Hello. Welcome to Computerworld's 2-minute technical briefing. I'm your host. Arnold Davis reports from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Here are the top IT stories you need to know on Tuesday, January 6th.
First, from CSO Online, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that two cybersecurity experts accused of running a ransomware operation have pleaded guilty. Ryan Goldberg and Kevin Martin were charged with using Black Cat ransomware against multiple victims in the United States between April and December 2023.
The Justice Department has accused the pair and an unnamed third party of conspiring to use Black Cat, also known as ALF, to extort companies, but court records show the attack resulted in more than $9.5 million in losses, although only about $324,000 was traced to them.
They face up to 20 years in prison, with sentencing scheduled for March 12 of this year.
Deep Seek from Computer World says it has discovered a cheaper way to train large-scale AI models, and the AI company has announced Multi-Constrained Hyperconnection (MHC), which reportedly allows large-scale language models to be trained more efficiently and at lower cost. The South China Morning Post reported.
Deepseek says MHC maintains stability and scalability without increasing computational costs. Researchers tested the technology on models with up to 27 billion parameters and found positive results. And finally, Meta acquires viral AI startup Manus.
TechCrunch reports that the acquisition will cost around $2 billion.Manus quickly became a hot topic after showing off demos of its AI agents handling everything from job interviews to stock price analysis. Manas said annual recurring revenue exceeded $100 million.
Meta will allow the company to continue operating independently, but its AI agents will be integrated into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The company also said that after the acquisition, it will no longer have Chinese owners or operations in China.
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