Spicy Edition Sunday for 2024-07-14
Unpack the spicy insights behind this week's edition, filled with deep links and fresh perspectives. 🔥
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.)
Spicy Edition Sunday for 2024-07-14
Welcome to 🌶️ Spicy Edition Sunday!
Uncover the spicy inspiration behind this week's Fudge Sunday edition, packed with deep links and fresh insights. 🔥
As a quick reminder, longer form Fudge Sunday topics are posted weekly on at https://fudge.org/.
🌶️ Spicy Edition Sunday
One challenge of writing a daily newsletter is that a lot can happen in 24 hours. While there is much I could share, I’ll adhere to my charter as a personal outlet for writing about technology and related news that I believe deserves attention.
To that end, I’m sharing a link to The Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook. The handbook image is now a decade old but is arguably more important today as increasingly rapid dissemination of highly automated and non-human generated information online spreads quickly with little or no vetting mechanisms.
The Breaking News Consumer's Handbook | On the Media | WNYC
Rampant misreporting following shootings and other breaking news events is so predictable that we unintentionally developed a formula for covering them.
By next month fudge.org will become a funnel to drive more traffic to hot.fudge.org newsletter with automated sponsorship management via Buttondown. At that point, I will reclaim fudge.org for blogging in ways that do not carry over easily to email.
This week, the digest is powered by Buttondown API and python scripts.
GitHub - JayCuthrell/buttondown-python-scripts: Simple python scripts for using the Buttondown API
Simple python scripts for using the Buttondown API - JayCuthrell/buttondown-python-scripts
Hot Fudge Daily Digest
Markets Monday for 2024-07-08
Analyzing the past and future of the tech market in Markets Monday.
Last week
Looking at the week behind for the tech market.
I typically ask Siri how NASDAQ is doing and wait to hear it if is a big change or not. Siri logic on the definition of what to say if the there is +/- < 1% seems to be varied by day of attempts. More experimentation or going deeper into how Siri makes word choices will be interesting as the new Apple WWDC stories of Siri evolve over the year.
Previously, I mentioned adding a 5 day view contrasted with a 5 year view.
Last week I made an error by showing only a 1D view vs. a 5D view. This is where automation would be handy so that at least errors would be consistent and correctable for the future.
And again, “this seems to be going up for now”, is still true on a long enough timeline.
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.
The winners list last narrowed from five to… two.
This week an expansion where the two went to fifteen. However, looking back, I made an error last week in going in before the bell. Lesson learned.
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 2024-07-09
Off the cuff analysis in a rapid fire format.
Let’s dig in…
Funds, Funding, and M&A
Techmeme: A group of investors led by Vista Equity Partners has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Nasuni, valuing the hybrid cloud storage provider at ~$1.2B (Bloomberg)
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
💰 + ☁️ Granted, data storage might not seem that sexy but the amount of data being generated has been growing exponentially for a while and A.I. is hungry for data.
Techmeme: NFT and metaverse content creation startup Infinite Reality raised $350M at a $5.1B valuation and acquires Roblox game developer Landvault for $450M in stock (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat)
By Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat. View the full context on Techmeme.
💰 + 👾 Just because I was awful at most arcade games (okay, all arcade games) and my modest crypto assets are underwater doesn’t mean that a $300B+ gaming industry won’t keep growing like a weed.
Techmeme: Skild AI, which is developing a foundational model for robotics, raised a $300M Series A at a $1.5B valuation led by Lightspeed, SoftBank, Coatue, Jeff Bezos (Rashi Shrivastava/Forbes)
By Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes. View the full context on Techmeme.
🦾 + 🤖 I for one welcome our soon to be vastly more skilled dexterous robot overlords.
Techmeme: Captions, which uses AI to let people create and edit videos, raised $60M led by Index Ventures at a $500M valuation, taking its total funding to $100M (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg)
By Rachel Metz / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
📺 + 🤖 How many VC firms can claim to have an outsized portion of their LP that are also founding members of ‘30 Seconds to Mars’ in addition to participation in both the MCU and DCCU?
Techmeme: New York-based Hebbia, which uses AI to help companies sift through documents, raised $130M led by a16z, a source says at a ~$700M post-money valuation (Rachel Metz/Bloomberg)
By Rachel Metz / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
🗄️ + 🤖 Yes, I totally read your memo…
[ furiously taps away at A.I. assistant which finds the memo that was most definitely not read and summarizes it with ELI5 TLDR model played back on the microLED display tucked away in my prescription AR glasses ]
Wacky Wednesday for 2024-07-10
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.
Look: Mystery emu found wandering loose through Pennsylvania neighborhood - UPI.com
A Pennsylvania police department is trying to find the owner of an unusual escaped pet found wandering loose -- an emu.
Which State Poops the Most?
Your Constitutional Right to Be a Pirate
Congress can grant any American permission to be a pirate. A.J. Jacobs found out what happens when you apply.
Throwback Thursday for 2024-07-11
Throwback Thursday will likely become a format based upon 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.
shot-and-chaser (2024) by Jay Cuthrell
the on again off again blog of Jay Cuthrell and Fudge Sunday 🤔💡🤯🤓 weekly newsletter
Past examples of "Shot and Chaser" included embedding content from Twitter (as it was known at the time) in the form of a specific tweet. As I come across Twitter URLs in my newsletter archive, I am finding that the change in Twitter ownership, degradation of URLs (link rot), and the transition between different newsletter platforms has made much of this content difficult or, sadly, impossible to follow.
For example, if you were to look back 5 years and analyze press coverage of the all things cloud, you’d probably have waved off any concerns for A.I… bubble or not.
Cloudflare - At just 15 years of age, this teenage titan of the cloud has made a big impact by simply not being AWS, Azure, GCP, or any other hyperscale cloud service provider — they are truly their own thing. From early protections from DDoS attacks from bot nets running on compromised PCs on residential broadband, the additions of similar protections from similar bots (likely running on AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) scraping websites for data to feed into A.I. models has been an interesting turn of events in the industry.
Techmeme: Cloudflare launches a tool that aims to block bots from scraping websites for AI training data, available free for all its customers (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
By Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
Final Thoughts Friday for 2024-07-12
Looking back at the week with an eye to the future.
The weekly coffee meetup series change of plans ran into tourist overflow and might come back in the Fall. Cru is right next door to The Vault and is also very busy for a Friday Coffee in July. Another lesson learned: If the event has coffee in the name… consider three alternative coffee houses.
Historic Grounds Coffee Shop | Beaufort NC
Historic Grounds Coffee Shop, Beaufort, North Carolina. 930 likes · 15 talking about this. Beaufort’s Coffee Shop! ☀️☕️🫖 • gourmet coffee & espresso • antiques • NC pottery • local artisans
Dancing Baristas Cafe
Mug Shot - Coffee Cocktails, Homemade Biscuits, Restaurant
You found us! Now, all you need to do is visit the premier caffeine, cocktail bar and restaurant of Morehead City, NC
I think my events related travel is locked in through next year.
Raleigh Founded - NCSU in Raleigh July 17, 2024 for Summer Career Fair
AI Field Day 5 in Silicon Valley September 11-12, 2024 for Tech Field Day
Monktoberfest in Portland October 2-4, 2024
Cloud Field Day 21 in Silicon Valley October 23-24, 2024 for Tech Field Day
All Things Open in Raleigh October 27-29, 2024 for CLS
SXSW in Austin March 7 - 15, 2025
This week, I continued the Hot Fudge Daily digest posted in 🌶️ Spicy Edition Sunday as “free” weekly content.
Spicy Edition Sunday for 2024-07-07
This edition covers a range of topics from market insights to tech trends and upcoming events.
Run Fly Visualize (2024) by Jay Cuthrell
Part 2: A look at silo spreadsheet sprawl and advisable Qlik ecosystem alternatives
Next month, fudge.org should have Google Adsense enabled which I last experimented with over a decade ago. However, for users browsing with ad blockers there won’t be one of those annoying “please turn off your ad blocker” messages.
I am still getting prepared for traffic to hot.fudge.org newsletter automated sponsorship management via Buttondown. I have another sponsor that will go live in August as well.
My original 11ty version and opinionated starter for fudge.org will be going through major revisions. 11ty is close to reaching 3.x and I’ve been fine with earlier releases but want to get the advantages of what 3.x brings.
Eleventy 3.0.0 Milestone · GitHub
A simpler site generator. Transforms a directory of templates (of varying types) into HTML. - Eleventy 3.0.0 Milestone · 11ty/eleventy
Mastodon continues to be an interesting experiment and I think that LinkedIn might be worth continuing to publish to but not as a newsletter platform. I believe that my LinkedIn Newsletter(s) experimentation will be to drive traffic elsewhere which is contrary to LinkedIn goals of being a walled garden. 🤷♂️
With the eventual reclamation of fudge.org and cuthrell.com in my roadmap, I continue noodling on using qthrul.com aka QTHRUL CORP as a holding site for cuthrell.consulting and anchor for cuthrell.net and cuthrell.org.
Sneak Peak Saturday for 2024-07-13
Unveiling overlooked tech news with a sprinkle of satire.
Peak 🏔️ vs. Peek 👀
Yes, a play on words.
By Friday, everything seems to be reaching the peak of getting news turned in before a deadline or dread-line.
Why Sneak Peak?
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. Or, in the case of a long holiday week.
Insert Let's See Who This Really Is Meme
Techmeme: Letter: OpenAI whistleblowers asked the SEC to probe OpenAI's allegedly restrictive NDAs barring staff from warning regulators about the risks its tech may pose (Washington Post)
From Washington Post. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert Ceiling Cat Meme
Techmeme: AT&T says it will begin notifying consumers about a data breach where cybercriminals stole phone records of “nearly all” of its cellular and landline customers (Zack Whittaker/TechCrunch)
By Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert We're All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This Meme
Techmeme: Sources: some of OpenAI's safety team felt pressured to speed through a safety protocol to meet GPT-4o's launch; Open AI says it “didn't cut corners” on safety (Washington Post)
From Washington Post. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert That Wasn't Me, That Was Patricia Meme
Techmeme: Snowflake confirms that the data breach at AT&T is connected to the hack that has affected other customers, including Ticketmaster and LendingTree (Bloomberg)
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Insert Anthony Adams Rubbing Hands Meme
Techmeme: Meta says it will soon roll back restrictions on Donald Trump's Instagram and Facebook accounts to ensure parity among candidates ahead of the 2024 election (Sara Fischer/Axios)
By Sara Fischer / Axios. View the full context on Techmeme.
Note: Some images via Unsplash
Disclosure
I am linking to my disclosure.
Cuthrell Consulting LLCAttn: Jay Cuthrell1903 Live Oak St #92Beaufort, NC 28516-0092
To learn about sponsorship opportunities, contact us. 🤓
This section of the newsletter is meant to fund the services stack that enables readership growth and continue free editions to be published each week.
And now, a word from our sponsors
Note: This pseudo-randomized sponsored portion of the newsletter contains referral links that may financially benefit this newsletter.
New sponsors added weekly!
NexusTek
Are you looking to identify and address cybersecurity risks before they impact your operations? Check out NexusTek’s Comprehensive Vulnerability Management Services!
GuestLab
Are you a podcaster looking for your own AI research assistant to generate personalized intros, interesting topics, and insightful questions for your guests? Check out GuestLab!
Google Workspace
If you are looking for essential tools to run your business, I use and recommend Google Workspace. Our readers can get a promotion code for 10% off per user on your first year of Google Workspace by replying to this email.
Buttondown
If you're looking for a great newsletter platform, I use and recommend Buttondown. Our readers can get $9 off your first month of Buttondown.
Linode
If you are looking for a reliable virtual private server with simple cloud billing math, I use and recommend Akamai Linode. Our readers can get a $100, 60-day credit on Akamai Linode.
⚠️ This content is not legal or financial advice. ⚠️