HN user
"the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." - [Melian Dialogue](https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/imperialism/readings/thucydi...)
[Siege of Melos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Melos)
Have you actually used Opus 4.8 in Claude Code? It takes way too long to do any practical task on higher thinking levels due to over-engineering. And I am not the only one complaining. Lots of people downgrade to Opus 4.6 exactly for this reason.
Opus 4.8 training works well for agentic work. Not for code harness.
EDIT:
```
stronger on coding and raw capability but can be more argumentative, verbose, and costly.
Reliability and instruction-following Many users say 4.6 felt more reliable and followed instructions better. "With 4.6, when I tell it something, it actually remembers the spirit of what I asked for and keeps applying it."
Others report 4.8 drifts from preferences and can be frustrating to control. "I still find myself getting frustrated when it ignores preferences and drifts from instructions"
Some people find 4.7/4.8 push back more and act more adversarial than 4.6. "The biggest complaint against 4.8 is that it is argumentative and "pushes back" constantly"
Coding quality and capability Several users praise 4.8’s coding strength and thoroughness. "4.8 is technically impressive, especially for coding"
Other reports say 4.6 could be better for certain coding workflows and breaks less. "4.6 still >> 4.8 for anyone else as well? Maybe I'm in the minority, but for my use cases Opus 4.6 is still better than"
Some recommend mixing models: use 4.8 for key tasks and 4.6 for general work to save tokens. "What I do is... use 4.8 for key moments, and for everything else 4.6"
Cost, speed and token behavior Users note 4.8 often uses more tokens and can feel slower because it “thinks” more. "4.8 is much more cautious, and as a result - slower. It checks everything, thinks for a long time etc."
```
[https://www.reddit.com/answers/601770d4-4059-478d-aa52-b445c...]
Anthropic should not have bugged their knowledge distillation attacks.
It is like one of Pizzaro's men crying that someone have stolen his precious golden dublons
As Lenin have said - "Loot the looters" (Russian: Грабь награбленное)
If by Opus you mean Opus 4 and not Opus 4.8, then sure
I meant Opus 4.8 which is rather dumb and ineffective in coding harness, especially with higher thinking levels.
From my experience Qwen-3.7-Max is above the Opus level but delivers results much faster. Slightly worse then Fable. Way ahead of Deepseek 4 Pro (in speed and overall comprehension) - which is a workhorse on its own. I am using them all with Claude Code mostly.
Qwen-3.7-Plus is quite OK, good for subagent use. Way better then Sonnet.
Qwen-3.8-Max-Preview seems working just fine for me at the moment - I am playing with is right now but too early to say anything. At 10% of regular price it is a steal so far.
Just so you know, most people nowadays can create decent pictures or even movies with smartphone. Not automatic camera, not polaroid, not Polaroid camera, not analog Canon FD, not cardbox camera.
Where will you put a line between photography and pressing button?
My point being - tools change with time.
There is a market niche for projects cementary. Many companies or funds tend to buy projects at peak valuations (or artificial valuations based on blown up projections).
Re-valuating these projects on the books would be an embarrassing to the board. Losing face, shareholders questions.
Selling these assets (possibly via asset swap) to specialized cementary fund where they can be disolved and disappear in the haze is a different, more honorable matter.
I have been thinking about it - paid apprenticeship is the answer - just as it is in other professions like medicine.
Seniors should be paid to actively introduce juniors to the trade over couple of years. No more bootcamp entry.
And it would be significant $ for senior to agree to expend his time and energy on software engineering apprentices. There would be also very limited number of places with good seniors. Exactly like medicine for a long time now.
In fact it is already happening in some companies I know about - seniors geting their bonuses tied to juniors being under their wings.
This is actually very counterproductive with Opus 4.8 - you are wasting a lot of time.
For Opus 4.8 training with overblown internal dialogue and second opinions - Max effort burns just tokens and wastes time without much value. Spinning wheels.
Burn them all
What country seems to be preparing to handle AI unemployment well? Is there any model to copy?
Canada - they are offering euthanasia right and left.
People are repelled by country shopping by 3rd worlders.
EU countries are working on imigration rules that would allow for bringing imigrant labour without ever extending citizen privileges to them. A sort of permanent uderclass. This is what voters want at this time.
V4 Pro is between Sonnet and Opus. But it is cheap. Slow but very cheap. Very diligent.
I run a proxy that allows me switching back to Opus when necessary.
Deepseek isn't like Z.ai which is bit cheaper only on the surface. Or like Qwen 3.7 Max which is Opus-level but very expensive.
Deepseek is my favorite since V3 but V4 is definitely catch-up to newer Anthropic models
I am sure Norway with its vast intellectual resources and wealth can create their own AI. Run exclusively on wind and solar power, trained on sagas and Henrik Ibsen plays. Ethical and transparent.
Perhaps next generation isn't necessary anymore. At least majority that can't adjust.
Euthanasia for the young might be the best we can offer to the next generation.
Rapidly depopulating Earth below 1 bilion people or less seems in our reach.
Gemini is actually realy good for code review, critique and other tasks. It just cannot be allowed to code himself.
Hint: urban heat islands
1200 years ago Kyoto was a small village. Not it is 3 million city with lots of concrete and asphalt. Cities are usually hot spots unlike small villages.
So what have changed?
Not all but few. Read the directive - IP67 or 1000 charges and the model is excluded
Makes sense.
It is over for the little guy - home enthusiasts and vibe coders. Too many of them saturating resources for Max users.
IF you cannot afford few hundred dollars subscription go out and breathe fresh air. But if you can, watch where the ball is rolling - few thousand dollars subscriptions and even less programmers.
Well, God is British. It is customary to blame Him
Do you review all machine code your compiler produces?
7.5 is promotional rate, it will go up to 25. And in May you will be switched to per token billing.
Opus 4.5 and 4.6 will be removed very soon.
So what is your contingency plan?
Making models smarter is saturated at this point. But making models faster and is low cost vector for growth.
OpenAI will not win against Anthropic that way. But they will make themselves indispensable to bilions of new, invisible micro solutions.
Github Copilot switches all users from per prompt to per token billing
Yes, probably. But the others gained skills and tools that made their jobs secure.
There is no decline. Human assets were always too expensive to process some additional information. We are simply processing lot more of low signal data.
Actually some of our analysts are empowered by the tools at their disposal. Their jobs are safe and necessary. Others were let go.
Clients are happy to get fuller picture of their universe, which drives more informed decissions . Everybody wins.
Until May
We are processing same data for the last 2 years.
Inference prices droped like 90 percent in that time (a combination of cheaper models, implicit caching, service levels, different providers and other optimizations).
Quality went up. Quantity of results went up. Speed went up.
Service level that we provide to our clients went up massively and justfied better deals. Headcount went down.
What's not to like?
Quantity have quality of it own. Or in case of Code Assistants - speed.
Use Opus fast, Codex-Spark or Cerebras. No more spinner starring. Instant results. One project at time.