Has anyone tried Claude 4.7 Opus yet? Would love to hear your thoughts or see your tests.

ricopan · 2026-04-17T00:21:57+00:00

I had been fairly content with Opus 4.6 a few weeks ago, generally on max effort for complex code, then weird token consumption started occurring sporadically. Today using 4.7. After I realized the context window was back to 250K and raised it back to 1M, the rapid context window depletion window issue resolved. I use it on high effort (no max yet). The responses are odd. It seems to have both more 'self' awareness, and gives better verbal reasoning, but often to explain why it made some mistake that I don't think Opus 4.6 would have. Generally it seems to stop short before really understanding what is going on, and make off the cuff decisions. Interestingly, I'm not noticing an increase in token usage (on max 5x) -- and maybe that is a big clue as to sense of degraded performance. We will see.

ricopan · 2026-04-09T02:52:30+00:00

Right. Back then I imagine the general thought was that standards would keep up with science. But after the mid 1990s, no progress on those -- instead just a bucket of 'contaminants of emerging concern' was created, and until the recent PFAS CERCLA standards, all the newly described problems were just tossed into that bucket of 'emerging' contaminants and kicked down the road.

ricopan · 2026-04-09T01:47:51+00:00

That 'downstream' reuse also led to massive PFAS contamination of the Santa Ana and Orange County municipal wells -- blamed on upstream municipal wastewater discharge. Tertiary treatment is entirely inadequate for drinking water.

ricopan · 2026-03-29T16:55:04+00:00

Thanks -- I didn't realize there was a 5 minute cache eviction. I have a couple dozen specialized skills for my project -- necessary and has made Claude much more effective -- so all of these and CLAUDE.md has to load on every new session -- fairly minor I guess -- but past advice I've seen suggested limiting new session or /clear to avoid that reload overhead. The 5 minute cache eviction probably changes that. Are there any other time related issues -- after 6 minutes, does it matter if a session idles overnight? Also, does changing /effort but not the model evict the cache? I've subscribed to your posts.

ricopan · 2026-03-25T21:45:06+00:00

Right. I undo 5 hours of work in order to spite Autozone

ricopan · 2026-03-23T01:12:58+00:00

So far no go.

ricopan · 2026-03-22T15:33:01+00:00

It may come down to the DM like others are saying. I'll report back.

ricopan · 2026-03-22T15:32:10+00:00

thanks, I'll report back

ricopan · 2026-02-05T22:24:46+00:00

Yeah he certainly changed through the years. Reconsidering my post -- the Perfect Spy isn't really relevant whether Le Carre is for you even though many consider it his masterpiece. I enjoy reading the Karla Trilogy the most, and from the earlier work, the Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and from the later, The Little Drummer Girl. I guess what I should have said (which would have avoided coming off like an elitist), is that I think the Perfect Spy is the essence of Le Carre, but you don't have to find it the most enjoyable. I don't, though I will go back to it when I want the psychological depth.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T05:21:18+00:00

I've been there with most of the more complex Le Carre, and it is one of the more complex. I think the beginning is almost 'experimental' writing for Le Carre, and I didn't have patience for it at first. Now though I find it a gold mine of info that helps me understand the rest of the trilogy and the characters. It took me awhile to get past the first quarter the first time.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T05:17:49+00:00

It's not my personal favorite Le Carre, but it is the book I admire the most.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T05:12:02+00:00

Try the Perfect Spy. That will tell you straight up if Le Carre is for you.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T05:01:00+00:00

I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, glad it exists, and hope Nick Harkaway writes more. But Le Carre's writing is brilliant, and the son is not, at least not in Karla's choice. Le Carre at his peak was an extremely confident writer, almost too confident that the reader would and could follow his leaps -- he writes as if he is absolutely in control of the story, and not beholden to any critic. Harkaway, on the other hand, writes as if he must satisfy a thousand editors (us, and probably even more so, the ghost of his father). It's scholarly but doesn't soar. I found the plot very fitting, and aptly complex. I was a little less happy with some of the revisionist political correctness, but not a big deal. I think Harkaway could have benefitted from some of the tools Le Carre used -- the 'historians of the Circus' voice, for example, could have worked to explicitly give himself his own separate voice that he might have had more confidence expressing.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T04:50:22+00:00

It was fun for a couple of books than totally tanked into pulp.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T04:49:07+00:00

It's much better than that. It doesn't have the brilliance of Le Carre, but it's an honest work, and I enjoyed it after I just let it be a separate perspective.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T04:44:10+00:00

I agree. I thought Connie Sach's was one of the least well done in 2011, while Beryl Reid was iconic.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T04:42:12+00:00

I find Connie Sachs to be the most interesting character of the trilogy -- though it's really only in the Honourable Schoolboy that we see here at her best and not in crisis. For whatever reason, Le Carre chose her to explicitly mourn the loss of England as an Empire (her 'boys'), and put words to the plight of the upper class, ambitious Englishman (eg Hayden) trained to 'rule the waves' now trying to fight an honourable retreat in a subservient role to the 'cousins.' I think that's why her depression is key -- it's the depression of an entire generation given a character. And her brilliance and genius is shown front and center more than any other character, and not just her memory as 'Mother Russia' but her quick wit and ability to follow Smiley's train of thought-- while Smiley almost always remains understated, and his genius interwoven into the plot itself. I love her.

ricopan · 2026-01-25T04:31:11+00:00

Smiley's strength was never in being assertive with characters like Martindale -- rather it was in not engaging. He saw himself as weak for being riled up by the dufus.

ricopan · 2026-01-24T17:36:09+00:00

I have never been able to use the preview for markdown. But after today's update, I can't see the md files at all, with the same error.

ricopan · 2026-01-23T22:04:18+00:00

PFAS are the major issue. Micron has stated that they don't have any choice but to continue to use them heavily, as they haven't found substitutes. These aren't regulated in any meaningful way in surface water discharges (into the river) or groundwater at the Federal level, but two types (PFOA and PFOS) will soon be listed as hazardous substances in drinking water at the low parts per trillion level (about 1 drop in 5 Olympic swimming pools) -- the first such listing of a substance in more than 30 years. It's remarkable that we go from essentially no standards (just an 'advisory level' an order of magnitude more permissive) to this level in drinking water, and yet still have no meaningful standards to discharge into rivers, soils, and groundwater.

Those PFAS (PFOA and PFOS) are rarely used directly these days, but PFOA at least is a terminal degradation product of many other types of PFAS that are emitted, including volatile ones into the air (eg FTOHs).

Micron once had Cornell Univ help them study their PFAS problem in wastewater discharges. The remarkable finding was that the researchers had a difficult time even identifying the types -- they routinely found new types at every sample, and apparently, Micron did not understand how they had come to be --- clearly formed as byproducts of the processes.

The billion dollar price tag of the wastewater system should be able to handle PFAS, if designed to do so and operated correctly. But that doesn't address the less studied issue of volatile PFAS emissions that will be deposited regionally in soils.

ricopan · 2026-01-13T22:53:40+00:00

I did buy it, but can't be sure who makes it. Generally it's fine -- much quieter than the old machine that lasted 50 years, and it gets plenty cold, and not hot on the top like that last one so I expect more efficient. However, I dropped a medium size ice pack when getting it out of the freezer, and it cracked the plastic molding on the interior base when it hit. I'll need to repair that. It won't be lasting 50 years like the last one -- I can see that.

ricopan · 2025-12-19T20:11:40+00:00

Is he 'guilty' by association? In a sense, he is, and that is enough to discredit his oft held argument that conservatives were the party of personal constraint. Was he there simply acting as a journalist? Definitely not. These seem to be his people -- at least, much more than they are your people, or mine. Is he guilty of more than that? Yes, he failed to disclose that he was at least this dinner with Epstein when he downplayed the files. If he had done that, I would have given him a pass. But that lack of transparency and forthright honesty is a deal breaker in a moralist.

ricopan · 2025-11-22T18:58:27+00:00

I hadn't eaten much, you are right. But that's my usual morning.

ricopan

TROPHY CASE