Pareto 26.9 vs Ember-1
Pareto 26.9 took 10 min 32 s and $0.34 at list price, Ember-1 took 25 min 56 s and $1.78 at list price. Ember-1 took 2.5× as long and cost 5.3× as much.
Pareto 26.9
Unbiased · $7.50/M out
Ember-1
Fireworks · $15.00/M out · 589 HN pts
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is a small workshop in the heart of Rotterdam, where three people spend their days elbow-deep in the guts of vintage synthesizers. We fix the machines that made the sounds you grew up with—the ones that shaped entire genres and then got left in basements when the tech moved on. But we're not a museum. Our benches are covered in solder, schematics, and the occasional broken key that's been there for two weeks longer than we'd like to admit.
We started this studio because we got tired of seeing classic gear being stripped for parts, or worse, turned into Instagram decor. These instruments deserve better. They were built to make noise, and we want to keep them doing exactly that.
Between the three of us, we've fixed everything from a 1960s Buchla to a beat-up Juno that fell down a flight of stairs. If you've got a synth that's gone quiet, bring it in. We'll bring it back.
Patchbay is a three-person workshop in Rotterdam dedicated to keeping vintage synthesizers alive. We work on the machines that shaped electronic music — analog polysynths, temperamental drum machines, early digital oddities — replacing tired capacitors, rebuilding keybeds, and coaxing silent oscillators back into tune.
Between us we bring decades of experience in electronics, instrument design, and music-making, but what unites us is simpler: we believe these machines were built to be played, not displayed. Every repair happens by hand at our benches, with period-correct components wherever possible and thoughtful modern solutions where reliability demands it. We test everything the only way that matters — by listening.
Whether your Juno has lost a voice, your 808 has lost its kick, or a flea-market find needs a full restoration, we treat each instrument as if it were heading back to a studio, a stage, and a long life of making noise. Because it is.
Specs and numbers
| Pareto 26.9 | Ember-1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Unbiased | Fireworks |
| Made in | — | US |
| Released | 13 Oct 2026 | 24 Sep 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $2.50 | $3.00 |
| Price out, per M tokens | $7.50 | $15.00 |
| Context | 262,144 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | closed |
| Hacker News points | — | 589 |
| Time for the six prompts | 10 min 32 s | 25 min 56 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.34 | $1.78 |
Pareto 26.9 was cheaper: $1.44 less at list price, and less on each of the 6 prompts. Pareto 26.9 was faster: 15 min 24 s less in total, and faster on each of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, both Breakout games play. Pareto 26.9's landing page was cut off at the output limit (12,000 tokens).
Rebuild this screen experiment: Ember-1's rebuild matched the screenshot at 67%; Pareto 26.9 was not in it. Tea Garden experiment: Ember-1's game passed 5 of 5 checks; Pareto 26.9 was not in it.