Mannerisms

65 years ago, when the UK computer industry matched the best of the rest of the world, this ad appeared in Electronics Weekly’s edition of October 12 1960.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy has released a new report outlining how Europe could replace U.S. support for Ukraine both financially and militarily. The organization has calculated that European governments as a whole will need to nearly double their aid flow from the current €44 billion per year to €82 billion per year, which equates to an increase ...

I particularly enjoy having lunch at the Ritz – lovely dining, room superb service but the problem today is the company – I’m  being lunched by lobbyists for the water companies – probably the most unpopular industry in the country, Ed confides to his diary. It turns out that neither the water companies nor the data centres need to reveal ...

Back in 2011, as now, the world seemed a turbulent place and, as now, chips were getting the blame for it. ‘Worldwide political turbulence is being enabled by semiconductors, Dave Bell, CEO of Intersil, told the 2011 Globalpress Summit Conference in Santa Cruz. “The world is moving at a dizzying pace because of the power of interconnection,” said Bell, “the ...

The American public does not approve of any bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites according to a survey by The Economist and YouGov . Only 16% of respondents were in favour and only 19% of those who voted for Trump in the presidential election were in favour.. Republicans in general showed still-low support of 23%. A significant part of respondents also said ...

This house belonged to a famous inventor: The inventor did not enjoy socialising but his wife would invite people to formal dinner parties. Fortunately the house was large enough for him to keep an upstairs room for himself  and his daughter recalls that, when these dinner parties occurred, “He would feign indigestion and skip dinner, being the only man to ...

Four in ten people say that they avoid the news at least sometimes, according to the Reuters Institute’s Digital News Report 2025, published on Tuesday. This is according to a survey of nearly 100,000 people across 48 countries. Of these, 39% said that they purposefully turned away from news because it has a negative effect on their mood, while 31% ...

This week the Vatican is holding a two day conference on AI in the Apostolic Palace. Attendees include execs from Google, Meta, Palantir, IBM, Anthropic and Cohere. The new Pope, Leo XIV, took his name from Leo XIII who, in the 1890s, challenged the robber baron tycoons who dominated an age of rapid technological change which exploited workers. In 1891, Leo ...

Thanks to Omdia for this one – the top 20 semiconductor companies in 2024:

One can understand why Jensen Huang goes around proselytising for data centres – or ‘AI Gigafactories’ as he calls them – because he’s talking his book – these things eat up GPUs. Last week’s converts to the Jensen pitch appeared to be bigwigs at the EU, including the flighty French president, who expressed their need for Jensen‘s concept of “AI ...

What, purportedly, is the first definitive sampling of an important segment of public opinion concerning the costly United States space programme has revealed strong support among American business executives for a vigorous space research effort, even at the price of, continued high taxes. So, 65 years ago, started a story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of  October 12th 1960. The story ...

2023 saw the hottest year ever recorded for the Mediterranean, when the annual anomaly surpassed 0.5 degrees Celsius above the average temperature observed between 1991 and 2020. “It is expected that 2024 will also follow this trend”, says Statista’s report ‘State of the Mediterranean Sea‘. On August 15, 2024 the Mediterranean reported its hottest day since records began. “Although regular ...

No.10 calls me in and I trot along feeling like a schoolboy expecting something unpleasant. When I get there, I know it’s going to be OK because I am ushered immediately through into the PM’s study where he is alone. “Thanks for coming in Ed,“ says the PM, “I am being assailed on all sides by people who say the ...

20 years ago, as the industry transitioned from 0.13 micron to 90nm, the problem for everyone was leakage Leakage at the 90nm process node was not as big a problem for Philips Semiconductors as it was for other chip companies because Philips scaled for cost rather than performance, said its CTO Theo Claasen. “We can maintain the price erosion, but ...

Lighting up a fag was once considered cool – but no longer – according to the Federal Trade Commission, 173.5 billion cigarettes were sold in the US in 2022, which is by far the lowest number since the FTC started tracking cigarette sales in 1963. Ciggie sales have declined more or less continuously over the past 40 years, dropping by ...

That was once a seven-year-old girl so full of curiosity that she dismantled seven alarm clocks to find out how they worked. Later on, she was on the teams which created the Harvard Mark 1 and Univac 1 computers.  She had a Navy ship, a supercomputer and a leading-edge IC named after her.  She became a Rear-Admiral. Moral: Curiosity opens ...

While smoking among men is often associated with masculinity or social status in Asia/Pac, it is frowned-upon for women to smoke. The WHO projects a global prevalence of 32.9% among males and of 6.7% among females for 2025 – but nowhere is the difference as pronounced as it is in Asia and the Pacific. Indonesia and China are the countries ...

Thanks to Semiconductor Intelligence for this – the top sixteen semi companies in Q1:

I hate buying new clothes and don’t much like being given them. The pleasure of an old coat or a well-worn shirt is that they bring back memories of happy occasions when they’ve been worn before. Familiarity breeds content. There are those who worry about being seen in the same piece of clothing twice. To me this is aberrational albeit ...

65 years ago, in Electronics Weekly’s edition of  October 12th 1950, this ad appeared: