Heya and welcome back to Five Things Tech!
Europe might actually have a shot at winning the quantum computing race because there is no legacy advantage to overcome, just pure math and capital deployment. But before you celebrate, consider this: Google and Cloudflare just moved their post-quantum cryptography deadlines up to 2029 (five years earlier than planned) because new research suggests cryptographically relevant quantum computers may arrive sooner than anyone expected. Meanwhile Anthropic’s Mythos model is already pulling off digital bank heists, orchestrating complete attacks from bypassing security protocols to breaking into digital vaults, the kind of critical bugs normally found only by the world’s best hackers. And while we worry about quantum threats and AI security risks, AI is already designing the next generation of chips that will accelerate both quantum computing development and AI capability itself, creating a feedback loop nobody fully understands yet.
Oh, and half of all PHP developers have over 15 years of experience with only 15% having five years or less, which means the language powering a massive chunk of the web is facing a retirement crisis with no replacement workforce in sight. So we have quantum computers racing toward breaking all our encryption, AI models that can hack entire systems, chip design entering an AI-accelerated era, and the infrastructure holding up the current web slowly aging out without successors. The rest of the 2020s are going to be wild.
Enjoy Five Things Tech!
Quantum computing: A tech race Europe could win?
“At the end of the day, it’s a math challenge. There is no unfair advantage from legacy technology like classical computing or something like that, so there is no reason to be shy.”
The main challenge, says Peronnin, is putting the capital together. “But Europe is definitely not poor and this is a technological opportunity for Europe to reshuffle a bit the cards in terms of autonomous strategy and our ability to have economic leading players,” he says.
There is a strong feeling that while Europe missed the boat on so many tech revolutions of recent years, at least when it came to transitioning from the research to the industrial stage, things could be different this time.
I currently have the feeling that while Europe is doing pretty okay with Quantum, we will soon be overtaken by USA and China when they utilize their AI compute to drastically advance Quantum research and design.
Recent advances push Big Tech closer to the Q-Day danger zone
Earlier this month, both Google and Cloudflare bumped up their internal deadline for PQC (post-quantum cryptography) readiness to 2029, an acceleration of roughly five years. The moves were largely prompted by two pieces of research showing that CRQC (cryptographically relevant quantum computing/computer) may arrive sooner than previously estimated.
While there’s little known evidence that a CRQC will emerge in the next four years, the revised deadlines set a good example for peers such as Amazon and Microsoft, whose timelines are two to six years longer. They also largely align with US government goals; the Defense Department is requiring all national security systems to use quantum-safe algorithms by December 31, 2031, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology is calling for the deprecation of vulnerable algorithms by 2035. While many experts strongly doubt CRQC will arrive by 2029, others say an industry-wide acceleration is necessary given the stakes and the difficulty of the work required to be ready.
The next few years will be interesting. The Y2K situation was concerning, but this is really an important race to harden our systems.
How Anthropic Learned Mythos Was Too Dangerous for the Wild
Mythos orchestrated the digital equivalent of a bank robbery: getting past security protocols and through the front door of networks, and breaking into digital vaults that gave it access to online treasures. AI had picked locks, but now it could pull off an entire heist.
Carlini and some of his colleagues began alerting staff to what they’d found. And each day they continued to discover high-severity and critical bugs in the systems Mythos probed, the kind of flaws normally uncovered by the world’s best hackers.
Speaking of which, some stuff will break long before 2029, it seems.
AI Could Democratize One of Tech’s Most Valuable Resources
Designing computer chips is one of the most consequential—and tricky—jobs on the planet. Chip engineers need to figure out how to arrange a vast number of components across a piece of silicon to optimize different functionality. After a chip is first designed, its performance has to be carefully tested and verified in an iterative process before the designs can be sent off to a foundry.
Nvidia’s designs are crucial for modern AI, with each new generation of chip allowing companies to train more powerful AI models using hundreds or thousands of processors networked together inside vast data centers.
So if this is already happening with “classical” silicon chips, I do not see why this won’t accel the development of Quantum computing real soon now.
Who will maintain the web when PHP’s veterans retire?
The survey of over 700 developers worldwide indicated that over half of the PHP users surveyed reported having more than 15 years of experience with the language, while only 15% had five years of experience or less. This points to a maturing workforce with fewer new developers entering the ecosystem, Perforce officials said.
In fact, hiring rose to one of the top challenges facing PHP teams in 2026, and for managers and directors, it was the number one concern. Moreover, 24% of respondents cited a lack of personnel with the right skills and experience as a leading operational challenge.
I remember when PHP was still called PHP FI and I started using it with version 2.5 - a looong time ago, probably 30 years or so. Back then, the combination of PHP/MySQL was all the rage.
That’s all for now! Thanks for reading! If you missed last week’s Five Things Tech, you can find it here:
🤖
— Nico