Latest news with #Mu
RNZ News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Fat Freddy's Drop founder Chris Faiumu - Mu and DJ Fitchie
[hx] Fat Freddy's Drop founder Chris Faiumu dies Fat Freddy's Drop (Iain Gordon 2nd from left) Photo: supplied Chris Faiumu, the founder of the band Fat Freddy's Drop has died. More widely known as Mu and DJ Fitchie, he was the man behind the band's signature sound. Fat Freddy's Drop's 2005 album Based On a True Story is the third highest selling album ever by a New Zealand artist. It remained on the Top 40 charts for two years. The band was also well known for its live improvised performances, and toured internationally. The band celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. More to come... Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
RNZ News
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Fat Freddy's Drop founder Chris Faiumu dies
Chris Faiumu. Photo: Sarah Hunter Chris Faiumu, the founder of the band Fat Freddy's Drop has died. More widely known as Mu and DJ Fitchie, he was the man behind the band's signature sound. Fat Freddy's Drop's 2005 album Based On a True Story is the third highest selling album ever by a New Zealand artist. It remained on the Top 40 charts for two years. The band was also well known for its live improvised performances, and toured internationally. The band celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Tributes for the musician have been posted social media, with people sharing warm stories about his career, and grief at his passing. More to come... Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Express Tribune
04-07-2025
- Politics
- Express Tribune
Cruel to be kind
Listen to article As with any old animosity, the 'Tom & Jerry' show between Pakistan and India has continued since independence. Call it competition, identity clash or animosity, it has certainly inflicted severe damage, but often felt like a sibling rivalry in a sitcom. If I wrote something critical about India at a given moment, somebody on the other side would write a rebuttal, have a private laugh with me when we met personally, and be done with the whole episode. It was eleven years ago that it all changed. One oddity was the hate mail's nature. When you write something critical, you can expect a degree of pushback. Still, a part of the new normal was that even when you praised India, you received an inbox full of hate mail trying to put you in your place - a citizen of a badly broken nation, a beggar state, India was out of your league. You should not besmirch its name by getting it out of your filthy mouth. I would have heeded the advice, but you realise, since I have been writing almost my entire adult life, one runs out of things to write. It is not possible to ignore a nation of 1.45 billion. In my defence, every word I write is a product of care. If I talk to you, it's because I value your judgement. While others feel flattered by the attention, this was the first time one encountered people threatening to gouge your eyes out for just looking at them. So, what was behind this weapons-grade hubris? The realisation that India has finally arrived? If yes, why police Pakistani media's online assets then? If you are so powerful, successful and rich, why worry about what a Pakistani says about you? America is so rich and powerful, yet all sorts of things are published about it. Do you think such websites and email addresses are swamped by American trolls? Absolutely not. You attack and police when either you are unconvinced of your own success or want to create an environment of fear with a clear outcome in mind. You can see this from the methods that were employed. Nawaz Sharif was invited to Narendra Modi's swearing-in ceremony. Still, India's foreign office quickly clarified: he was just one of six SAARC leaders, and the visit should not be seen as bilateral. They also objected to his meeting with Hurriyat leaders. Let's decode that. Their message was clear: we are somebody, you are nobody. These ceremonial invitations to our "court" are acts of generosity; be grateful, obey protocol, and never presume equality. And what was the expectation? When we berate you, do not fight back. When we stare at you, make a point of being seen as cowering. And when we raise our hand, fall down and pretend to writhe in pain. This will please our people, and as long as we are in power, we will ensure you get some morsels off our table. You guessed it. The we in the above statement is royal we. And this imagery creates a global superstructure echoing India's caste system. Islam, according to this worldview, is synonymous with terrorism, and Pakistan is a Muslim country, so Pakistan gets a station lower than Dalits. This brings to mind the forgotten image of young BR Ambedkar sitting on a sack outside his classroom's door despite his brilliant mind, while his dull-witted classmates sat inside with standard desks and benches. Why? Because he was a Dalit and they were of the upper castes. He was not allowed to drink from the common water pot. Most teachers wouldn't even listen to him. America hasn't been able to shake off the ghost of Jim Crow Laws despite becoming one of the most tolerant societies today. A country which still sustains a fivefold Jim Crow system on acid as the present reality is unlikely to perpetuate anything different. Sadly, I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge that many Pakistanis fell for this scheme. The Indian media needed a certain archetypal Pakistan to represent the country's caricature. Many individuals lined up to volunteer. Those who refused were told that they would have no role among the emerging media elite of the country. Many policymakers and notables showed readiness to pretend to speak from a position of weakness whenever they spoke of India. As Indian politicians publicly tried to paddle Pakistan, there was no dearth of those shouting, stop, their voices, "thank you, sir, may I have another"? An economy has flourished since then. People like me were duped by another phenomenon. Whenever dramatic developments occur, I imagine how it would impact me if I were there. So when I see suffering, I immediately empathise. We looked at Indian seculars and thought they must be going through hell. But we ignored that had it not been for the latent bigotry and active connivance of the secular elite, a party with so much history of bloodsport could not control a nation as diverse and populous for the past eleven years. Scratch an Indian secular, and a Nathuram Godse with a good accent comes out. They all want Akhand Bharat. Only they don't want the blame. Why not deal with the real deal then? Modi then wasn't the problem. He was India's elected leader. One should have put up or shut up. My bad. But a direct consequence of India's carefully manufactured self-image was the demand for incremental aggression towards Pakistan in 2016, 2019, and now. This time, they misjudged the situation and are still licking their wounds. For the first time in eleven years, they have encountered a reset. While I do not condone war or violence, sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Frankly, the mutual hostility of these nations has made them engines of poverty in this neck of the woods. There is no excuse for this to go on indefinitely. If this lesson does not sink in, more shocks may come. While the jury is still out on the future of peace in South Asia, the economy mentioned above, which emerged in the past eleven years in Pakistan, hasn't gone away. From the 2014 sit-in to destabilising the Sharif government in 2017, the reelection of Modi in 2019, and many others, it has left behind indelible fingerprints on every crisis. Sadly, politicians who became its victims blame others for their plight. But I kept all the receipts. About time you knew who did what. I have faced attempts to deplatform and financially ruin me before, like between 2019 and 2022. I didn't enjoy it, but I survived. What is the worst they can do now? Kill me?
Yahoo
27-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Microsoft Launches 'Mu,' New On-Device AI Model for Copilot+ PCs
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is one of the best US tech stocks to buy now. On June 23, Microsoft officially launched a new small language model called Mu. The AI tool is designed for efficient local operation on personal computers, particularly the new Copilot+ PCs. Unlike larger AI models that rely on cloud processing, Mu operates entirely on a device's Neural Processing Unit/NPU, which enables rapid responses while consuming less power and memory. Mu is an efficient 330 million parameter encoder-decoder language model optimized for small-scale deployment on NPUs. Its design was carefully tuned to fit the hardware's parallelism and memory limits, and ensure peak efficiency for operations. The model's development used insights gained from Microsoft's earlier Phi models and was pre-trained on hundreds of billions of high-quality educational tokens. A development team working together to create the next version of Windows. To enhance its performance despite having fewer parameters, Mu was fine-tuned using advanced techniques such as distillation and low-rank adaptation, and it also incorporates transformer upgrades like Dual LayerNorm, Rotary Positional Embeddings/RoPE, and Grouped-Query Attention/GQA. Initially, the Mu model will be applied to the Settings function within the Windows system, using natural language processing to convert user inputs into system commands. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) develops and supports global software, services, devices, and solutions. While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the . READ NEXT: and . Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Microsoft Just Launched Its New Mu Language Model. Should You Buy MSFT Stock Here?
Microsoft (MSFT) reiterated its leadership in artificial intelligence with the introduction of a brand-new 'Mu' small language model, an accelerated local model to run on Neural Processing Units (NPUs) on Copilot+ PCs. Introduced as part of a broader edge AI capability initiative, the solution seems to provide low-latency AI features. Wall Street is paying attention, with the stock moving to new all-time highs on June 25 as the software giant continues to convert AI innovation into tangible business victories. In context, the Mu model isn't another AI product launch but a sign of the accelerating hardware-software collaboration within custom silicon, Windows, and Azure ecosystems. With good tailwinds from Office 365 and cloud services, Microsoft has become the de facto AI platform company. Broadcom Just Got a New Street-High Price Target. Should You Buy AVGO Stock Here? Is United Health Stock a Buy, Hold or Sell for July 2025? This New ETF Promises to Help You Invest Like Warren Buffett and Yields 15% Markets move fast. Keep up by reading our FREE midday Barchart Brief newsletter for exclusive charts, analysis, and headlines. Microsoft (MSFT) is a technology leader, headquartered in Redmond, Washington, which sells software, cloud computing, enterprise services, and AI infrastructure. With a market capitalization of more than $3.6 trillion, institutional investors continue to keep Microsoft as a cornerstone holding due to its diversified business and stable cash flow. MSFT stock has gained nearly 9% over the past 12 months, including a 16% rally year-to-date. Shares recently hit an all-time high of $494.56, bolstered by AI-driven tailwinds and sustained revenue growth across its cloud and productivity segments. The stock trades at a forward price-earnings ratio of 36.4x and price-sales ratio of 14.7x, premium multiples. But the valuation itself is a testament to investor confidence in Microsoft's sustainable revenue model, 36% profit margins, and strategic corporate AI participation. With a return on equity of 32.7% and minimal leverage (0.13x debt-equity ratio), Microsoft remains financially robust. For the third quarter of its fiscal 2025, Microsoft announced great results, surpassing Wall Street estimates on all fronts. Revenue came to $70.1 billion, up 13% year-over-year (15% in constant currency), and net income climbed 18% to $25.8 billion. EPS came to $3.46, up 18% as well, led by strength in Microsoft Cloud, up 20% to $42.4 billion. Microsoft stock earns a 'Strong Buy' rating with 46 analysts tracking the stock. They have given 37 'Strong Buy' and five 'Moderate Buy' ratings. Analyst sentiment has remained solidly positive throughout 2025 with the aid of accelerating cloud expansion and new AI product cycles. The consensus price target for Microsoft is $518.98, which implies roughly 6% upside potential from current prices. With the Street-high price target at $626, there could be a possible 28% advance from here over the next 12 months. On the date of publication, Yiannis Zourmpanos did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
