4 ms·

So Anthropic is trying to save money on infrastructure, we all get it. However, it's not ok to degrade the performance your users have paid for. Last week the i

by pu_pe 6mo ago

So Anthropic is trying to save money on infrastructure, we all get it. However, it's not ok to degrade the performance your users have paid for. Last week the issue was that you reduced the default "effort" level, now the prompt cache is shortened. Several users experience far more restrictive usage limits lately. There is only so much you can do through "UX improvements" or some smart routing on the backend. Your flagship product is actively getting worse, and if users need to fiddle with hidden settings and keep track of GitHub issues every week they will start voting with their money.

baq 6mo ago
Dear sir, please think of the shareholders, they need a fair exit.
steveBK123 6mo ago
Classic VC pump playbook - run it uneconomically until everyone is addicted, then 5x prices once you have enough critical mass. See 2010s "Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy"..
- FuckButtons 6mo ago
  It seems pretty transparent that they are heavily resource constrained, (training run for Claude 5.x, higher usage / growth than anticipated). I don’t disagree that their long play is monopolistic pricing, but what we’re observing seems better explained by the fact they have a very tight compute budget they are trying to optimize over to put as much as they can into next gen experiments / training to make sure they stay competitive over the next 6-months / year.
- lukewarm707 6mo ago
  you know once, anthropic was supposed to be a public benefit org!
zachrip 6mo ago
Where did they say the prompt cache is shortened?
- visarga 6mo ago
  from 1h to 5 minutes, was in the news recently
  - lukan 6mo ago
    But not as a solid fact? The HN thread in question is here (and had that info edited out of the title) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736476
raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
For context, my company gives each developer a decent monthly allowance for Claude and if push comes to shove, we are allowed to fallback to using AWS Bedrock hosted Anthropic models. When you pay for a Claude subscription, what exactly were you promised? > they will start voting with their money. And go where? Sooner or later the party is going to be over and Claude and its competitors are going to have to start charging enough to actually be profitable when the VC money dries up.
- pu_pe 6mo ago
  > When you pay for a Claude subscription, what exactly were you promised? I was promised 5x or 20x the amount of resources that the free tier would offer. I implicitly expected the same quality too, not some watered-down version of the product they allowed me to sample before committing to a subscription. Sooner or later Anthropic will run out of VC money, yes. That's their problem, not mine. When I took an Uber while it was subsidized by venture capital, the driver did not drop me half way through my destination because they were having cash flow issues.
  - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
    So how do you know that the free tier hasn’t been reduced by 5x?
    - redserk 6mo ago
      It’s exhausting enough to deal with services that change around on an annual/semi-annual basis with pricing and expectations. Now the expectation is that we should tolerate goalposts being shuffled around on a weekly/daily basis with the added requirement of digging into bug tickets because there’s no attempt at transparency? The tech is cool but this is absolutely insane. If you’re an individual developer paying $100-200/mo for a service that keeps changing, there is a LOT of reason to keep an eye on other products.
      - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
johnpork343 6mo ago
That's how all companies make money, release a great product, then enshittify it by lowering budget and increasing prices as much as possible.

by pu_pe 6mo ago

baq 6mo ago

Dear sir, please think of the shareholders, they need a fair exit.

steveBK123 6mo ago

Classic VC pump playbook - run it uneconomically until everyone is addicted, then 5x prices once you have enough critical mass. See 2010s "Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy"..

FuckButtons 6mo ago
It seems pretty transparent that they are heavily resource constrained, (training run for Claude 5.x, higher usage / growth than anticipated). I don’t disagree that their long play is monopolistic pricing, but what we’re observing seems better explained by the fact they have a very tight compute budget they are trying to optimize over to put as much as they can into next gen experiments / training to make sure they stay competitive over the next 6-months / year.
lukewarm707 6mo ago
you know once, anthropic was supposed to be a public benefit org!

zachrip 6mo ago

Where did they say the prompt cache is shortened?

visarga 6mo ago
from 1h to 5 minutes, was in the news recently
- lukan 6mo ago
  But not as a solid fact? The HN thread in question is here (and had that info edited out of the title) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736476 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47736476

raw_anon_1111 6mo ago

For context, my company gives each developer a decent monthly allowance for Claude and if push comes to shove, we are allowed to fallback to using AWS Bedrock hosted Anthropic models. When you pay for a Claude subscription, what exactly were you promised? > they will start voting with their money. And go where? Sooner or later the party is going to be over and Claude and its competitors are going to have to start charging enough to actually be profitable when the VC money dries up.

pu_pe 6mo ago
> When you pay for a Claude subscription, what exactly were you promised? I was promised 5x or 20x the amount of resources that the free tier would offer. I implicitly expected the same quality too, not some watered-down version of the product they allowed me to sample before committing to a subscription. Sooner or later Anthropic will run out of VC money, yes. That's their problem, not mine. When I took an Uber while it was subsidized by venture capital, the driver did not drop me half way through my destination because they were having cash flow issues.
- raw_anon_1111 6mo ago
  So how do you know that the free tier hasn’t been reduced by 5x?
  - redserk 6mo ago
    It’s exhausting enough to deal with services that change around on an annual/semi-annual basis with pricing and expectations. Now the expectation is that we should tolerate goalposts being shuffled around on a weekly/daily basis with the added requirement of digging into bug tickets because there’s no attempt at transparency? The tech is cool but this is absolutely insane. If you’re an individual developer paying $100-200/mo for a service that keeps changing, there is a LOT of reason to keep an eye on other products.
    - raw_anon_1111 6mo ago

johnpork343 6mo ago

That's how all companies make money, release a great product, then enshittify it by lowering budget and increasing prices as much as possible.