Techmeme: Pixel 3 review: fastest Android device with impressive computational photography features, but the phone's build quality and gaming performance lag competition (Andrei Frumusanu/AnandTech)

Top News

Sources: Amazon close to making a decision on HQ2, with Crystal City in Northern Virginia and Austin as frontrunners, but new HQ may be split between them — - Amazon is in the advanced stages of placing its second headquarters in Northern Virginia, The Washington Post reported on Saturday

More: USA Today, Washington Post, SlashGear, Recode, The Guardian, TechCrunch, Washington Post, Axios, BostonGlobe.com, GeekWire, Engadget, CNN, The Verge, The Hill, Neowin, Mashable, Telegraph, Business Insider, and GeekWire

Tweets: @mikegrella, @mikegrella, @ryanfelton, @markos, @evleaks, @sam_baker, @nxthompson, @timmarchman, @stevecheney, @tomscocca, @richard_florida, @semil, @ryanavent, and @yfreemark

Mark Sullivan / Fast Company:

Source: Apple will launch an iPhone with Intel's 8161 5G modem chip in 2020; Intel will likely be the sole modem supplier for that year's iPhones — Apple's 5G iPhone will come to market in 2020, a source with knowledge of Apple's plans says. — Apple plans to use Intel's 8161 5G modem chip in its 2020 phones.

More: BetaNews, TechCrunch, TechSpot, The Verge, Engadget, Firstpost, SlashGear, Gizmodo, MSPoweruser, Mashable, iPhone in Canada Blog, VentureBeat, iPhone Hacks, MacRumors, Neowin, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Redmond Pie, and Digital Trends

Tweets: @witeken and @stevesi

Khadeeja Safdar / Wall Street Journal:

How companies use customer lifetime value scores to differentiate prices, services offered; unlike FICO scores, CLVs aren't regulated or accessible to consumers — Retailers, wireless carriers and others crunch data to determine what shoppers are worth for the long term—and how well to treat them

More: BGR. Tweets: @wsj and @wsj

Katharine Schwab / Fast Company:

A look at Unfold, whose templates app for Instagram Stories has 11M+ users including celebs like Selena Gomez, as it launches a design agency focused on Stories — Alfonso Cobo saw the potential in Stories early on. Today, his template app has 11 million users, and he's launching a design agency focused on Stories alone.

More: The Verge. Tweets: @fastcodesign and @fastcompany

James Vincent / The Verge:

New research from OpenAI shows how an AI agent with a sense of curiosity outperformed its predecessors playing the classic 1984 Atari game Montezuma's Revenge — This question is perhaps too broad to yield a single answer, but if you had to sum up why you accept that next quest …

More: The Register, OpenAI Blog, and Simon Willison's Weblog

Tweets: @gdb, @quasimondo, and @gdb

Sahil Patel / Digiday:

Programming on Facebook Watch has evolved as it focuses on sports, news, and high-profile stars/creators and funding for shows by digital publishers dries up — Facebook says it wants Facebook Watch programming that's unique to its platform — with big names and built-in distribution, if possible.

Tweets: @maxwillens, @billsimmons, and @mattnavarra

See also Mediagazer

Andrei Frumusanu / AnandTech:

Pixel 3 review: fastest Android device with impressive computational photography features, but the phone's build quality and gaming performance lag competition — The Pixel 3 is Google's third generation in-house design, meant to showcase the company's own view of what an Android device should be …

Thanks:@iancutress

Eric Newcomer / Bloomberg:

Inside Uber's deal with Saudi Arabia, from David Plouffe's first meetings with local officials to the 10%+ stake that, sources say, the kingdom now owns — Even as Uber's lawyers finalized the details of the deal, they still couldn't quite believe it would really happen.

Tweets: @natashakhanhk, @khanoisseur, @markmilian, and @dignitydriver

Gizmodo:

A history of the ongoing quest to build a viable 2-in-1 tablet-laptop hybrid and why they are so hard to design — In a recent barrage of new products, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Lenovo, and HP have all shown off computers that are trying to tackle one of the industry's most vexing problems …

More: CNET and Windows Central

Tweets: @stevesi, @stevesi, @stevesi, @stevesi, and @gizmodo

TechCrunch:

Facebook reorganized AR and VR team from a divisional structure focused around products to a functional structure focused around technology areas of expertise — Facebook is again looking to whip Oculus into shape for its 10-year journey towards making virtual reality mainstream.

More: Engadget and UploadVR

Tweets: @joshconstine and @lucasmtny

Jack Morse / Mashable:

Interview with three renowned women in infosec on how they got started, some of their most memorable finds, and how to encourage more women to join their field — This post is part of Mashable's ongoing series The Women Fixing STEM, which highlights trailblazing women in science, tech …

Tweets: @k8em0 and @infosecsherpa

Lily Hay Newman / Wired:

Current and former employees on Google's ongoing struggle balancing user privacy with business interests — OVER TWO DAYS during the summer of 2009, experts from inside and outside Google met to forge a roadmap for how the company would approach user privacy.

Tweets: @nxthompson, @privacymatters, @wired, and @jason_kint. Thanks:@aaronjstein

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