PlanAssist adds 12 councils and can cut planning officer assessment time by up to 58%. In pilots, over 70% of generated reports required no edits. A 12-month beta will involve 15 councils total.
Key points
Time reduction: up to 58% less assessment time.
Expansion: made available to 12 additional councils.
Sources
- Original post
- Speeding up planning decisions with AI - Linked page
Gemini 4 Carbon debuts at #1 on APEX-Agents with 90%+ mean
Gemini 4 Carbon leads APEX-Agents leaderboard with 84.2% Pass@1 and 90.4% mean, the only model above a 90% mean. It ranks #1 in management consulting (91.9% Pass@1) and investment banking (86.9% Pass@1), and #2 in corporate law (73.8% Pass@1).
Key points
Gemini 4 Carbon: 84.2% Pass@1, 90.4% mean on APEX-Agents.
Management consulting: 91.9% Pass@1, #1 position.
Investment banking: 86.9% Pass@1, #1 position.
Corporate law: 73.8% Pass@1, #2 position, trailing Argon’s 76.7% (#1).
Sources
Loop Scaling paper reports 1B-parameter models, 32 loops
Loop Scaling paper reports 1B-parameter models, 32 loops, trained on 155B tokens with 1.07×10^21 FLOPs. Full-transformer looping gives strongest quality at a fixed parameter budget. Looping a middle block of layers gives a better return when training FLOPs are constrained.
Key points
Experiments span models up to 1B parameters, trained on up to 155B tokens using up to 1.07 × 10^21 training FLOPs, with up to 32 loops.
Looping the full transformer generally gives the strongest quality at a fixed parameter budget, whereas looping a middle block of layers gives a better return when training FLOPs are constrained.
Sources
Altair 8800 replica on Tang Nano 9K UART sends Hello
Altair 8800 replica on Tang Nano 9K UART sends "Hello world" at 115,200 baud. The transmission is captured by a $10 logic analyser and displayed in a Mac terminal.
Key points
UART state machine in Verilog sends "Hello world" at 115,200 baud.
$10 logic analyser decodes the output and prints it on a Mac terminal.
Sources
Project Suncatcher hello world milestone, first response
Project Suncatcher achieved a hello world milestone by sending a command to orbit, booting the TPU and receiving a haiku response. The response was a complete haiku returned to Earth.
Key points
Command sent to orbit
TPU booted, prompt run, haiku received
Sources
GoogleDeepMind AI agents design and build 12-DOF robot
GoogleDeepMind AI agents designed, simulated, and built a physical dancing robot with 12 degrees of freedom from a plain-English prompt. The robot was created without manual CAD.
Key points
Design: AI agents designed, simulated, and built a physical robot.
Specs: Robot has 12 degrees of freedom and was created from a single plain-English prompt with no manual CAD.
