🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2025-11-02
Last Week
- NexusTek’s Pavle Majerle was recognized as a CRN 2025 Next-Gen Solution Provider Leader! 🎉
- NexusTek published Futureproof or Fossilize: Cybersecurity Lessons Beyond Awareness Month
- Joseph Kasal published Nine Days. Two Giants. One Wake-Up Call.
- NexusTek published The Cyber Gym: Training for Everyday Defense
- Peter Newton published When AWS Sneezes, the Internet Catches a Cold: Why Today’s Outage Should Be Your Wake-Up Call
This Week
I’m back on the road for a few days and hope to find time to refactor my Buttondown automation stack.
Hot Fudge Daily Digest
📈 Markets Monday for 2025-10-27
Today showed strength in automation, hardware, and core components. The movement was concentrated in robotics and robotic process automation (SYM, PATH), semiconductors (QCOM, AAOI, MRVL), and communication equipment (LITE, ASTS).
| Symbol | Company Name | % Change |
|---|---|---|
| LMND | Lemonade Inc | +10.80% |
| QCOM | Qualcomm Inc | +9.99% |
| AAOI | Applied Optoelectronics Inc | +8.62% |
| SYM | Symbotic Inc | +7.91% |
| LITE | Lumentum Holdings Inc | +7.48% |
| ASTS | AST SpaceMobile Inc | +7.24% |
| RIOT | Riot Platforms Inc | +6.87% |
| SMCI | Super Micro Computer Inc | +6.36% |
| PATH | UiPath Inc | +5.23% |
| MRVL | Marvell Technology Inc | +5.16% |
🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2025-10-28
💰 + 🤖 Funding for AI-anything companies continues.
- Mem0 (AI cross-device memory passport): $24M
- ConductorOne (AI identity security): $79M
- Substrate (US chip making): $100M+
- Whatnot (AI-assisted livestream marketplace): $225M
- The Bot Company (AI household robots): $250M
- Fireworks AI (AI developer platform): $254M
- Mercor (AI contractor marketplace): $350M
- Wealthsimple (AI-powered robo advisor investing): $538M
🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2025-10-29
First, a wacky wonderful video. Second, a wayback nostalgia tome. Third, a whoa we’re getting older moment.
Wacky Wonderful
- Custom displays
- SoC brain
- Groundhogs Day?
Wayback
First ARPANET connection (1969)
- “LO” rider
- System crashed
- First 404?
Whoa
High-Speed Interstellar Travel via via Sentiers No.376
- Starship dreams
- Physics-bending
- Interstellar paparazzi?
🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-10-30
What was buzzing 5, 10, and 15 years ago today?
5 Years Ago: October 30, 2020
An East Texas jury awarded VirnetX ~$0.5B against Apple for patent infringement (but Apple appealed and won a ~3 years later).
10 Years Ago: October 30, 2015
Amazon Fire(d) all competing devices from Apple and Google from the retail platform (but allowed both back ~2 years later).
15 Years Ago: October 30, 2010
Apple took legal actions against Motorola after Motorola took legal actions against Apple (and others).
✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2025-10-31
The story that completely eclipsed tech earnings week was OpenAI’s pivot.
OpenAI is now a very much for-profit, giving Microsoft a ~27% stake in exchange for a $250B+ Big MACC (Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment), and putting a potential $1T IPO into motion.
Apparently, the pursuit of “benefit for all humanity” includes a vesting schedule.
🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2025-11-01
It’s time to select the Friday news dump for this week’s most skillfully buried story.
Just as the world was gearing up for Halloween weekend, “Chat Control” withdrawal meant no candy for anti-privacy proponents in the EU.
In this news cycle, loss of support for a controversial proposed policy known as “Chat Control” forcing tech companies to scan private, encrypted messages, was skillfully buried on a Friday news dump. Had this news broken earlier in the week, it would have reignited a back and forth news cycle between privacy advocates and anti-privacy safety groups.
Also, giving notice at the end of tech earnings week right before a holiday weekend is savvy news management by euphemism. The result is a collapse of a major mass surveillance proposal positioned instead as a simple obscure administrative step (“instead support voluntary scanning”).
#OpenToWork Weekly
I participated in a #NeverSearchAlone #JSC after rebooting Cuthrell Consulting and joining NexusTek.
I added those #OpenToWork from my LinkedIn network to this newsletter. Over time, we’ve grown an Alumni 🎉 section for those that transitioned to their next career adventure.
Alumni 🎉
- Congrats Brian Booden 🎉
- Congrats Sam Aiello 🎉
- Congrats Nathan Clyker 🎉
- Congrats Kelly Britt 🎉
- Congrats Tamera Rousseau King 🎉
- Congrats Thomas Chatham 🎉
- Congrats Dan Kelleher 🎉
- Congrats Jarrod Weise 🎉
- Congrats Karl Edwards 🎉
- Congrats Paul Lysko 🎉
- Congrats Bob Lima, PMP 🎉
- Congrats Rich Green 🎉
- Congrats Sheri Gearhart 🎉
- Congrats Shianna Maxwell 🎉
- Congrats Richard Arnesen! 🎉
Those in my network that are #OpenToWork:
- Mike Berteletti, CISSP - Experienced IT Professional | Infrastructure & Security
- Jennifer Fisher - Full-Cycle Recruiter
- Scott Place - High Performance Sales Rep
- Trevor Schulz - 20+ Years in Tech Sales | Loyal, Dedicated, and Ready to Work Today
- Elizabeth Quintanilla - Fractional CMO, Digital Marketing Consultant & Coach, Marketing Gunslinger
- 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
- 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
- Ricardo Perez - Virtualization Architect | PowerFlex & VxRail Specialist
- 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
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