alt Hacker NewsThey can get away with it because they are so far ahead of OpenAI models for coding, it's not like you can switch to anything else if you don't like it. Astra is even worse than nerfed 5.5.
Pretty much the only alternative is loading up some credits and using Fable.
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Every time I read something like this that doesn't match my experience I'm bewildered until I remember that providers play quality games and that everybody's workload and harness is different. For me GPT 6.1 Sol is tremendous value and excellent at low-level work like DSP and 3D game engines whereas Opus is more expensive and not as capable. I also don't get along with DeepSeek at all even though everybody on HN seems to think it's the second coming.
A neutral third party who runs a matrix of closed-source coding benchmarks across multiple harnesses would be helpful but that'd take a lot of time and money...
How can you even tell? Do you have an experiment I could run right now which would would prove it to myself.
Nice try Amodei, but buying openai or anthropic credits is equivalent to just setting your money on fire.
DeepSeek, Qwen.
Astra when it hit the ground felt like “A Fable monent”: it was so good and concise and just was done with whatever task in a short time, where opus and fable sometimes can take forever. I think it lasted a week or two until it started to deteriorate to where we are now. Coincided nicely with the stopping of codex20 subscriptions etc.