Mannerisms

THE era of using microwave radiation as an action-at-a-distance source of power is almost here, The Raytheon Company of America are working on the feasibility of using microwave radiated power to provide a propulsion system for airborne machines. So, 63 years ago, started a piece in the TOMORROW’S THINKING section of Electronics Weekly’s edition of February 1st 1961 The story ...

The EU Commission’s Joint Research Center sounded the alarm earlier this year over how prolonged drought events have affected Europe for more than two years already and northern Africa for as many as six, which is “causing water shortages and hampering vegetation growth.” Spain’s northeast Catalonia region is currently suffering its worst drought on record. According to a survey by ...

Machine customers are going to be the biggest opportunity of my career, Ed confides to his diary, although it’s taken me a while to cotton on that this will be a trillion dollar bunce bonanza. CEOs surveyed by Gartner  predict that 20% of their revenues will come from machine-generated orders by 2030. Cars will order up new tyres when they ...

20 years ago the chip industry was facing an unprecedented setback – for the first time in its history a shrink was not delivering improvements in density, power, speed and cost. Density, speed and cost  benefits were still do-able but power was not. “The industry is facing a challenge which is unprecedented in its history,” said Dr Tsugio Makimoto, corporate ...

Nvidia has stunned the world with  80% capex growth this year – but there’s a better investment you could have made in January 2024: cocoa. The price of cocoa beans, the most important raw material for making chocolate, has surged more than 120 percent this year, with cocoa futures temporarily trading at more than $10,000 per metric ton this week. ...

There was once a scientist who was offered the Presidency of Israel. This was his reply. “I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal ...

Water stress, i.e. the proportion of water withdrawn for use in industry, agriculture or private households in relation to available water, was manageable at 18.2% in 2020,  according to the UN, but 51 of the 164 countries and territories analysed are expected to suffer from high to extremely high water stress by 2050. According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), ...

Ranking countries by the size of their economies and their overall net wealth, the U.S. is usually at the top of the list, followed by countries like China, Japan or Germany. But sorting countries for their per-capita average wealth – or even for their median per-capita wealth – other countries come out on top. Using the two metrics, Switzerland is ...

Thanks to Counterpoint Research for this one – the top ten semiconductor companies measured by revenue in 2023: Top 10 Semiconductor Companies’ Revenue 55% of Global Revenue Source: Counterpoint Research

The antitrust lawsuit against Apple focuses on five areas: streaming, super-apps, cross-platform messaging, smartwatches and digital wallets. In all of these examples, the US DOJ alleges, Apple used it position to put in place rules and policies that make it harder for non-Apple devices and services to compete with Apple’s own offerings, thus keeping users in the company’s (in)famous walled ...

EEV has been making  electronic components in Chelmsford since 1947. 14 years after it was founded –  63 years ago – this ad appeared in Electronics Weekly’s edition of March 24th 1961   w

If the US has debt of $34 trillion, China has debt of $13 trillion Japan has debt of $9 trillion,  and Germany and the UK each have debt of $2.7 trillion, you would think that somewhere, someone must be the biggest humungeous creditor of all time. But no one seems to know who the creditor is. Or whether, indeed there ...

It seems to me that we’re missing a trick with AI and migration, Ed confides to his diary. Cheap labour has been the key to countries’ economic success for centuries – we led the world in industrialisation in the 19th century by migrating workers from the country to the towns and the USA followed suit in taking in migrants from ...

There is a very silly story about Einstein which one would like to hope is true. Einstein had a driver who used to sit at the back of the room when he gave his public lectures. One day when they were  in the car the driver said to Einstein that the theory of relativity was so simple that even he ...

It’s Friday again and though it may not be Amami Wave-Set night for you, it’ll probably mean a snifter or two and a good time. Having a good time is one of the three most important aspects in life for many people according to survey results from Statista Consumer Insights. The Japanese  are particularly keen on enjoying themselves, as 77 ...

If you ever pass this house at Hampton Court Reflect upon it that this man once lived there He is one of our greatest scientists  who had clapped eyes on Napoleon Bonaparte, rejected honours and changed our understanding of  the world. Moral: Greatness of mind can come with nobility of spirit.

In power for around a quarter of a century – spanning four presidential terms and two terms as prime minister between 1999 and 2000 and between 2008 and 2012 – Putin has spent almost 9,000 days as boss of Russia. By the end of his new six-year term of approximately 2,190 days he will be Russia’s longest serving leader since ...

The canard that TSMC makes 90% of the world’s most advanced chips has been taken apart by the industry’s foremost process technology analyst Scotten Jones. In SemiWiki, Jones points out that that this much-quoted ‘stat’ does not stand up to scrutiny. Jones takes ‘advanced’ as being processes with densities of  100 million transistors per millimeter squared (MTx/mm2) which is the ...

Thanks to Gartner for this one – the top ten semiconductor companies in 2023: 10 2023 Rank 2022 Rank  Vendor 2023  Revenue 2023  Market Share (%) 2022  Revenue 1 2 Intel 48.664 9.1 58.436 -16.7 2 1 Samsung Electronics 39.905 7.5 63.823 -37.5 3 3 Qualcomm 29.015 5.4 34.780 -16.6 4 6 Broadcom 25.585 4.8 23.868 7.2 5 12 NVIDIA ...

Although far from flops when released in theatres, data from Box Office Mojo shows that the past five years’ Best Picture winners at the Oscars weren’t the highest-grossing movies in the year of their release. Oppenheimer, the year’s third-highest grossing movie, won Best Picture and 2023’s biggest success, Barbie, received an Oscar snub. Oppenheimer grossed close to $1 billion in ...