Techmeme: 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 (James Vincent/The Verge)

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

Tweets: @mikegrella, @ryanavent, @semil, @richard_florida, and @yfreemark

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

Tweets: @gdb, @quasimondo, and @gdb

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: @markmilian

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: Windows Central. Tweets: @stevesi, @stevesi, @stevesi, @stevesi, and @gizmodo

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 …

More: Fortune

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: @jason_kint and @wired. Thanks:@aaronjstein

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

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: UploadVR and Forbes

Tweets: @lucasmtny and @joshconstine

Martha Pskowski / New York Magazine:

Profile of TIC, a community-run low-cost cellular service operating in underserved areas across Oaxaca in Mexico, as it gears up to launch in four more states — Talea de Castro is a four-hour drive through winding mountain roads from the capital of Oaxaca, Mexico.

Andrei Zakharov / BBC:

Hackers publish private messages from 81K Facebook accounts and claim to have details from up to 120M accounts for sale; FB blames 3rd-party browser extensions — Hackers appear to have compromised and published private messages from at least 81,000 Facebook users' accounts.

Tom Simonite / Wired:

A look at how deepfakes, with recent software advances that easily create AI-generated fake audio and video, could be misused to undermine elections — PLENTY OF PEOPLE are following the final days of the midterm election campaigns. Yale law researcher Rebecca Crootof has a special interest—a small wager.

More: Axios. Tweets: @nxthompson and @wired

Karen Hao / MIT Technology Review:

How US-based Truepic and UK-based Serelay discern true images from fakes by using proprietary algorithms to automatically verify photos the moment they're made

Tony Romm / Washington Post:

How Facebook and Twitter fight online voter suppression for the midterms with algorithm changes and partnerships with organizations that report disinformation — Facebook and Twitter aren't just trying to drive people to the polls — they're racing to fight back bad actors who seek to deter their users from voting.

More: CNN, Reuters, Bloomberg, MSPoweruser, CNET, Vox, Mashable, The Hill, Cyberscoop, Wired, Axios, and Reuters

Tweets: @wired, @tonyromm, @cnetnews, @peteskomoroch, @nickpacilio, @bcappelbaum, and @tonyromm. Thanks:@tonyromm

Zachary Fryer-Biggs / Center for Public Integrity:

Current and former senior US officials say the Pentagon has outlined an offensive cyberattack against Russia if it electronically interferes with the midterms — U.S. military hackers have been given the go-ahead to gain access to Russian cyber systems as part of potential retaliation for any meddling in America's elections

More: Newser. Tweets: @natashabertrand, @thedailybeast, @garethporter, @baekdal, and @thedailybeast

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