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Mannerisms

Fable: The Scientist Who Was Offered The Presidency Of Israel

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

Water stress, i.e. the proportion of water withdrawn for use in industry, agriculture or private households in relation to available water, was manageable at 18.2% in 2020,  according to the UN, but 51 of the 164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), ...

The Really Rich Countries

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 ...

USA vs Apple

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’s Longevity

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

Debt Without A Creditor

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 ...

Ed Embraces The Migrants

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 ...

Einstein’s Driver

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 ...

Where The Good Times Roll

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 ...

Fable: The Noble Scientist

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.

Puttin’ It On

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 ...

TSMC’s share of ‘advanced’ silicon

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 ...

Top Ten IC Companies

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 ...

Oscars vs Box Office

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 ...

The Gate-Keepers

The Digital Markets Act (DMA) – the EU’s move to rein in the power of big tech companies – went into effect earlier this month. The six-month grace period for the six companies designated as “gatekeepers” ended on March 7th, meaning they now have to comply with the rules set out in the DMA and outline the measures they’ve taken ...

Ed Taps Arabia

Mutabilogica, my AI-at-the-edge-optimised programmable logic company, is shaping up as a sprat to catch a whale-sized mackerel, Ed confides to his diary. Where are the whales? Very clearly the Middle East is the place to go for the big-fish investors. As  His Majesty’s Secretary of State for Science, Technology and Digital Industry it is not difficult to fix up an ...

How Little We Know

“A trend is a trend is a trend But the question is: Will it bend? Will it alter its course through some unforeseen force And come to a premature end,” so doodled Sir Alec Cairncross Nowhere is this more true than in the semiconductor industry.  In  its mid-year forecast for 2000, IC Insights forecast a $250bn market for 2001. It ...

MyMan The Bot

So here you are, you’re boss of a group of red-hot coders who can make world-warping AI applications. Obviously the dough is in tailoring apps for sale to big organisations to use to oppress their staff and make it cheaper to get their customers off their back. Maybe the reason why MS is the most valuable company in the world ...