- Link & Load
- Posts
- š¤ Grok 4 Claims PhD-Level Supremacy | š Perplexity Drops AI Browser Comet | š Bitcoin Scratches $112K All-Time High
š¤ Grok 4 Claims PhD-Level Supremacy | š Perplexity Drops AI Browser Comet | š Bitcoin Scratches $112K All-Time High
The AI arms race hits warp speed while browsers get superintelligent assistants and crypto rewrites the record books
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š Todayās Angle
You wake to xAI's latest AI powerhouse claiming PhD-level smarts, an AI arms-open embrace, and a browser that wants to ghost Chrome. Also on deck: Bitcoin's moonshot, XRP's court-side drama, and a tutorial that turns your weekend into dev bootcamp bliss. Buckle up:
xAI drops Grok 4 with "better than PhD" claims across all disciplines
OpenAI flips the scriptāpromises a truly open model later this summer
Perplexity's new "Comet" browser fires a privacy-first salvo at Google
Bitcoin cracks $112K while XRP watches the SEC like a hawk
Level-up fast: master Astro 5's bleeding-edge features
āāSascha Thiele

š Tech & Business
What Happened: Elon Musk's xAI launched Grok 4 via late-night livestream, claiming it's "better than PhD level in every subject, no exceptions." The model crushed benchmarksāscoring 45% on Humanity's Last Exam (nearly double Gemini 2.5 Pro's 21%) and 95% on advanced math tests. With a $300/month SuperGrok Heavy subscription and promises of discovering "new physics" within two years, xAI is betting big on raw intelligence over safety theater. The launch comes just days after Grok's antisemitic posts forced xAI to pull the plug temporarilyābecause nothing says "ready for prime time" like your AI praising Hitler before your biggest product reveal.
What Happened: Sam Altman confirmed the company's first open-weight language model since 2019 is due "late summer," after a surprise research breakthrough delayed the June target. The upcoming release aims to beat rival open models like DeepSeek R1 and Mistral's Magistral family, while repairing OpenAI's "wrong side of history" reputation on transparency. Early dev meet-ups kick off next week to crowd-source wish-listsābecause nothing says "open" like letting 500 hackers poke holes in your baby.
What Happened: AI search startup Perplexity unveiled Comet, a Chromium-based browser with a built-in assistant that summarizes pages, manages tabs, and chats about what's on-screen. Initially limited to Max-tier subscribers ($200/month), Comet bets on "infinite retention" by doing the mundaneāemail triage, calendar wranglingāinside the browser. If it works, Chrome extensions may start feeling like cassette tapes in the streaming era.

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š° The Finance Overview

Giphy
Wall Street's mood is risk-on after the Fed minutes hinted at a 2025 rate cut.
Big Tech Barometer: FAANG closed mixedāApple lagged on tariff fears while Microsoft rode Azure AI demand. xAI's Grok 4 launch signals the AI arms race is entering hyperdrive.
Startup Thermometer: Early-stage AI deals keep sizzling; Boldstart's $250M fund shows seed rounds are padding their runway, but Series C valuations are getting reality-checked.
Infrastructure Watch: Cloud spend shifts to GPUs and liquid cooling. CoreWeave's $9B buy of Core Scientific signals that even Bitcoin miners are pivoting to AI compute.
Wild Card: Airline Emirates teaming with Crypto.com to accept BTC at check-ināproof that loyalty points might soon live on-chain rather than on dusty servers.
Ticker |
---|
S&P 500: $SPY ( ā¼ 0.34% ) |
DowJones: $DJI ( ā² 0.22% ) |
Nasdaq: $QQQ ( ā¼ 0.89% ) |
German DAX: $DAX ( ā² 0.24% ) |
Indian NIFTY: $NIFTY50.NSE ( ā² 0.42% ) |
Bitcoin: $BTC.X ( ā¼ 2.19% ) |
Ethereum: $ETH.X ( ā¼ 3.14% ) |

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š° Crypto Carousel

Gif by darkbean on Giphy
What Happened: BTC smashed its May peak, touching $112K before cooling to $111K. Fuel? ETF inflows topping $500M this week, a softer dollar, and traders front-running a possible August Fed cut. Now eyes are on Thursday's CPI print to see if the party continues or the punch bowl evaporates.
What Happened: The SEC holds a closed-door meeting today that could decide whether to drop its appeal in the long-running Ripple case. Ripple already withdrew its own counter-appeal; if the regulator follows suit, XRP's legal cloud clears and an ETF rumor mill starts instantly. Traders have bid XRP to $2.35āvolatility guaranteed whichever way the vote swings.

š Skill Builder
Coding in Public - Published Dec 4 2024
What You'll Learn
Master Astro 5's island architecture for selective hydration and peak performance
Build server-first apps with zero JavaScript by defaultāthen add interactivity where it counts
Leverage content collections and the new Content Layer API for type-safe data management
Implement layouts, slots, and props for scalable component architecture
Deploy hybrid apps that mix static generation with server-side rendering
Integrate React, Vue, or Svelte components without bloating your bundle
Why It's Worth Your Time
A tightly-packed 28-minute deep-dive that covers Astro's most powerful features without the fluffāperfect for devs who want to build lightning-fast sites that don't sacrifice modern tooling.

š² Link Grab-Bag
ā
magicanimator.com ā Animate your Figma designs in seconds with AI
ā
iftrue.co ā Engineering managerās copilot in Slack
ā
visualph.com ā A more visual way to experience Product Hunt
ā
plox.in ā Affordable docsend alternative
ā
file.ai ā Classify, extract, enrich, and validate any file
Got a killer link we missed? Hit reply and share the goods. š

What do you think about Link & Load? |

š Tomorrowās Forecast
Eyes on CPI and that SEC rippleāexpect either fireworks or confetti. š

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