Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use • Hacker News Board

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#41

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

sddsfsdfsd2 wrote: post #35

amelius wrote: post #11

Why are the UIs of the AI companies all broken in multiple ways?

They are moving at breakneck speed deploying on scales most of us can't even imagine. They are working in a space that's completely unexplored where getting information as quickly as possible is preferred above iterating on some feature until it's "done" while your competitor has released fifteen other features, all sucky, but one of which turns out to be a killer and makes a billion bucks overnight.

[flagged]

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#42

Post by nailer » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:36 PM UTC

nathanyz wrote: post #10

The VM itself is for Claude Cowork which does all work within the VM sandbox. That doesn't help answer why they spin it up immediately and don't have a way to disable it though. Just the "why it exists" question.

It kind of does though. If you want to use the product they'll need the sandbox ready.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#43

Post by inigyou » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:37 PM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #31

Please edit the title. Currently "Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it" Should be "Claude Desktop spins up a VM with no way of stopping it"

There are some English dialects with negative concord, meaning that to form the negation of a sentence, you negate all negateable words in it

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#44

Post by pier25 » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

So a company which has access to practically unlimited tokens and their best models makes crappy software. Huh who would've thought?

/s

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#45

Post by literatepeople » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:40 PM UTC

I didn’t get a screenshot of this, but I just found a really pointed example of Anthropics lack of craft / rush to build. If you open Claude on Windows, and click Dispatch (under cowork) to start that up, it will tell you that you need permissions windows doesn’t have. When you click the buttons for those permissions, it has broken links to macOS system preferences. I really encourage someone to try it and post the images as a reply as I am writing this from my phone.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#46

Post by bryanrasmussen » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:41 PM UTC

I think the title should be changed. Either with no way of stopping it, or without any way of stopping it.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#47

Post by jrochkind1 » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:42 PM UTC

nathanyz wrote: post #10

The VM itself is for Claude Cowork which does all work within the VM sandbox. That doesn't help answer why they spin it up immediately and don't have a way to disable it though. Just the "why it exists" question.

If you're not going to give Claude access to anything on your machine, why are you using Desktop instead of web chat? (Real question, I don't use these much!)

If you are, obviously you need the VM.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#48

Post by scottyah » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:42 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #11

Why are the UIs of the AI companies all broken in multiple ways?

They're some of the only new UIs to be made in the last decade. Almost everyone else stays in the browser (or something close like electron- claude code is actually mostly written in React, they couldn't get far from web dev). The problem is they need to interact with the local filesystem, and not many people have built apps for such a wide range of devices in a long time, and of that small talent pool I bet most are corpo coders- moving too slow and to focused on "the right way" to actually ship more than detailed Jira tickets. They also don't have time for stable releases because competition is so fierce.

But I almost always think of things from a talent-pool-first perspective. Perhaps there are actual technical issues like what Boris was referring to.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#49

Post by zkmon » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:45 PM UTC

Back in the day, personalization / customization was all the rage, as it lets the user feel the control, power and freedom. Now it's the opposite. It's about not letting user to have any control at all. I can't delete some junk apps from my phone and mac, because they are "system" apps. As a non-geek, I can't deal with complexity of the browser and account settings to stop it from what is doing. We are at the mercy of the machines.

Re: Claude Desktop spawns 1.8 GB Hyper-V VM on every launch, even for chat-only use

#50

Post by troyvit » Wed, Jun 10, 2026, 6:46 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #11

Why are the UIs of the AI companies all broken in multiple ways?

There are lots of good answers in this thread but I think it's because they are AI companies and not UI companies. When you look at tools like AnythingLLM, OpenCode, pi, etc. you see all kinds of different interfaces, and while they might make disagreeable choices at least they do it with intentionality and direction.