Techmeme: The Billion Dollar Valuation Club (Fred Wilson/A VC)

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November 3, 2013, 5:25 PM

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Fred Wilson / A VC:

The Billion Dollar Valuation Club — Aileen Lee has a really good post up on TechCrunch, in which she analyzes the number of companies that have been started since 2003 that have gone on to be worth $1bn or more. — This is a very useful exercise in the VC business since it is these big wins …

Tweets: @mathewi

Aileen Lee / TechCrunch:

Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning From Billion-Dollar Startups — Editor's note: Aileen Lee is founder of Cowboy Ventures, a seed-stage fund that backs entrepreneurs reinventing work and personal life through software. Previously, she joined Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 1999 …

More: Business Insider. Tweets: @sjacobsohn, @rgwd67, @semil, @jesskah, @hunterwalk, @quinngarner, @rabois, @fredwilson, @davemcclure, @amir, @shervin, @trengriffin, @om, @chamath and @carnage4life

Mark Gurman / 9to5Mac:

Henri Lamiraux, Apple's top iOS Engineering Vice President, leaves company after 23 years — Henri Lamiraux, Apple's top Vice President of Engineering for the iOS iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch operating system has left the company, according to a source and corroborated by his LinkedIn profile.

More: PC Magazine, iMore, The Verge, MacRumors, CNET, The Next Web, iPhone in Canada Blog, iPhone Hacks, App Advice and iClarified. Tweets: @markgurman

Scott Shane / New York Times:

No Morsel Too Minuscule for All-Consuming N.S.A. — The N.S.A.'s Evolution: The National Security Agency was founded in 1952, and its surveillance capabilities were limited by legislation in 1978. But with the attacks of September 2001 came a new sense of urgency.

More: Guardian, CNET, Business Insider, emptywheel and Guardian

Tweets: @jlllow, @kenroth, @colvinius, @charlie_savage, @zeynep, @dangillmor, @csoghoian, @ggreenwald, @apblake, @bcappelbaum, @jameeljaffer and @joshuafoust

Caroline Copley / Reuters:

Swisscom builds ‘Swiss Cloud’ as spying storm rages — (Reuters) - Swisscom is building a “Swiss Cloud” that could loosen the grip of U.S. technology giants and attract foreign companies looking for a way to shield sensitive data from the prying eyes of foreign intelligence services.

More: Ars Technica and Guardian

Washington Post:

HealthCare.gov: How political fear was pitted against technical needs — In May 2010, two months after the Affordable Care Act squeaked through Congress, President Obama's top economic aides were getting worried. Larry Summers, director of the White House's National Economic Council …

More: Polygon. Tweets: @tcarmody, @digiphile, @jpodhoretz, @nprinskeep, @arimelber and @jodyavirgan

Richard Waters / Financial Times:

Bill Gates stands separate from peers with focus on disease over internet connectivity — An exclusive interview with Bill Gates — The internet is not going to save the world, says the Microsoft co-founder, whatever Mark Zuckerberg and Silicon Valley's tech billionaires believe.

More: The Verge, Digits, Forbes, TechSpot, Gigaom Search, Business Insider, T3 News, The Atlantic Wire, CNET and WebProNews. Tweets: @rupertmurdoch

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Netflix starts testing 4K videos, wants to launch Ultra HD next year — Netflix quietly added a handful of 4K HD videos to its catalog this week to prepare itself for a wider launch of ultra high-definition video content in the coming months. So far, the titles added to the catalog …

More: Pocket-lint, Gizmodo, The Verge, Newsy, Digital Trends, TechSpot, Engadget, iClarified, Mashable, DisplayBlog, Softpedia News, SlashGear and T3 News. Tweets: @qthrul

David Grossman / The Verge:

YouTube Live: a disastrous spectacle Google would like you to forget — On the eve of its next attempt, has the company learned from its mistakes? — This Sunday, November 3rd, the world will experience the first annual YouTube Music Awards, hosted by Jason Schwartzman and streamed live from New York City.

Dave Itzkoff / New York Times:

YouTube Music Awards Are Readied for Webcast

More: AllThingsD, The Verge, Boing Boing and Hollywood Reporter. Tweets: @pkafka

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

Yahoo's Mayer on the Talent Hunt for Tech Journalists (Even From AllThingsD!) — This weekend, a Yahoo recruiter tried to poach two of our fine AllThingsD reporters for what was described as a “new initiative within our Tech Vertical.” — According to the recruiter, who used LinkedIn for the outreach …

Tweets: @mattbuchanan, @thestalwart, @jackshafer and @alexia. See also Mediagazer

Anand Lal Shimpi / AnandTech:

iPad Air Delivers 24 Hours of Battery Life as LTE Hotspot — A year ago during my review of the LTE iPad 3 I decided to find out how long the iPad would last as a personal hotspot. With the display off and a single notebook tethered wirelessly to the iPad downloading at a constant 50KB/s …

More: ZDNet, Gotta Be MobileGotta Be Mobile, CNET, iClarified, iPhone Hacks, iPhone in Canada Blog and Fierce CIO Tech Watch

Eric Pfanner / New York Times:

After recent stock price decrease, Samsung to hold first analysts meeting since 2005 — Samsung Prepares to Slowly Lift a Curtain to Investors — TOKYO — Secrecy has served Samsung Electronics well. Keeping its rivals guessing has helped the company, a South Korean technology giant …

Tweets: @lessien

Vlad Savov / The Verge:

Android 4.4 KitKat and Google's quest to take over the world — Can a low-end Android phone be any good? For Mountain View, a billion users are at stake — “As we get on our journey to reach the next billion people, we want to do it on the latest version of Android.” — Sundar Pichai

More: Forbes and Ars Technica. Tweets: @carlfranzen

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