SED News: Perplexity’s Chrome Play, Meta’s AI Freeze, and Intel Becomes Too Big to Fail
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
The post SED News: Perplexity’s Chrome Play, Meta’s AI Freeze, and Intel Becomes Too Big to Fail appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
---
SED News: Perplexity’s Chrome Play, Meta’s AI Freeze, and Intel Becomes Too Big to Fail
[Image: SEDaily]
By SEDaily
Podcast
Tuesday, September 9 2025
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
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.
Gregor Vand is a security-focused technologist, having previously been a CTO across cybersecurity, cyber insurance and general software engineering companies. He is based in Singapore and can be found via his profile at vand.hk or on LinkedIn.
Sean’s been an academic, startup founder, and Googler. He has published works covering a wide range of topics from AI to quantum computing. Currently, Sean is an AI Entrepreneur in Residence at Confluent where he works on AI strategy and thought leadership. You can connect with Sean on LinkedIn.
Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com
[Image: SEDaily]
SEDaily
#### Sponsors
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.
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.
POPULAR
- Amazon’s IDE for Spec-Driven Development with David Yanacek 67 views
- Gas Town, Beads, and the Rise of Agentic Development with Steve Yegge 41 views
- Inside China’s Great Firewall with Jackson Sippe 15 views
- Why We Switched from Python to Go 15 views
- Elegant Puzzle with Will Larson 13 views
#### Software Daily
[Image: Software Daily]
Subscribe to Software Daily, a curated newsletter featuring the best and newest from the software engineering community.
Exclusive Articles
VMware Tanzu GemFire and Next-Generation Real-Time Application Development
Uber’s LedgerStore and its Trillions of Indexes with Kaushik Devarajaiah
GraphQL vs. REST: What Are They, and Which Is Better for You?
Cloud Engineering
CodeRabbit and RAG for Code Review with Harjot Gill
Building Chess.com with Jay Severson
Mastodon with Eugen Rochko
Business and Philosophy
Startup Investing with George Mathew
KubeCon Special: Docker with Justin Cormack
Software Architecture with Josh Prismon
Greatest Hits
Hardening C++ with Bjarne Stroustrup
Surviving ChatGPT with Christian Hubicki
Special Episode with George Hotz
Hackers
Making React 70% faster with Aiden Bai of Million.js
Cross-functional Incident Management with Ashley Sawatsky and Niall Murphy
SDKs for your API with Sagar Batchu
Data
Hyperscaling SQL with Sam Lambert
Spring AI and Java in 2024
Iceberg at Netflix and Beyond with Ryan Blue
---
[Original source](https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/09/09/sed-news-perplexitys-chrome-play-metas-ai-freeze-and-intel-becomes-too-big-to-fail/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sed-news-perplexitys-chrome-play-metas-ai-freeze-and-intel-becomes-too-big-to-fail)