In today’s Bulldog wrapup of technology news:

  • Uber offers an instant pay option for dirvers
  • Google lobbies feds for faster approval of auto-driving cars
  • Homeland Security begins briefing businesses about threats
  • Vint Cerf talks the Internet in Cuba

The details:

  • Uber to give drivers option to be paid instantly

Uber is launching a pilot program intended to help the ride-hailing service’s drivers draw their pay faster, an effort that may also fend off emerging payday lenders who are targeting drivers.

Uber will allow drivers to deposit their earnings from each ride into an account with GoBank, a subsidiary of the pre-paid debit card company Green Dot. Uber won’t charge any fees for the service, and GoBank will not charge a monthly fee so long as drivers access their accounts at least once every six months. Should it go untouched for longer,drivers would face a monthly fee of $8.95.

San Francisco-based Uber pays its drivers once a week, sometimes leading to financial stress for some members of its largely low-to-middle income workforce.

The pilot program, which Uber is launching in San Francisco and a few other cities, is a direct challenge to companies that offer drivers faster payment in exchange for high fees. Drivers have been increasingly vocal about the need for alternatives, Uberexecutives said.

“Our drivers should not have to pay for this technology,” said Wayne Ting, Uber’s general manager for the San Francisco Bay Area.

The lack of an option at Uber, by far the largest of the ride-hailing app companies, to pay drivers instantly has increasingly resulted in services going into the business of providing cash advances or deposit services to Uber drivers and other members of the so-called “freelance economy.”

  • Google gives federal plan for self-driving car

Google wants Congress to create new federal powers that would let the tech giant receive special, expedited permission to bring to market a self-driving car that has no steering wheel or pedals.

The proposal, laid out in a letter to top federal transportation officials, reveals Google’s solution to a major regulatory roadblock: U.S. law does not permit the mainstream deployment of cars with the design Google has been advancing, which would not allow a person to drive.

The cars may sound futuristic, but Google has dropped increasingly strong hints that its self-driving technology — tested for several years on public roads in California and elsewhere — could be ready for early adopters sooner than the public expects. The tech giant’s push to clear roadblocks in federal law reinforces that confidence.

The process Google advocates would be available to any company that wants to produce a car which can drive itself without human intervention. Traditional automakers are moving in that direction, but not as aggressively as Google.

In a letter sent Friday to U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, the head of Google’s self-driving car project, Chris Urmson, sketched out the idea of a federal fast track for the technology which he floated without details at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday.

Under Google’s proposed framework, a company that could show its vehicles passed federal safety standards could receive permission from transportation regulators to sell them. The government could set conditions that limit use based on safety concerns, and would be obligated to review the application in a “tight but realistic” time frame.

The typical process for making new rules takes years.

  • Homeland Security begins sharing cyberthreats with business

The Homeland Security Department on Thursday formally began sharing details of new digital threats with private business and other government agencies, a culmination of a longtime effort to improve cybersecurity.

“This is the ‘if you see something, say something’ of cybersecurity,” saidHomeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson at the agency’s Virginia-based data sharinghub, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.

A federal law passed at the end of 2015 was intended to encourage corporations to share information about cyberthreats, making it harder for businesses to be targeted by threats used elsewhere.

The program is voluntary, and the number of companies that will participate or how effective the program will be remains unclear.

Companies have long been reluctant to acknowledge security failures. As of Thursday, about six organizations had signed up and others have expressed interest, Andy Ozment, the assistant cybersecurity secretary at Homeland Security, said. The names of companies participating are closely held, and records about their involvement are exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

“This is a big deal,” he said. “We’re not going to launch out the gates … and have thousands of companies sharing all sorts of information. We want to make sure we’re providing value and growing.”

Under the new law, the Homeland Security Department programmed its systems to remove personally identifiable information that might be included that private companies might share.

“As companies come on board, we’ll learn more about what’s useful,” and learn to streamline other parts, said Suzanne Spaulding, a top Homeland Security cyber official.

  • Google’s ‘chief evangelist’ gives unusual talk to Cubans

A legendary computer scientist known as Google’s chief Internetevangelist has delivered an unusual talk to Cuban officials in a sign of warming relations between the U.S. technology giant and the Cuban government days before President Barack Obama visits the island.

Google Vice President Vint Cerf spoke for more than an hour to an audience of Communications Ministry officials and recent computer science graduates on Wednesday at the 2016 International Computer Science Fair, a government-run symposium on information technology and communications.

Cerf reviewed the history of the Internet, which he is credited with helping invent, and described Google’s projects to spread Internet access to developing countries. Googlehas expressed intense interest in bringing more Internet access to Cuba, one of the world’s least-connected nations.

Cerf’s talk didn’t directly address Cuba’s lack of connectivity or Google’s hopes of helping fix it, but he lauded Cubans’ ability to resolve practical problems like keeping old cars running, and emphasized the importance of government not blocking innovation. Cuba blames its lack of connectivity on limited economic resource. Independent experts say the country’s view of the Internet as a national security threat and its desire to control citizens’ ability to access and share information in real time is also a major culprit.

Cerf told the audience that drivers of the first automobiles were forced to drive at a crawl behind policemen on foot who warned pedestrians of the potential danger.

“We don’t want that” occurring when governments regulate new technologies, he said. “What we want is to encourage new ideas.”

While Cerf was accompanied by a Google attorney, a spokeswoman for the company said that Cerf was participating as a member of the U.S. National Science Board and the company itself had no comment on his visit.