Chinese electronics manufacturer Xiaomi recently passed Apple to become the world’s second-largest phone maker. It’s now banking on the fact its products are recognizable enough they don’t need additional branding. As first reported by XDA Developers, the company will phase out its “Mi” branding over the coming months, with new products slated to carry the Xiaomi name instead.

“Starting in 2021 Q3, Xiaomi's product series ‘Mi’ will be renamed to ‘Xiaomi,’” a spokesperson for the company told Engadget. “This change will unify our global brand presence and close the perception gap between the brand and its products.” The Mi branding isn’t going completely away. The company’s Mi Home stores will continue to carry the name. Xiaomi will also continue selling Redmi devices, with those targeted at consumers who want to save money on their next phone purchase.

In fact, it sounds like we’ll see the Redmi branding appear on more devices before too long. “The product series naming convention — Xiaomi and Redmi — will also be applied to our ecosystem and IoT products over time,” the spokesperson said. The possibility that Xiaomi was planning to retire the Mi name came out earlier this month when the company’s new Mix 4 phone didn’t feature the branding.

Following its announcement late last month, Facebook’s new 128GB model of the Oculus Quest 2 is now available to buy. You can purchase the VR headset from the company’s website for the same $299 price as the previous 64GB base model. “Long story short? We’ve created this 128GB model so that players can easily store and access more games and apps on a single device,” Facebook says of the new variant.

Facebook announced the 128GB model at the same time it issued a voluntary recall of the Quest 2 to address an issue with the original face insert that came with the headset. The company temporarily stopped selling the Quest 2 for about a month so that it could add a new silicone face cover inside the box of each new unit. If you’re a current Quest 2 owner, you can request Facebook send you the new silicone cover by visiting the My Devices section of the account settings. The new 128GB model also comes with the silicone cover inside the box.

Alphabet's fully autonomous driving unit Waymo is ready to offer rides to select passengers in San Francisco, the company announced on Tuesday. Starting later today, residents can sign up to become "Trusted Testers." With an invite to the program, you can use the Waymo One app to take rides in the fleet of Jaguar I-Pace vehicles Waymo will have stationed in the city. 

Waymo describes the Trusted Tester program as a "research-focused" effort designed to help it collect feedback on its ride experience, with an emphasis on gathering information related to accessibility.   

"We kicked off this program last week with a select few and are now expanding the program to all interested San Franciscans," the company said. "We’ll begin with an initial group and welcome more riders in the weeks to come." Much like it did in Arizona, Waymo won't let the cars drive without supervision right off the back. The company will have employees in the cars to ensure its fifth-generation Waymo Driver technology doesn't get lost on San Francisco's tricky one-way streets and hills. The company also told Bloomberg passengers will ride for free.  

The expansion comes after Waymo recently announced CEO John Krafcik was leaving the company to pursue other projects. Some saw Krafcik as being too slow to push the company toward commercialization. 

The Witch Queen, Destiny’s 2 long-awaited fourth expansion, will launch on February 22nd, 2022, Bungie announced on Tuesday. The expansion will pit players against Savathûn. First mentioned in 2015’s The Taken King, the titular Witch Queen is a foe Destiny players have been waiting years to face. She’s the sister of Oryx, the Hive god players defeated in the aforementioned Taken King expansion, and a character Bungie has meticulously teased in strikes, in-game lore items and more.

In The Witch Queen, players will travel to Savathûn’s Throne World to face the Lucent Hive. Bungie is introducing a new crafting mechanic that will allow players to create their own custom weapons, complete with unique mods, shaders and stat combinations. The expansion will also add a new Glaive weapon type that allows players to complete melee combos, fire energy projectiles and deploy a shield.

Bungie had originally planned to release The Witch Queen in 2021 but delayed the expansion to early 2022 at the start of the year. By the time the studio announced the decision, it had said it was already considering pushing back the expansion for the sake of “the health of the team.” In combination with other plans the studio had for 2021, the coronavirus pandemic made that decision easier.

Whether you’re an Android or iOS user, there’s a good chance you look at user reviews and ratings before you decide whether to download an app to your device. In hopes of making those more useful for everyone, Google plans to make two tweaks to the Play Store.

Starting in November, the ratings you see will be based on where you live. So, for example, if your device is registered to Japan, you will first see what other Japanese users think of the app you’re about to download. Then, sometime early next year, Google plans to further tweak Play Store ratings to better reflect the device you’re using, be that a phone, tablet, foldable, Chromebook or smartwatch. “This will give users a better impression of the experience that they can expect for the device they’re using,” the company says of the change.

In part, Google is making these tweaks to help developers. It wants to avoid a situation where ratings in one area impact the global perception of an app. This can happen in cases where a bug only affects one localized version of the software. Of course, that compartmentalization means you can learn of those same bugs before you download an app.

While Panic's pint-sized Playdate handheld won't make its way to early adopters until the end of the year, iFixit got a chance to look inside the device early. "Unfortunately it didn't come with any games, so a teardown was about all it was good for," iFixit said, for those who might be jealous the company got a unit before they did.

Panic

Taking apart the handheld, iFixit found a console with mostly modest internal components. The Playdate has a 180MHz CPU supported by 16MB of memory and 4GB of flash storage. Powering everything is a 2.74 Wh battery with about 25 percent of the capacity of the power cell you'll find inside the iPhone 12.

But what you want to know about is Playdate's signature fold-out crank. According to iFixit, Panic and Teenage Engineering embedded a cylindrical magnet into the shaft of the component. That magnet works in conjunction with a Hull effect sensor to trigger an input from the crank. It's a simple but effective design that should last. "One thing this crank won't do? Drift. There's no wiper or spring or sensor surface to wear out," the company says, referencing the Nintendo Switch's well-known controller issue.

Panic

While it's no Framework laptop, it's clear Panic and Teenage Engineering designed the Playdate with at least one eye toward repairability. A charming sticker iFixit found upon opening the device said "breaking," not removing, the components would void the warranty. Many of the internals most likely to fail first, including the battery and headphone jack, were either modular or easily accessible. Components like the display and USB-C port will be more challenging to replace, but the Playdate looks DIY friendly enough that it could enjoy a modding scene like the Game Boy Advance.

A group of current and former Apple employees are calling on their colleagues to publicly share stories of discrimination, harassment and retaliation they experienced while working at the company. The call to action went up on Monday when the collective started a Twitter account called Apple Workers. 

"For too long, Apple has evaded public scrutiny," the group says on its website. "When we press for accountability and redress to the persistent injustices we witness or experience in our workplace, we are faced with a pattern of isolation, degradation and gaslighting."

The protesting workers say they've exhausted all internal avenues for a remedy from the company, which is why they're going public with their complaints. "We've talked with our leadership. We've gone to the People team. We've escalated through Business Conduct. Nothing has changed," they say. "It's time to Think Different."

According to The Verge, about 15 individuals were involved in organizing the effort. Earlier today, they shared the news on a 200-person Discord server for Apple employees and contractors. We've reached out to Apple for comment.

The action comes as Apple faces questions over its handling of sexism in the workplace. In August, the company put Ashley Gjøvik, a senior engineering program manager, on paid administrative leave. In a series of tweets, Gjøvik shared several interactions with the company's employee relations team. One of those details is an episode in which a manager referred to her "tone" in presentations and said, "I didn't hear you going up an octave at the end of your statements." Apple is currently investigating Gjøvik's allegations.

"There is much more information about my story and my concerns about Apple work conditions that I have not made public yet," Gjøvik says on a website she created to chronicle her experience at the company. "I only resorted to this because everything I tried internally has failed."

Earlier this month, Roku released the last of the TV shows and movies it acquired when Quibi shut down at the end of 2020. Now the company is looking to the future. On Monday, Roku announced it’s bringing back Most Dangerous Game, one of the more popular titles it acquired in the transaction, for a second season.

Two-time Academy Award-winner Christoph Waltz will reprise his role as antagonist Miles Sellars, with David Castañeda, best known for his role in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy, joining the cast as the show’s new protagonist. Roku describes Castañeda’s character, Victor Suero, as a down on his luck fighter who is forced to participate in the deadly contest at the center of the show to protect his sister.

It’s not surprising to see Roku decide to bring back Most Dangerous Game. The shorts Roku acquired from Quibi have played a significant role in its plan to find a niche among giants like Netflix and Amazon, and Most Dangerous Game was one of the few shows Quibi renewed before its demise last year. Roku hasn’t said when the new season would debut.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen one retro Nintendo game after another shatter the record for the most expensive video game sold at auction. At the start of July, a copy of The Legend of Zelda went for $870,000. Days later, a mint version of Super Mario 64 sold for $1.56 million. Now another Nintendo collectible has set a sales record, but this one is a bit different.

Over the weekend, a special commemorative edition of a Game & Watch system sold for approximately $9,100 on Yahoo Japan. As most Nintendo fans know, the Game & Watch predates the far more successful Game Boy. What makes this unit unique is that it was commissioned by Game & Watch creator Gunpei Yokoi after Nintendo sold more than 20,000 million units of the handheld. Before this weekend, this version of the console had never come on the market before.

What’s unclear is just how many units of the commemorative edition Game Nintendo produced. According to Beforemario, a blog devoted to games and toys the company made between the 1960s and 1980s, the unit is “extremely” rare. “If I had to guess, I would say there were more than three made [one for each of the individuals pictured on the plaque], but again, just a guess,” John Hardie, the director of the National Videogame Museum in Fresco, Texas, told Ars Technica.

Given the current state of the video game collectibles market, what seems like a one-of-a-kind historical artifact selling for so little is surprising. Part of that could be the result of the Game & Watch market. As Ars Technica points out, you can find common versions of the handheld for about $50. Rarer variants like the Ballon Fight one can go for as much as $2,000 if they’re in good condition.

One of the most unusual cryptocurrency heists in recent memory has come to a close. On Monday, Poly Network, a decentralized finance platform that saw a hacker named “Mr. White Hat” exploit a vulnerability in its code to steal $610 million in Ethereum, Shiba Inu and other cryptocurrencies, says it has recovered all the money it lost in the theft.

“At this point, all the user assets that were transferred during the incident have been fully recovered,” the company said in a Medium post. Poly Network is now working to return control of those digital currencies to their rightful owners, a process the company says it hopes to complete as soon as possible.

The Poly Network hack took one strange turn after another. Less than a day after stealing the digital currencies, the hacker started returning millions and sent a token indicating they were “ready to surrender.” Everything was going smoothly until they locked more than $200 million in assets in an account that required passwords from both them and Poly Network. They said they would only provide their password once everyone was “ready.” At that point, Poly Network offered the hacker a $500,000 reward.

It’s unclear why the perpetrator had a change of heart, though some experts believe they may have found it difficult to launder and cash out the money they had on their hands. All we have to go on from the hacker is that they were trying to help in their own way.

“My actions, which may be considered weird, are my efforts to contribute to the security of the Poly project in my personal style,” the hacker said in a message they included with the final transaction, according to CNBC. “The consensus was reached in a painful and obscure way, but it works.”