Mannerisms

From my stool round the beach bar of the Sandy Lane hotel, filled with bonhomie and rum punch, I exude warm wishes for peace and goodwill to all. With the exception of the idiot on the adjacent barstool who has fallen for my line that I own the Mount Gay rum distillery here on the island. I think he’s about ...

Nine years ago, the former CEO of BT and Alcatel Lucent, Ben Verwaayen, told the European Nanoelectronics Forum 2014 in Cannes that the kitchen table, the pub and money are the ingredients for getting the European nanoelectronics industry to thrive, The kitchen table is where a kid raises the prospect of starting an enterprise and is either encouraged or discouraged. ...

After Covid made 2020 “the worst year in tourism history” the latest UNWTO (UN World Tourism Organisation) data shows that international tourism has almost completely recovered with many destinations reaching or even exceeding pre-pandemic arrivals and receipts, according UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololiksahvili speaking at the launch of the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. Tourism  is now expected to end the ...

In 1846  the first musical instrument to combine a single-reed mouthpiece with a conical brass tube  with a flared end was patented by a Belgian gentleman named Antoine-Joseph Sax. The combination resulted in the archetypal instrument for playing jazz Moral:  Fortuitous combinations create happiness            

Opinion based on zero information has become a modern phenomenon. “That’s an interesting point of view,” you may say to someone, “why do you think that?” After all, the reason people hold a particular POV is often the most interesting thing about the POV. “Wodya mean?” is  a typical modern response to this innocent inquiry, “that’s my opinion.” Possibly even ...

If, knowing nothing about it, you were asked who were the greatest savers in the OECD, you would probably guess those wongaphiles the Swiss. And you’d beright. According to data from the OECD, the average savings rate for Swiss households is around 19% (data from 2022). This is well above the European Union’s average of around 6%. France and Germany ...

Thanks to Gartner for this one – the top ten PC vendors in Q3 in (units in 1000s): Company 3Q23 Shipments 3Q23 Market Share (%) 3Q22 Shipments 3Q22 Market Share (%) 3Q23-3Q22 Growth (%) Lenovo 16,146 25.1 16,887 23.9 -4.4 HP Inc. 13,531 21.0 12,713 18.0 6.4 Dell 10,320 16.1 12,022 17.0 -14.2 Apple 6,266 9.7 8,267 11.7 -24.2 ASUS ...

Italy and France have always been at the pinnacle of the global wine industry. According to the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV), Italy has been the world’s largest wine producer for 9 of the past 10 years with an annual production of roughly 50 million hectoliters or five billion litres. France boasts diverse regions like Bordeaux, Burgundy and ...

At the present time, the two elemental, semiconductor materials, germanium and silicon are predominant. So 62 years ago, started a feature by Dr AJ Goss in Electronics Weekly’s edition of April 26, 1961. The feature continues: Of particular interest, but far less in actual volume, are gallium arsenide for devices and tellurides for thermoelectric applications. Many other semiconductor materials – ...

It is 70 years since Everest was first climbed and more and more climbers have been reaching the summit in recent years thanks to advances in mountaineering equipment. It’s become a lucrative business, with westerners forking over anywhere between $10,000 and $100,000 for permits to climb it. The Himalayan Database  shows the increasing number of climbers tackling Everest. The growing ...

Where’s the Craic? Ed asks his diary and answers himself: ‘Where the money is’. Where’s that in the chip industry? Government. Doesn’t matter which – US, China, India, EU wherever – they’re all spending like inebriated matelots with the exception, of course, of my own government. More’s the pity. The US subsidy programme has red tape tying it up tighter ...

20 years ago Pat Gelsinger, was pursuing another technological aspiration as ambitious as his current push to regain Intel’s process technology leadership. At the 2003 IDF Gelsinger – then Intel  CTO – asked: @What is the ultimate vision that Intel has? We want to get to a world where all access is done wirelessly. There are no new deployments of ...

Canada is the leading country worldwide for essential healthcare coverage, according to The World Health Organization’s (WHO) World Health Statistics 2023 report. The organization ranked 194 countries based on a selection of indicators of key health concerns such as reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health, infectious diseases, noncommunicable diseases and service capacity and access. The WHO is monitoring universal health ...

This gentleman invented a process, which he named after himself, by which an image of this gentleman could be captured in 1846 when he was a US Congressman-elect (before going on to greater things), Moral: Technology embellishes history

President Zelensky has been in Washington this week attempting to save Ukraine’s lifeline of US military aid. Last week, an emergency spending bill for more than $50 billion in assistance to Ukraine, as well as $14 billion for Israel, was blocked by Senate Republicans. In a press conference on Monday, President Joe Biden said he had signed “another $200m drawdown ...

Thanks to Scams.com for some jolly cyber-infused carols: All I Want Is Online Safety (Inspired by Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You”) I don’t need a flashy website, To know it’s safe for me. Just want a secure connection, No online threats, let it be. I won’t ask for your credentials, Or your personal key. I just ...

Thanks to TrendForce for this one – the Top Ten fabless companies in Q2:

Turkey and Nigeria tied in top place as the countries with the highest share of mobile bankers, with 83% percent of respondents in each country saying it was how they carried out their transactions. This is according to data from a Statista Consumer Insights survey, carried out between April 2022 and March 2023 across 56 countries. In both cases, mobile ...

The key space question now before the Kennedy administration is whether to launch a crash program to land a free world astronaut on the moon before the Communists. So, 62 years ago, started the American Letter feature  in Electronics Weekly’s edition of April 26, 1961. The letter continued: There has been a tendency to write off Soviet space achievements, such ...

The grandiose chest-puffing of the Eurobods can be amusing. “Europe has positioned itself as a pioneer, understanding the importance of its role as a global standard setter. This is yes, I believe, a historical day,” says European Commissioner Thierry Breton. What’s the EU done? Hours of chin-wagging followed by delivery of  much bumf – what else does the EU do? ...