Thoroughly disrupted by contractor-based ride-hailing companies like Uber and Lyft, 1928- founded Luxor Cabs has filed with the Planning Department to receive benefits reserved for so-called legacy businesses. Socketsite snapped up the news, writing that Planning has recommended Luxor Cabs for approval.

That Legacy Business program, voted into being by Prop J last year, has so far benefited such business as North Beach bar Specs' and SoMa bar The Lone Star Saloon. It incentivizes property owners to extend the leases of legacy businesses with grants — something that doesn't necessarily apply for Luxor since their headquarters isn't what they're trying to save here. Legacy businesses, which must be 30 years or older to qualify for the designation, can also receive grants of up to $500 per full time employee per year. In this case, for cab drivers with expenses to like medallions and commercial insurance to pay for, anything, I suppose, helps.

The Planning Department’s summary of the business and application:

Luxor Cab Co. is an independently-owned cab company providing transportation services to all people, with a special emphasis on senior and disabled residents, since 1928. Its location has changed several times over the years but it has operated 24 hours a day, every day of the year, for 88 years. Its office and garage has been located at 2230 Jerrold Avenue between Toland Street and Napolean Street in the southeast quadrant of the city since 1995.

More than 100 individual taxicab medallion holders are currently affiliated with Luxor and the company prides itself on its providing a living wage to all of its employees and maintaining a fully-insured fleet of 162 cabs. Luxor Cab Co. is the largest provider of ramp taxi service for wheelchair users and the largest provider of paratransit rides, a subsidized taxi transportation service for seniors and disabled people, in the city.

The company is owned by a group of shareholders rather than a single owner and is known for its distinctive shield-like logo on the sides of its taxicabs.

I myself haven't operated in San Francisco for 30 years, but if I had, I would seriously consider sending in an application on behalf of myself as a legacy biz right about now.

Related: Weekend Reminder: You Can Legally Get Drunk In San Francisco Cabs

You'll recall how last year BART canceled that contract they had with a wi-fi service provider after five spotty years of service that drew thousands of complaints. Well, commuters and the Chronicle's Michael Cabanatuan alike have been wondering if the late-night shutdown of the Muni underground system will be coming with wi-fi installation on the Muni system, and the answer is a resounding "Nope."

As we discussed earlier, the six-month inconvenience that Muni is putting us through, cutting off train service between 9:30 and 10 p.m. every night and necessitating bus bridges, is only accomplishing some more mundane technical upgrades, including the underground radio system and emergency phone system in the tunnels.

And as officials at CalTrain, Muni, and BART all confirm for the Chron, the task of wi-fi enabling a long stretch of tracks or the interior of a steel train is logistically difficult and highly expensive, thus the promises we've had of years past — not to mention the promise of free, citywide public wifi — have not come to pass.

We should be thankful, at least, that there is some limited cell service in BART and Muni tunnels, but mostly only on BART within city limits and part of Oakland.

Muni officials, apparently, think that budget shouldn't be diverted from more important things, like the purchase of new rail cars, and I think we all should see the wisdom there. Trains that work, and that aren't overcrowded constantly, are more important than trains where you can check your Facebook.

Nonetheless Muni spokesman Paul Rose says the agency is “in the process of exploring our options for Wi-Fi or cellular service in the Muni Metro." And even though that statement alone translates to "you may see it in ten years" in SF bureaucratic speak, he adds, "We understand that many of our riders would be interested in this service."

Related: You Won't Be Able To Get Home On The Muni Underground After 10 PM Starting July 31

A lot of us just got back from long weekends or extended vacations and have reached Hump Day in our first week back to our media-saturated, screen-addicted reality. I myself had a three-and-a-half-day weekend in a place in Northern California where cell signal is spotty if not non-existent, and wi-fi is similarly unreliable, even in the hotels. In the last five years I've come to crave such breaks from the internet, which tend not to be complete breaks but only partial breaks — with occasional scans of Facebook and the New York Times. But, of course, if something big had happened news-wise, I would have had to jump online with the nearest signal and make sure it was blogged about.

Journalist Melody Kramer just wrote a piece on Poynter bragging about the joys of being able to disconnect on a recent July 4th vacation that sounds like it was about a week long. And even she admits that she wasn't completely disconnected — she may have "read back issues of The New Yorker in print" and took some walks, but she also "triaged email every other day, or so, and sporadically tweeted that I was trying really hard not to tweet."

Seriously, people, what the fuck is wrong with us?

I've already shared my unsolicited thoughts on why I find Twitter exhausting, and not that essential to my life, but among media-hounds, bloggers, and journalists I'm probably more the exception there. I am, however, pretty tied to Facebook, as many of us are, and looked to there and Instagram frequently over the weekend to see what terrific and artfully framed things everyone was doing.

But this form of relaxation, and detaching from work life to remember what non-work life feels like, isn't really as relaxing or detached as it once was. At every bar and restaurant I entered with my friends over the weekend we had to find out what the wi-fi password was — of course this was also helping us communicate with stragglers who were not with us, because otherwise our texts wouldn't go out. I admit I felt anxiety every time I saw a text go undelivered, and unreplied-to. At other moments I felt like we all needed to put our cell phones in a bag and lock them somewhere, the way people play that game of stacking their phones face down at the dinner table, just in order to enjoy each other and let things play out as they may — there really was only one bar in town that we'd all end up in, so why stress?

I talk about this just as a new documentary called Web Junkie is airing on PBS next week about internet-addicted Chinese teens, and just as there was this alarmist piece on a New York Times blog two days ago about the toll that cell phones and tablets and screens in general are taking on small children.

More and more, as connectivity-dependent adults, we're going to view being totally, truly off-the-grid as an amenity, the ultimate form of information detox, taking away the option of staring at our phones and engaging in the secondary, documentary realities of Facebook and Twitter simultaneous with our own. I feel stupid and clichéd even having to say this, but it bears repeating: Our immediate realities can be, in fact, great and exciting without being documented, and a selfie does not prove that you were having fun. Memories, too, are sometimes more precious when they're not photographed.

Remember what it was like to leave town, sit on a beach, and not know or care what your 600 friends, family members, and former classmates were doing that very minute?

Not knowing the locations of these people, and remembering that you don't need to know, feels like the greatest, most satisfying kind of vacation right now. You do not need to tweet, or to explain to your followers why you're not tweeting. Their lives are going on without you, and they also don't need to see a photo of your feet and the frozen cocktail you're sipping. They've been on vacation, and they're familiar with the concept.

In fact, the next time I see someone post such a picture, I'm just going to comment, "Turn off your phone."

Though the feature has been available to those in the know as a public beta option for a while now in Gmail Labs, Gmail has now made their Undo Send feature fully legitimized and available to all, meaning that for the first time since we began sending emails, we will be able to take them back. The only catch is, you have a limited window in which to do that take-back.

The original, beta-tested feature delayed sending emails for 5 seconds, allowing you to say, "Oh shit!" and undo your hasty send if you misspelled someone's name, or immediately noticed that you said Thursday when you meant Wednesday. Now, as Google announced in this blog post Monday, all Gmail users can enable the feature and select whether they want emails delayed 5, 10, 20, or 30 seconds. Those who are poor spellers and big email-regretters will probably want to use the 30-second delay.

The New York Times picked up the story and notes that this could also be your saving grace from that awful nightmare of all corporate nightmares, the mistaken all-company reply all.

As Mashable notes, the feature is not yet available on phones, however. Also, they explain, "Google Labs is a collection of Gmail features that allows users to opt in to public betas for services that aren't quite yet ready for prime time. Undo Send was one of the most popular of the Labs features."

Needless to say, Undo Send is trending. And it's inspired some to crack wise.

41 new emoji have been approved by the Unicode Consortium as part of the latest release of the universal picture-based texting array, Unicode 8.0. iPhone users may have to wait until September for the release of iOS 9 to get to use them though (sadface, teary face). As Emojipedia reports, the newly approved emoji include a bottle with a cork popping, taco, burrito, cheese wedge, popcorn, and some vital new facial expressions including mouth zippered shut, eyeroll face, and face with head bandage.

The new release also includes the skin-tone variations and family variations (including same-sex parent families) that Apple already rolled into their last iOS update in April, even though they were technically still in the "draft" stage awaiting approval. June 17 is the official approval date for the whole new array. Please be aware that July 17, 2015 has been declared World Emoji Day.

There are 14 new family types that are part of the new Unicode release, but Apple already released these as part of the iOS 8.3 in April.

It remains to be seen when, exactly, all these fun new emoji will be available for your texting pleasure on iOS, Android, and Windows phone platforms.

Interestingly, though the ever useful middle-finger emoji was approved in Unicode 7.0, it still is not included in most of these platforms. Shouldn't that be more in demand?

The non-profit Unicode Consortium now actually pays attention to public demand and requests for specific emoji, and some of those included in the new release were added by popular nomination, including unicorn face, turkey, hot dog, and cheese wedge. Other considerations have to do with cultural parity — they added mosque and synagogue symbols where before there was only a church — generality, and expected usage level. The campaign for the hot dog emoji, for instance, was led by Chicago's Superdawg starting earlier this year.

And in case you don't own a cell phone and aren't hip to emoji speak, New York Magazine and The New Yorker have covered the topic, and someone has translated all of Moby-Dick into emoji — it's titled Emoji Dick, and you can buy a copy for $40.

The next Unicode update, Unicode 9.0, won't come until mid-2016, but there's already a list of candidate emoji being considered, including face palm, hand taking selfie, nauseated face, and croissant.

Coming soon?

Previously: Apple Adds Racially Diverse Emoji; Asians Already Crying 'Yellowface!'

It's been five days since the Apple Watch came out, and the internet has rushed to put the device through a litany of non-professional impact and torture tests, because who needs Consumer Reports reports anymore? This blender schill has already put the thing in a blender — and [spoiler alert!] it gets easily destroyed. And barely hours after the release, CNET (see below) dunked one in cold water for ten minutes, in boiling water for a few seconds, and doused it with everything from red wine, to ketchup, to Nutella. The only thing that did anything serious to it was a quick slam by a cast iron pan, which did indeed shatter the screen — suggesting that a good smack of your wrist onto solid metal would probably yield a similar result.

But CNET performed a number of drop tests from four or five feet that appeared to have no effect at all on the Apple Watch, and this may not prove to be the case for everyone. As YouTuber TechRax shows us in the video above, shattering that screen can actually occur with a drop onto pavement from four feet or less. A random drop doesn't do any damage, but a head-on drop, when the watch lands directly on the screen from approximately four feet, shattered the screen quite easily.

As SFGate notes, the AppleCare+ plan for the watch ($49) extends the warranty to two years and provides two incidents of damage coverage — at $69 per, for screen replacement, etc.

Other potential issues have to do with irritation to peoples' wrists either from metal or plastic components, or the various sensors — Tech Times went through the fine print of the user guide and it notes that "You may be more likely to experience irritation from any wearable device if you have allergies or other sensitivities. If you have known skin sensitivities, please take special care when wearing Apple Watch." But this follows on some well reported issues with the FitBit causing rashes for some users, and they even did a voluntary recall last year for users who had reactions to prolonged exposure to the nickel content of the device.

You might also want to be aware that the Apple Activity app on the phone can get a little annoying if not set properly, or shut off. As Matt Haughey noted on Medium, "My favorite unknown feature was the Apple Activity app informing me halfway into a movie with a forceful haptic jolt and message demanding I needed to stand for one minute out of every hour to remain healthy and I should do so right now because I hadn’t stopped sitting since the movie began."

And, finally, people with arm sleeve tattoos and wrist tattoos are probably going to find that the Apple Watch's heart monitor doesn't work correctly for them. As iMore reports, via Apple's own support documentation, "Apple Watch uses green LED lights paired with light‑sensitive photodiodes to detect the amount of blood flowing through your wrist at any given moment." Therefore if you have solid-colored tattoos interfering with that LED detector, it's not going to be able to give you an accurate heart rate. So, sorry, wrist tattoo people.

Below, the full CNET torture test. You'll note that in extreme heat, like the iPhone, the watch does shut down and will, probably, eventually die.

All previous Apple Watch coverage on SFist.

Perhaps reinforcing the idea that the divide between the haves and have-nots of San Francisco is very stark and wide these days, a new report by the city estimates that about an eighth of the population here, or 100,000 people, lack internet connections in their homes. It's a surprising figure just given how techie San Francisco is portrayed as being these days, but this almost crazier: There are some 50,000 people who are still on dial-up connections! Dial-up!

Anyone old enough to remember this?

It should go without saying, but the report confirms that those without home internet connections tend to have lower incomes, and are typically older, less educated, and/or are people of color.

The study was done by city budget analyst Harvey Rose, and as the Examiner reports, it was requested by Supervisor Eric Mar after the Mayor submitted his five-year technology plan, which was part of the budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Mar says "The city can have a much broader vision of digital inclusion like we did years ago," and he's hoping that the mayor will champion a plan for a municipal broadband network — something that was previously studied back in 2007 at the request of then supervisor Tom Ammiano.

Affordability and accessibility of good internet service were cited as the main reasons for not having connections. A municipal broadband network, while expensive, would potentially level the field for people in providing discounted broadband connections, and provide a new revenue stream for the city.

Currently, the mayor has no plan for a municipal broadband network — and that free citywide wi-fi we were promised years ago never really materialized, though there is city-sponsored free wi-fi in 32 public parks and along the Market Street corridor, though it doesn't always work. It was estimated, at least eight years ago, that a citywide municipal broadband network would cost $560 million and take 15 years to construct. Mar hopes it could still happen within 10 years.

Read the full report embedded here.

One of the first tech writers to be balls-out honest — instead of sycophantically, droolingly gaga — about the functionality of Google Glass is Computer World's Matt Lake. In a piece titled "Why I'm Sending Back Google Glass," Lake lays out ten reasons why the $1,500 face computer is actually quite janky and alienating.

Lake was one of the pre-approved "Explorers" who was given the opportunity to give the device a test run last month during that brief, fake-out on-sale window. And now that it's for-real on sale to the public, Lake has some harsh words to say about this new technology that pretty much everyone has loved to hate, and slap off people's faces.

First off, the voice prompts, he says, are "about as responsive as your average 6-year-old after soda and cupcakes." And unlike an uncooperative Siri, you can't tap harder on your own phone or slam it down on a countertop in spite. "And if you get frustrated by unresponsive hardware, you soon remember that Glass is connected to the bridge of your nose. Tapping Glass's touchpad with any force will spite your face."

He also notes that "[i]f you actually use its capabilities, the battery drains like a bathtub," i.e. in about an hour, making it about as useful as a four-year-old iPhone 3.

The photo-taking functionality, he says, makes everything come out crooked. And as for the music-playing, well, the proprietary earbud options "don't appear to be designed for the human ear." And you might as well skip playing music altogether, because of the above-mentioned battery issue.

... if you're going to stream music, you'll be hard-pressed to get through Beethoven's Ninth without at least one recharge. And Beethoven doesn't sound right buzzing behind your right ear through the tinny built-in speaker.

And then there are the larger social implications:

People fear surveillance... Big Brother phobia makes Glass wearers targets of derision — or actual crime. Wearing Glass makes you self-conscious enough without adding Mean Girls-style social snubs into the mix. No amount of frames or shades conceals the glowing prism at the front that brands you a Glass-exploring neo-cyborg.

Right. So. Not only should we not feel envious of any Glassholes we run into on the street or in bars, we should either continue shaming them, or just feel quietly smug about the fact that these early adopters just spent the price of a ticket to Europe on something that barely works.

In other news, the Epoch Times reports that this early adopter model does not reflect the final price point, and that by the end of the year a much cheaper version is likely to go on sale to the public. Probably with some bug fixes, too.

[Computer World]
[Epoch Times]

Every single person who had stock in Twitter all had the best of intentions. Whether 'the best' and 'aligned with each other' could be questioned, I guess. But everybody thought that they were doing the right thing. Nobody was trying to do harm. It was, 'If this thing benefits me, it benefits us all.' Though there were people who came late to try to get as much wealth as they could... [Biz Stone, to The Guardian]

Twitter (and many other things) co-founder Biz Stone apparently published a book last month.

In an interview with the Guardian, Stone denies that his book, entitled Things a Little Bird Told Me: Confessions of the Creative Mind, is intended to refute Nick Bilton's Hatching Twitter, saying that he didn't really read the journalist's expose, and "only skimmed the section about me to make sure I'm not portrayed as a fool."

Stone's book is presently ranked 25,549th on Amazon's book sales list. Bilton's book, which was published in November of lest year, is ranked 72,931st.

In the Guardian interview, Stone promotes not just his book but his company, Jelly, the existence of which many of us had already forgotten. He also touches on apps like Secret and Whisper ("I’m not sure how I feel about anonymity"), San Francisco's tech backlash ("It baffles me that it isn't good. What's the alternative, a ghost town?"), and local legislation (a "lot of arcane city regulations need to be changed but can't be changed overnight"). You can read the entire interview here.

Rumors abound, but according to several sources, it looks like Apple will finally unveil a new iPhone this August. The Cupertino-based company will probably, maybe, most likely release a larger 4.7-inch iPhone 6, as well as a "phablet" boasting an impressive Samsung-esuqe 5.5-inch display.

CNET has more: "Apple will show off its new iPhone 6 at an event in August and release the device that same month, Taiwan-based Economic Daily News reported on Friday, citing people who claim to have knowledge of Apple's plans. At the same event, Apple will also show off a larger iPhone with a 5.5- or 5.6-inch display that will launch in September."

Regarding the bump in size, Reuters points out: "Industry watchers have said increasing the iPhone's screen size from 4 inches would help Apple regain market share from competitors such as Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, who they say have responded to consumer desire for more screen size."

Again, this is all rumor right now as Apple hasn't made an announcement. But all signs point to a larger phone later this summer. Fantastic.

[CNET]
[Reuters]

A new app, cutely christened MonkeyParking, allows drivers to auction off their prime public parking spots in San Francisco to the highest bidder. Kudos to those of you who want to park your Tesla right in front of Puerto Alegre. Yet again, the world is yours.

But you don't have to be a Lower Haight resident to use the newfangled app. Nope. Drivers can bid anywhere from $10, $15, $20, or more for a parking spot swap. Some people, though, are none too thrilled about it. For example:

For their part, MonkeyParking claims that they're in the app business for reducing traffic, not money. (Perish the thought.) Paolo Dobrowolny, co-founder of MonkeyParking, tells SFGate, "It’s a fair business for anybody...It’s not just for rich people. If you think you can get that money back when you leave that parking spot, you can earn back the money when you leave the spot."

As for parking spaces, there just aren't enough of them in the city. (Then again, what driver anywhere thinks there's enough parking, ever?) KTVU notes:

Like many large cities, parking is at a premium in San Francisco. SF MUNI's parking census, which has yet to be officially released, shows 440,000 spaces available. Of those, 275,000 are street parking. "That makes up about 900 miles, and that's larger than California's coastline," said MUNI spokesman, Paul Rose. "But in a city like San Francisco, those spaces are limited."

However, according to Jackson West of Uptown Almanac, this app could hinder much-needed funds going to improve land and infrastructure improvements on public property. In part, he writes:

The thing is, a ridiculously large portion of the 49 square miles in San Francisco is set aside for parking cars. And what the city owns, it hardly charges enough for. The SFPark program introduced in 2010 has used a different method to achieve goals similar to those stated by MonkeyParking, which is to assure parking availability even during busy times: By increasing the cost of the most popular spots. But that money goes straight to the SFMTA, which perpetually needs it for things like paying the Police Department millions for “security services”—as it should, because that land and the infrastructure improvements on it are public property.

In the end, MonkeyParking sits in the same genre as Airbnb, only this time they're using public space for commodity, while ostensibly claiming to provide "valuable information for everybody."

[Uptown Almanac]
[KTVU]
[SFGate]

Just last night I noticed that UberX wanted to charge me a new $1 "Safe Rides Fee" on top of the usual fare. I clicked OK, because I needed to get home, and now in the cold light of day I find an explanation. I knew it couldn't stay so cheap forever.

Uber has added the new surcharge, as it turns out, in order to offset the costs of driver background checks, insurance, and motor vehicle checks. As they put it, the "increased costs associated with our continued efforts to ensure the safest platform for Uber riders and drivers." It may actually be directly off-setting the extended insurance policy the company got in response to that UberX driver who ran into and killed that little girl on New Year's Eve. UberX drivers are now insured for the entire duration of their time on the road while their Uber app is turned on, rather than just while they have a fare in their car, as CNET reports.

They may also just be copying Lyft, which already gets away with a $1 "Trust and Safety Fee," which goes to offset the same sort of costs.

Long story short, UberX is no longer cheaper than Lyft..

[CNET]
[The Next Web]

It's not going to impact me, you said at dinner with your parents, while discussing the endless deluge of leaked documents detailing the massive NSA spying program, which just netted Pulitzer prizes for both the Guardian and the Washington Post. That's the government. And now Google, which just changed its Terms of Service to clarify that they have the right to scan all of your emails. Not that not telling you has stopped them from doing so before.

This terms of service change follows last year's introduction of their latest inbox (an update on the so-called Priority Inbox), which automatically filters incoming emails into three distinct categories based on a proprietary algorithm used by Google's automated scanning bots.

Incoming and outgoing emails, as well as your entire electronic mail archive, is fair game. But nervous consumers clinging to quaint notions of "privacy" are reminded that Google is simly at war with the rogue spammers, threatening the peaceful civility of your online activity. It is imperative to Google's mission for you to recognize the manufactured difference between a Viagra bulk email and that tailored banner ad based on your late-night "Best Ramen In Bay Area" search. The change is as follows:

“Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such as customized search results, tailored advertising, and spam and malware detection. This analysis occurs as the content is sent, received, and when it is stored.”

The crux of the issue seems to be that it is a function that cannot be turned off, even if users are aware of it and consent to it, though consent online is something of misnomer at this point. Have you ever read any Terms of Service?

“This is not the worst thing Google does,” Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, tells the Guardian. “But like anything like this, if people are concerned about it they should be able to completely switch it off if they want to.”

Ultimately, the information gained from online searches, browsing history, and email content all contribute data for a comprehensive portrait of each user, allowing the most specific advertisements possible. Their ad revenue broke $50 billion dollars for the first time last year.

The change comes after a second major lawsuit against the $268 billion dollar company over the bulk scanning of email caches. On March 19th, the Guardian reported on a lawsuit in California over the possible violation of state and federal wiretapping laws, with the nine plaintiffs alleging the illegality of scanning university student emails.

These are by no means new revelations, however. In August of 2013, Google stated in a court filing that any of the almost 500 million Gmail users "must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing," and that the digital communications carry with them no "reasonable expections" of privacy.