Techmeme
October 20, 2015, 4:55 PM

Top News

Vlad Savov / The Verge:
HTC's One A9 has a high-quality look and feel, similar to an iPhone, available this November for $399 with 3GB of RAM and 32GB of storage  —  HTC's One A9 is a $399 iPhone running Android 6.0  —  The HTC One M9 introduced earlier this year was a disappointment, both to fans of high-end smartphones and, consequently, to HTC itself.
Wall Street Journal:
Sky-high valuations begin to backfire on some Silicon Valley companies trying to raise more money or go public  —  Tech Startups Feel an IPO Chill  —  Sky-high valuations are starting to backfire on some Silicon Valley companies that are trying to raise more money or go public; Dropbox stalls
Kara Swisher / Re/code:
Uber nabs Jill Hazelbaker, the Snapchat communications head poached from Google just one year ago, to be VP of communications and public policy  —  Uber Nabs Snapchat Communications Head Hazelbaker for Key Policy and PR Role  —  Jill Hazelbaker, the high-profile Google communications …
Ravi Somaiya / New York Times:
New York Times partners with Google on virtual reality project, will distribute over 1M cardboard VR viewers to subscribers, and will release new VR film  —  The Times Partners With Google on Virtual Reality Project  —  The New York Times announced on Tuesday a virtual reality project …
Casey Newton / The Verge:
Facebook rolls out instant articles to all iOS users and announces an Android beta  —  Five months after introducing its fast-loading instant articles into the News Feed, Facebook is now rolling out the format to all iPhone users, the company said today.  Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's …
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Tim Cook says new Apple TV coming next week, reveals 6.5m paying Apple Music subscribers  —  As expected, Tim Cook today took the stage at the Wall Street Journal Digital Live conference for an interview.  During his time on stage, Cook discussed a variety of topics, ranging from iPhone to Apple Watch and to Apple Music.
Sarah Buhr / TechCrunch:
Collective Health Closes On $81 Million, Adds Google Ventures To List Of High-Profile Investors  —  Enterprise health insurance services platform Collective Health has raised a healthy $81 million in Series C funding to help the startup continue to grow its team as well as cover the U.S. market.
Andrew Cunningham / Ars Technica:
New Android phones and tablets that ship with Marshmallow must enable full-disk encryption by default if their AES crypto perfomance exceeds 50 MiB/s  —  Android 6.0 re-implements mandatory storage encryption for new devices  —  As long as you meet the minimum speed requirements, that is.

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Earlier Picks

Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica:
Dan Levine / Reuters:
Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica: