This Week in Tech

Tesla Misses Insurance Firm’s ‘Safest Cars’ List Because Its EVs Don’t Crash Often Enough – This Week in Tech – 09/15/2019

Tesla Misses Insurance Firm’s ‘Safest Cars’ List Because Its EVs Don’t Crash Often Enough

Teslas are among the safest cars on the road, and part of this is due to their suite of active and passive safety features. From Autopilot’s capabilities to standard features like Automatic Emergency Braking, Tesla’s electric cars are designed to avoid accidents, or protect its occupants in the event that a crash is unavoidable…


Israel Allegedly Installed Stingray Devices Around D.C. to Spy on President Trump

Israel was allegedly behind the Stingray spy devices discovered around Washington, D.C. in 2017, according to an explosive new report from Politico, which notes that they were primarily intended to spy on President Donald Trump and his associates. The Israeli government denies the charge, but Politico’s sources include at least three unnamed former U.S. officials who “served in top intelligence and national security posts.”..


Electric Cars Are Finally Taking a (Tiny) Bite Out of Combustion Engine Sales

California’s car buyers are shifting their loyalties from the internal combustion engine to electric batteries—but ever so slowly. Despite car sales declining in the Golden State since 2016, the number of electric and hybrid cars sold continues to rise. In the first half of 2019, sales hit 51,750 and 48,861, respectively. That’s a 40% increase for both over last year…


Trump Administration Considers Monitoring Smartphones of People With Mental Health Problems

The Trump administration is considering a proposal to combat mass shootings which suggests phones and smartwatches may be used to track people with mental health problems…


App That Cancels Subscriptions Launches in UK

It was developed by Josh Browder, who as a teenager developed an algorithm called Do Not Pay, which continues to successfully fight parking fines…


Firefox Is Testing a VPN, and You Can Try It Right Now

Last week, Mozilla said its Firefox browser would block third-party trackers for everyone by default and yesterday, Mozilla announced a new product that could give Firefox users even more privacy on the web: the Firefox Private Network, which claims to be “a secure, encrypted path to the web” — essentially, a Firefox-made VPN (though Mozilla never calls it one)…


France and Germany Agree to Block Facebook’s Libra

PARIS (Reuters) – France and Germany have agreed to block Facebook’s Libra cryptocurrency, the French finance ministry said on Friday…