🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2025-04-13
This week I reflect on my Job Search Council and celebrate network alumni finding new opportunities.
🙏 Big thanks to our sponsor, NexusTek! 🙏
Thank you NexusTek for sponsoring!

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.
Reminder
AI Infrastructure Field Day 2 is just a week away!

AI Infrastructure Field Day 2 - Tech Field Day
#OpenToWork Weekly
I believe in #NeverSearchAlone. I have participated in a #JSC for a year since leaving IBM, rebooting Cuthrell Consulting, and joining NexusTek.
This week was my first week without a #JSC to join. In truth, for the past few months I was missing #JSC meetings.
My work travel time commitments were starting to turn me into that person that is on the invite but doesn't show. Even if I like to think that's not me, I learned a lesson about availability.
Since late last year, I’ve also been highlighting those in my network that are #OpenToWork by linking to their LinkedIn and quoting their LinkedIn About section. This week I’m simplifying as the About section updates were not getting updated (by me) in a timely fashion.
Week over week, the list grew until I had to add an Alumni 🎉 section this week for those that have transitioned from #OpenToWork to their next career adventure.
Alumni 🎉
Congrats Paul Lysko 🎉
Congrats Bob Lima, PMP 🎉
Congrats Rich Green 🎉
Congrats Sheri Gearhart 🎉
Congrats Shianna Maxwell 🎉
Congrats Richard Arnesen! 🎉
#OpenToWork
Those in my network that are #OpenToWork:
- Kelly Britt - Experienced Talent Acquisition Specialist
- Jarrod Weise - Strategic Partnerships & Business Development Leader
- Dan Kelleher - Program & Technical Project Manager | CSM
- Barbara Hadley, EdM, SPHR - Strategic HR Leader | Employee Engagement Expert
- Andrew Webber - Proven Leader | Consumer Product Innovation & Scaling
- Lida Tohidi - Award-Winning Product & Marketing Leader | Startup Advisor
- Nathan Clyker - Strategic Sales & Business Development | IT Solutions Expert
- Gina (Gina Minks) Rosenthal - Global Product Marketing Manager | Technical Content Strategist
- Janel Van Beek - Business Strategist & Master Coach | Leadership & Change Expert
- Greg Phillips - Cloud Platform & Strategic Marketing Leader
- Tamera Rousseau King - Technical Program Manager | Agile Product Owner | People Leader
- Ricardo Perez - Virtualization Architect | PowerFlex & VxRail Specialist
- Mike Berteletti, CISSP - Experienced IT Professional | Infrastructure & Security
- Chris Mojica - Technical Sales & Solutions Architect
- Matthew Leib - Data Center, Cloud & Storage Architect | Technical Writer & Analyst
- Michael Joffe - Global Technology Leader | P&L Management | SaaS & OEM
- Colleen Coll - Event Technology & Digital Media Specialist | Live Reporting
- Karl Edwards, PMP - Technical Program Manager | Network Strategy | Telecom & Tech
- Thomas Chatham - Engineering Leader | SaaS & Converged Infrastructure
- Sam Aiello, Ph.D. - Cybersecurity & Technology Strategist | Pre-Sales Leadership
Hot Fudge Daily Digest
📈 Markets Monday for 2025-04-07
As a reminder, this is an end of day snapshot…
Quick Recap
For Market Monday, I continue to look at the same key indicator that I take from a simple Yahoo Finance webpage each week. It’s how I look at things through the lens of the closing bell on Monday.
Last week:

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 when the market is moving and a smaller handful of companies when the market is not moving as much.
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 2025-04-08
Tariffs Tuesday? I'll let other newsletters handle that...
Two hot takes on funding on Tuesday.
🛜 + 💰 I am a happy long time Tailscale customer and this is pleasing to see as they are the only exception I have to saying VPN stands for Vexing Productivity Neutralizer.

Techmeme: Toronto-based Tailscale, which offers an enterprise mesh VPN service, raised $160M led by Accel, a source says at a $1.5B valuation, up from $1B in May 2022 (Katie Roof/Bloomberg)
By Katie Roof / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
🤖 + 💰 I am reminded of Mr. Rogers looking for the helpers among the increasingly dystopian drone warfare landscape.

Techmeme: Emergency response drone maker Brinc raised $75M led by Index Ventures, taking its total funding to $157.2M; Motorola will become a distributor of Brinc drones (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
By Todd Bishop / GeekWire. View the full context on Techmeme.
🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2025-04-09
Each Wednesday I go through dozens of Slack communities.
I then select the most interesting shared links.
This will always be a safe for work list. 🙈
🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-04-10
One headline for Thursday Throwback caught my eye.
🧂 + 🛜 The herd of packets has been heard.
Techmeme: Sources: Chinese officials acknowledged in a secret December 2024 meeting that China was behind the Volt Typhoon hacks, tying them to the US' support for Taiwan (Dustin Volz/Wall Street Journal)
By Dustin Volz / Wall Street Journal. View the full context on Techmeme.
Previously… Salt Typhoon was seemingly a blip in the news because some other shiny object squirrels appeared to knock it out of the headlines.

Techmeme: The Trump administration fires all advisory committee members within the DHS, including those in the CISA's CSRB, which was investigating Salt Typhoon hackers (Becky Bracken/Dark Reading)
By Becky Bracken / Dark Reading. View the full context on Techmeme.
Why Typhoon? Reasons.

Techmeme: Microsoft starts naming threat actor groups after weather events, like typhoon, sandstorm, and blizzard; each name represents a nation state or a motivation (Tom Warren/The Verge)
By Tom Warren / The Verge. View the full context on Techmeme.
✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2025-04-11
The story that caught my eye this week was Agent2Agent (A2A).

Techmeme: Google launches Agent2Agent, an open interoperability protocol designed to enable seamless collaboration between AI agents across diverse frameworks and vendors (Alexey Shabanov/TestingCatalog)
By Alexey Shabanov / TestingCatalog. View the full context on Techmeme.
If you haven't heard buzz around Model Context Protocol (MCP) then I'll try making this a cooking contest television show.
MCP would be like different chefs competing on a cooking contest show. It's entertaining but the chefs are focused on their unique recipes and making their courses unique.
A2A would be like getting different chefs to be able to collaborate as a team for the best meal possible within a budget that considers dietary restrictions. It's not just entertaining — it's arguably going to result in a better and more complete meal experience that seeks the culinary experience optima.
🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2025-04-12
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.
Peak 🏔️ vs. Peek 👀
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: A group of former OpenAI employees files an amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit opposing OpenAI's for-profit transition (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
By Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert Ceiling Cat Meme

Techmeme: Ireland's DPC opens an investigation into how personal data in public X posts was used to train xAI's Grok, which could stoke tensions between the EU and the US (Ellen O'Regan/Politico)
By Ellen O'Regan / Politico. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert We're All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This Meme
Techmeme: US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth cuts $5.1B in IT and consulting contracts, such as with Accenture, Deloitte, and Booz Allen, calling them “wasteful spending” (Business Insider)
From Business Insider. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert That Wasn't Me, That Was Patricia Meme

Techmeme: Sources: OpenAI recently gave staff and third-party groups just days, vs. several months previously, to evaluate the risks and performance of its latest models (Cristina Criddle/Financial Times)
By Cristina Criddle / Financial Times. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert Anthony Adams Rubbing Hands Meme

Techmeme: SmartScout: China-based electronics accessories maker Anker has raised prices by ~18% on a fifth of its products on Amazon, as US starts applying new tariffs (Reuters)
From Reuters. 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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