In today’s letter: A better remote for the Apple TV; SoftBank’s hard-hitting tech bet; the ongoing unfairness of U.S. broadband; the inscrutable economics of videogame pricing; and more. But first ...

When Steve Jobs designed Pixar’s headquarters in the 1990s, he insisted on having the bathrooms located near the center so people would have to bump into one another. He knew that serendipitous interactions are powerful drivers of innovation.

Since the pandemic hit, many of us have been missing those face-to-face meetings with our colleagues. So of course tech companies are looking for ways to fill the gaps. Enter digital whiteboards, virtual-reality conference centers and an always-on tablet starring your favorite colleagues’ floating heads.

Are these real substitutes for being together in person? Probably not. But we do need services for this unique time we’re in. Working remotely every once in a while could be done pretty easily through email, messaging services like Slack and the phone. But as weeks turn to months and months quite possibly turn to years, we need something better.

Over the past few months my colleagues and I have talked through Zoom, Slack, Houseparty, Google Hangouts, iMessage and by phone. We stress-test ideas that way and come up with new avenues to explore in our work; we also accidentally interrupt one another, listen to the wind gusting while one of us walks and talks, and 90% of the time, my computer freezes just as I’m making a weird face.

That’s another way of saying no one method of quarantine communication is perfect. One researcher told me products and services aiming to replicate in-person interactions are kind of like aspirin for a headache: They’ll make it hurt less, but you’d prefer not being in pain in the first place. The pandemic is basically a dull migraine with no end in sight; it’s time to check out the latest in remote-work remedies.

—Katie is a tech reporter based in San Francisco. Read her full article here.

Long ago, all you had to do to play a videogame was dig into your piggy bank for quarters and head to the arcade. Now, you can play great games almost anywhere without spending a penny. But you also might spend as much as $70 up front. 

👉Read Sarah E. Needleman’s column explaining how to parse the different business models so you can get the most bang for your buck. Also, don't miss the latest on Epic's battle with Apple over "Fortnite."

Facing the Sheriff: Online brokerage Robinhood faces a civil fraud investigation over its early failure to fully disclose its practice of selling clients’ orders to high-speed trading firms.

Come A Cropper: Farmers Business Network, a Silicon Valley startup that is trying to build an Amazon-like e-marketplace for agricultural supplies, faces pressure from big suppliers as it tries to grow its online platform.

Zooming Ahead: Zoom raised its full-year outlook for a second time during the pandemic, cementing its position as one of the biggest corporate winners from the shift to working from home and remote schooling.

Hip to Be…Square shares have more than doubled since the start of the year mostly due to the popularity of its Cash app, which has taken off during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Deal talks for TikTok’s U.S. operations have hit a snag over the question of whether the app’s core algorithms can be included as part of a deal.

The algorithms, which determine the videos served to users and are seen as TikTok’s secret sauce, were considered part of the deal negotiations until the Chinese government issued new restrictions on the export of artificial-intelligence technology. 

👉 Read the full report from Liza Lin, Aaron Tilley and Georgia Wells here.

The tech battle between the U.S. and China has battered TikTok and Huawei and startled American companies that produce and sell in China. The Wall Street Journal explains here how Beijing is pouring money into high-tech chips as it wants to become self-sufficient.

⭐Separately, the Trump administration is weighing whether to place export restrictions on Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s most advanced manufacturer of semiconductors.

• Memers are Making Deepfakes, and Things are Getting Weird (MIT Technology Review)

• To Play Poker in a Pandemic, Americans Flee the U.S. (NYT)

• Inside Amazon’s Secret Program to Spy On Workers’ Private Facebook Groups (Motherboard)

Investors watching the vertigo-inducing rise—and last week’s fall—of technology stocks are buzzing about a single trade, a giant but shadowy bet on Silicon Valley big enough to pull the market up with it.

The investor behind that trade, according to people familiar with the matter, is Japan’s SoftBank, which bought options tied to billions of dollars worth of individual tech stocks.

👉 Read Summer Said, Liz Hoffman, Gunjan Banerji and Phred Dvorak’s full report here

By Joanna Stern

The editors of this newsletter were very clear with me: only three paragraphs about this heavenly remote control that I won’t shut up about. Hmph! Only three paragraphs to talk about the best tech product of the year. Maybe the decade. Maybe ever.

Of course, the Function101 Button Remote for Apple TV (yes, that’s the official name) is great because it fixes one of the worst gadgets in the history of gadgets: Apple’s $59 Siri Remote. Disagree? Then I guess you must enjoy Apple’s razor-thin easy-to-slip-between-couch-cushions shape, the jumpy trackpad and the oh-so-helpful which-end-is-up button layout.

Instead, the granola-bar-sized Function101 remote, which instantly pairs with an Apple TV, has real, bouncy buttons. You can pick it up without looking at it because it looks and feels like an actual remote. Sure, there’s no microphone or Siri but that’s really fine since, you know, you can actually navigate to Netflix with this thing. At $30, it’s a no-brainer. Just be aware that Apple might be planning to release a new Apple TV with redesigned remote before the year end. Hey, 2020 is looking up already!

—Joanna is WSJ’s senior personal technology columnist based in New York. Read her columns here.

As many schools around the country start the year virtually, residents in rural communities like those in West Virginia are asking why they don’t have reliable Internet service. The recent bankruptcy of Frontier Communications provides insight into how U.S. broadband policies have fallen short for many Americans.

👉Watch Jake Nicol's video here

...When UFO sightings are spiking. That said, there’s still no official word on first contact just yet.

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Brought to you by tech editor Robert Wall, tech news editor Bowdeya Tweh and personal tech editor Wilson Rothman. You can reach them by replying to this newsletter, and follow them on Twitter: @R_Wall, @bowknowsbiz and @wjrothman.