Large companies that are the leaders in their industry generally have a hard time maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit that got them to their leading position in the first place. On one hand you have relatively “new” companies like Facebook who keep growing and on the other, you have companies like Yahoo who are struggling in … Read More
Star Wars, the Force and the Power of Parallel Multicore Processing
During the 80’s, the original Star Wars movies featured amazing future technology and were all about “the power of the Force.” The latest movie has now broken all box office records and got me thinking about how much IT and computing technology has progressed over the years but yet, there is still so much left untapped.
Yes, several… Read More
Do You Need a 3D Printer Yet?
There is no question: you will own a 3D printer – it’s only a matter of time. The situation today is like it was with the early personal computers, at first it was the hobbyists who had them and most other people wondered what they would use one for. But over time their usefulness became obvious and the difficulty of acquiring, using and… Read More
The Silicon Valley Apocalypse!
Based on the Behavioral Sink Experiments in the 1950s it is hard for me to believe that Silicon Valley will continue with the unicorn fueled hyper expansion we are currently experiencing without some very serious repercussions, both social and financial. First let’s talk about the social issues which to me are the most interesting.… Read More
Lighting Up The Cloud
In our rush to imagine a world populated with IoT devices, tech advances at the top end of this ecosystem (the cloud) don’t seem to get much airtime. But this isn’t because they are limited to modest refinements. As one example, there is active technology development in connectivity around fiber-based communications within the… Read More
The "Great Acceleration"
The “Great Acceleration” is upon us. On all fronts technology in everything is advancing at an ever accelerating rate due to improvements in education/training, increased power and functionality of hardware, software, access to information(Google, technical publications, etc.) prototyping techniques (3D… Read More
Hyperloop: Faster Than the Shinkansen
In 1987 I made my first trip to Japan for business, then rode in my first high-speed train on the fabled Shinkansen (aka bullet train) traveling up to 200 mph on the way from Tokyo to Kyoto. Compared to the USA, our engineering friends in Japan have the most futuristic high-speed trains in the world. Today there’ s talk about another… Read More
Ask Not For Whom The Bell Tolls
We boomers thought we would continue to innovate and live forever. We put men on the moon, we created rock and roll, we invented practical computers and personal computers, we did it all. And we lived the high life, especially in tech – big houses, fancy cars, great vacations. Then unexpectedly we got old (nobody warned us), and now… Read More
You Can Win at Daily Fantasy Football, But Is It Worth It?
It’s hard to avoid the Draftkings and Fanduel commercials. These new unicorns are spending over $200M in ads this year. The government has caught on to the fact this is legalized gambling, and will certainly be taking action. The sites argue that Fantasy Sport are a game of skill, and thus are not considered gambling. My take… Read More
Smartphone Trends Revealed
I’ve been using cell phones since the 1980’s and I’ll never forget my first one, the Motorola DynaTAC (aka Brick Phone). The data plan was paid for by my EDA employer, and it did make me more productive because clients, prospects and co-workers could get a hold of me by simply dialing, not having to go through a secretary… Read More
More Headwinds – CHIPS Act Chop? – Chip Equip Re-Shore? Orders Canceled & Fab Delay