Author: azeeadmin

Two of India’s most prominent VCs are backing a motorbike on-demand service after Sequoia India and Accel led a $12.2 million investment in Metro Bikes. Sequoia India and Accel were joined in the round by Raghunandan G, who founded TaxiForSure which sold to Ola, among other investors.

Metro Bikes started out as a luxury bike rental service in 2014 — initially as “Wicked Rides” — and it launched scooters (motorbikes) and other two-wheel rentals in 2016. Now, the company is rebranding to Bounce and refocusing its business to on-demand scooter (that’s motorbike in U.S. parlance) rentals for first and last mile transportation. The idea is to appeal to commuters, who can pick up a bike at their nearest location and later leave it at an endzone. The cost is based on distance and time spent.

Bounce is currently present in Bangalore, where it has 2,000 scooters currently, and Hyderabad, where it has around 500. The plan is to increase those numbers but the company is waiting on a permit to operate electric scooters, once it gets that it will only deploy electric, CEO Vivekananda Hallekere told TechCrunch in an interview. Its current mix of vehicles also includes bicycles, electric bicycles and kick scooters available.

The startup is going to hone its focus on Bangalore and Hyderabad for now, with no new expansions for 6-10 months, he added. Looking further forward, Bounce is aiming to be nationwide by 2020, while Hallekere said he sees the potential for deployment in Southeast Asia in the future.

Bounce claims that it is currently seeing around four rides per vehicle per day on its on-demand platform, the company is targeting seven to twelve rides which it believes will bring it to a good level of revenue. Although Hallekere did stress that the core business is anchored in sustainability.

That’s down to the funding of the fleet, which the CEO said is financed by institutional investors who purchase the assets in exchange for a cut of revenue. That helps cover a significant portion of operating expenses, while in other cases Bounce works with OEMs who provide vehicles under similar terms.

Bounce’s founding team (left to right): Vivekananda H R, CEO; Varun Agni, CTO; Anil Giri Raju, COO

Bounce is entering a fairly congested market in India, with other startups include Wheelstreet — which TechCrunch wrote about earlier this year — ZipHop also competing with similar services. Hallekere, the Bounce CEO, said that the company’s history in the business and its technology can help it stand out.

Added to that, Bounce said it is working closely with authorities to help ease last mile congestion. For example, the company is one of a number to have a struck a deal with Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) to put rental bikes at 36 metro stations. It also landed a deal with corporate to enable parking across the city. The company said it plans to pursue similar arrangements with metro operators in Hyderabad and other cities when it expands.

“The first mile and last mile are essential to having public transport work in India,” Hallekere said. “It’s very natural for Indians to go on scooters and we started with metro bikes keeping this in mind. We want to make an impact and enable people to ditch cars.”

Bounce is also looking to introduce a pooling service that would enable scooter owners to add their vehicles to the company’s fleet and make money when they are used.

Taxfix, the Berlin-based startup that has developed a mobile assistant to help you file your tax return, has closed $13 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, with participation from existing investors Creandum and Redalpine.

Launched in 2017, Taxfix is built on the premise that filing taxes remains a daunting task in most countries, involving a lot of archaic form filling, often carried out incorrectly and without the proper advice, and rarely optimised for tax refunds. As a result, the company says that in Germany alone, over 10 million employees decide not to file a tax return, and therefore forgo an average tax rebate of 935 Euros.

“The problem is that most people don’t have a personal tax accountant, nor the sufficient knowledge on how to file their taxes,” explains Taxfix co-founder and CEO Mathis Büchi. “Taxpayers are required to invest a substantial amount of time to become an expert themselves to receive their maximum tax refund. That’s why the rich can optimise their taxes with their own accountants and the regular citizens are overpaying billions of Euros in taxes every year in almost every country in the world”.

To help combat this, the Taxfix app works similar to a chatbot, and — coupled with the startup’s “tax-engine technology” — aims to make filing your taxes as easy as it would be if you hired your own tax accountant. You simply photograph your annual payslip and work through a questionnaire personally tailored to optimise your refund. The Taxfix app then automatically calculates the predicted tax rebate and submits your filing for you.

“[Taxflix creates] a digital tax accountant on the mobile phone, which asks the users simple questions and makes sure they optimise their refund and file their tax return correctly,” says Büchi.

To date, Taxfix’s typical customers are young people between 20-35 years old, who are not tax experts and often have never filed a tax return before. For every tax return that generates a refund of over 50 Euros, the startup charges 35 Euros for submission to the relevant financial authorities.

Of course, there are already a large number of startups and software companies that can help you file a tax return. These include legacy players such as WISO in Germany and Intuit’s TurboTax in the U.S., or upstarts such as the U.K.’s TaxScouts. A government’s own online tax filing gateway could also be considered a direct competitor.

“Taxfix differentiates itself from all other solutions by its mobile-first approach and by not using forms fields as the user interface,” adds Büchi. “Taxfix creates a completely new user experience with the conversational interface that asks simple questions and translates the information into tax language automatically. It takes on average 20 minutes to file your taxes with Taxfix, compared to 3 to 6 hours with traditional software”.

Meanwhile, Büchi says the new funding will be used for international expansion, bringing the app’s tax declaration capabilities to other jurisdictions. The German company also plans to invest heavily in machine learning to bring its tax engine technology “to the next level”.

Walmart sold its China-based e-commerce business in 2016, but the U.S. retail giant is very much involved in the Chinese internet market through a partnership with e-commerce firm JD.com. Alibaba’s most serious rival, JD scooped up Walmart’s Yihaodian business and offered its own online retail platform to help enable Walmart to products in China, both on and offline.

Now that relationship is developing further after Walmart and JD jointly invested $500 million into Dada-JD Daojia, an online-to-offline grocery business which is part owned by JD, according to a CNBC report.

Unlike most grocery delivery services, though, Dada-JD Daojia stands apart because it includes a crowdsourced element.

The business was formed following a merger between JD Daojia, JD’s platform for order from supermarkets online which has 20 million monthly users, and Daojia, which uses crowdsourcing to fulfill deliveries and counts 10 million daily deliveries. JD Daojia claims over 100,000 retail stores and its signature is one-hour deliveries for a range of products, which include fruit, vegetables and groceries.

Walmart is already part of the service — it has 200 stores across 30 Chinese cities on the Dada-JD Daojia service; as well as five online stores on the core JD.com platform — and now it is getting into the business itself via this investment.

JD.com said the deal is part of its ‘Borderless Retail’ strategy, which includes staff-less stores and retail outlets that mix e-commerce with physical sales.

“The future of global retail is boundaryless. There will be no separation between online and offline shopping, only greater convenience, quality and selection to consumers. JD was an early investor in Dada-JD Daojia, and continues its support, because we believe that its innovations will be an important part of realizing that vision,” said Jianwen Liao, Chief Strategy Officer of JD.com, in a statement.

Alibaba, of course, has a similar hybrid strategy with its Hema stores and food delivery service Ele.me, all of which links up with its Taobao and T-Mall online shopping platforms. The company recently scored a major coup when it landed a tie-in with Starbucks, which is looking to rediscover growth in China through an alliance that will see Ele.me deliver coffee to customers and make use of Hema stores.

Away from the new retail experience, JD.com has been doing more to expand its overseas presence lately.

The company landed a $550 million investment from Google this summer which will see the duo team up to offer JD.com products for sale on the Google Shopping platform across the world. Separately, JD.com has voiced intention to expand into Europe, starting in Germany, and that’s where the Google deal and a relationship with Walmart could be hugely helpful.

Another strategic JD investor is Tencent, and that relationship has helped the e-commerce firm sell direct to customers through Tencent’s WeChat app, which is China’s most popular messaging service. Tencent and JD have co-invested in a range of companies in China, such as discount marketplace Vipshop and retail group Better Life. Their collaboration has also extended to Southeast Asia, where they are both investors in ride-hailing unicorn Go-Jek, which is aiming to rival Grab, the startup that bought out Uber’s local business.

TaskUs, the business process outsourcing service that moderates content, annotates information and handles back office customer support for some of the world’s largest tech companies, has raised $250 million in an investment from funds managed by the New York-based private equity giant, Blackstone Group.

It’s been ten years since TaskUs was founded with a $20,000 investment from its two co-founders, and the new deal, which values the decade-old company at $500 million before the money even comes in, is proof of how much has changed for the service in the years since it was founded.

The Santa Monica-based company, which began as a browser-based virtual assistant company — “You send us a task and we get the task done,” recalled TaskUs chief executive Bryce Maddock — is now one of the main providers in the growing field of content moderation for social networks and content annotation for training the algorithms that power artificial intelligence services around the world.

“What I can tell you is we do content moderation for almost every major social network and it’s the fastest growing part of our business today,” Maddock said.

From a network of offices spanning the globe from Mexico to Taiwan and the Philippines to the U.S., the thirty two year-old co-founders Maddock and Jaspar Weir have created a business that’s largest growth stems from snuffing out the distribution of snuff films; child pornography; inappropriate political content and the trails of human trafficking from the user and advertiser generated content on some of the world’s largest social networks.

(For a glimpse into how horrific that process can be, take a look at this article from Wired, which looked at content moderation for the anonymous messaging service, Whisper.)

Maddock estimates that while the vast majority of the business was outsourcing business process services in the company’s early days (whether that was transcribing voice mails to texts for the messaging service PhoneTag, or providing customer service and support for companies like HotelTonight) now about 40% of the business comes from content moderation.

Image courtesy of Getty Images

Indeed, it was the growth in new technology services that attracted Blackstone to the business, according to Amit Dixit, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone.

“The growth in ride sharing, social media, online food delivery, e-commerce and autonomous driving is creating an enormous need for enabling business services,” said Dixit in a statement. “TaskUs has established a leadership position in this domain with its base of marquee customers, unique culture, and relentless focus on customer delivery.”

While the back office business processing services remain the majority of the company’s revenue, Maddock knows that the future belongs to an increasing automation of the company’s core services. That’s why part of the money is going to be invested in a new technology integration and consulting business that advises tech companies on which new automation tools to deploy, along with shoring up the company’s position as perhaps the best employer to work for in the world of content moderation and algorithm training services.

It’s been a long five year journey to get to the place it’s in now, with glowing reviews from employees on Glassdoor and social networks like Facebook, Maddock said. The company pays well above minimum wage in the market it operates in (Maddock estimates at least a 50% premium); and provides a generous package of benefits for what Maddock calls the “frontline” teammates. That includes perks like educational scholarships for one child of employees that have been with the company longer than one year; healthcare plans for the employee and three beneficiaries in the Philippines; and 120 days of maternity leave.

And, as content moderation is becoming more automated, the TaskUs employees are spending less time in the human cesspool that attempts to flood social networks every day.

“Increasingly the work that we’re doing is more nuanced. Does this advertisement have political intent. That type of work is far more engaging and could be seen to be a little bit less taxing,” Maddock said.

But he doesn’t deny that the bulk of the hard work his employees are tasked with is identifying and filtering the excremental trash that people would post online.

“I do think that the work is absolutely necessary. The alternative is that everybody has to look at this stuff. it has to be done in a way thats thoughtful and puts the interests of the people who are on the frontlines at the forefront of that effort,” says Maddock. “There have been multiple people who have been involved in sex trafficking, human trafficking and pedophilia that have been arrested directly because of the work that TaskUs is doing. And the consequence of someone not doing that is a far far worse world.”

Maddock also said that TaskUs now shields its employees from having to perform content moderation for an entire shift. “What we have tried to do universally is that there is a subject matter rotation so that you are not just sitting and doing that work all day.”

And the company’s executive knows how taxing the work can be because he said he does it himself. “I try to spend a day a quarter doing the work of our frontline teammates. I spend half my time in our offices,” Maddock said.

Now, with the new investment, TaskUs is looking to expand into additional markets in the UK, Europe, India, and Latin America, Maddock said.

“So far all we’ve been doing is hiring as fast as we possibly can,” said Maddock. “At some point in the future, there’s going to be a point when companies like ours will see the effects of automation,” he added, but that’s why the company is investing in the consulting business… so it can stay ahead of the trends in automation.

Even with the threat that automation could pose to the company’s business, TaskUs had no shortage of other suitors for the massive growth equity round, according to one person familiar with the company. Indeed, Goldman Sachs and Softbank were among the other bidders for a piece of TaskUs, the source said.

Currently, the company has over 11,000 employees (including 2,000 in the U.S.) and is looking to expand.

“We chose to partner with Blackstone because they have a track record of building category defining businesses. Our goal is to build TaskUs into the world’s number one provider of tech enabled business services.  This partnership will help us dramatically increase our investment in consulting, technology and innovation to support our customer’s efforts to streamline and refine their customer experience,” said Maddock in a statement.

The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2018, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions.

To hack: to study a system’s flaws and emergent properties, and use them for your own ends; to instil your own instructions into a computer’s memory, and coerce its microprocessor to run them. To pick at the air gaps and missed stitches in the many overlapping layers of software from which our modern world is woven.

Et voilà, an entire industry, employing countless thousands. Information Security a.k.a. infosec. It is said that there are four PR people for every journalist in America, which seems high, but I expect the ratio of infosec people to actual hackers is higher yet, even if you count the proverbial script kiddies.

For a long time it was where the counterculture techies went, the curmudgeons, the renegades, in black boots and leather and tattoos and colored hair. By no coincidence they also tended to include many of the smartest ones. (I’m a CTO and to this day I find interview questions about security are the best way to delineate the merely good from the excellent.) And by no coincidence they also included many angry, wounded, and/or terrible people.

That was when the Internet was something people used from time to time, rather than the fundamental substrate of half of human activity. It was OK, as far as its users were concerned, for its walls to be built and defended (and only very rarely womanned, courtesy of infosec’s default oppressive, exclusionary, and often predatory sexual culture) by a cohort of … well … cranky assholes. Not all of them, I hasten to stress. But definitely a disproportionate number.

That was part of its appeal, in many ways. Bad boys in leather who could spin up hard drives and ransom data from across the planet with a few opaque, wizardly shell scripts, in green text on black, using knowledge they’d won the hard way from online duels and grimoires — that was the Hollywood myth of the hacker, and the much-less-romantic real hackers loved it, as you’d expect, whatever color their notional hats might be.

It was a shitty system and a shitty subculture in many ways — colorful and dramatic, sure, but essentially shitty — and it couldn’t last. Nowadays it is big business, on the one hand, and slowly becoming more equitable and less exclusionary, on the other. Don’t get me wrong, there’s much work to be done, but the trajectory is a hopeful one.

Nowadays the security biz is an iterative process rather than an exploratory frontier. Researchers discover vulnerabilities in software; they disclose them to vendors; vendors grumble and fix it. Security vendors offer a growing arsenal of tools to prevent, detect, log, and attribute attacks, iterating as attackers do the same — and attackers are, increasingly, likely to be 9-5ers paid by a nation state, rather than members of a criminal enterprise.

One of the most respected teams in infosec is Google’s Project Zero, and another is their Chrome security team; both are managed by Parisa Tabriz, who gave the keynote speech at Black Hat today. She pointed out that there has been good and measurable progress in the security world over the last few years. Initially, when Project Zero started giving vendors precisely 90 days to fix their bugs before their exploits were revealed to the world, only 25% complied in time; now that number is up to 98%. Secure HTTPS traffic has risen from 45% to 87% of traffic on ChromeOS, and from 29% to 77% on Android, just over the last three years … and Tabriz attributed this to UI improvements in the Chrome browser as much as to the behind-the-scenes plumbing work.

Once upon a time UX and usability were considered entirely orthogonal to security. This is probably directly attributable to the contemptuous attitudes of infosec at the time. Now, thankfully, the industry knows better. Once “community” was a dirty word among the black-clad lone wolves, and if a “vulnerability” was personal, you didn’t talk about it; now there’s an entire Community Track at Black Hat, discussing addiction, stress, PTSD, burnout, depression, sexual harassment/assault, among other issues that would have been swept under the collective rug not so long ago.

Conventional wisdom has it that everything is terrible and everything can be hacked, and that “attackers have strategies while defenders only have tactics,” to quote Black Hat founder Jeff Moss this morning. And don’t get me wrong: some things do continue to be terrible. (Border Gateway Protocol, anyone?) But there is room for a kind of guarded optimism. Many of the big new hacks of the last few years aren’t catastrophic flaws in widely used essential infrastructure. OK, some are, but some, like Meltdown/Spectre and Rowhammer, are astonishingly elaborate Rube Goldberg hacks.

This is an extremely good sign. In the same way that airline crashes tend to have a baroque set of perfect-storm causes these days, because the simple errors are guarded against with multiple redundancy, the increasingly baroqueness of major bugs suggests that the software we use is getting noticeably more secure. Slowly. In irregular fits and starts. Over a period of decades. Sometimes in devices which cannot be fixed except by complete replacement. And reducing vulnerabilities still doesn’t fix, say, the password reuse problem. But still.

We’ll see if the rise of machine learning causes a new arms race, or whether it gives us new and better tools against attackers, and/or whether convolutional pattern recognition will unearth an entire new crop of previously undetectable bugs. It’s admittedly worrying that adversarial examples are so effective at tricking current AI models. But even so I’m inclined to agree with Tabriz that there is, at long last, cause for a certain guarded optimism, both for the infosec community and their work.

WeWork recently announced a new office space solution called “HQ by WeWork” to provide mid-sized companies the privacy, flexibility, customization and cost-efficiency they need without making a long term brick-and-mortar commitment.

According to US Census data, the number of mid-sized companies with 11 to 250 employees account for 1.1 million companies in the country and employ approximately 30 million people. In many cases, these companies have begun seeing growth but are not ready (or financially capable enough) to settle into a long term office space that they may soon outgrow.

“Be it those lifestyle businesses that are going to be 30 people forever, a small law firm, or a tech firm, we believe very strongly in companies of that size and how important they are to their local economies,” WeWork Chief Growth Officer Dave Fano told TechCrunch. “Often times space is still very much a challenge for companies of that size and the way they have to make these [office space] commitments ends up probably being an inhibitor their growth.”

To better meet the needs of these companies, HQ by WeWork offers private office floors (leased and managed by WeWork) that companies can move into for flexible leasing periods — typically for a minimum of 12-24 months. But, should a company out grow its space in six months, Fano said WeWork will work to accommodate a move to support its growth.

Unlike WeWork’s Powered by We model, which allows companies to bring the management of WeWork to spaces they rent themselves, companies using HQ by WeWork can leave the ins-and-outs of office real estate to the office-sharing company.

HQ by WeWork offers spaces with customizable color schemes and branding incorporation, private entrances and a service-lite model of WeWork management that includes essentials (IT, AV etc.) but without all the bells and whistles (e.g. full conference rooms, events) that come with a typical WeWork office space. This pairing down of amenities allows it to offer these spaces at a lower price per person than a typical WeWork accommodation, Fano told me. That said, HQ tenants can still drop-by any WeWork facility to utilize the features their spaces lack.

So far, WeWork has leased six HQ spaces in New York City and is actively working to expand HQ by WeWork into all the company’s flagship cities, such as Los Angles and Toronto.

As crews across California battle more than a dozen wildfires — including the largest in state history — the blazes are spewing enough carbon into the air to undo some of the good done by the state’s climate policies.

What’s even worse: Climate-warming compounds that will be released by the charred forests long after the fires are extinguished may do more to warm up the planet than the immediate harm from smoky air.

Scientists say that only about 15 percent of a forest’s store of carbon is expelled during burns. The remainder is released slowly over the coming years and decades, as trees decay.That second hit of carbon, experts say, contains compounds that do more to accelerate climate change than those from the original fire. And future fires over previously burned ground could make climate prospects even more bleak.

“The worst possible situation is the fire that comes through and kills everything,” said Nic Enstice, regional science coordinator for the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. “Then, 10 or 15 years later, another fire comes through and releases all the carbon left in the trees on the ground. That’s really bad.”

It’s a scenario that could explode at any time. Enstice cited a research paper published this year that laid out a chilling tableau: California has more than a 120 million dead trees strewn around its mountain ranges, with the southern Sierra hardest hit.

When fires hit those downed trees, the state will begin to experience “mass fires” spewing plumes of carbon. The resulting conflagrations, according to the researcher, will be almost unimaginable.

“The emissions from those fires will be unlike anything we will have ever seen,” Enstice said. “And you won’t be able put it out.”

Computing the carbon released from the fires so far this year will not happen soon. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration flies planes through smoke plumes, gathering data, but air traffic over wildfires is tightly restricted. Scientific research is not a top priority when fires are threatening towns.

But some preliminary data is available now.

One method uses inventories of existing forests — surveying how many trees and which type. Those records are updated every 10 years. Researchers then overlay infrared images captured from satellites that show what’s burning and at what intensity. From that, predictions can be made about carbon emissions on any given day. Scientists say that emissions from burned forests are one of the most virulent types, called black carbon.

According to the most recent accounting from the state Air Resources Board, California’s annual black carbon discharge — excluding wildfires — are equal to emissions from about 8 million passenger vehicles driven for one year. Not a small number. But when the state calculates the same annual average of black carbon coming solely from wildfires, it’s the equivalent of nearly 19 million additional cars on the road.

With year-round fire seasons and fire intensity off the charts, state officials admit that wildfires could set back California’s myriad policies to offset the impacts of climate change. “It’s significant,” Enstice said. “We don’t have a lot of data to measure yet, we’re still using primitive tools. But everyone is gearing up to study this.”

This article is republished courtesy of CALMatters. 

NASA has announced a set of public-private partnerships with several U.S. space companies, totaling an impressive $44 million. Blue Origin, Astrobotic, United Launch Alliance and more are the recipients of up to $10 million each for a variety of projects aimed at exploring and utilizing space safely and efficiently.

The 10 awards are for “tipping point” technologies, as NASA calls them, that are highly promising but need funding for a ground or flight demonstration — in other words, to get it out of the lab.

ULA is the big winner here, taking home $13.9M split between three projects. $10M will go to looking into a cryogenic vehicle fluid management system that could simplify and improve lunar landers. The rest of the money is split between another cryogenic fluid project for missions with long durations, and a project to “demonstrate mid-air retrieval capabilities up to 8,000 pounds… on a vehicle returning to Earth from orbital velocity.” Really, that last one is the cheapest?

Blue Origin has $13M coming its way, primarily for… yet another a cryogenic fluid management system for lunar landers. You can see where NASA’s priorities are — putting boots on the regolith. The remainder goes to testing a suite of advanced sensors that could make lunar landings easier. The company will be testing both these systems on its New Shepard vehicle from as high as 100km.

The other big $10M prize goes to Astrobotics, which will like Blue Origin be working on a sensor suite for Terrain Relative Navigation. It’s basically adding intelligence to a craft’s landing apparatus so it can autonomously change its touchdown location, implement safety measures, and so on, based on the actual local observed conditions.

The Mars 2020 Rover will be using its own TRN system, and the ones funded here will be different and presumably more advanced, but this gif from NASA does a good job illustrating the tech:

Several other endeavors were selected by NASA for funding, and you can find them — and more technical details for the ones mentioned above — at the partnership announcement page.

The New York City Council has approved legislation that will halt the issuing of new licenses for ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.

The stated goal of the policy is to give the city time to study the industry’s impact. During that time, ride-hailing companies would only be able to add new vehicles if they’re wheelchair accessible. The legislation also allows the city to set a minimum wage for drivers.

There were drivers demonstrating in favor of the bill package outside City Hall today, and the Independent Drivers Guild (which says it represents more than 60,000 drivers for ride-hailing apps in New York City) praised the decision.

“We hope this is the start of a more fair industry not only here in New York City, but all over the world,” said IDG founder Jim Conigliaro, Jr. in a statement. “We cannot allow the so-called ‘gig economy’ companies to exploit loopholes in the law in order to strip workers of their rights and protections.”

Uber and Lyft, meanwhile, had asked their riders to oppose the legislation, saying that it would result in fewer drivers and less reliable service. They also suggested there were other ways to address the underlying issues, and in fact proposed creating a $100 million “hardship fund” for drivers as an alternative.

Drivers demonstrating outside City Hall

In response to today’s news, Danielle Filson from Uber’s communications team provided the following statement:

The City’s 12-month pause on new vehicle licenses will threaten one of the few reliable transportation options while doing nothing to fix the subways or ease congestion. We take the Speaker at his word that the pause is not intended to reduce service for New Yorkers and we trust that he will hold the TLC accountable, ensuring that no New Yorker is left stranded. In the meantime, Uber will do whatever it takes to keep up with growing demand and we will not stop working with city and state leaders, including Speaker [Corey] Johnson, to pass real solutions like comprehensive congestion pricing.

The company plans to explore other strategies to keep up with demand. Those include recruiting drivers with licensed vehicles who aren’t currently working with Uber, or finding additional drivers who could drive licensed vehicles at times when they would otherwise be idle.

Lyft, meanwhile, sent this statement from its vice president of public policy Joseph Okpaku:

These sweeping cuts to transportation will bring New Yorkers back to an era of struggling to get a ride, particularly for communities of color and in the outer boroughs. We will never stop working to ensure New Yorkers have access to reliable and affordable transportation in every borough.

The New York Times reports that the cap will take effect as soon as Mayor Bill de Blasio signs the bill.

“Our city is directly confronting a crisis that is driving working New Yorkers into poverty and our streets into gridlock,” de Blasio tweeted. “The unchecked growth of app-based for-hire vehicle companies has demanded action – and now we have it.”

Disney may offer its customers the option to purchase a discounted bundle of its three streaming apps — Hulu, Disney’s upcoming streaming service and ESPN+ — according to comments made by Disney CEO Bob Iger during the company’s’ earnings call this week. He said Disney would rather keep the three properties separate, rather than trying to combine them into a more robust “aggregation play,” so as to better address cord cutters’ desire to pick-and-choose the services they want.

The company will own 60 percent of Hulu when its $71.3 billion deal to acquire 21st Century Fox closes. It already owns ESPN, which now offers a streaming service called ESPN+, and is launching its own Disney-branded streaming service in 2019 that will feature Pixar, Marvel, Disney, Lucasfilm (Star Wars) and, eventually, it now says, National Geographic content.

While Disney’s service is meant to be more family-friendly, Hulu will cater to a more adult market. And the plan is to keep those two separate.

Iger had previously said the idea that a bundle could exist in the future wasn’t out of the question, but had not been definite about Disney’s plans in that area.

Now, he’s making it more clear that Disney believes there’s value in offering a discounted bundle of its services, rather than combining all their content under one roof.

“So rather than one, let’s call it, gigantic aggregated play, we’re going to bring to the market what we’ve already brought to market [with the] sports play. I’ll call it Disney Play, which is more family-oriented. And then, of course, there’s Hulu. And they will basically be designed to attract different tastes and different segment or audience demographics,” Iger explained, in response to a question about whether or not it would ever build an aggregated streaming app instead of pursuing the different market segments.

“If a consumer wants all three, ultimately, we see an opportunity to package them from a pricing perspective,” Iger continued. “But it could be that a consumer just wants sports or just wants family or just wants the Hulu offering, and we want to be able to offer that kind of flexibility to consumers…” he said.

In addition to this potential bundling deal, the company took the opportunity to divulge a few more details about Disney’s streaming service this week.

It noted, for example, that it will have less content that its rival Netflix, but its price point will also reflect that — meaning, it will cost less than Netflix.

“We will be launching the Disney app into the market probably in about a year — sometime the end of calendar 2019,” Iger had told investors. “We’re going to walk before we run, as it relates to volume of content, because it takes time to build the kind of content library that ultimately we intend to build,” he said.

“We feel that it does not have to have anything close to the volume of what Netflix…And the price, by the way, will also reflect a lower volume of product,” said Iger.

He also re-confirmed the service’s lineup will initially include a 10-episode, live-action Star Wars series from director Jon Favreau that cost $100 million; new episodes of Star Wars: Clone Wars; and new series based on existing IP like Disney Channel’s “High School Musical” and Pixar’s “Monsters, Inc.”

Plus, the service will stream Disney’s upcoming slate of films like Marvel’s “Captain Marvel,” “Avengers 4,” “Star Wars: Episode IX” and the live-action remakes of “Dumbo,” Lady and the Tramp,” “The Lion King” and “The Sword in the Store.”

“Ultimately, National Geographic will be a contributor,” Iger noted at one point.

According to an NYT profile of Ricky Strauss, the Disney exec charged with programming the new service, it will also include an original film, “Timmy Failure,” which is based on the best-selling book series about a “comically self-confident boy detective.”

The report said that at least nine movies are in production or advanced development, with budgets ranging from $20 million to $60 million.

This includes a period adventure story about a sled dog called “Togo;” a remake of “Three Men and a Baby;” “The Paper Magician,” which takes places at a school for magic; “Noelle,” starring Anna Kendrick as Santa’s daughter; “Stargirl,” based on a young adult novel; and a version of “Don Quixote,” The NYT additionally reported.

There will “probably” be a new Muppets show and Marvel-themed shows, too, it said.