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0xbadcafebee
boldlybold
Illegal is a strong term here. While the wiki link you included indicates there might be some permitting nuances, I've seen nothing claiming the power is "illegal."
Thrymr
xAI removed its illegal gas turbines and obtained permits for the others only after being sued by the Southern Environmental Law Center. They then built another unpermitted site (Colossus 2) across the state line in Mississippi, and they are being sued again. [0]
"The company began operations at its first site, Colossus 1, in June of 2024 and used as many as 35 unpermitted gas turbines to power the facility. Despite receiving intense public pushback over the use of illegal turbines and the lack of public input and transparency around Colossus 1, xAI officials said it planned on “copying and pasting” its unlawful turbine strategy to power Colossus 2."
"xAI removed its unpermitted turbines at the Colossus 1 data center after SELC, on behalf of the NAACP, sent a notice of intent to sue under the Clean Air Act. The company obtained permits for its remaining 15 turbines."
[0] https://www.selc.org/news/xai-built-an-illegal-power-plant-t...
486sx33
They did not require permits at the time as they were portable Think transport trailer sized. If you use portable power for under 365 days a year, an epa permit was not required. They changed the rules on permitting after and xAI complied
everfrustrated
[flagged]
BrianGragg
[flagged]
fancyfredbot
The ethics are questionable, legal or not. Anthropic are tarnishing their image again here.
Not sure how much it hurts then compared to blocking openclaw though.
DonsDiscountGas
I don't quite understand the business logic behind "blocking" openclaw (you can still use it at API rates) but I never saw how this was unethical. Anthropic has no ethical obligation to support other people's software
port11
I find the ethics of power generation, resource use, and pollution in a world struggling with climate change to be more of a challenge than whether a few people can run some software. And that’s coming from a Claude user that’s getting tired of their shenanigans.
breadsniffer
from perplexity deep research: "Colossus‑related gas‑turbine power plants have been run in ways alleged to violate the Clean Air Act, in already over‑polluted Black and low‑income communities near Memphis, and Anthropic has now become the main user of that infrastructure."
sources: https://www.tba.org/?pg=Hastings2025AIX (Tech, Toxins, and Memphis: Evaluating the Environmental Footprint of the xAI Facility)
lostmsu
Any specifics? What are they doing and what statutes are allegedly being violated?
ethagknight
I live in Memphis, none of this is true. What is true is that there is a concerted effort to smear anything related to xAI‘s presence in Memphis for some reason.
For some facts, the colossus data center is next-door to a steel mill and city sewage treatment plant, a vacated gigawatt scale coal power plant complete with nasty Coal Ash Ponds, and a brand new combined cycle gas power plant. The area is at the far edge of Memphis city limits up against the river, in a heavy industrial area. There’s even a major Valero oil refinery right there too.
Memphis has trillions and trillions of gallons of water, both in a gigantic underground aquifers and the Mississippi River itself. xAI has agreed to shed load in case of impending brownouts. The fear mongering is out of control.
They had a ton of portable turbines that were under operating under a temporary permit, and that was the disputed part. However, the blame should rest with TVA and or Memphis light gas and water for not being able to run an appropriate high voltage connection less than 1 mile from the plant to the data center in a timely manner. However… What difference does it make if the natural gas is burned at TVA plant or very similar gas turbines on site in the same neighborhood. Environmental groups and the county health department tried suing, was struck down, xAI works closely with the State, but the whining continues. xAI is paying gargantuan taxes to the city, no tax breaks.
These environmental groups do not care about the nasty unregulated cars burning oil, that I have to breathe every day. We terminated our motor vehicle inspection requirements due to the “burden” it places on the low income population. So they can burn their oil in my face, but then they sue to stop a SOTA turbine in an industrial area? There are junkyards in these same areas that burn their piles of waste tires every year or so “on accident”. No lawsuits there either.
pathartl
We have similar issues here in Wisconsin. Especially when it comes to solar and battery storage facilities. I absolutely think there needs to be more regulations carved out for data centers, just as there is for any other industrial building, but yeah the great mongering is incredible to see. Especially when the argument of "save our beautiful farmlands" is brought up. Do you even know how nasty agricultural runoff is?
whamlastxmas
Agreed there is a huge effort to smear as much as possible. Between parent comment being very highly voted and Wikipedia page being militantly updated and seeing these tired, wrong talking points everywhere, it's pretty obvious
rcbdev
> profits matter more than safety
For all the big talk from U.S.-Americans on European 'overregulation', they sure seem to have much more dystopian societal failure modes materialize.
timmmmmmay
it's in a former appliance factory that's right next to two pre-existing TVA power plants, a Nucor steel mill, and a sewage treatment facility. you've been lied to about how close it is to a residential area, just look at a map
0xbadcafebee
"The independent study, conducted by EmPower Analytics Group and commissioned by the Southern Environmental Law Center, was led by a Harvard-trained environmental health scientist Dr. Michael Cork and shows that operation of xAI’s proposed permanent gas turbines would measurably increase health risks for families throughout the area—even in places as far away as Germantown and North Memphis." - https://www.memphiscap.org/
alsetmusic
Air pollution travels.
causal
So I was just Googling this, and apparently most datacenters don't pay any state tax on revenue generated by said datacenter? Huge loophole if true, no wonder capital investment in datacenters is so high. [0]
[0] https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/regulations/how-are-data...
polski-g
I like how you said "googling this", but then didn't actually read the article you linked.
causal
> In general, data centers only pay corporate income tax if they generate revenue. Not all data centers do this because many don’t sell goods or services; they simply house servers. By qualifying as business expenses rather than revenue generators, they reduce the tax liability of their parent companies.
> Thus, when it comes to income tax, at least, many data centers – especially hyperscale data centers owned by large companies – don’t generate tax revenue because they don’t generate direct operating income.
matthewiiiv
Are you going to stop using Claude Code then?
Zetaphor
Yes. Was that supposed to be a gotcha? Local models are becoming more useful, and I still remember how to write code.
andsoitis
Now that you have stopped using Claude Code, what have you replaced it with? Would love to know your setup. I am experimenting with local models too, but nothing comes close to Claude (Code), at least for me - not just for coding, mind you.
Rover222
Get out of your bubble, my god.
ETH_start
Not every allegation that appears in print is true. One should be very skeptical about these kinds of allegations, especially when there are deep-pocketed corporations involved who can be sued or pressured to settle in the face of sufficiently "plausible and persistent" (to borrow Hazlitt's term) claims of harm done by their operations.
undefined
arian_
Anthropic renting out the data center Elon built for Grok is the kind of plot twist you can't make up.
brokencode
Pretty smart for SpaceX though. They’re turning an asset they made for a money-pit (Grok) into probably a major source of revenue ahead of their IPO.
floatrock
We all remember 2 weeks ago when SpaceX bought $10B of Cursor services. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47855293
Since Cursor often relies on Claude models, some of those services will flow back to their own datacenter compute. Especially if there's, lets call it, "customer demand loadbalancing optimization agreements" that makes those Cursor services prioritize Claude models using the app keys that get load-balanced onto the SpaceX datacenter.
Did SpaceX just spend $10B to rent out its own datacenter, juicing their recurring revenue metrics with their own AI services investment?
selicos
If the question involves Elon and fraud or pumping numbers, then the answer is yes.
predkambrij
Either way, now those datacenters run Claude that they didn't before.
jordanb
Big wheel keeps on turning
giwook
I don't think it's the conspiracy theory that you're making it out to be.
It is publicly known that the vast majority of deals in the AI space are circular in nature without the need for explicitly encoding any of it in a legal contract or even tacit agreements.
e.g. Nvidia has invested significantly in many AI companies including both Anthropic and OpenAI which rely heavily on Nvidia's hardware and will undoubtedly use some of said investment towards that end.
nutjob2
It's the circle jerk economy.
Companies appear to be spending endless billions on AI but ultimately it's a huge wank.
dlev_pika
When you put it like that sounds like another subprime crash in the making lol
Thrymr
Sure, if "pretty smart" means overinvest in capital spending on an dirty datacenter powered by unpermitted gas generators that you don't even need anymore because of lack of demand for your product, so you lease it to a competitor (presumably at a huge loss). I am not sure that "major source of revenue" as a datacenter provider is the kind of growth opportunity that IPO investors are looking for.
cavisne
Definitely not going to be leasing it at a loss. GPU's are sold out, Anthropic will be paying a significant premium.
hx8
> presumably at a huge loss
Why do you say that? I was under the impression that everyone in the datacenter business was printing money.
undefined
runako
The financials for a Musk company do not, and will not, affect investor sentiment in the slightest.
Investors in the SpaceX IPO are buying a call option on Musk.
23rf
Its not even that. Its better to be involved in the game with a leader/help out a competitor who is competing against someone you don't like and don't want them to win, than to sit it out.
giwook
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
undefined
AntiUSAbah
Thats just bullshit in this corporate world.
If he could fill his Datacenter with Grok use, he would make a lot more money.
This is not a good sign at all.
AntiUSAbah
The weird thing is, that the IPO might still work out for him and save his ass again.
At least he doesn't come across as a happy person...
While i'm really curious though when someone might hit him back after all the garbage he did and still does
BrianGragg
I see it more of lets make money off the hardware we are not using anymore.
From Elon on X: ... After that, I was ok leasing Colossus 1 to Anthropic, as SpaceXAI had already moved training to Colossus 2.
philipwhiuk
But like... most companies are so short of GPUs they'd run it on anything. SpaceXAI not needing the compute is not really a good sign imo.
ur-whale
[dead]
ur-whale
[dead]
cedws
It was pretty obvious to me that the merger was a way of quietly shutting xAI down in a way that keeps investors happy. With it also being used as a vehicle to offload the Twitter debt to the public, he certainly has good accountants.
HarHarVeryFunny
Yep - and in the meantime it's an asset of SpaceX to boost their IPO price, as long as this is done before people realize that xAI is apparently becoming a datacenter company not an AI one.
Then you've got SpaceX buying 1200 cybertrucks from Tesla, so it's serving as failure laundering vehicle for all his endeavors.
nerdsniper
> it's serving as failure laundering vehicle for all his endeavors.
Which would be fine to me if Tesla wasn't a publicly traded company and SpaceX wasn't about to IPO. Whereas juicing companies in a way that affects the open stock market feels very inappropriate.
kcb
Elon Musk has been failing any minute now since like what? 2015
redox99
Why would they spend 10B and potentially 60B in cursor if they were to shut xAI down? And I'm pretty sure Elon wants to have a model of his own, even if weaker, so it's "not woke".
whamlastxmas
The idea they're shutting down xAI is outrageously dumb and to me just sounds like FUD before the IPO
charlieflowers
Not a merger, right, unless I missed something (admittedly skimming).
nprateem
Yeah it's corporate subprime. Bundle a load of overpriced "assets" with made up valuations into something that's actually valuable, then shove it on the public markets so everyone has to buy it in their index trackers.
freakynit
Excess money and influence makes a lot of things possible. Evil or good, that's a separate discussion.
aurareturn
Plot twist but makes perfect sense for both companies.
Anthropic gets the compute they so desperately need to keep growing. Elon rents out compute that xAI couldn't make use of due to little demand for Grok. SpaceX gets revenue on the books for IPO.
PS. I want to translate this part:
We’re very intentional about where we’ll add capacity—partnering with democratic countries whose legal and regulatory frameworks support investments of this scale
We're putting profits above anything else. Yes, Elon is a far right guy who supported Trump, a president who isn't very democratic, but we're just really desperate for more money. We're also trying to make you forget that xAI is funded by Middle East non-democratic governments. Heck, we'll even buy compute from China if we can sell Anthropic models there.VortexLain
>we'll even buy compute from China if we can sell Anthropic models there.
Considering that Anthropic mass-bans Chinese users accounts based on using VPN (used to circumvent the Chinese firewall) and then demands an ID or a residence permit of a country where Claude officially works to ensure that the user doesn't live in China, seems unlikely.
aurareturn
If the Chinese government tells Anthropic they can freely sell Claude in China, Dario is suddenly going to be kissing China's ass instead of saying how we can't let China win the AGI race for democracy and western values.
phatfish
Which naive souls are downvoting this? Anthropic is speed running Google's "don't be evil" mantra.
toephu2
> funded by Middle East non-democratic governments
What's the problem here exactly? Are you insinuating any non-democratic government is bad and evil and only democratic governments are the correct and right way to govern? sort of like: "there is only one true prophet, and it's the one I follow, and all the others are false!"
driverdan
> Are you insinuating any non-democratic government is bad and evil
The ones run by people who chop up journalists certainly are.
aurareturn
No, I didn't say that.
My point is that Anthropic cares a lot about "democracy" but will buy compute from a data center mostly funded by non-democratic nations.
whamlastxmas
I would say ruling over people without their consent is blatantly morally wrong, yes. In the same way anything non consensual is wrong
lern_too_spel
Anthropic brought up the "democratic" justification, not GP. GP was just pointing out that Anthropic doesn't actually care. If it can get a sweetheart deal from an autocrat, it'll take it.
But assuming there are people that care, if a government doesn't derive its right to govern from the will of the people it governs, under what definitions can it be considered legitimate? Divine right of kings?
shimman
Yes, especially in the context of supporting US imperialism and capitalists interests (perpetual war + extraction machine) over what would actually benefit Americans: peace + cooperation initiatives. Something also tells me that American civilians would rather cooperate with peaceful governments than those that feed the blood machine.
America could do so much to compel the world to work in from a human rights perspective rather than petrodollars. I can't imagine any serious person would say the average American benefits from US imperialism. All US politicians did was traded away were secure middle class lifestyle for cheaper widgets, hardly anything worth caring about.
Who benefits from American petrodollar policies? Not Americans, all the wealth gets extracted to the elites while civilians suffer from the imperial blowback/boomerang.
Look at what the new deal coalition brought in and they nearly burnt out enough to allow neoliberalism to flourish during their fall. What do we have in return? No universal healthcare, no universal childcare, a broken welfare system, increasing income inequality, losing the ability to make a better life.
2ndorderthought
Don't forget the whole, "maybe this will make it easier for xAi to distill anthropic models and we can make another attempt at mechahitler"
foobar_______
Thank you for the "real speak" section. Accurate and hilarious.
dboreham
I'm just relieved to read that it isn't in fact...in space.
stevefan1999
SPAAAAAAAACEEEEEEEEEE (it is a Portal 2 space sphere reference)
georgemcbay
I'd rather it be in space than where it is now, poisoning people in the rural parts of Memphis with off-gassing from their methane turbines.
robwwilliams
Urban/industrial and refinery complex; not at all rural. Located about 8 miles southwest of downtown Memphis (3231 Paul Lowery Rd) on a bend of the river.
gpugreg
> As part of this agreement, we have also expressed interest in partnering with SpaceX to develop multiple gigawatts of orbital AI compute capacity.
Anthropic is either taking this space business more serious than the general public, or posting this sentence was part of the deal to get the compute.
airspresso
> posting this sentence was part of the deal to get the compute
This 100%
theptip
But also - anyone would be interested in purchasing orbital compute at the price Elon is quoting.
londons_explore
Expressing an interest is presumably free... So anthropic might as well.
Sevii
Anthropic needs any compute they can get. So if Elon wants to build orbital data centers Anthropic would be happy to run models on it. There isn't really any doubt Elon can build orbital data centers the question is if they are economical compared to earth based.
cyclopeanutopia
What are you talking about
There is no doubt that it's not a serious idea.
charlieflowers
Help me understand why not? I know solar power generation in space, and "beaming" the power back, was a naive idea. But this would actually use the power up there, mostly for training, but also for inference.
That claim seems reasonable. I have zero knowledge of the economics of launching and maintaining satellites though.
signatoremo
[flagged]
23rf
I love how this line of thinking completely avoids the issue re. improvements in local models.
I suppose if you are desperate to justify a large investment this what you would do - frame the story in a particular way.
impulser_
Local models are always going to be useless unless compute get significantly cheaper, and it's not. TSMC might literally run out of capacity to build any consumer compute product.
Once computer constraints ease up, you will see much larger models. The reason LLM seems to have stalled a bit is because there just not enough compute.
You have more people using AI which requires more compute, and you want to build larger models which requires more compute and you have limited compute. What do you do?
undefined
JMKH42
I don't think space compute is going to work out, but I would certainly say "yes happy to buy space compute from you in the future if you offer it at a good price"
If it happens it happens, if not, it doesn't.
CamperBob2
It makes no sense. We're being presented with a forced choice -- put them in space, or put them in the middle of downtown Seattle.
This is stupid. I don't understand what's happening... specifically, what mental virus is spreading that lowers everybody's IQ by 10-20 points, evidently including my own. Put the data centers in the ocean, powered by solar and networked with Starlink or LEO. Put them in the desert. Put them 20 miles south of Nowhere, Idaho.
But space?!
Karrot_Kream
Because the US has levied high tariffs on solar cells, can't build their own solar cells economically enough, and has such a torrid permitting system that it can't build transmission lines. Natural gas is the only form of generation that's easy to permit outside cities (due to pipeline agreements and this admin fast-tracking natural gas generation approval) but few cities will allow one. DCs need to be built within low latency interconnect of urban areas or else they become uncompetitive.
Elon claims (which I take with a huge grain of salt because he's made endless broken promises in investor calls and interviews) that he disagrees with the administration's stance on solar and would use it to power his DCs if he could, but contends that permitting is a huge problem.
The US needs to figure out how to build again.
> This is stupid. I don't understand what's happening... specifically, what mental virus
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes"
zeafoamrun
The middle of downtown Seattle would be greatly improved if it were replaced by a giant data center.
joshstrange
Ehh, I think they are just "kissing the ring". This was part of the agreement for the terrestrial datacenter access, pretend like the space orbital compute is more than the boondoggle that it clearly is.
I want to be clear, I do think that one day something like that will exist, I just don't think it's anywhere close to being a reality, much like FSD.
Also it costs them, almost [0], nothing to say it and then later come up with some reason why they are no longer interested.
[0] Maybe a little bit of respect
re-thc
> or posting this sentence was part of the deal to get the compute
All it says is expressed interest.
That's like asking a casual how are you...
anthonypasq
most of the big tech ceos have mentioned this.
shimman
Most big tech CEOs are people that only "succeeded" due to have an unregulated monopoly or picking the right lotto ticket and not due to any innate above average intelligence. Go look at the 100s of billions in wasted capital and tell me who benefitted from such waste while workers + children suffer from lack of medical care.
You honestly expect this trajectory to continue unabated?
pdimitar
> You honestly expect this trajectory to continue unabated?
Knowing humanity's history, yes. Not sure we're ever going to see a second French Revolution. People are pacified and are not rioting. And they really should. Most of us are kind of privileged. I know people out there who are barely holding on and the recent fuel + food price increases might push them over the edge to actual poverty.
Rover222
It’s weird to not take this seriously. It’s obvious it’s serious and they’re pursuing it.
s08148692
The whole armchair engineer debate online about this is hilarious
I'm just a software engineer, all I need to know is SpaceX is aggressively pursuing this - that's enough for me to believe it's viable
SpaceX operates literally orders of magnitudes more satellites than anyone else. If anybody understands the physics and engineering of space compute, it's SpaceX. Lay people debating this online is just showing their ignorance as far as I'm concerned, and it mostly comes from an emotional place of wanting Musk enterprises to fail
scottyah
Thank you for a reasonable comment. I know internet people love to comment on how "dumb" things are, but we're seeing a growing group of funded, motivated, and intelligent people working towards a common goal. It's at least something to be curious about, I wish the comments were more oriented towards in-depth discussions on the actual current blockers.
aayushdutt
[flagged]
0dayz
Has anthropic said Elon is evil or why else is this relevant?
Ironically it is Elon who has said that anthropic is evil:
https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-teams-up-with-anthropic-a-comp...
And if you need to be reminded: https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...
prohobo
They're in every discussion even remotely related to anything Elon Musk.
Everything Elon does is somehow stupid or evil. Actually, that reminds me of Thunderf00t YouTube streams where he was (or still is?) betting Starship would fail miserably every test flight, and he'd talk about how evil and stupid Elon is for 3 hours with chatters, watch the flight then say something like "it's still bullshit."
I think it's a mixture of cope and a little bit psyop from adversaries like Russia who are being crippled in Ukraine because of Starlink.
mirzap
Doubling the five-hour rate limits is merely a marketing stunt if the weekly rates are not also doubled. It simply means that you can reach the weekly limits in three days instead of five.
swalsh
I have never come close to my weekly limit, but have hit my hourly limit frequently.
codazoda
Same. I hit limits after 45 minutes. I'm on a measly Pro plan. I'm usually building small, open source projects, often from scratch. I only work on these projects in a 2-hour window in the morning. This is my "free time" development. I hope this change helps, because I was days away from switching back to Codex, though I like Claude Code a bit better these days.
I also hope that the fact I had OpenClaw in my sandbox once is not why I hit these limits so damn fast. I don't use it anymore and I've tried to rid my sandbox of anything "openclaw" but it is in my git history in various places on various projects. Claude doesn't seem to be transparent about this limitation.
bryanhogan
You should definitely try:
- Codex
- OpenCode Go
- Ollama Cloud
All are very useful, still a subscription, but with higher usage limits.
Specific providers like GLM also provide subscriptions like Z.ai.
Using DeepSeek, Kimi etc. through OpenRouter or from them directly is also great, here you pay per token but it's still more usage overall.
piyh
Are you using haiku for most tasks? I'm in the Google ecosystem so I'm curious how it is on the other side.
mirzap
For me it's the opposite. I almost never hit hourly limit, but I hit weekly limit in about 5 days.
nickthegreek
Would be more meaningful if everyone said what plan they are on, as there are 3 different ones that users could be discussing.
extr
What does your usage look like day to day? Are you using a low level amount all day long? I'm with the others here, I've never hit the weekly limit ever, only the hourly, and I consider myself a heavy user.
culopatin
That’s because the week ends before you can use them because you’re waiting for your hourly resets. Now the week essentially got longer with the same limit
vidarh
I hit my weekly limit in 3 days this week. Irregularly do in 5. With the top MAX sub.
scottyah
Wow, then you are most likely doing something very wrong.
headcanon
same, I struggle to use more than half of my weekly, even if I max out my 5-hour windows regularly during the day.
druskacik
For me personally, I have the basic Claude Code subscription that I use to rewind on some evenings or on weekend, to code a bit for 1-2 hours. I have like 3-5 session with it every week.
The 5h windows are frustrating because I can go through them quickly if I have a more complex task. I haven't yet met the weekly limit. I'd say there are many cases similar to mine.
Salgat
I disagree. I routinely hit the 5 hour limit on Pro with Opus 4.7 just trying to have it do one design task or comprehensive code review on a large PR, and the worst part is, the overhead and bringing all that context back into another 5 hour window blows through 30%+ of my 5 hour usage limit.
dwaltrip
I don’t think I’ve hit either limit a single time in the past 5 months after upgrading to the $100 plan.
On heavy weeks I probably am using it consistently for at least 6+ hours a day.
Although, I’m pretty rigorous about always keeping my sessions under 200-250k tokens.
airstrike
I've maxed out weekly limits for 2 $200 accounts before
9wzYQbTYsAIc
Exactly, the weekly limits are the real limiting factor. If you really push it, you can easily hit the weekly $200/mo Max limit in a day.
solenoid0937
5 hours were the painful ones. If you're hitting your weekly you've outgrown the sub and should use extra billing
9wzYQbTYsAIc
Or start switching to open-weights, local LLMs for basic development. Would rather invest in my own hardware than Anthropic’s, tbh.
sidrag22
I've found with opus 4.6 which im still stubbornly using i can burn about 10% of the weekly within a 5 hour window with my workflow.
Mentally i think about the weekly usage in terms of usage per day so about 14% per day which results in me not using that much early in the week so i can kinda "burn freely" later on. which leads me to a spot where usually on the final two days im sorta thinking about how can i expend that usage ive "saved".
the 5 hour windows make this harder, sometimes the final day of the week im trying to get that 10% in every 5 hour window of my waking hours and i HATE that, i wanna work when i am most productive, not around some ridiculous window of time, i dont wanna think "I am gonna be utilizing claude the most around 11am so i should send a dumb message to haiku to get my 5 hour window started at 7:30am so i can have it roll over at 12:30."
So im happy about this change sure. But it is 100% them creating a problem and pretending having some relief from that problem is them doing their users a favor. I understand they are doing it to lower peak hours usage and all that, I still despise it.
alwillis
People are waisting tokens by using Opus for everything.
Using Advisor [1], you can use Sonnet most of time; Sonnet can handoff work it can't handle to Opus. When Opus is done, you automatically go back to Sonnet.
[1]: https://www.mindstudio.ai/blog/claude-code-advisor-strategy-...
sidrag22
I think the main reason that workflow has not worked for me is because im using an ide version of claude code, which means my main agent isn't a crafted agent and is "stock" sonnet or "stock" opus. I'll likely swap to the cli version soon enough and see if that remedies it (this isn't laziness on my part, i instead learned opencode workflows first because it applies more broadly, the only limitation is usage of a claude subscription within it).
So with the stock sonnet i get the chatty confidently wrong sonnet instead of a strict crafted agent. Stock Opus is a lot more reasonable, and hands off simple tasks to crafted sonnet agents with the chatty and more strict workflows, so i guess im literally doing the opposite(closer to what that old article describes).
port11
I rarely use Opus for planning (in the Pro plan). Spec a feature in Sonnet, hand it to Haiku, come back for review. That’s a 5-hour window gone, sometimes 2.
I hit my weekly limit around day 4, with 2 maxed out windows per day (and sometimes a bit of usage at night).
I completely understand why people would use Opus for everything, it’s much more thorough and effective. Sonnet as well, but on Pro it’s gonna be Haiku all the time.
solenoid0937
> Mentally i think about the weekly usage in terms of usage per day so about 14% per day
20%, there are 5 work days in a week, not 7.
sidrag22
weird distinction to make when replying to someone talking about their own personal usage of the weekly limit that is a 7 day window of time.
_giorgio_
It's not, because I've never hit my weekly limits because of the very restrictive 5 hours limits. Let's see if I really hit my weekly limits now.
However you see it, it's an improvement for the consumer.
alxsuv
[dead]
losvedir
> 300 megawatts of new capacity (over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs)
The scale is just mindboggling here. Are there any blog posts or anything discussing what kind of infrastructure is used for even just the inference side (nevermind the training) for SotA models like Opus? I would have thought it might be secret, but given that you can actually run the models yourself on AWS Bedrock doesn't that give an indication?
epistasis
I know you're probably talking about the compute infrastructure, but I think the electricity infrastructure side is interesting too, data centers are doing things in dumb ways because the need for operational expansion speed is greater than the need dollars:
> It’s regulation with the utilities. There are ramp rates, there are all of these things that you’re supposed to do to not screw up the grid. Data centers have been in gross violation of that. When you think about what’s wrong with data centers, they have load volatility, which we just talked about, then they decide to power it with behind-the-meter natural gas generators. These natural gas generators, their shaft is supposed to last for seven years. It’s lasting 10 months because of all the cycling.
https://www.volts.wtf/p/doing-data-centers-the-not-dumb-way
On the compute infrastructure, there are standard NVIDIA reference designs like this:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/technologies/enterprise-referen...
I haven't bothered to look but I'd guess Mellanox GPU-to-GPU networks, and massive custom code for splitting tensors across GPUs, and for shuttling activations across GPU nodes.
airspresso
> but given that you can actually run the models yourself on AWS Bedrock
That's not exactly how it works. Anthropic are hosting their models in AWS Bedrock as a managed service. Customers call those LLMs just like calling any other API. There's no visibility into what kind of AWS infrastructure is serving that API request.
kristjansson
All evidence is that the final training runs across thousands to low tens of thousands of GPU, and that a single instance of the resulting model runs (or could run) well within a rack (ie NVL72).
The massive scale is all massively parallel: test-time compute for users, test time compute for RL rollouts (and probably increasingly environments for those rollouts), other synthetic data generation, research experiments, …
cavisne
Probably the best source https://jax-ml.github.io/scaling-book/
sroussey
> 300 megawatts of new capacity (over 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs)
That’s just for the SpaceX part (over provisioning for grok, lol).
The Amazon and Google deals are each over an order of magnitude larger! Pretty wild indeed!
giwook
How many instances of Doom can it run though?
htrp
>Higher usage limits
>The following three changes—all effective today—are aimed at improving the experience of using Claude for our most dedicated customers.
>First, we’re doubling Claude Code’s five-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans.
>Second, we’re removing the peak hours limit reduction on Claude Code for Pro and Max accounts.
>Third, we’re raising our API rate limits considerably for Claude Opus models,
Looks like Elon's finally giving up on XAI and just selling the compute
peder
> Looks like Elon's finally giving up on XAI and just selling the compute
I don't think that's certain yet, but I do think that the open-source models like Gemma and Qwen are getting so good so fast that even Anthropic has real risk around the long-term value of their models and tooling.
Basically, if I'm Anthropic or xAI, I try to get revenue whenever and wherever possible and see what sticks. There's no value in playing for monopolistic control when everything is so volatile.
swalsh
There's always money in the giggawatt datacenter
petercooper
I don't know if it relates to the same data centers, but this also comes hours after several still recent Grok models were deprecated at short notice. Grok 4.1 Fast is the cheapest way to do research on X (cheaper than the X API!) and it's gone on May 15: https://docs.x.ai/developers/models - freeing up compute to sell?
swalsh
Fuck, I loved grok 4.1, it was a really capable model for the money.
I'd run agents consuming hundreds of millions of tokens for less than a hundred dollars.
Geee
Unlikely, because xAI had huge amount of overcapacity.
JustSkyfall
Probably a good idea in all honesty. xAI is a deeply unserious lab
throwa356262
From a technical standpoint xAI is basically Gemini team B who were give A+ salaries to join the company.
But even then, I suspect their hands were tied in some areas because Elon had some expectations from his AI.
fancyfredbot
Did Google outbid Elon for team A? Or A team just don't like Elon?
cyanydeez
There's only so much determinism you can create when you try not to filter (read CENSOR) your LLM.
kingstnap
The details are secret. It very well could be wasted GPU time but Anthropic could have made a killer offering as well.
I'm just speculating, but a particularly killer offering Elon wouldnt be able to refuse would be if Anthropic agreed to give them some training data / technology.
swalsh
Billions in revenue just before your IPO isn't a bad deal either.
fancyfredbot
The icing on the cake for Elon is that it strengthens the competition to OpenAI.
Or is that actually his main motivation. Hard to know. Either way it's a win win win for him.
vagab0nd
Giving Musk the benefit of the doubt, here's a thought experiment: It doesn't seem like any of the big labs in the US can keep a lead for more than 3 months. The Chinese models are closing in. Even if xAI comes up with the best model, so what?
On the other hand, power and compute are limited. Ridiculous as orbital compute sounds, land/power on earth is not easily scalable. There are too many limiting factors, chief among which in the US is regulation. But in space, if you make one satellite work, you just get more resources and launch more. This also leads naturally to Tesla's plan for a chip fab.
So if you squint, Musk might not be that crazy.
spikels
No I don't ever give up. I would have to be dead or completely incapacitated.
-Elon
AlexCoventry
I don't think this is giving up. He's getting inside information on how Claude works, and a huge stream of Claude usage data. This will all inform future grok development, IMO.
hn1986
question is, will they buy cursor?
nl
Say what you like about Sam Altman, but given how Anthropic is scrambling to sign capacity deals for compute we can sure say he was right about the capcity build out needed.
stingraycharles
That’s correct, but from what I understand his move was also strategic: to choke the market.
Having said that, Anthropic’s position is fully understandable, as Sam took a very large risk here, and OpenAI’s future is all but certain.
sigmar
Scrambling? Seems to me xAI built too much capacity (for what they can use in 2026). Does that mean OpenAI built the right amount? I don't see how this proves that just because we see one AI company willing to sell compute. We don't even know the terms/pricing.
nl
> Scrambling?
Yes.
To quote:
> Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said his company tried to plan for 10-fold growth. But revenue and usage increased 80-fold in the first quarter on an annualized basis, which he says explains why it’s been so hard to keep up with demand.
> “That is the reason we have had difficulties with compute,” Amodei said Wednesday at his company’s developer conference in San Francisco. Amodei added that the company is “working as quickly as possible to provide more” capacity and will “pass that compute on to you as soon as we can.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/06/anthropic-ceo-dario-amodei-s...
I think "scrambling" is a fair characterization of the CEO saying "we have had difficulties with compute" and "working as quickly as possible to provide more"
They've also signed new compute deals with Google and AWS recently.
lmm
Or the bubble he was pumping hasn't popped yet. We won't be able to say how much of this capacity was actually "needed" until 10 years in the future, if ever.
gck1
Limits were the last straw that made me cancel my subscription and make my workflow completely model agnostic with pi.
While this is good news, I'm not coming back. Anthropic just lost me with too many wrongs in too short of a time period.
Opus has been replaced with GPT 5.5, DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen and they all allow me to use my own, single harness and switch models easily if any of them start treating me the same.
farfatched
Same, though I'm reconsidering, in light of the recent bugs (which can happen to any provider) and the increased limits. I guess that's at least 3x more Opus for my usecase.
sergiotapia
I wouldn't make any grand stand declarations like this honestly. The models themselves are all hot swappable with minimum effort. The AI labs american or chinese don't really have a moat. Today anthropic is bad and openai is good. Last month it was the other way around. Next month it may be google.
The only certainty is that you can swap models quickly and painlessly.
minimaxir
> First, we’re doubling Claude Code’s five-hour rate limits for Pro, Max, Team, and seat-based Enterprise plans.
The fine-print-omission appears to be that weekly limits are not doubled. The progressive 5-hour rate limit shrinking was indeed an efficiency blocker that finally convinced me to cancel, but being only able to get 4 full sessions a week as opposed to 8 doesn't compell me to resubscribe.
dw_arthur
For my hobbyist purposes Deepseek v4 Flash has replaced Claude Code because I was also sick of hitting 5 hour limits with Claude. Right now, the only thing I miss from Claude is multi-modal image support. I can work around no image support since I can use v4 Flash all day and spend around $1. I am aware Deepseek is currently discounting their API at 75% off so I may try out another provider once the discount is gone at the end of the month.
At this point if feels like if you properly scope your work open weight LLMs are adequate.
mostafas
The 75% discount only applies to Deepseek v4 Pro. Flash will stay the same price after the discount ends. It's remarkably cheap for what it delivers.
farfatched
Ouch, I wasn't aware they were discounting so much. There goes my subscription escape plan.
scottyah
The datacenter isn't operational yet, they don't magically get more processing instantly after signing a deal.
Philpax
Well, this sucks :/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(supercomputer)#Envir...
quinncom
One of the reasons I refuse to use xAI’s models is because of the outsized negative environmental impacts of the methane gas turbines.
Now I have to avoid Claude too.
bottlepalm
If you can make up an inconsequential arbitrary rationalization to not use a service then I’m sure you can do the opposite to convince yourself to use it.
That’s what virtue signaling is I guess - the action you’re taking is pointless, the only point is to tell everyone you’re taking it therefore feed the narrative forward?
The entire economy runs off gas turbines though this is the thing you boycott?
quinncom
Obviously I’m virtue signaling, and I hope instilling a feeling of shame in people who support businesses that contribute to climate change.
But more than that, the emissions generated by the Colossus data centers are far worse than typical combined-cycle gas plants or data centers that buy renewable: these turbines emit NOx, fine particulates, carbon monoxide, and formaldehyde into a population-dense area.
I thought people knew about this already. Post from last year: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jun/12/xai-data-center/
Footnote7341
I'm using grok to help bring awareness to black and brown and latinx communities that live within 100 miles of Colossus 1!
data-ottawa
Sorry, what?
Deciding not to spend money with a company you don't like is not pointless. The point is that you're not participating in something that you judge to be wrong.
The world is full of things I feel are wrong yet have near zero power to stop. That does not mean I should willingly support those things.
formvoltron
gas turbines generally are for peaking. Not for base load.
Hopefully Elon lets you into his glass bubble when the s** cooks on the fan.
LeoPanthera
[dead]
everfrustrated
You realize natural gas is one of the more environmentally friendly methods of generating power. Lots of work went into moving to natural gas generation to improve the environmental impact for electricity generation.
This is nothing like burning coal.
dymk
More greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, speeding up global climate change. Renewables or don’t do it.
stuaxo
This natural gas burning is suited too close to where people live.
jLaForest
While the burning of methane is cleaner, the extraction of methane is a massive source of uncontrolled pollution emissions which is made worse by the fact that methane is 20x worse for greenhouse effect than CO2. Clean methane is another green washing myth to encourage people to keep consuming at much as possible
thrownthatway
Why?
chainwax
I think he's referring to the fact that Colossus is powered by fossil fuels.
kfrzcode
literally the entire economy is powered by fossil fuels
xienze
[flagged]
thrownthatway
[flagged]
cbg0
They're doubling the five hour limits, but no mention about the weekly limit. So overall it's the same maximum usage, right?
adriand
I think so, but that's also really great because I frequently run into the five hour caps, but very rarely use my entire weekly allotment. There are lots of situations where I do things like write the plan for all the work that has to get done, and then set a reminder to execute the plan after I get home, when I'm done making dinner (because e.g. my five hour cap ends at 6pm). Higher caps for the five hour period is a lot more convenient.
novaleaf
I (and many others) are the opposite. I run out of quota is 4-5 days. Generally no issues with the 5hr cap. ($200 sub)
solenoid0937
Like 90% of people I know never hit their weekly but they hit their hourly. I'd bet your case is way rarer.
farfatched
If this logic applied, then there would be no purpose in them having the 5 hourly limit.
cbg0
The purpose is to control the total amount of requests they need to handle in a given timeframe. If everyone could use up their whole weekly limit in 5 hours, many would do so, thus pushing the GPU/TPU clusters to or above their capacity limits.
joncik91
Some get the reset, some don't it seems :(
antipaul
"All of [SpaceX]'s compute capacity at Colossus 1"
SpaceX/xAI also has Colossus 2, with double or more the GPUs
Seems xAI will still be around
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empath75
That is one take, but here is how I interpret it. They spent a lot of money training a model which isn't doing enough inference to justify continuing to use those GPUs, and now they are buying even more GPUs to build an even bigger model that also won't be very popular.
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Colossus 1 datacenter is the one using illegal power, is poisoning the air for poor communities near Memphis, and is potentially poisoning the water. It's likely the additional demand on the grid will cause massive blackouts during extreme weather events, putting residents at further risk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(supercomputer)#Envir...
So you can put Anthropic on your list of companies that like to talk big about safety, but when the rubber hits the road, profits matter more than safety.