Mannerisms

Patents associated with energy storage are expected to reach more than 50%  of all energy patents filed worldwide in 2024, reports 2026 State of Energy Innovations report by the International Energy Agency (IEA). Since  2002, the share of energy storage patents has risen from 14.4% to almost 44% as of 2023. Around the turn of the millennium, the energy topic ...

The share of wealth owned by the 1% of richest people in the US hit a record of 31.7% in Q3., according to figures  published in late January by the Federal Reserve. Q2 of 2025 and Q4 of 2024 had already seen new all-time highs set at or above 31%, as the wealth of the super-rich tends to recover quicker ...

Thanks to The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) for this one – the top ten most innovative countries: WIPO’s 2025 Global Innovation Index evaluates  innovationlevels across 132 economies focusing on a long list of criteria such as human capital, institutions, technology and creative output as well as market and business sophistication, among others. Switzerland topped the rankings once more this ...

A recent Ipsos survey of 25,000 people across 30 countries shows Asians are on average more optimisic for the future of their countries than people from the rest of the world. When asked whether they believe things in their country are headed in the right direction or off on the wrong track, 82 percent of respondents in Singapore said they ...

ELECTROCHEMICAL polishing of wafers of semiconducting material is claimed to be faster,  more efficient and to offer a 50% saving in cost over conventional methods So, 65 years ago, started a story in Electronics Weekly’s edition of  April 26th 1961. The story continued: The use of the system was revealed recently by Mr. M. Sullivan of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, ...

In 1933 this engineer bought a used piano and chucked out everything except the keyboard action. Using the keyboard as a controller, he experimented with different sound-generating methods, finally settling on the tonewheel generator. The  device was patented in 1934, put into production, and launched onto the market in 1935, since when two million  have been sold. Moral: Adaptation can ...

While confidence in government and tech  companies is eroding, according to a Statista Consumer Insight survey, some sectors retain public confidence . Healthcare providers are the most trusted institutions, with 38% of British respondents expressing confidence in them, followed by 24% in the U.S. and 17% in Germany. But only 15%  of  Brits say they trust the government, and a ...

I am quietly liquidating my AI-related investments, Ed confides to his diary, I hear that companies involved in AI infrastructure-related activities and semiconductor-adjacent areas are seeing less interest. Very likely the AI expansion will benefit a few companies but will not be a generally stimulative influence on the tech industry. The big tech companies have the cash and the revenues ...

The health of the European microelectronics industry has never been better. This was the message from Monte Carlo  at the 2006 annual forum of MEDEA+, the pan-European microelectronics initiative. In many key areas, Europe and the US are fighting it out for supremacy, and lithography is probably the most important of these. “We are the first company in the world ...

The United States has fallen to its lowest-ever rank in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI). In 2025, the U.S. fell down one spot to 29th place (out of 182) with a score of 64/100 on a 0 to 100 scale, where 0 means highly corrupt and 100 completely clean. This ranking puts the country on the same level as ...

One of the main scientists behind the creation of ENIAC was also the major figure behind the creation of the world’s most famous forum for presenting new ICs. At the first meeting of the forum, in 1954, six papers were presented from Bell, GE, MIT, Philco, RCA and Pennsylvania University. 601 people attended with foreign attendees came from the UK, ...

28% of Americans say they can’t afford a holiday this year according to a   Consumer Insights survey from Statista. This was the highest proportion of respondents of the 32 countries included in the survey, equal with Canada. The share of people in Japan whose finances did not allow them to go on holiday this year was slightly lower at ...

Last year Meta, Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft spent more than $400 billion in capital expenditure, most of for building  datacentres. That’s more than double the amount spent in 2023. According to the companies’ latest capex forecasts, their joint investments will  exceed $600 billion this year, with Amazon alone expecting to spend $200 billion on “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, ...

Thanks to Mining.com, for this one, the top 20 gold mines:  

A Statista Consumer Insights survey conducted in January 2026 shows that, when people are asked what matters most in life, the headline is strikingly consistent: family life and health dominate across the U.K., Germany and the United States. However, the differences observed for the other priorities cited by the respondents reflect different ideas of what a good life should be ...

The US remains the world’s leading operator of nuclear submarines, with a fleet of around 70 active vessels as of January 2026, including fast-attack, ballistic-missile, and guided-missile submarines. However, the most significant shift in the undersea balance of power is China’s rapid expansion, which has seen it recently overtake Russia to become the world’s second-largest operator of nuclear-powered submarines, with ...

I’m engaged in the Black Arts, Ed confides to his diary, there’s a narrative doing the rounds that the techies have an endgame in which they accumulate so much of the world’s wealth they will gain the power to eliminate everyone else. The accumulation of humungeous wealth and power in the hands of fewer and fewer people and the growing ...

In the early days of telephony, the telephone operating companies found that advertising  suggestions for what to do with telephones was an effective way of recruiting new customers: Moral: Utility resides in the eye of the beholder

Less than five years after Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision for the metaverse and a VR-centric future, that idea is officially dead. Earlier this month, Meta reportedly began laying off 1,000 people in its Reality Labs division. In 2025, the company’s Reality Labs division lost $19.2 billion, bringing the total bill for Zuckerberg’s big bet close to $90 billion ...

There was once a genius engineer who designed a computer. He took it to his bosses in the large company which he worked for and suggested that they manufacture it The bosses pointed out: 1. The engineer did not have a college degree 2.  The engineer had no formal qualifications for computer design. The engineer became an entrepreneur and four ...