Daily Pulse: Uber Drivers Get a Lift, McDonalds Gets the Message, Idiots and Self-Driving Cars

The Uber of Lawsuits: A US district judge in San Francisco has granted Uber drivers class action status to pursue an action under California labor law that could reclassify drivers, now considered contractors, as employees disrupting the disruptive force that is the gig economy.

At its core, this is about the cost of doing business, not the viability of the business model that Uber and other sharing economy startups employ to employ people who are, in the main, looking for part-time income and the freedom that freelancing provides.

But even as a cost it could seriously dent Uber’s red-hot valuation: at $51 billion, it is by far the priciest unicorn. And a ruling in favor of Uber’s 150,000 drivers in California “could set some precedent for similar cases in other states across the country,” writes Colin Lecher in The Verge.

A similar case “is unfolding” in federal court in San Francisco against rival Lyft, reports Howard Mintz for the San Jose Mercury News.

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All.Day.Breakfast: McDonald’s has heard your plea. It’s been a long time coming but circle Oct. 6 on your calendar. “McDonald’s Corp. is embarking on its biggest operational change in years as it tries to juice flagging sales,” breathlessly writes The Wall Street Journal’s Julie Jargon, “with plans to offer breakfast items all-day at its more than 14,300 U.S. restaurants.”

It’s been tested since March, but franchisees only approved the changes last week and on Tuesday the “franchise leadership council” gave its blessing.

And, just in time: “The introduction of all-day breakfast comes just as McDonald’s nears the third anniversary of declining sales,” Jargon observes.

#Quote

“This is the consumers’ idea. This is what they want us to do”

— McDonald’s USA President Mike Andres

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Google gave its logo a makeover: It’s the 7th incarnation for the company and the first using a san serif font that looks suspiciously like that employed by parent company Alphabet. There’s a full low-down from the design team on how we got here, and a ridiculous four-dozen stories or so about this unmonumental development on Techmeme, where it was the top story for hours.

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Self Driving Cars Would Be Great If We Got Rid of Humans: That’s basically the message from Dmitri Dolgov, the head of Google’s autonomous vehicle project, who says people behind the wheel need to be “less idiotic.”

That’s fine, but to get to a world where there are no drivers, self-driving cars are going to have to coexist with people at least for a while. And if they can’t, all the utopian visions of what technology can do in a perfect world isn’t worth the trade-in value of a 1979 Kia.

The problems that Google’s vehicles have encountered aren’t really serious, but they are intriguing hurdles that put in precise focus the little things that define the difference between machine knowledge and human intelligence. The incompatibilities are exposed, for example, with adaptive cruise control which invites “aggressive” humans to merge and sensors which can’t win the game of chicken at a four-way stop where the human drivers are jockeying for position with eye contact and intuition while the autonomous car plays it safe.

And that puts a fundamental proposition on full display: Humans may drive like crazy people, but we understand crazy. A machine that completely understood a human wouldn’t be a machine anymore, even if it could be built. And if it drove less safely to keep up with air-breathers, the key selling point for removing the human element would be weakened.

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SELL SELL SELL: Wall Street closed sharply down. The Dow Jones industrial average lost about 470 points. The Nasdaq is now negative for the year and all major US averages are (back) in correction, off 10% their 52-week highs.

#Stat

The S&P 500 has moved up or down by 6 percent or more only once since 2008. Oil has moved by at least 6 percent each of the last four trading days.

#Chart

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Earlier today: Twins For Marissa Mayer, Obama Talks Tough on Climate Change, and Apple vs. Netflix?

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Cover Art: Sara Errani of Italy hits a return to Angelique Kerber of Germany during their women's singles match at the 2012 US Open tennis tournament September 3, 2012 in New York. (Don Emmert/AFP/GettyImages)