SED News: Anthropic’s Mythos, Supply Chain Hacks, and the AI Spending Surge

SED News: Anthropic’s Mythos, Supply Chain Hacks, and the AI Spending Surge

Author: Software Engineering Daily May 7, 2026 Duration: 52:46

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 cover Anthropic’s controversial “Mythos” security model and what it means for vulnerability discovery at scale. They also discuss recent layoffs at Snap and Meta, and how AI investment pressures are reshaping hiring, organizational priorities, and the economics of big tech.

Gregor and Sean then zoom out to examine the massive wave of AI infrastructure spending—hundreds of billions in capex across Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta, and what it signals about the future of cloud platforms, model providers, and the engineers who build on top of them. They explore the emerging entanglement between model labs and infrastructure providers, the evolving role of engineers in an AI-native world, and the growing gap between rapid AI adoption and security readiness.

Finally, they highlight standout threads from Hacker News, including creative uses of AI coding tools to revive abandoned side projects, new approaches to training smaller yet highly capable models, surprising demographic data visualizations, and even the mathematics of “cheating” at Tetris.

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.

Please click here to see the transcript of this episode.

Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com

The post SED News: Anthropic’s Mythos, Supply Chain Hacks, and the AI Spending Surge appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.


Dive into the deep end of the world's most ubiquitous programming language with the JavaScript Archives-Software Engineering Daily. This curated collection pulls from the broader archive, focusing entirely on conversations that dissect the ecosystem, its evolution, and its practical application in modern software engineering. Each episode features in-depth technical interviews with engineers, library authors, and industry leaders who have shaped the language. You'll hear detailed discussions on everything from the intricacies of frameworks like React and Node.js to the underlying mechanics of the V8 engine, from deployment strategies to the challenges of building at scale. The dialogue is substantive and geared toward practicing developers, offering insights that go far beyond surface-level tutorials. For anyone who builds with JavaScript, this podcast serves as an essential audio companion, transforming complex topics into accessible, thoughtful dialogue that illuminates the how and why behind the code we write every day.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 50

Software Engineering Daily
Podcast Episodes
SED News: Restricted Models, IDE Wars, and the DeepMind Mafia [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 51:58
SED News is a monthly podcast from Software Engineering Daily where hosts Gregor Vand and Sean Falconer break down the biggest stories shaping software engineering, Silicon Valley, and the broader tech industry. In this…
Grafana’s Approach to AI-Native Observability [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:29
Advanced software systems have long been more complex than any single engineer can fully understand. Observability is the established solution to this problem, but with AI agents now generating code, deploying changes, a…
Building Software That People Love [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:26
Building great software always involves technical problem solving, but the best software goes beyond function. It feels fluid, coherent, and genuinely fun to use. This quality lives at the intersection of engineering and…
Mina the Hollower [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:48
Yacht Club Games is the studio behind the acclaimed Shovel Knight franchise. Their latest release is Mina the Hollower, which is a top-down action RPG inspired by classic Zelda and Castlevania titles. After many years in…
Foundation Models for Structured Data [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 44:00
Predictive modeling is a core element in modern systems, and powers capabilities such as fraud detection, loan approvals, and recommendation systems. These systems typically operate on structured, relational data stored…
Biome and the Future of JavaScript Tooling [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:56
Modern web development requires an ever-growing collection of tools including formatters, linters, bundlers, and plugins. Each tool typically has its own configuration, dependencies, and performance cost. As applications…
Preparing for Q-Day [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:18
Most of the cryptography securing the internet today rests on mathematical problems that classical computers cannot solve in any reasonable timeframe. That assumption is now being tested. Recent advances in quantum compu…
Developing Multiplayer Games in Godot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:21
Multiplayer games are among the hardest software systems to build, requiring developers to synchronize state across unreliable networks while maintaining fairness, performance, and a responsive player experience. Latency…
Web Native Game Development [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:08
The web has quietly become one of the most capable platforms for game development. Advances in WebAssembly, WebGL, and WebGPU have given developers tools that rival native desktop performance, while game engines like Uni…