“This is robbery.”

San Francisco-based ride-hail companies Uber and Lyft are keeping just over one-third of driver revenue, according to data from 14,756 fares collected by car-related news website Jalopnik. If the findings are representative of the whole, Uber and Lyft are taking around 10% more from their drivers than they have reported. Meanwhile, despite their classification as independent contractors, drivers cannot control the price of their own services. Jalopnik

Federal officials indicted a former Google executive for allegedly stealing files that helped him build a self-driving tractor-trailer company and sell it to Uber for $680 million. New York Times | SFGate

In 2007, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. hired an outsider named Ed Salas to perform a system-wide risk evaluation, NBC uncovered. Two months before the fateful San Bruno explosion in 2010, Salas produced a report documenting a surprising pressure surge on one of the utility’s aging gas lines that would inflict $500 million in damages if it exploded. He also described shoddy record keeping and emergency crews ill-equipped to respond to serious disasters.

What’s more, in reviewing the high voltage transmission network, Salas also identified risk of “fires caused by aged equipment failure that PG&E had not taken timely action to replace.” Salas left the company in frustration. Now he operates a church in Southern California.

NBC

"Coming from somewhere with very little transit, where we had one bus and it didn't go anywhere I wanted to go, to where you can go anywhere is kind of life changing."

Twenty-nine-year-old designer Chris Arvin turned his passion for public transit into a side hustle. In March, he launched Transit Supply, an online merch shop selling enamel pins, apparel, stickers, magnets and prints all depicting streetcars, buses and other transit-related imagery.

SFGate

"No video, no case. That’s the reality."

Police are tapping 1,000 private security cameras to keep tabs on San Francisco’s neighborhoods. Cryptocurrency giant Ripple founder Chris Larsen is bankrolling the majority for multiple business improvement districts and other local groups. He said he believes that some 100 professional criminals are targeting The City, and security cameras are the solution. SFist

Friends, colleagues or neighbors on the playa? There's a live webcast of Burning Man. SFStation

Mayor London Breed announced on Monday that $805,000 will be used for the installation of 22 more water filling stations at The City’s public schools and 14 more at parks and open spaces. Funds for the stations come from the Soda and Sugary Beverages Tax Measure, a 2016 voter-approved tax of one cent per ounce of sugar-filled beverages. To date, 107 stations have been installed. CBS

Breed announced on Tuesday that $3.5 million of The City’s budget will be put toward expanding mental health programs at public schools for the next two years. San Francisco Examiner

“It’s so frustrating that we — legitimate businesses — are always being lumped in with illegal syndicates.”

Since 2015, hundreds of massage therapists have been required to jump through expensive and time-consuming legal hoops to set up shop. The most onerous is for them is The City’s conditional use process, which requires massage therapists to have months of rent saved before starting the process and can take 11 months. The Department of Public Health last week sent 206 massage therapists letters giving them a choice: Comply with the law within 30 days, or pay $1,000 daily in fines.

Mission Local

As promised, opponents of two voter-approved tax measures that passed with simple majorities have appealed Judge Ethan Schulman’s July decision to uphold them. In January, the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and collaborators sued to block two 2018 tax measures used to fund childcare and early education and homelessness services. While City Hall is collecting the taxes, they won’t be spent until the legal issues are resolved.

San Francisco Examiner