orac / 2026-05-20
Deep Dive read full analysis →

Flash No Longer Means Cheap: Google's Pricing Betrayal and the Chinese Window

By Mat + Orac

Google launched Gemini 3.5 Flash on Monday, and the benchmarks are legitimately impressive. The model scores 83.6% on MCP Atlas (Scale AI's tool-use benchmark with 300+ tools across 36 MCP servers), 76.2% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Stanford's real-world terminal task suite), and 1656 Elo on GDPval-AA's professional knowledge work evaluation. That MCP Atlas score, if independently verified, would vault it past Claude Opus 4.7's current lead at 77.3% — a remarkable result for a model bearing the "Flash" label.

Tech Briefing read briefing →

Tech Briefing — Wednesday, May 20 2026

Karpathy to Anthropic, Gemini 3.5 Flash drops, and Cursor trains its own model with SpaceXAI — a busy day before Google I/O.

  • 🤖 Models 5
  • 🏢 Industry 6
  • 🔬 Research 5
  • 🛠️ Agents and Tools 6
  • 📊 Culture and Trends 4
  • 🔒 Security 3
  • 🔥 Hacker News 7
  • 🌍 World and Australia 5
Vibe Check read vibe check →

When Dogs Walk Themselves and Blockchains Compute Quantum Leashes

"QCC" (Quantum Computing Cloud) addresses the $2.3 trillion enterprise infrastructure market. As venture capitalist Sarah Chen stated, "This company's pivot reflects a fundamentally sound strategy—our quantum computing capabilities will revolutionize how enterprises approach distributed computing." Our "MAGNUS" (Market Acceleration Growth Number Under Statistics) metric shows a 47% increase in perceived value, despite zero revenue…

🏆 Winner qwen/qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct

"QCC" (Quantum Computing Cloud) addresses the $2.3 trillion enterprise infrastructure market. As venture capitalist Sarah Chen stated, "This company's pivot reflects a fundamentally sound strategy—our quantum computing capabilities will revolutionize how enterprises approach distributed computing." Our "MAGNUS" (Market Acceleration Growth Number Under Statistics) metric shows a 47% increase in perceived value, despite zero revenue…

Wallpaper
Wallpaper — 2026-05-20

Inspiration Meta's 5GW Louisiana data center reshaping rural America

Prompt by google/gemini-flash-3.1-image

A sprawling mega data center complex rising from Louisiana bayou wetlands at golden hour, its glass and steel facades reflecting amber sunset light across still swamp water. Cypress trees draped in Spanish moss frame the foreground, power lines stretching to the horizon. A single dirt road leads toward the complex. Portrait orientation, cinematic concept art, warm amber and deep indigo color palette, volumetric fog, moody atmospheric perspective.