“OCA is a neutral term; there is of course nothing inherently wrong with companies marketing their services. However, where these marketing messages are in fact deceptive design practices used by powerful platforms to undermine consumer choice and prevent switching away from their affiliated browsers, it harms competition and ultimately consumers,” Mozilla adds in the report. “Similarly, companies are and should be free to build their brands. But where branding is used by gatekeeper opera ...read more

In brief: Amazon has announced updated versions of its Fire 8 tablets across a variety of price points. The standard Fire HD 8 now features an 8-inch IPS touchscreen display (1,280 x 800 resolution, 189 PPI) made with strengthened aluminosilicate glass. According to Amazon, the tablet is twice as durable as the iPad mini in tumble tests. The new Fire HD 8 is powered by a refreshed hexa-core processor that is up to 30 percent faster than the chip in the previous generation slate. It is mated t ...read more

It was back in 2019 that we reported on Visionaries Club, a new, Berlin-based, European VC focusing on B2B, founded by Sebastian Pollok and Robert Lacher. At the time, Visionaries Club had launched two new €40M micro funds for seed and growth-stage B2B. Pollok was previously a VC at e.ventures in San Francisco and also founded Amorelie, which exited to Pro7Sat.1 Media Group. Lacher was previously a founding partner of La Famiglia, an early investor in FreightHub, Coya, Asana Rebel, OnTr ...read more

Facepalm: On Wednesday, Morgan Stanley settled a complaint by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over "astonishing" security failures occurring between 2016 and 2021. The financial giant agreed to pay a $35 million fine for the improper disposal of hard drives from one of its decommissioned data centers. According to the SEC's complaint, Morgan Stanley auctioned off roughly 1,000 unencrypted HDDs that had not had their contents erased. It also claims that the company improperly disp ...read more

Michelle Grover. (Slalom Photo) — Michelle Grover was appointed as the first chief technology officer of Slalom, a Seattle-based global business and technology consulting firm. Grover previously served as chief information officer for Twilio, and was most recently the interim chief information and digital officer at First Command Financial Services. She was also senior VP of software development for TripIt and Mobile at SAP Concur. Founded in 2001, Slalom has more than 13,000 employee ...read more

From left: Chief Revenue Officer Jake Stone; CTO Jim Castillo; Chief Business Officer Jonathan Macey; and CEO and co-founder Thomas Lapham. (Cheq Photo) Editor’s note: The headline and story were updated to better reflect CHEQ’s business and technology. Seattle-area startup Cheq Lifestyle Technology has raised $8 million to fuel growth of its mobile ordering and delivery platform that lets consumers get items delivered to their seat at sporting events and gift drinks to friends. The ...read more

Kitty Hawk, the electric aviation startup founded and led by the “godfather of self-driving cars” Sebastian Thrun and backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, is shutting down. The company said in a tweet and on a post in LinkedIn that it was winding down operations. “We have made the decision to wind down Kittyhawk. We’re still working on the details of what’s next,” the posts on social media read. We have made the decision to wind down Kittyhawk. We're still working on the ...read more

Through the looking glass: Do you remember floppy disks? The archaic storage device used to ruled computers of the 1980s and 1990s, but a good number of you reading this may have never seen or used one before. Surprisingly though, they still hold a place in one specific and unlikely setting: airlines. Long before the days of SSDs, USB drives, or even CD and DVDs, floppy disks used to rule the computer world. There's a high chance that you haven't used a floppy in a decade or two, if ever. The ...read more

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here . Due to excessively poor judgment, today’s Christine and Haje show is brought to you by Haje and Christine. Meanwhile, mark your calendar for September 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT/1:00 p.m. EDT when we bring you a special Twitter Spaces, “Immigration law for startups,” featuring Silicon Valley–based attorney and TechCrunch+ columnist Sophie Alcorn. So ...read more

From left: TrovaTrip CEO and co-founder Nick Poggi; co-founder Lauren Schneider; and CTO Brandon Denham. (TrovaTrip Photo) TrovaTrip, a Portland, Ore.-based startup that runs a marketplace for group travel, raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group. The company said it had 10X growth in bookings last year despite the ongoing pandemic. Travel companies took a hit when the pandemic began, but some have recovered amid an uncertain economy and the lingeri ...read more