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Comment by revolvingthrow | Hacker News Reader

There was a model called Astra-Minor, found in the files a few days ago. I assume Sol 6.1 is this, as a last minute panic rename due to Sol 6 being underwhelming while Opus 5.5 turned out really strong. I can't really explain releasing Sol 6 in any other way, especially mere days ago.

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I don't understand why they didn't call 6-Sol just 6-Terra. It was 5.6-Terra level pricing with a perf jump.

I mean, when I upgraded my pipeline from terra to sol saying "it's the same price basically!" I was excited. Probably would not have felt as excited if it was just a version bump.

Not sure that's why they did it. But that was my experience.

I don't understand any of this naming man. It just gets more confusing.

"When in doubt, baffle them with b*llshit"

I like it. It's cool and better than Opus, Fable, Sonnet etc.

Like who can figure out the ordering? With Luna < Terra < Sol < Astra it's obvious at a glance.

I propose for some third company to name after monsters: Cyclops < Minotaur < Ettin < Cerberus < Hydra < Kraken < Nyarlathotep (the AGI singularity stage)

There is also more room upwards. Galaxy? Quasar? Filament?

“Local Globular Cluster” - just rolls off the tongue.

Apparently they already have "Aeon" in the pipeline.

Then they could probably move to proper nouns: Sagittarius, Andromeda..

I mean, Haiku < Sonnet < Opus < Fable/Mythos makes just as much sense. They're larger and larger works.

Many people would get confused on the order of Opus, Fable and Mythos. In my mind, they are even from different groups; fable is a synonym forba fairytale (perhaps with songs), mythos is communicating importance and status instead of a size, while opus is the only one which in my mind communicates a big size. "What did you think about the Tolstoy's book? It was not a book, but a real opus, a tedious, incomprehensible, sluggish monumental opus."

Waiting on Limerick to drop.

Oh my god I’ve got it!

Bug < Ticket < Story < Epic < Theme

> With Luna < Terra < Sol < Astra it's obvious at a glance.

It.. is?

yes, each of these things are larger than the other

If that holds then the ultimate model must be called Urmom

and wth is an "astra"?

"Ad Astra" my guy. "To The Stars"

Many of which are thiccer than our beta ass sun

Pretty badass name tbh

My brain immediately translated "Luna -> Terra -> Sol -> Astra" to "Moon -> Earth -> Sun -> Galaxy", an overall growing of size. While sure, "astra" doesn't directly translate to "galaxy", it's the base of the word "astronomical" and "astronomy".

I feel like people who don't get it immediately are just being deliberately obtuse.

I don't doubt that you feel that way, and there's no way I can really provide you any evidence. But I wasn't trying to be obtuse.

Astra means stars.

The more obvious, to me, interpretation was distance from us so I would've expected Terra -> Luna -> Sol -> Astra.

When I think of space and astronomical scales, I think of distance as much more common concern.

yup I thought the same but had no idea wtf astra was. Some meteor belt I wasn't aware of or something? A moon on Jupiter? Idk wasn't obvious to me.

i think you underestimate how much you "just getting it" stems from being terminally online - this is a HN model release thread after all

> I feel like people who don't get it immediately are just being deliberately obtuse.

Okay. I don't believe that you got it immediately.

i think ai bros just don't read much

Why when we can just say "use simple words"?

Of course, by perceived size the order would be:

terra, sol == luna, astra

Bigger => Bigger, makes sense to me.

It’s not… why do I need to translate from Latin (or wherever these come from) to understand them? Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku do the same thing, and are widely known words. Not to mention all LLMs do is generate tokens; I prefer the homage to writing over a space reference.

Boy wait till you find out where "opus" comes from.. Do you realize how many words from Latin you used in that comment?

When was the last time you heard anybody say "opus" or "sonnet" before this?

Also it implies that "haikus" are inherently inferior to longer texts which may be kinda frown-inducing..

It's not supposed to be about superior and inferior, it's supposed to be about bigger and smaller.

Fable kind of screwed that up, though.

TIL everyone knows Terra means the planet earth (not a prefix for ground) and everyone knows Astra means a star that isn’t the sun

Wait till you learn that earth means the planet and also the ground

So you agree that Luna vs Terra is less clear than Haiku vs Sonnet?

I find Luna vs Terra more clear. I know what a haiku is only because it hss some sort of hype factor among certain crowds. But I have no idea what a sonnet is, I heard of the word but never seen or written one. Opus vaguely reminds me of something in Greek mythology but also no idea what that, let alone the apparent implication that it's supposed to be longer than a sonnet.

I'm not a big fan of poetry but I think it's bit depressing if you've never seen a sonnet or even heard of the concept.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

If you want to be pedantic, Earth is the planet and earth is ground/soil.

Also in some languages without letter case though

haiku (the model family) was not inherently inferior to its larger, more expensive siblings. Sometimes you prefer a cheap, fast model, just like how sometimes you prefer a shorter poem.

> When was the last time you heard anybody say "opus" or "sonnet" before this?

Not a lot, but occasionally. I was familiar with the words.

> Also it implies that "haikus" are inherently inferior to longer texts which may be kinda frown-inducing..

It really doesn't.

The one real weakness of Anthropic's naming is that Fable doesn't fit. A fable is typically a fairly short story whereas I think of an opus (if a written work) as being at least a long book and maybe a whole collection of books.

you just know they considered "novel" and "epic" internally and decided against both for being too normal

I think Fable was meant to compare with Mythos - it's not continuation of the seuqence, but a frame shift.

Everyone who speaks English knows Luna Terra Sol and Astra… no one cares what you prefer

“I’m right and you’re wrong” type reply

Yeah, the redditification of HN is ripe in these AI related threads.

I always thought I knew English. I suppose it's better to find out now.

But those aren't actually English words. Are you sure you know English?

> Opus, Sonnet, and Haiku ... are widely known words.

You are serious?

it really isn’t

clear would be something like

piss-cheap - it’s-alright-i guess - okay-relax - ouch-my-wallet

It isn’t ? ;) celestial bodies Are memorable

Yes. Also, celestial bodies are not ordered. And remembering them doesn't do anything for estimating the power level of a particular LLM named after it.

It's a language-nerd joke he made. You have to know some Latin basically or enough Latinate roots. Those are the Latin-ish words for, in the same order: moon earth sun stars. So it's obvious in the sense of, it's increasing in size (assuming stars is the collection of all of them while the sun is just one of all the stars or one example of its parent category).

opus fable sonnet haiku is way more obvious than luna terra sol astra imo

mythos opus sonnet haiku, yes. But why in the world would a "fable" be bigger than an "opus"

Maybe if English is your first language it does.

Oh thats funny, I previously thought Luna > Terra because I assumed the order was “further away from earth = better”. I guess that speaks for itself.

Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus also made sense to me, but Fable ruined it. It isn't at all clear that a fable is bigger/grander than someone's magnum opus—actually, I'd think probably the opposite.

I don't think it gets better if you swap "fable" for "myth" either, although when you add "-os" to the end it suddenly sounds grander so there's that. Mythos isn't a model I can use, though.

It's the classic "this one goes to 11" problem.

an opus isn't a magnum opus fyi. magnum opus is a phrase with means one's greatest work, where opus in latin means "work". but in this context opus refers to an ordered series of musical compositions

Is it? The order if Luna and Terra in particular is not obvious to me. I would have put them the other way around, especially given the "to the moon" meme.

I forgot about Terra's model existence and after Astra release I was temporarily confused about Astra and what's that do, because I had an idea that maybe it was about observed size, so Astra should be the smallest maybe?

Honestly, the old boring business lingo of adding Pro and Max suffixes would have been clearer for both companies.

Also, cyclops is assuredly bigger than minotaur in almost any reference. And what's "ettin"?

Tall, Grande, Venti should be the standard for everything.

When i read the first few words of your message i thought you were going to say that the model naming is just as bad as the coffee cup size naming.

That's not incompatible with "it should be the standard for everything". We are desperate for a standard, however bad it is.

A few words which everyone would understand, like "small, medium, large"? I wish we had something, yeah...

Or just tshirt sizes

I find those (Italian?) names super confusing as a non-Italian. I automatically read "tall" in English and think "ok it's tall as in high so this gotta big" -> "wait, what is 'grande' then and how is that different from tall?" -> "venti? Genshin Impact character??"

Venti is 20 in Italian. 20 oz? IDK

Of course the point of their joke is that those are super confusing too.

But the origin is size inflation. The original Starbucks sizes were short and tall. Shorts are still available, in at least a few outlets, despite having not been on the menu for at least 20 years. (For a while a few years ago here in the UK, I even saw short as a column on the menu at one, but that's very rare.) Then they added grande, literally meaning large but maybe meaning more like "extra large". Then when they added an even bigger size, since large was already taken, they just stated the actual size "venti" = 20 (fluid ounces).

(The first time I ever went to a Starbucks had the same confusion as you. I didn't know what an espresso was but at least its sizes of "single" and "double" were easier to understand, so I got a double and was a bit surprised at how small my drink was!)

What’s funny about it to me is that it now isn’t confusing because we’ve spent 20 years with it. It’s nonsense but we’ve adapted to it.

Terra is the "missing middle" model and had no positive brand recognition. Sol was for intelligence, Luna was for efficiency. Luna max was cheaper and smarter than terra light and sol light was better than terra max.

Because they asked the model what it wanted to be called?

Was it a last-minute panic, or just OpenAI releasing an update when the had a bit more training under their belt to make 6.1-sol a whole lot better? Either way, I'm extremely pleased and will be giving this model a shot.

That seems likely, in the API GPT-6.1 Sol requires reasoning, just like Astra, whereas GPT-6 Sol (and Luna) allow "none"

Theo dropped their Sol 6.1 video and he says he can't tell you, but, shows enough to make it pretty clear. https://youtu.be/vu8X3YroB-w#t=5m30s

The smoking gun is how much slower than Sol 6 this is. It's not a retrain.

Sol 6 was pretty good the first 4 days or so of it's release. Then it was probably dialed back to a lower effort level and it became really bad.

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