Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley is a senior writer at SiliconANGLE covering Startups, Bitcoin, and the Internet of Things. Duncan is a co-founder of VC funded media company B5Media and founder of news site The Inquisitr, and was a senior writer at TechCrunch in its earlier days. Tips? Press releases? Intersting startup? email: duncan@nichenet.com.au or contact Duncan on Twitter @duncanriley

Latest from Duncan Riley

Biden administration officials push for sale of TikTok’s US operations

Some two years after a push by the Trump administration for ByteDance Ltd. to sell the U.S. operations of TikTok, all that is old is new again with a report that the Biden administration is now pushing for the same thing. The Wall Street Journal reported today that administration officials are pushing for the sale to ...

Apple and other companies face disruption amid massive COVID outbreak in China

Tech companies with manufacturing facilities in mainland China, including Apple Inc., are facing a months-long disruption amid a massive outbreak of COVID-19 in the Middle Kingdom after the Chinese Communist Party dropped its zero-COVID policy. COVID disrupting Western tech companies in the country is nothing new. Apple faced delays in manufacturing as early as February ...

Microsoft responds to FTC lawsuit that seeks to block its takeover of Activision Blizzard

Microsoft Corp. today filed a response to a lawsuit from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that seeks to block its $68.7 billion takeover of computer games maker Activision Blizzard Inc., the biggest ever in the technology business. Microsoft announced that it had entered an agreement to acquire Activitision in January, and antitrust concerns emerged not ...

Zerobot botnet upgrade targets unpatched Apache servers

Zerobot, an “internet of things” botnet discovered earlier this year, has been updated with additional features, including the ability to target vulnerabilities on unpatched Apache servers. As detailed Wednesday by researchers at Microsoft Corp.’s Security Threat Intelligence team, Zerobot is a Go-based botnet that primarily spreads through IoT and web application vulnerabilities. Zerobot is offered as ...

Self-driving truck company TuSimple lays off 25% of staff days before Christmas

It won’t be a Merry Christmas for many employees of self-driving truck company TuSimple Holdings Inc. this year, as the company announced Wednesday that it’s laying off 25% of its staff in a restructuring plan. The move affects about 350 employees, with 80% of the company’s remaining 1,100 employees now undertaking research and development functions. Onetime restructuring costs are ...

LastPass reveals hacker copied encrypted customer password vaults

Password manager LastPass US LP today revealed that a hacker who gained access to their systems last month copied data from a backup that contained customer account information. LastPass revealed the attack on Dec. 1, saying at the time that a hacker had gained access to a third-party cloud storage service used by the company and affiliate ...

The Guardian newspaper hacked in suspected ransomware attack

Guardian News & Media Ltd., the publisher of the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, has been struck by a suspected ransomware attack. Details of the suspected ransomware attack were fittingly published today by The Guardian, which said that the “incident” began late Tuesday night U.K. time and had affected parts of the company’s technology infrastructure. The online ...

‘South Park’ creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone raise $20M for their deepfake company

Deep Voodoo, an artificial intelligence entertainment startup founded by “South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, revealed today that it has raised $20 million in funding to accelerate its development of deepfake technology, cost-effective visual effects services and synthetic media projects. Connect Ventures and New Enterprise Associates led the round. If you’ve never heard of ...

German industrial giant ThyssenKrupp targeted in cyberattack

German multinational industrial engineering and steel production company ThyssenKrupp AG said today that it’s fending off a cyberattack against its Materials Services division and corporate headquarters. The form of attack was not disclosed. A spokesperson told Agence France Presse only that “Thyssenkrupp is currently the target of a cyberattack — presumably by organized crime” and that ...

Despite earnings beat, BlackBerry shares drop slightly in late trading

Shares in BlackBerry Ltd. dropped slightly in after-hours trading today despite the company beating analyst’ expectations for its latest quarterly earnings. For the third quarter that ended Nov. 30, BlackBerry reported a net loss of $4 million, or a penny per share, on revenue of $169 million, down from a net profit of $74 million, ...