Every year I leave it up to Santa’s Elves (Figure 1) to fix my broken Christmas lights but now they are demanding technician grade salaries and overtime. This year I am using the “Light-Keeper–Pro” to make my life easier.  Why a $20 investment in a “tester” when a new set of Christmas lights is less than $10?  While I don’t have a holiday lighting exposition like Figure 2, I do have over 1,200 Icicle Lights outside on my home. Having one light fail becomes a major hassle especially after they are installed on the roof of the house or on a fully dressed Christmas tree. Read more......

Lighting with longevity: Livermore’s longest living light bulb more than a century of light…The Centennial light bulb.
As I researched stories about this amazing Shelby1 manufactured light bulb (see Figure1), I found many interesting facts(..) Read More...

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• 09.07.2012

Like "Fast Eddie" Felson in "The Hustler," we've all gotten roughed up using "rules of thumb." Read More...

By Tom Terlizzi
Earlier in my career, my “Phd mentor/boss” always chided me to “move out of your comfort zone”. As engineers, scientists and geeks, we tend to stay with what we know.  Anything out of our ecosphere that we are not comfortable or familiar with is “off limits”.

So when I was invited to attend “The 4th Annual Modeling High Frequency Data in Finance Conference” (July 19-22, 2012), I decided to take the challenge. The conference venue was at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey.

Hoboken is the birthplace of Frank Sinatra (see Figure 1) and the first officially recorded game of baseball took place in Hoboken in 1846 between Knickerbocker Club and New York Nine at Elysian Fields.    Read more

Last week, Yahoo chose Marissa Mayer to run Yahoo for about $71 million over the next five years, according to regulatory documents Yahoo filed—and it could top $120 million if an extra batch of stock grants that she is eligible for comes through.
Read more...

July 5, 2012

Recently, I was reviewing the cost per million gates (Figure 1) and the approximate cost of semiconductor fabs as shown in Table I below. It appears that only a few semiconductor companies will have the wherewithal to finance them. Additionally, the cost per million gates seems to be going in the wrong direction. Is “Moore’s law ” hitting an economical barrier rather than a technology barrier? This has started controversy in the industry with Nvidia2 openly criticizing its fab partner TSMC.   Read More                     

June 28, 2012  Not even a day since my latest blog “Cyber security dangers and threats expand daily” does the FBI hit hackers in a sting that saved potentially $205 million from theft, notified credit card providers of over 411,000 compromised credit and debit cards, and notified 47 companies, government entities, and educational institutions of the breach of their networks.

Additionally the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had filed a lawsuit “against global hospitality company Wyndham Worldwide Corporation and three of its subsidiaries for alleged data security failures that led to three data breaches at Wyndham hotels in less than two years.”

Marcus Sachs details this in his Verizon document entitled  “2012 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR)”

The most-afflicted industry, over 54%, of all breaches in 2011, was Accommodation and Food Services, consisting of restaurants (around 95%) and hotels (about 5%).

Cyber security dangers and threats expand daily Tom Terlizzi - June 27, 2012


On June 22, 2012, I was invited to attend the inaugural lecture series and awards luncheon on Cyber Security at the NYU-Poly campus at the MetroTech Center in Brooklyn, N.Y.  Sponsored by Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NYU-Poly's series of four lectures and panel discussions are designed to raise the visibility of cyber security risks and issues.

The first lecture discussed the partnership between academia, private and public entities working together to resolve these security risks.

The benefits of the Internet have been recently shown to be vulnerable to serious security risks. This critical infrastructure is now vulnerable to hackers as evidenced by virus like Stuxnet and Flame. Whether generated by friend or foe, these new secret weapons can place havoc and catastrophic failure in our airports, power grids, railways as well as our financial and business institutions.

Foreign hackers are the new breed of criminals who exploit private computer networks, steal intellectual property, and engage in industrial and military espionage. The risks are even greater as we move our personal, and corporate information and software to the “cloud”. Read More...

Looking @ electronics
Tom Terlizzi - June 27, 2012
Like the Greek God Janus this Blog will look back, look at, and look ahead at electronics design, development and technology.  Prior to the internet, as a gatekeeper of technology at a large “Fortune 500 company”, one was able to become a self-proclaimed “expert” within weeks. Today with the internet and communication technology, it takes a fraction of time.

This blog will present eons of having dealt with electronic technology and its impact on society. After watching my soon to be three year old grand daughter on my iPad playing Disney Princess games or my daughter simultaneously texting, cell phoning, answering her email, doing her homework on her PC (and still getting straight A’s), it easy to see how we are all linked up with technology.

Subject areas will be based on venues not normally covered or my analysis of where trends will lead us as well as unique miscues in the electronics industry. Topics will range from electronic components, semiconductors, software, computer hardware, design systems, RF, wireless, Internet to education and other social items.

We will try to keep it brief. As Shakespeare said “Brevity is the soul of wit”. I hope you'll enjoy it and if you have comments, criticisms, or topics you want us to cover just send me a note.

thanks and hope to hear from you.
Tom Terlizzi