New Google Pay ...and the worst passwords of 2020
There’s a big Google Pay app redesign! At least in the US, and it takes on both Venmo/CashApp for sending money, and Mint for tracking your transactions.:
- Google has unveiled the redesign for both Android and iOS.
- On the payments side, there’s now Venmo-like abilities to send money to friends and businesses, which includes a messaging service. (Cue the Google-debuts- another-messaging-service-jokes)
- Then, on the transactions side, there’s a new “Insights” section of the app, that aims to help ease financial stresses.
- It sounds handy - it can track information from connected bank accounts, credit and debit cards, provide reminders that bills are due, warn of suspicious activities, show you your weekly expenditure, and it has search too.
- “Google Pay has a semantic understanding of the word food and it also understands places where I’ve bought food,” said a Google rep.
- It also can search through photos in Google Photos to find pictures of receipts and words in those receipts, while Google promises a “privacy-forward” approach.
- Also, Google announced its long-expected digital bank accounts, the Google-branded accounts called Plex, coming in 2021, and you can join the waitlist now for a Plex Account from Citi or SFCU.
- No signs if Google will roll out the better Google Pay features beyond the US for now.
And the bonus today — the worst passwords of 2020 are here and they are just miserable. NordPass published a list of 200 but the top 20 are bad enough:
- 123456
- 123456789
- picture1
- password
- 12345678
- 111111
- 123123
- 12345
- 1234567890
- senha
- 1234567
- qwerty
- abc123
- Million2
- 000000
- 1234
- iloveyou
- aaron431
- password1
- qqww1122
Obvious reaction: yikes.
- “The most popular password '123456' has been breached 23,597,311 times," writes NordPass, alarmingly.
- #10 “senha” is “password” in Portuguese, by the way.
Round Up:
🎁 Vivo is unveiling its redesigned OriginOS Android skin for Vivo and iQoo phones, as it retires FuntouchOS which leaned on iOS pretty closely. OriginOS looks like it’s borrowed from iOS widgets, but looking forward to seeing what reviewers say once it’s out in 2021 (Android Authority).
📺 Wonder Woman 1984 will debut on HBO Max (and in theaters) Christmas Day, but there’s a catch around that the Gal Gadot superhero film will only be available for a month, when it will head to theaters exclusively, then a wider release to retailers, and back to HBO Max (Android Authority).
🍎 Apple to pay $113 million in latest iPhone ‘Batterygate’ settlement, no real change to the status quo (Android Authority).
🍏 More on Apple’s move to cut fees for small developers, with a nice nuanced take (John Luxford). Given many developers don’t get anywhere beyond $1M in annual revenue, it’s still Epic and Spotify taking up arms against the 30% tax. Epic’s reaction may well be over the top (TechCrunch). No doubt Apple’s move is protecting itself here, and while it looks good, it affects a vanishingly small amount of Apple’s revenue because the top 1% of developers like Epic and Spotify etc, log 90%+ of App Store revenue for Apple.
📺 YouTube will now play ads before more videos, but creators won't see a dime (Gizmodo).
🛫 The FAA has given Boeing the all-clear to fly the 737 Max again. Now, Boeing has to modify hundreds of planes, and return them to a much emptier sky (Seattle Times).
😺 MeowTalk: An app that aims to translate your cat’s meows has been developed by a former Amazon Alexa engineer. There’s no one cat language apparently, so you’ll need to train the app to your cat (BBC).
😢 The jetman Vincent Reffet, famous for airborne feats using jetpacks and carbon-fibre wing packs, has been killed in a training accident in Dubai (BBC).
🎮 The Among Us developers have teased a new map plus hinted at something alongside The Game Awards on December 10th. Devs are finally on Twitter, too (Engadget).
🚀 A guy records a Soyuz launch from an insanely close distance (r/thatsinsane).
🎲 Here’s a bunch of board games you might want to consider gifting this holiday season. Or, buying for yourself! (Engadget).
🏡 “People who’ve been on home renovation or remake shows, how’s the house holding up?” (r/askreddit).
Throwback Thursday
The Amazon Kindle was first released on this day in 2007. Built under codename Fiona after a 2004 Jeff Bezos request to beat the competition to market. (Which it didn’t — the Sony Reader was out long before, but hey, Sony no longer makes ebook readers...)
- The six-inch grayscale E Ink device, with 250MB of storage, plus SD card slot, went on sale for $399.
- It sold out in under six hours, remaining out of stock until April 2008, and a juggernaut was born.
- CNET gave it a 7.5/10, and the review sort of confirms that it’s not always about competition.
The hook was the books, of course, but Amazon made the experience better.
- Bezos demanded that Amazon have 100,000 titles available at launch, a gargantuan amount that nearly broke Dan Rose who worked on the project, as he revealed in a really interesting Twitter thread this year, which features a lot of “we told [Jeff] it couldn’t be done, he did it anyway.”
- Wirelessly loading those books onto the device beat plugging in like you did with the Sony.
- Plus, the might of Oprah was hooked (CNN).
Cheers,
Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor.
