GoKawiil
Tech News
Google Maps is rolling out a change that displays stop signs and traffic lights in the same floating info boxes used for upcoming street names, according to 9to5Google. The feature has been spotted on Android Auto and on smartphone navigation, suggesting it may also reach CarPlay users.
Several users report that Google Maps' speedometer on Android Auto is randomly toggling between miles per hour and kilometers per hour, ignoring their chosen unit settings. One user also reported the same mismatch on the mobile app itself, according to a Reddit thread. The cause remains unclear, and it's unknown how many drivers are affected.
Apple has integrated its Hidden Histories podcast series into Maps, showing a panel that links directly to episodes about select landmarks in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and Washington, DC. Tapping the panel opens a city-wide list of linked podcasts, covering sites like Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the Hollywood Sign and Alcatraz. The podcasts sit under Maps' existing Guides section, where users can save them to a personal collection for later listening.
Google allows users to turn off Timeline, its location-history feature in Google Maps, through device-specific settings rather than a single global switch. Users can choose to simply pause tracking, delete all past data, or set auto-delete rules for activity older than three, 18, or 36 months. The app also provides options to export Timeline data or back it up in encrypted form to a Google account.
A regular Google Maps user says that despite Google's edge in local search and data depth, Apple Maps outperforms it in several everyday ways. The comparison highlights Apple's progress in rebuilding its navigation app over the past decade, with a notably cleaner, less ad-cluttered interface as a standout advantage.
A developer built mapsnap, a program that automatically aligns old Sanborn Insurance Maps—detailed block-by-block city surveys made from roughly 1870 to 1960—with modern geographic coordinates. The tool processes the maps' rich detail, including building materials, addresses, business labels, and heights, to make them usable in mapping software. The post explains the technical approach and why automating this process matters for historians and archivists.
Google Maps estimates how crowded entire areas, not just individual businesses, are by aggregating anonymous location data from users who have opted into Google Timeline. The feature combines data from nearby stores, restaurants, and parks, but excludes private residences, and typically only works in high-traffic zones like tourist areas or festival grounds where enough visitor data exists.
The United Nations passed a resolution, backed by the African Union, urging adoption of map projections that preserve the true relative size of continents instead of the 500-year-old Mercator projection. The vote passed 164 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenting country. Togo's foreign minister argued that maps shape how people understand the world's balance of power.
On September 4, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to phase out the 16th-century Mercator map projection in favor of the Equal Earth projection, which more accurately represents the relative sizes of continents and countries. The Mercator map, created by Gerardus Mercator in 1569, has long been criticized for exaggerating the size of Northern Hemisphere landmasses like Canada and Russia while shrinking equatorial regions such as Africa.
A new methodology integrates multiple existing data sources—Sentinel-1 radar-based damage detection, Overture Maps building footprints, VIINA territorial control data, and UCDP fatality records—to analyze building destruction across Ukraine from March 2022 to October 2023. The approach disaggregates damage data from 10-meter pixel grids down to individual building level using over 26 million mapped footprints, mostly sourced from Microsoft's ML Building Footprints and OpenStreetMap.
Google Maps users on Android Auto are reporting that the recently rolled-out live speedometer and speed-limit indicator have vanished from the app. Some drivers also say markers for stop signs and traffic lights, which had appeared alongside the feature, are no longer showing up. The speedometer had only begun reaching beta testers in July after Google added a feature long available on mobile and on Apple CarPlay.
Ivo Stivoric, who holds the title 'Lt. Trouble + Maker' at Alphabet's X, the Moonshot Factory, has been named 2026 Innovative Leader of the Year. Over more than a dozen years at X, he has led varied projects including Taara's light-based wireless communication, Tapestry's electric grid mapping, Chorus's AI supply chain tracking, and Materra's AI-driven waste sorting, and holds over 90 patents.