AI/Tech Brief — May 2, 2026

TL;DR

• DeepSeek drops V4, a frontier-level model matching Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.4 at a fraction of the cost, intensifying the AI pricing war.
• Eka reveals a robotic claw demonstrating unprecedented physical dexterity, marking what many consider a “ChatGPT moment” for robotics.
• Historic search engine Ask.com shuts down entirely, closing a multi-decade chapter of early web history.

Key stories

• DeepSeek V4 challenges frontier models: The new V4 model delivers performance comparable to Opus 4.7 and GPT-5.4 but at a fraction of the cost, putting immense price pressure on top-tier incumbents. (Simon Willison / Hacker News)
• Codex challenges Claude Cowork: OpenAI pushes new updates and features aimed at making Codex more competitive against Anthropic’s Claude Cowork in the enterprise assistant space. (Superhuman AI)
• Claude Code v2.1.126 adds project purge: Claude Code introduces claude project purge to let developers completely wipe project states (transcripts, tasks) and adds dynamic model selection via gateways. (Claude Code Changelog)
• Eka’s robotic claw makes waves: A major breakthrough in robotic manipulation is being hailed as a potential paradigm shift for physical AI capabilities. (Wired / Hacker News)
• Ask.com closes its doors: The pioneering web search engine has officially shut down, marking the end of an era for early internet platforms. (Hacker News)
• LFM2-24B-A2B scales up: Liquid AI announces a 24-billion parameter version of their LFM2 architecture, demonstrating viable paths for non-transformer architectural scaling. (Liquid AI / Hacker News)

Quiet but interesting

• Ti-84 Evo modernizes a classic: Texas Instruments introduces a new iteration of their ubiquitous graphing calculator, bringing a much-needed update to classrooms. (Texas Instruments / Hacker News)
• Lib0xc by Microsoft: A new set of C standard library-adjacent APIs aimed at enabling safer systems programming. (Microsoft / Hacker News)
• Dream communication research: New scientific studies suggest it’s possible for people to communicate and practice real-world skills while dreaming, potentially opening new frontiers in sleep science. (The New Yorker / Hacker News)

Skip

• Claude Support, Gemini CLI, OpenAI API, and Codex Changelogs: Quiet today, no major platform updates.
• Dario Amodei, Sam Altman, ByteByteGo, and DeepMind blogs: No new announcements in the past 24-48 hours.