Monday, April 23, 2018

Amazon's working on a home robot. It's The Daily Crunch.

THE DAILY CRUNCH
MONDAY, APRIL 23 2018 By Anthony Ha

Amazon has more plans for living room domination, Netflix looks to raise another billion dollars and desktop 3D printing has a rare success. All that and more in The Daily Crunch for April 23, 2018.

1. Amazon is reportedly working on a home robot

According to Bloomberg, the project is code-named "Vesta" and might be tested in employee homes this year, with a consumer launch in 2019.

It's not clear what this robot will do, exactly, though it's a safe bet that Alexa will be incorporated somehow. It'a also worth noting that it's not being developed by Amazon Robotics, but rather Lab126, which created the Echo and various Fire devices.

2. Netflix looks to raise $1.5 billion in debt financing

The company will presumably spend most of the money on producing even more original content, and you'll never need to watch a non-Netflix streaming service again.

3. Facebook hit with defamation lawsuit over fake ads

The company is being sued for defamation in the UK by consumer advice personality Martin Lewis, who says his face and name have been repeatedly used in fake ads.

4. Amazon's new blockchain service competes with similar products from Oracle and IBM

Speaking of Amazon, it's also getting into the blockchain infrastructure business. In the announcement, Amazon's Jeff Barr compares blockchain technology to a classic Saturday Night Live skit.

5. 43% of music revenues came from streaming last year

Streaming growth has offset some of the declines in physical album sales and downloads. The MiDia Research report also claims that the convenience of streaming has led to a 50-percent decline in piracy since 2013.

6. Formlabs scores another $30 million in funding

It's a rare success story in the world of desktop 3D printing, where most of the company's competitors failed to weather the industry's own hype bubble. The company says it's using the funding to build more product, and to help meet growing demand abroad — particularly in Asia.

7. Here come the podcasts

Longtime newsletter readers will remember that we used to do Podcast Friday, but times have changed: Welcome to Podcast Monday! Over the weekend, we published new episodes of Original Content (our podcast for streaming news and reviews) and CTRL+T (which covers the intersection of technology and culture).

Get more stories at techcrunch.com 

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