| Essential starts selling a Phone, Tim Cook takes on Trump, and tech continues its war on hate. All that and more in the Daily Crunch for August 17, 2018. 1. Andy Rubin's Essential Phone goes on sale Essential has begun taking orders for their Phone, the smartphone with the most on-the-nose name ever. The device is a bit overdue, based on shipping timelines the company laid out earlier, but fans are probably excited nonetheless. The smartphone aims to be a premium alternative to the reigning champs with a low-touch approach to Android software and other add-ons/bloatware. It's also got a modular accessory system, and the company says it's going to release more accessories on a regular basis. 
2. Tim Cook disagrees with Trump's take in internal email Apple CEO Tim Cook sent out a company-wide email in which he says he disagrees with Trump's stance on Charlottesville. This is a pretty standard strategy for tech companies: circulate an internal email and "leak" it to media in lieu of making an actual on the record statement. It would be nice if more people in power would speak out directly. 3. Tech isn't winning the hate war Why would that be nice? Well, it might help turn the tides in the continuing fight against hate online. Taylor takes a look at why the tide might not be turning, as you might imagine based on the wave of companies making an effort to move hate off their platforms. 4. DigitalOcean and Cloudflare ditch Daily Stormer At least one hate monger is having trouble finding harbor in a storm, at least: Cloudflare and CloudOcean have booted The Daily Stormer off their respective platforms. Cloudflare's CEO penned a very personal letter about coming to the decision, and it's worth a look. 5. Amazon is opening Alexa to commercial products Amazon has made a new SDK for Alexa available, opening up access to its voice assistant to commercial products. Making Alexa an enterprise hardware product add-on could open up lots of new opportunities. 6. The new Nokia Android phone has a "dualie" photo and video feature Livestreaming through both front and back cameras at once seems like it could be a selling point. I guess? 7. Check out the official Disrupt SF 2017 schedule Who's going to be at Disrupt SF 2017? Now you can find out: The agenda is available for all to see. Check out the list, it's a promising lineup with a lot of top tech talent. Also, if you haven't yet, check out the latest new TechCrunch podcast, hosted by myself and Anthony Ha. If you like Netflix, you'll like this: 
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