The Daily Crunch 11/18/16

Sports! Solar power! Suspect sources! All that and more in The Daily Crunch for November 18, 2016. And if you're doing a food startup, you're either very brave or very stupid, and I commend you in either case.

1. DraftKings and FanDuel are now a single lobbying powerhouse

DraftKings and FanDuel, once fierce rivals in trying to separate adult humans from their money in exchange for nothing but a fictional competition involving grown people throwing balls or whatever, are now unified as one.

The fantasy sports platforms seem to have decided that the best way for them to further their primary goal of legalizing gambling in fantasy sports is to do so together, instead of having to lobby while also competing with one another.

2. Tesla gets shareholder approval to acquires SolarCity

Tesla is one step closer to acquiring SolarCity today, with approval from shareholders in both companies tendered via a vote yesterday. The approval was Tesla's last major internal hurdle before the acquisition could go through, and now that it's in the rearview mirror, the company expects to finalize the transaction in the next few days. The tie-up will bring one step closer to reality Musk's vision of a future where there's a Tesla battery in every home, Tesla tiles on every roof and a Tesla car in every garage.

3. Fake news circulated via social could undermine democracy

Fake news seemed relatively harmless when it was literally "unbelievable" stories of wolf boys raised in the wild or whatever, but now that material stories fabricated about elected officials can get as much or more Facebook engagement as the real stuff, that's troubling. And President Obama is troubled, too -- he addressed the topic during a visit to Berlin, and said that it threatens to confuse us about the problems we're actually facing.

4. Apple looked into U.S. manufacturing costs for iPhones

Apple asked assembly partner Foxconn to look into what it would take to relocate iPhone manufacturing to the U.S., according to Japanese business newspaper The Nikkei (which is generally reliable on this sort of thing). This follows a claim by Trump during his campaign that he would "get Apple to build their damn computers and things in this country instead of other countries," so clearly the smartphone maker is at least taking him somewhat at his word -- enough to have a plan in place, at least.

5. That's a Zesty salad dressing -- and not in a good way

You've heard the expression "hardware is hard," but really "food is f*cking impossible" might be a more generally true adage for startups. Dealing with inventory, preparation and delivery logistics when your product is perishable is all incredibly complicated, and so it's no surprise to see so many food startups flare out or restructure. Zesty, a startup that focuses on business catering, is no exception, and it has now replaced its CEO with its CTO, and restructured its operations.

6. Amazon might finally bring Prime Video global

I would love if Amazon does what it seems to be gearing up to do, which is open Prime Video to over 200 markets beginning in December. Even if it's a limited content library at first (The Grand Tour seems to be the only one confirmed as of yet), it would be great to have another original content creator like Netflix operating outside of the dreary provincial fiefdoms that are local TV licensing arrangements.

7. Google undoes the bad thing it did

So some users were buying Google Pixel phones through Project Fi, then sending them to a seller in New Hampshire where there's no sales tax for resale and netting some tidy profits. That's admittedly shady. But then Google punished them by suspending the Google accounts of those involved, which is shadier still and a pretty aggressive form of data DRM. Now Google has turned back on the accounts of those involved who didn't create the account just to run the scam, which is fair and good.