August 25, 2024

🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2024-08-25

Tech market analysis, AI funding, M&A trends, Slack community links, encryption throwbacks, and upcoming tech events.

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 2024-08-19

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

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.

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

Update: Here’s what this chart looked like just before building this digest for Sunday August 25, 2025.

🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-08-20

Off the cuff analysis in a rapid fire format.

First… a quick nerdy aside. My Pi-hole approved list of FQDNs grows one entry at a time. Better than 1/5 of objectionable (to me) traffic is being effectively blocked. 🙏

And back to our regular Hot Takes Tuesday…

Funds, Funding, and M&A

Techmeme: Virginia-based Defcon AI, which aims to use ML to improve US DoD logistics, raised a $44M seed led by Bessemer, and has earned ~$15M in government contracts (Aria Alamalhodaei/TechCrunch)

By Aria Alamalhodaei / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🪖 The amounts being raised related to pursuit of US Government / Military contracts seems to be getting more press recently as software and AI/ML becomes the latest in technological progression.

Techmeme: Fabric Cryptography, a startup working on a “verifiable processing unit” chip for cryptography, raised a $33M Series A co-led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx (Bradley Keoun/CoinDesk)

By Bradley Keoun / CoinDesk. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🔐 Seeing funding coverage for companies with “cryptography” in the name vs. cryptocurrency or $omethingCoin might just mean that nature is healing.

Techmeme: South Korean AI chip makers Rebellions and Sapeon agree to merge; Rebellions has raised $225M+, and Sapeon's shareholders include SK Telecom and SK Hynix (Joyce Lee/Reuters)

By Joyce Lee / Reuters. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🤖 M&A is alive and well in 2024 which means this pattern will likely occur a few more times before end of the year.

Techmeme: AMD agrees to buy New Jersey-based ZT Systems, founded in 1994 to design and make servers, server racks, and other infrastructure, for $4.9B, closing in H1 2025 (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)

By Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.

💰 + 🤖 Speaking of M&A, the vertical integration for solving key customer challenges is very impressive when there is a specific carve out intended to focus on the accretive value of the combination and simultaneously widen access to growth in the process for the remaining entity… and it probably anticipates regulatory approval questions before they are posed.

🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2024-08-21

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

The long and underappreciated history of male witches - and the countries where more men were prosecuted for witchcraft

More men than women were prosecuted for witchcraft in countries such as Normandy, Estonia, Burgundy, Russia and Iceland

GitHub - d07RiV/diabloweb: Diablo 1 for web browsers

Diablo 1 for web browsers. Contribute to d07RiV/diabloweb development by creating an account on GitHub.

How Snobbery Helped Take The Spice Out Of European Cooking : The Salt : NPR

Complex, contrasting flavors are a hallmark of Indian cooking. They used to dominate Western food, too. What changed? When spices became less exclusive, Europe's elite revamped their cuisines.

GitHub - drakh/acid-generator: acid bassline generator

acid bassline generator. Contribute to drakh/acid-generator development by creating an account on GitHub.

A Texas "Moth Man" Photographed 550 Species in His Own Yard

Small, obscure moths are Curtis Eckerman’s favorites: “I love seeing the little jewels that you can’t normally see.”

🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2024-08-22

Throwback Thursday is based upon the classic Fudge Sunday Weekly newsletter sections for "Shot and Chaser".

Basically, Throwback Thursday is a look back at a prior prediction or past news coverage and how that worked out in the present.

Encryption has been an increasingly thorny topic in the news as technology, privacy, and policy collide. For example, if you were to look back a few years ago, you might have thought the Sky ECC story was over.

Techmeme: US DOJ indicts CEO of encrypted phone company Sky for selling devices to drug traffickers, the second such company to face charges after Phantom Secure (Joseph Cox/VICE)

By Joseph Cox / VICE. View the full context on Techmeme.

In fact, the story was only just beginning. This week, Sky ECC made news again.

Techmeme: US court records: US agencies are increasingly accessing parts of the 500M encrypted message haul retrieved from the hack of encrypted phone company Sky in 2021 (Joseph Cox/404 Media)

By Joseph Cox / 404 Media. View the full context on Techmeme.

What makes this story interesting is the parallels of accessing encrypted messages years later as we face a future Y2Q. Notably, NIST standards for PQC arrived recently as well.

NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards | NIST

NIST is encouraging computer system administrators to begin transitioning to the new standards as soon as possible.

✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2024-08-23

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

As for me, the week in review is about being thankful for new and ongoing client work, amazing weather, and catching up with folks I haven’t spoken to for years. I also got around to finishing some languishing personal projects that have nothing to do with technology.

Switching gears back to technology, the bigger tech stories this week seemed to be AMD+ZT, Twitter drama, Microsoft Recall, Apple iOS capitulation, and US DOJ vs RealPage. My thinking is this:

• As I've said, in numerous digital locations, expect more mergers and acquisitions in pursuit of forming moats and furthering vertical integration. AMD combining with ZT makes a lot of sense when you consider the number of chips that go into hyperscale cloud service provider data centers.
• I no longer use Twitter. However, coverage on Twitter drama is something I cannot escape apparently and boy is there drama.
• Considering the recent security concerns with Microsoft in general, a slower rollout makes sense. If anything, this delay will likely provide a window for the required upgrades in systems and devices to keep up with the demands of a Microsoft Recall workload itself.
• As someone that enjoys iOS beta releases, seeing the EU compel one of the most valuable companies on the planet to alter course can be a bit surreal. Ultimately, this change in course is a net benefit to all.
• While I haven't been in the rental market recently, this allegation against RealPage is a bit of a confirmation for my prior bias. When I've considered relocating to other cities and reviewed rental pricing, anecdotally, the oddly similar patterns were hard to not notice, and perhaps the US DOJ will eventually prove this was not coincidental in a court of law.

Techmeme: AMD agrees to buy New Jersey-based ZT Systems, founded in 1994 to design and make servers, server racks, and other infrastructure, for $4.9B, closing in H1 2025 (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)

By Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: PitchBook: seven banks' ~$13B loans to Musk to buy Twitter have been “hung” for two years, weighing on balance sheets, the worst buyout for banks since 2008-09 (Wall Street Journal)

From Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: Microsoft says Recall will be available to Windows Insiders in October 2024, after delaying the AI feature's launch in June over security and privacy concerns (Tom Warren/The Verge)

By Tom Warren / The Verge. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: Apple unveils iOS changes to comply with the EU's DMA: browser choice screen updates, more default app settings, and the ability to delete certain system apps (Chance Miller/9to5Mac)

By Chance Miller / 9to5Mac. View the full context on Techmeme.

Techmeme: The US DOJ sues RealPage, alleging its software helps property managers collude to drive up rental prices on millions of units, violating antitrust law (Bloomberg)

From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.

🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2024-08-24

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: Silverbear, an investor named in Bolt's financial docs for a $450M raise, says it was “never in this deal”, as some investors consider legal action against Bolt (Forbes)

From Forbes. View the full context on Techmeme.

Insert Ceiling Cat Meme

Techmeme: US SEC filing: oilfield services company Halliburton says it has taken some systems offline after discovering that an unauthorized party had gained access (Colin Kellaher/Wall Street Journal)

By Colin Kellaher / Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.

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

Techmeme: Microsoft plans to hold an event on September 10 with CrowdStrike and other cybersecurity vendors to discuss how to prevent incidents like the July 19 outage (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

By Jordan Novet / CNBC. View the full context on Techmeme.

Insert That Wasn't Me, That Was Patricia Meme

Techmeme: Documents: state-linked Chinese entities are using cloud services from AWS or its rivals to access advanced US chips and AI models they cannot acquire otherwise (Reuters)

From Reuters. View the full context on Techmeme.

Insert Anthony Adams Rubbing Hands Meme

Techmeme: SpaceX says Starlink satellite internet kits purchased in one of six regions and activated in another are subject to an “outside region fee” of $200 to $300 (Andrew Liszewski/The Verge)

By Andrew Liszewski / The Verge. 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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