Way offtopic to TFA now, but isn't using an improved harness a bit like saying "I'm going to hardcore as many priors as possible into this thing so it succeeds regardless of its ability to strategize, plan and execute?

While true to a degree, I think this is largely wrong. Wouldn't it still count as a "harness" if we provided these LLMs with full robotic control of two humanoid arms, so that it could hold a Gameboy and play the game that way? I don't think the lack of that level of human-ness takes away from the demonstration of long-context reasoning that the GPP stream showed.

Claude got stuck reasoning its way through one of the more complex puzzle areas. Gemini took a while on it also, but made it through. I don't that difference can be fully attributed up to the harnesses.

Obviously, the best thing to do would be to run a SxS in the same harness of the two models. Maybe that will happen?

it is. the benchmark was somewhat cheated, from the perspective of finding out how the model adjusts and plans within a dynamic reactive environment

They asked gemini to come up with another word for cheating and it came up with 'harness'.