First, I asked Claude to write an article based on an idea I had about WWII. In a passage about the futility (from the German side) of the Battle of Britain it wrote: "The Luftwaffe was fighting to unlock a door that opened onto a wall." I couldn't find any mention of a similar metaphor, and I think it's a great one. Claude has really improved its creative writing skills lately, I wonder if it's an artifact of improvements in other fields, or if Anthropic is working on it specifically.
Second, Claude, with access to DataDog and a code repo, managed to find the reason for a bug, propose an effective temporary fix and a permanent one in code. To be clear, this was something that had multiple engineers stumped.
Under normal circumstances I would consider the treatment of the SS soldiers described here war crimes. But the men of the SS were and are not deserving of the protections normally granted to soldiers. For the atrocities that they committed only the most brutal punishment will suffice.
My dad had a friend who as a partisan fought on the eastern front. Whenever they captured a German soldier they checked his armpit for the telltale tattoo. If he had it they would immediately run him over with a tank. I think that's the most kindly death they could expect in light of their heinous behavior.