Jason D. Rowley / Crunchbase News: Aerospike, which provides a high-scale NoSQL database platform for processing data queries really quickly, raises $32M Series D, bringing total raised to $78M  —  Imagine for a moment that you´re making a credit card transaction.  This prompts a lot of questions from the payment processor before it accepts your payment.

Jason Hovet / Reuters: Czech government approves a proposal for a 7% digital tax covering revenue from large companies gained via targeted ads, user data sales, and more  —  PRAGUE (Reuters) - The Czech government approved a 7% digital tax proposal on Monday aimed at boosting state coffers by taxing advertising …

Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica: Facebook launches Oculus Link software for Oculus Quest in beta, allowing users to access Rift PC games using a USB-C cable  —  Beta for this wired-VR update is now live; official Oculus Link cable coming soon.  —  Oculus Quest owners, your chance to dive into the world of PC-VR gaming has begun.

Bloomberg: Chinese government data suggests Apple shipped 10M iPhones in the country during Sept. and Oct., up 6% YoY, as overall smartphone shipments dropped 5% to 69.3M  —  - Upgrades to camera and battery spur 6% growth in shipments  — China is Apple´s most important market after the U.S.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Elavon, the payments subsidiary of US Bancorp, to acquire Sage Pay, a payment processor operating in the UK and Ireland, for £232M in cash  —  E-commerce continues to gain momentum — a trend we´ll see played out in the next two months of holiday shopping — and with that comes more consolidation.

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: Self-driving startup Wayve, which considers sophisticated sensor tech like lidar unnecessary for safe autonomous driving systems, raises $20M Series A  —  Wayve, a U.K.-based startup that´s developing artificial intelligence (AI) that teaches cars to drive autonomously using reinforcement learning …

Mike Murphy / Quartz: Profile of Mixhalo, a live-music app being offered by bands like Aerosmith as a VIP experience, to let fans hear the music at live shows as the band intended  —  Think back to the first time you saw a high-definition TV program.  —  After a lifetime of looking at standard-definition shows …

Kevin Roose / New York Times: As millions pay for premium subscriptions to have a “clean” digital media experience, privacy and freedom from advertising are gradually becoming luxury goods  —  Photo illustration by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari  —  A decade ago, an internet video start …

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News: Qualia, which streamlines closing of real estate deals and claims to handle 15%+ of all US transactions, raises $55M Series C, bringing its total raised to $95M  —  Anyone who has bought a home knows that the sheer amount of paperwork involved in closing the transaction is not only overwhelming …

Christina Farr / CNBC: PillPack adds “Amazon Pharmacy” to its logo and says it has filed paperwork that adds “Amazon Pharmacy” to the licensed name of its pharmacy fulfillment centers  —  - PillPack, the Internet pharmacy it acquired last year, has updated its logo to “PillPack by Amazon Pharmacy.”