| Snap's new business focus, Silicon Valley's principles vs. profit, and Gmail tests a great new feature. It's The Daily Crunch for October 19, 2017. 1. Snap is becoming an animated hot dog company Snap, Inc. is facing some tough times, in terms of its main business, but everyone fell in love with its animated augmented reality dancing hotdog filter. Now, the company is selling its second ever hardware product – and it's also the hot dog. Snap surprised us all with an Amazon listing for the Hot Dog costume, which is probably going to do pretty well this Halloween season. And then we'll forget all about it and why we ever cared. 
2. Facebook and Google wanted those sweet, sweet anti-immigration ad dollars Left-leaning Silicon Valley has right-leaning inclinations when it comes to making money, it turns out – both Google and Facebook fought hard to get contracts for scare-mongering anti-immigration ads from a conservative special interest group. Blargh. 3. Gmail launches public iOS beta for third-party accounts Gmail now has a pubic beta client for iOS, with the added ability of supporting third-party email accounts. It could be the best email client for iOS as a result. Anyone remember Inbox? 4. Bixby's back Samsung wants a second chance at creating a good virtual assistant. Bixby 2.0 made its debut on stage at the company's annual developer conference, now with Vivi introduction, the smart assistant Samsung acquired from the creators of Siri. So, like maybe it'll have some real smarts finally. 5. August Home sells to Assa Abloy You may not have heard of Assa Abloy but they make a ton of locks – like a whole lot. Also they just acquired August Home, the smart lock startup. It's probably a timely exit for August, since making hardware is hard for a startup, and costly. 6. Blue Apron laying off hundreds Blue Apron had one of the worst IPOs this year, and it's laying off a bunch of people. This business was probably never viable, to be fair. 7. This rocket company wants to undercut SpaceX using 3D printing Let's make rocket launching so affordable even minor billionaires can afford to send stuff up – that's what Relativity Space wants to do, by taking people out of the equation when it comes to rocket production, using 3D printing. 
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