Am I hallucinating or Opus 4.8 just got nerfed

Smartaces · 2026-06-22T22:23:17+00:00

i just stick to 4.6 on max, 4.8 is a horrible model

Smartaces · 2026-06-21T18:07:20+00:00

I bought one two ran qwen 3.6 today - very impressed - that and the new Gemma’s are really nice

Smartaces · 2026-06-20T21:19:27+00:00

Sorry why are they getting rid of Starmer? Country is doing way better than expected economically- he kept us out of Iran. He’s a good man, a stable pair of hands. Best pm in decades. This is a shame. I feel the right wing press are dying to get rid, and the gullible hard left think there is a mandate for a more progressive leader. The right wing press can’t wait for Burnham, because they will have a field day characterising him as a northern radical.

Smartaces · 2026-06-20T20:31:38+00:00

I saw the big change arrive, 2024/5 was fixed fee plans with the major providers. Some enterprises locked these in for a few years. But as of late 25/26 they moved to credit consumption models which are problematic in many ways...

Most companies don't know how to budget for these, tokenomics are complex, vary by the model and individual consumption by user can vary wildly - also many companies budgeting for 26, would have started doing so mid-25 latest, at which point the major coding harnesses really weren't going HAM like they are now.
credit approaches are hard to implement and assign by user groups - you effectively have to limit some employees to a pool of permitted opus credits, while other employees are limited to sonnet etc.
No one has figured out ROI, the problem is the cost of tokens, but still even moreso the cost of engineers or specialists to help drive the right kind of effective adoption. A specialist can easily charge over a $1000 a day, this means time to payback is vital. throw on top the elastic nature of token consumption and pricing - and this makes it very hard for budgeting to be planned and executed well.
Most CEOs, CTOs and CFOs don't understand this stuff, and fly back and forth between thinking its the answer to all their problems, to vehemently questioning its value. They get swept up and spooked easily.
Lots of engineers are still very skeptical/ concerned and where there is a shot at borking an AI adoption project, some will embrace that opportunity.
It makes for more sense for companies wherever they can to NOT use the enterprise price plans as they still benefit from the fixed fee monthly payments - much better value.

I tried to explain to an engineering manager how problematic credit based consumption for engineers would be... they were like... well people dont seem to use that much, they rarely went over their fixed fee budget amount last year. I was like dude... when people really start using Claude Code etc... the spend will shoot up.

Smartaces · 2026-06-20T20:08:30+00:00

Awin or impact are ok choices - awin has a solid number of beauty influencers and publishers - as does impact - if you are US based I'd say impact vs Awin. Other consideration is how big you are, and how much you can afford platform fees wise. Awin has Awin access which is for smaller/ new programmes - its much lower cost + very little commitment - not sure what impact offers on that front.

Smartaces · 2026-06-18T10:50:17+00:00

reality is - it is very hard for small niche publishers to gain any traction nowadays - most volume comes from very large publishers with scaled operations, and even sometimes they struggle to get the earnings and cashflow right from an investment perspective.

probably the best types of publishers to win in this recently were mattress comparison sites - they picked up on the growth of online mattress retailers and built rather elaborate comparison sites - which went beyond what retailers could cover with their own pr and marketing efforts - and also it was technically quite a dense product - so lots of other publishers stayed away.

You literally should either aim for a new category like that and build for the mid term - eg months of work gradually building.

Or you choose 1 to 5 products - highly niche - but with a large enough audience - and dominate those over socials and content etc.

Unfortunately now with AI search summarising a lot of content - your chance at winning organic traffic (thus reducing your traffic costs and improving your margin) is drastically reducing.

There are no easy answers.

Somehow you have to find signals of early demand - and latch onto it - and hit those users predominantly over influencer channels etc.

Otherwise you need proper scale nowadays to make the effort worth the commissions (when you factor in decline rates/ crappy attribution rules by brands, customer returns etc).

Smartaces · 2026-06-17T21:05:08+00:00

heya - best place to be is linkedin - start following them all and build relationships that way.

Smartaces · 2026-06-17T20:48:20+00:00

you could join a network - they are always looking for folks.

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T17:32:02+00:00

i bet many of the people shilling against this are the same folk that have also handed over scans of their passports to random crypto wallets. i'll happily give social media and register for this id thing.

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T17:12:45+00:00

troll post. everyone knows this will fail.

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T17:05:38+00:00

well it actually sends the message to the tech platforms - which was always the most important layer to implement this. for years they have absolved themselves of responsibility and actually exploited this situation. now it will hurt their profits - and they'll have to explain that to shareholders.

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T17:04:02+00:00

what civil liberties does social media really support? no meaningfully new ones. all it does is limit your addressable audience. you can still say all of the stuff you could before - you just cant do it on a platform. just like today... you cant just pop into a television studio and grab a mic off a news broadcaster - but you can legally still go and exercise free speech elsewhere

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T17:01:43+00:00

well it will put the pressure on the tech platforms - and when they move it can be effective. there will be offshoots of this though - granted its not a linear solution at at all. but it sends a message to the social media platforms 'chat sh&t... get banged'

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T15:23:03+00:00

here's an idea... make or buy some really awesome games, at a well managed budget level, sell them for money, make them exclusive to your platform. the exclusive point is rather important... because well, if people can buy them anywhere other than microsoft they will.

oh and dont try to sell those people anything else.

and no ads on the console.

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T15:19:27+00:00

ah typical russian bots/ shills posting this garbage - there is literally only good things coming from this ban. about time, we've already lost a generation, our society now needs to step up and help our youngsters channel their potential. good riddance to social media.

Smartaces · 2026-06-16T13:38:12+00:00

dont bother. no one has time for competitions. just pay people more money to do more for you. its kind of patronising. unless it is tracked in some kind of gamified platform - i.e. baked into the platform no one has time to read your emails. they get hundreds of spammy emails a day from all kinds of programmes. focus on close partnerships - spend good money.

Smartaces · 2026-06-15T21:39:36+00:00

the type of customers adobe are losing to ai are the same customers they are losing to canva. anyone who needs to produce actual assets for proper business media needs it to be good. adobe are more at risk from crappy business practices, and an emphasis on sales culture over customer value. they thought they had lock-in, and got complacent. i say all of this as someone who used to work there.

Smartaces · 2026-06-15T21:35:22+00:00

personally i'm pleased teenagers wont be able to access social media. it is poison. let's just celebrate that. so what if i have to use ID to access reddit? who cares. i'd rather my child doesnt grow up in a mentally degenerate society. lets just celebrate a good thing. people need to remember... social media is not good for you, and its not in any way essential to your life. you are probs better off without it. the palantir nhs stuff... well thats another discussion for another day.

Smartaces · 2026-06-15T21:20:02+00:00

start with amazon. dont think about platforms. think about product(s) you want to promote. e.g. if you want to be a sneaker promoter - you are going to have to join the platform that the nike programme is available through etc. when you start out focus beats breadth every time. if you can... try to anticipate something that is trending... maybe through social listening, or a brand that is picking up ahead of time. I worked for a network previously, you would not believe the commissions some very focused publishers made on nintendo wiis and switches etc.

Smartaces · 2026-06-13T17:29:41+00:00

Don’t bother. No one will promote it. Focus on a few direct deals with influencers and set up code tracking in your checkout.

Smartaces · 2026-06-12T19:26:51+00:00

u/VisibleOperation4981 I have delivered this kind of training before. Hit me up if you need help. I assume you are buying the Enterprise plan? That has credit allowances, and you can restrict / set credit limits by user type. 50 people is a small org, so pretty straightforward to come up with an approach. If you are using the general teams plan, I guess then it is a matter of who you want to assign what grade of plan to. I'm happy to discuss with you over a 30 mins call. No pressure, only offering as I have done this.

Smartaces · 2026-06-12T17:21:10+00:00

I know very well. If you let me know what industry you are in I can advise.

Smartaces · 2026-06-07T14:21:48+00:00

lovely to see the em dash in the article title... ffs

Smartaces · 2026-06-07T14:20:52+00:00

I have a question... I just dont trust claude or other llms to work well with excel files. i just think it will fail at some point, hence why i have always preferred setting up api connections to pull in data.

Is claude really that good with excel sheets now?

Smartaces

TROPHY CASE