SED News is a monthly podcast from Software Engineering Daily where hosts Gregor Vand and Sean Falconer unpack the biggest stories shaping software engineering, Silicon Valley, and the broader tech industry.
In this episode, they discuss Perplexity’s headline-grabbing offer to buy Google Chrome, the U.S. government’s large stake in Intel, Meta’s abrupt pause on AI hiring, and a reality check on what “agentic” systems can actually deliver today versus the hype.
They also dive into standout discussions from Hacker News, including a proposal to curb “ghost job” postings with stricter transparency rules, an interactive Big-O explainer, and more.
Sponsors
Capital One’s tech team isn’t just talking about multi-agentic AI.
They already deployed one.
It’s called Chat Concierge, and it’s simplifying car shopping.
Using self-reflection and layered reasoning with live API checks,
It doesn’t just help buyers find a car they love.
It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade-in value.
Advanced, intuitive, and deployed: that’s how they stack.
That’s technology at Capital One.
Building agentic AI apps isn’t just about choosing the best LLM.
Agents need short‑term memory, long‑term recall, and lightning‑fast retrieval. Without it, you’re left with clunky prototypes that never scale.
You know, Redis? The world’s fastest caching solution?
It turns out fast data is the key to good context. And good context is essential for fast, accurate memory. It’s what makes AI agents actually work with your data.
Redis for AI. The right infrastructure. The right tools. The only way to scale.
Learn more at redis.io/genai.
Building an app often feels like a balancing act. You want to ship features fast – chat, activity feeds, moderation, video. But building them from scratch is slow and complex.
That’s where Stream comes in. Stream provides developer-friendly APIs that let you add real-time communication without reinventing the wheel.
Why Stream?
First, developer experience. Stream has clean, open source SDKs, and great docs, and you can get a proof of concept running in hours.
Second, speed to build. Experiment, prototype, or launch features quickly – no credit card required to start.
Stream also scales. Over 2,000 global apps, including Strava, Patreon, Nextdoor, Robinhood, and Peloton, rely on Stream to power in-app communication for more than a billion users.
Whether you’re a startup or an enterprise, Stream handles the hard parts so you can focus on what makes your app unique. Get started today at getstream.io/podcast.
