Uber was slapped with a major setback in its largest American market after the New York City Council voted to freeze new-vehicle licenses for Uber, Lyft and other ride-hail services in the city. The new rules will make New York the first major U.S. city to restrict the number of ride-hail vehicles and to establish a minimum wage for drivers. Uber and Lyft will be fine — the real concern is that this may set a precedent and a model for other cities that are trying to find ways to rein in the ride-hail companies. [Johana Bhuiyan / Recode]
Recode Daily: The real problem with Uber’s new-car freeze in NYC
Plus, hands-on with the $2,295 Magic Leap AR headset, the advent of “Disneyflix,” and the art of Burning Man — now with air-conditioning.
Spencer Platt / Getty Images
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While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey touts the company’s “rules” as the reason it hasn’t banned Alex Jones or Infowars, “it is values that Mr. Dorsey should really be talking about,” Recode Editor at Large Kara Swisher writes in her latest New York Times column. “By values, I mean a code that requires making hard choices — curating your offerings, which was something Apple got made fun of for doing, back when it launched the App Store, by the open-is-best crowd.” [Kara Swisher / The New York Times]
The Magic Leap augmented reality headset finally went on sale (but not everywhere), and after our sister site The Verge spent an afternoon playing with the $2,295 goggles, the verdict is … “not the kind of revolutionary (or downright magical) advance that Magic Leap has teased for years … still very much a work in progress.” Here’s an interview with CEO Rony Abovitz — who now admits that all the pre-market hype was a mistake — and the inside story of his quest to remake the once-mysterious Magic Leap into an ordinary company — with a real product. [Adi Robertson / The Verge]
The New York Times continued its digital growth, adding 109,000 digital-only subscribers in the second quarter of 2018; the Times now has 2.9 million digital-only customers out of 3.8 million total. Revenue from digital subscriptions rose to $99 million in the second quarter, an increase of nearly 20 percent over the same period a year ago, but the company also saw a 10 percent decline in advertising revenue. [Jaclyn Peiser / The New York Times]
Disney reported mostly positive financial news earlier this week, but its conference-call conversation was focused almost entirely on what some are calling “Disneyflix.” CEO Bob Iger said the successful introduction of the company’s still-unnamed streaming service would be Disney’s “biggest priority” in 2019, which will also bring the integration of 21st Century Fox assets. Iger also said he would seek subscription sales for the service from every corner of the Disney empire — theme park pass holders, holders of Disney-branded credit cards and those who own Disney time-share properties. [Jill Disis / CNN]
Salesforce named Keith Block as co-CEO alongside Marc Benioff. Block, who joined Salesforce in 2013 and became COO in 2016, has been called “the buttoned-down yin to Benioff’s Hawaiian-shirt-wearing yang,” and has helped to drive the company past one revenue milestone after another. Benioff said the move “really reflects how Salesforce is run today.” [Clifton Leaf / Fortune]
Top stories from Recode
Young people are apparently happy to pay for online dating.
Larger tenants can now rent a more private WeWork space with less branding.
This is cool
The art of Burning Man — in an air-conditioned Washington, D.C., museum. And yes, there’s a VR version.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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