🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2024-09-01
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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.
Hot Fudge Daily Digest
📈 Markets Monday for 2024-08-26
According to the tech press, the future of the tech market in Markets Monday will hinge upon NVIDIA earnings on Wednesday August 28, 2024… if you believe the tech press. I kind of don’t but here we go.
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.
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
🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2024-08-27
First… an interesting post arrived from VMworld. For perspective, my first VMworld experience was in 2010 and the community I met there would alter the course of my career for the next decade.
I was even a one time vExpert in 2013 within the massive VMware community aka vCommunity… and since then, well, things have changed. Things have changed — drastically.
And now, back to our regular Hot Takes Tuesday…
Funds, Funding, and M&A
Let’s take a look at where the money is flowing.
https://www.techmeme.com/240826/p9#a240826p9
💰 + 🥈 The secondary market is interesting but not as interesting as a $1B+ fund intended to take advantage of secondary market bargains.
https://www.techmeme.com/240827/p11#a240827p11
💰 + 📊 The hunt for better ways to harness data to deliver IT, security, and observability continues with the displacement of pre-cloud era solutions.
https://www.techmeme.com/240827/p12#a240827p12
💸 + ☁️ As I’ve said many times before, cloud fiscal responsibility (aka FinOps) is going to become synonymous with cloud excellence within the larger technology business management (TBM) space.
https://www.techmeme.com/240826/p22#a240826p22
📺 + 🤖 Perhaps I’m just not creative enough to be a video creator, but I get a vibe that ethically sourced ingredients is crossing over from food supply chains into A.I. video services training corpus chains.
https://www.techmeme.com/240827/p22#a240827p22
⚖️ + 🤖 Forensic examination of large volumes of materials in discover is arguably a better use case for RAG than attempting to cite a so-called hallucination.
🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2024-08-28
Each Wednesday I go through dozens of Slack communities and select the most interesting shared links. This will always be a safe for work list. 🙈
https://www.history.com/news/mailing-children-post-office
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20231221-the-mystery-of-the-medieval-fighting-snails
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingham_plastic
https://tedium.co/2024/01/12/isdn-history-retrospective/
🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2024-08-29
Data center power consumption has been a below the fold news topic in the past but has ramped along with coverage of recurring topics of A.I. which is even more power intensive. But how long has there been a data center energy crisis?
In short, the data center energy crisis has always been there. The difference is that modern data center demands are now hyperscale cloud service providers.
For example, if you were to look back to 2007, you might recall so-called green data center initiatives like “IBM Project Big Green” in response to the data center energy crisis.
Fast forward to the present… What makes “green” claims so interesting is how the established data center players are always looking for better power purchase agreements (PPAs) or virtual power purchase agreements(vPPAs) terms — but is always about more electrons, not less.
Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Apple do their own tracking as well. However, the coverage of how that tracking is done has raised more questions.
https://www.techmeme.com/240814/p10#a240814p10
✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2024-08-30
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 and catching up with folks I haven’t spoken to for years. I’m back in the gym again to reach personal goals and continuing to put in time for my own personal projects that have nothing to do with technology.
Switching gears back to technology, the bigger tech stories this week seemed to be the next iPhone, zero-day SD-WAN exploits, Telegram, OpenAI, and Twitter/X. My thinking is this:
https://www.techmeme.com/240826/p16#a240826p16
As a long time owner of tiny iPhone devices, I am wondering when my personal preference ride ends. My current daily driver is an iPhone 13 mini and my small hands still miss the 1st Gen iPhone SE form factor. While I don’t see myself moving to a flip phone, foldable phone, or similar, there is a growing demand somewhere for growing phone sizes… but that’s not me, at least not yet.
https://www.techmeme.com/240827/p14#a240827p14
My early career in late 1990s telecom and the ISP / MSP business reminds me of a tale I heard about digital phone switching infrastructure (aka Digital Multiplex System aka DMS for short). Of the hundreds of security features that could be enabled in the modern digital switch, less than 20% ever were enabled. As for reasons why, the security features were considered at the time to be extra work to keep track of, the cost of setting up a bastion host for OOB OAM&P, or speculatively avoided to prevent degradation in performance when enabled them for ongoing operation. Plus, it was “just a phone switch” that would only impact a small blast radius, or so the thinking went. Fast forwarding to our increasingly connected world, this latest SD-WAN zero-day exploit highlights how making it easier for a bad actor to make an impact opens the possibility for a well funded team of bad actors that can have global blast radius reach.
https://www.techmeme.com/240828/p25#a240828p25
No shade intended, but, I briefly used Telegram many years ago until I determined other alternative solutions were more appropriate for my use case. However, the amount of reductive tech press coverage concerning the CEO of a communications platform company being charged in the country of their citizenship for allegedly breaking laws only appears shocking if the assumption is that a CEO is somehow unable to be charged or is somehow above the laws of the land. It seems that the microwave oven timeline for justice, due process, and straw-man argument construction continues to accelerate in line with technology advancement.
https://www.techmeme.com/240829/p27#a240829p27
It is quite normal that the largest market cap companies on this planet are investing in what might become the next largest market cap company on this planet. Please wake me up when there is anything to see here other than [ checks notes… ] protecting the shared interests of said largest market cap companies. Funding does not necessarily guarantee success but it can go a long way to getting a seat at the table of a board of directors that has only recently added more established personalities and polished pedigrees.
https://www.techmeme.com/240830/p18#a240830p18
Oh, what was I just saying about the audacity to hold a communications platform company operating within a country to uphold the laws of the land? Unposssible! Perhaps FAFO also stands for Forgot Another Financial Outcome.
🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2024-08-31
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
https://www.techmeme.com/240830/p13#a240830p13
Insert Ceiling Cat Meme
https://www.techmeme.com/240830/p17#a240830p17
Insert We're All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This Meme
https://www.techmeme.com/240831/p4#a240831p4
Insert That Wasn't Me, That Was Patricia Meme
https://www.techmeme.com/240831/p1#a240831p1
Insert Anthony Adams Rubbing Hands Meme
https://www.techmeme.com/240830/p15#a240830p15
