August 18, 2024

🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2024-08-18

Hot Fudge Sunday - A weekly digest of markets, funding, wacky finds, and throwbacks in tech.

Welcome to the latest Hot Fudge Daily. Each day of the week you get thematic value.

• 🌶️ Spicy Edition Sunday FREE (Hot Fudge Sunday weekly newsletter captures the best of Hot Fudge Daily and the most clicked links for the week.)

• 📈 Markets Monday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: What is moving markets and why does it matter for the week ahead?)

• 🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Get fast unfiltered thoughts on news of the day with just a dash of snark.)

• 🤪 Wacky Wednesday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Catch up on the wild and wooly memes from a variety of deep web #random channels.)

• 🔙 Throwback Thursday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Examine recent news in a thought provoking Shot and Chaser format.)

• ✅ Final Thoughts Friday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: A clear eyed look back on the week that was and could have been.)

• 🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Steady and sober unpacking of the slow news day where muted press releases and disclosure stories try to get buried before the weekend takes all the attention.)

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Hot Fudge Sunday 🤔 💡 🤯 🤓 is a free weekly newsletter containing a digest of the Hot Fudge Daily paid newsletter at hot.fudge.org in a single easy to reach URL. This free weekly edition is posted every… wait for it… Sunday.

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Hot Fudge Daily Digest

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📈 Markets Monday for 2024-08-12

Analyzing the past and future of the tech market in Markets Monday.

Last week

As a recap, what I try to do each week is look at the same key indicator that I take from a simple yahoo finance webpage. It’s not much but it’s how I look at things and this is what I saw today after the bell closed.

This week

Looking at the week ahead for the tech market.

Previously, I decided on a view from Yahoo Finance. For example, this was a view of intraday in Technology which usually gets around a dozen or so interesting companies.

Last week was a bit anemic.

Last week I had a hunch it is because of semiconductors, value chains, and the like. Oh, and this rise is happening before earnings on August 8, 2024. 🤔

This looks a lot like someone knew something. Maybe?

Let’s zoom out a bit. Ah, the rise on the fall of the rise.

As for my regular screenshot at the end of a Monday? Behold.

If you are using Yahoo Applied Filters for Stocks screener you can bookmark your own heat map view.

• % Change in Price (Intraday):greater than 4

• Region: United States

• Market Cap (Intraday): Mid Cap and Large Cap and Mega Cap

• Price (Intraday):greater than or equal 5

• Volume:greater than 15000

• Sector: Technology

• Industry: Software—Infrastructure and Information Technology Services and Computer Hardware and Software—Application and Communication Equipment and Electronics & Computer Distribution and Consumer Electronics and Electronic Components and Scientific & Technical Instruments and Semiconductor Equipment & Materials and Semiconductors

🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-08-13

Off the cuff analysis in a rapid fire format.

First… a quick aside.

SXSW 2025 PanelPicker voting started and I gathered some graphs.

Jay Cuthrell on LinkedIn: #panelpicker

Each year, SXSW #PanelPicker gets easier to show trends. 📊📉📈
Enjoy! Also, please vote!
Source: panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote

Okay. Let’s dig in…

Funds, Funding, and M&A

Techmeme: A profile of Peregrine, which was founded by an ex-Palantir exec to help US police access surveillance data, raised $30M in May, and had $10M in 2023 revenue (Thomas Brewster/Forbes)

By Thomas Brewster / Forbes. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 👮‍♂️ There is probably a slice of the funding data from the origins of various Lord of the Rings named companies that could summarize how effective these founders have become at convincing US Government to part with constituent tax dollars while simultaneously claiming the US Government wastes constituent tax dollars. 💸

Techmeme: Tally, which helped users manage and pay off credit card debt, is shutting down; the startup had raised $172M and, per PitchBook, was last valued at $855M (Mary Ann Azevedo/TechCrunch)

By Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.

🤑 + 💳 This could have been a lyric to an Alanis Morissette song.

Techmeme: Balderton Capital raised $1.3B for European startups across two funds: a $615M early-stage fund and a $685M fund for “growth” investing in more mature startups (Tim Bradshaw/Financial Times)

By Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times. View the full context on Techmeme.

💶 + 🤓 It is important to remember that there is more to the world of startups and technology than just Silicon Valley.

Techmeme: Sources: Anysphere, a GitHub Copilot rival, has raised a $60M Series A co-led by a16z and Thrive at a $400M post-money valuation (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)

By Marina Temkin / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🤖 Seeing the DevX aka developer experience companies getting funding means that software development is going to become even more interesting in the coming years.

Techmeme: DevRev, which develops AI tools to improve the efficiency of employees on support, product, and engineering teams, raised a $100M Series A at a $1.15B valuation (Katie Roof/Bloomberg)

By Katie Roof / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🤖 Again, DevX is happening and the notion of being a software developer ONLY for a technology company is on a slow decline as more kinds of companies just happen to become more technology oriented.

🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2024-08-14

Explore the wild and wacky world of shared links from online Slack communities.

One unique thing about online Slack Communities is the use of #random channel. Sometimes you come across some real gems.

Each week I go through dozens of Slack communities and select the most interesting shared links found. This will be a safe for work list.

Join me in this collection of what is being shared that is wow, wild, wtf, and wacky each Wednesday.

Mayonnaise may unlock secret to ‘never unstable’ nuclear fusion

Scientists are using mayonnaise to study plasma behavior and instability, potentially leading to breakthroughs in nuclear fusion research.

But if you watched Disney movies from the late 1970s… you may know the “mayonnaise” (13m 20s) story already… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NfQSurV6Ck&t=800s

Andy Warhol's lost Amiga art found - The Silicon Underground

Images he created when demonstrating an Amiga in 1985 surfaced in 2024

CIA Realizes It's Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

LANGLEY, VA—A report released Tuesday by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information with black highlighters.

🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2024-08-15

Throwback Thursday is based upon the classic Fudge Sunday Weekly newsletter sections for "Shot and Chaser". Basically, this is a look back at a prior prediction or past news coverage and how that worked out in the present.

Past examples of "Shot and Chaser" included embedding tweets. However, as I come across tweets in my newsletter archive, I find the change in Twitter ownership, removed URLs (link rot), and transitions between newsletter platforms rendered this content difficult or, sadly, impossible to follow.

Thankfully, there is Techmeme. Techmeme is pretty great at historical views.

For example, if you were to look back twenty years ago, the first year of LinkedIn was probably slow until it wasn’t. But if you look back almost fifteen years ago, you’d probably wonder how much more LinkedIn could grow from their 2011 success of reaching 100 Millions users globally.

Boom! Professional Social Network LinkedIn Passes 100 Million Members | TechCrunch

2011 has proven to be a monumental year so far for professional social network LinkedIn. The company filed its S-1 for a public offering, released a number of data-focused products and unveiled a social news reader for professionals. And today, the professional social network has hit an important milestone: 100 million users. LinkedIn, which launched in 2003, says that it is now being used in over 200 countries, with more than half of its users originating from outside the U.S. To be exact, the ...

Today, there are reportedly ~200 Million users of LinkedIn just within the United States.

This week, the attention of tech journalists turned to the growing contributions by influencers and A.I. generated (amplified?) content (noise?) in this increasingly popular destination.

Techmeme: Some longtime users of LinkedIn lament the barrage of performative content from hustle-culture influencers and AI-generated “thought leadership” on the site (Charlie Wells/Bloomberg)

By Charlie Wells / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.

✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2024-08-16

As a reminder, I’ve committed to four events for the remainder of this year.

• AI Field Day 5 in Silicon Valley September 11-13, 2024 for Tech Field Day

• Monktoberfest in Portland October 2-4, 2024

• Cloud Field Day 21 in Silicon Valley October 23-25, 2024 for Tech Field Day

• All Things Open in Raleigh October 27-29, 2024 for CLS

• SXSW in Austin March 7 - 15, 2025

Speaking of SXSW, I organized an awesome panel with amazing speakers on an amazing topic. I’d appreciate you voting (registering to vote is free) for this panel.

The week in review for me is being thankful for new client work, cooler weather, and catching up with folks. As I decide what the longer term fate of these daily updates and weekly digests become, I’ll probably use this section for a “me” update of sorts.

Switching gears, the bigger tech stories this week seemed to be Patreon (and Apple), Google Gemini, FTC actions on fake reviews, A.I. safety bill contraction, and CHIPS Act grants. My thinking is this:

• At some point, deleting the Patreon app is an option as is providing feedback to companies like Patreon to encourage eschewing app investments to instead focus on making far greater value open web first designs that walled garden handheld tiny screen experiences cannot easily match.

• Gemini is useful in the Google ecosystem. The demos seem very cool (even the ones that failed) but will it be an iOS experience?

• One of the reasons I stopped using Amazon for e-commerce was the reviews seemed remotely authentic, and that was probably 10 years ago — so it highlights just how slow legislation and regulation are relative to the speed of technology.

• It was probably inevitable that the first wave of AI safety bills in the United States would be watered down or cut back in response to a whole host of objections that either came directly from the industry or via proxy and likely lobby related communications.

• Seeing CHIPS grants happen is exciting and I hope the investments turn into a story that we look back up on fondly — even if I was probably a few years ahead of my time.

Techmeme: After Apple's threats, Patreon memberships via its iOS app will be subject to Apple's 30% fee from November 2024; creators must switch to subscription billing (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

By Sarah Perez / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: Hands-on with Gemini Live: conversationally, a big step forward, but functionally, a step back in some ways, largely due to working entirely in the cloud (Joanna Stern/Wall Street Journal)

By Joanna Stern / Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: The US FTC announces a final rule banning the sale of fake reviews and testimonials, including AI-generated ones, with fines as high as $50K per violation (Danny Gallagher/Engadget)

By Danny Gallagher / Engadget. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: California lawmakers weaken the AI safety bill with amendments proposed by Anthropic and other opponents, including giving the AG less power to sue AI companies (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)

By Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: The Biden administration approves $1.6B in Chips Act grants and $3B in loans for Texas Instruments, to help pay for one chip factory in Utah and two in Texas (Mackenzie Hawkins/Bloomberg)

By Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.

🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2024-08-10

Peak 🏔️ vs. Peek 👀

By Friday, everything seems to be reaching the peak of getting news turned in before a deadline or dread-line. It sometimes seems like we reach a fever pitch in news coverage throughout the week.

Then there is a trope, cliché, or bromide about slow news days and the quietly mentioned news updates sent on a Friday — to try and sneak it past wider coverage. Or, in a nutshell, peak patronizing publishing.

In that spirit, here are a few stories that you might have missed on the slow news of a Friday.

Insert Let's See Who This Really Is Meme

Techmeme: OpenAI removed a cluster of Iranian accounts using ChatGPT for an influence campaign targeting the US elections, and says the effort didn't gain much traction (Cade Metz/New York Times)

By Cade Metz / New York Times. View the full context on Techmeme.

Insert Ceiling Cat Meme

Techmeme: Background check service National Public Data confirms a breach after hackers leaked a stolen database with millions of SSNs and other sensitive personal info (Ionut Ilascu/BleepingComputer)

By Ionut Ilascu / BleepingComputer. View the full context on Techmeme.

Insert We're All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This Meme

Techmeme: Google says it “missed the mark” after leaked screenshots showed a Team Pixel program agreement threatened influencers who didn't showcase the Pixel over rivals (Victoria Song/The Verge)

By Victoria Song / The Verge. View the full context on Techmeme.

Insert That Wasn't Me, That Was Patricia Meme

Techmeme: Filing: AT&T and Verizon ask the FCC to deny SpaceX's request to waive rules, claiming Starlink's service with T-Mobile would interfere with existing networks (Jon Brodkin/Ars Technica)

By Jon Brodkin / Ars Technica. View the full context on Techmeme.

Insert Anthony Adams Rubbing Hands Meme

Techmeme: A YouTuber files a proposed class action against Nvidia, accusing it of scraping his content without consent to train AI models, weeks after also suing OpenAI (Justin Bachman/Legal Dive)

By Justin Bachman / Legal Dive. View the full context on Techmeme.

Note: Some images via Unsplash

Disclosure

I am linking to my disclosure.

Cuthrell Consulting LLC
Attn: Jay Cuthrell
1903 Live Oak St #92
Beaufort, NC 28516-0092

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