1 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Archives for October 2026

Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
Amazon adds handwritten ebook notes to the Kindle Android app.

After adding the option to annotate Kindle ebooks with handwritten notes on its new Alexa Tablets, Amazon has brought the same functionality to the Kindle Android app, as some users in the Kindle subreddit have discovered. It currently appears limited to Android tablets and phones that support a stylus, and it hasn’t come to the iPadOS version of the app yet.

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A screenshot of the Kindle Android app showing handwritten notes on an ebook.
Image: Reddit
Terrence O'Brien
Terrence O'Brien
Google’s AI overview led some people to think they were donating to James Talarico when they weren’t.

Instead, their money went to a political action committee that funneled the money to the reelection campaign of Colorado’s Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper. According to The Atlantic:

The mix-up wasn’t all AI’s fault. The link led to a misleading donation page that carried Talarico’s name and picture, and specified only at the bottom that the money would go to Hickenlooper. But Google’s AI tool evidently didn’t read the fine print. And perhaps no one would have clicked on it had Google not highlighted the page in an authoritative-sounding AI response.

Googlebooks just aren’t ready

Our collective reviews of every Googlebook at launch: very good laptops hobbled by beta-level software.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto, David Pierce and 2 more
Dominic Preston
Dominic Preston
Now that’s what I call futureproofing.

Some Android users are reporting receiving a Google Play system update dated “1 January 2027,” which really seems to be getting ahead of itself. Sadly, all my Android phones are still stuck on September 2026, which now feels entirely old fashioned.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google Chrome’s new HTTPS warning rolls out today.

As announced last year, Chrome will now show a warning when you visit public websites without an encrypted HTTPS connection. The new warnings will appear the first time you visit a site without a secure connection. If you continue to the site, Google won’t present the warning for another two weeks.

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis thinks AGI is two to three years away.

The Wall Street Journal published a big profile of the Google DeepMind co-founder, who says his timeline for the arrival of artificial general intelligence (AGI) is becoming “nearer and nearer.”

He adds that “winning” the AI race “means helping humanity steward AGI into the world safely and securely for the benefit of everyone.”

Emma Roth
Emma Roth
Google is clamping down on scammy financial ads in the US and Canada.

Starting in 2027, Google will require advertisers to prove that they’ve been approved by regulators before running certain kinds of financial ads. The company has already introduced this requirement in the UK and EU as part of efforts to prevent brand impersonation and financial scams.