like Google Play services. Depending on the manufacturer, these services may need to be updated separately from the main software update screen, and how they appear can vary between brands such as Google Pixel and others.
BleepingComputer is hosting a live webinar on September 23, 2026, with Material Security's Rajan Kapoor and Fireside Consulting's Rick Fitzgerald, who will dissect two real breaches of Google Workspace environments carried out through malicious OAuth applications and social engineering rather than stolen passwords. The session will walk through how the attacks unfolded, the security gaps that let them succeed, and the response decisions made in the early hours of each incident.
Google appears to be developing a way for users to customize which restrictions apply under Android's Advanced Protection mode, rather than enforcing all safeguards as a single bundle. This would let users opt into stronger security features selectively instead of accepting the full, more restrictive package.
Google has opened a formal beta program for its Drive app, letting users opt in to test upcoming features before they roll out broadly. The program follows similar early-access schemes Google runs for other apps like Gmail and Photos.
A 15.5 GB file containing over 7.3 million Chess.com user records surfaced for free on two data-leak forums, with no ransom attached. Analysis of the archive found genuine, recent Chess.com data including emails, usernames, ratings, and subscription status, but no passwords or payment details, pointing toward large-scale scraping rather than a server intrusion.
Google is now widely deploying Gemini as the default digital assistant across Android Auto, replacing the standard Google Assistant for drivers who haven't already switched manually. Users can still enable it themselves via Settings, and once active, Gemini handles voice interactions, messaging, music requests and more inside the car.
A YouTube ad disguised as an iPhone low-storage system alert has been repeatedly reported by users but cleared by Google, which says it doesn't violate ad policy. When the author ran the same ad through Google's own Gemini AI, it flagged the ad as deceptive for imitating system UI and making unreliable claims, contradicting the human review team's verdict.
Software engineer Alex Wormuth built a simulated fruit fly brain using Google and HHMI Janelia's newly released connectome data, then wired it to control Doom frame by frame. Each frame generates thousands of brightness and color inputs that feed into the simulated brain's 25.6 million connections, translating neural activity into in-game controls, including a pain response modeled on real dopamine receptors.