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Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

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Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#41
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may be surprised to know that residential areas in San Francisco are height limited, sometimes as short as 4 stories. They're not exactly anti-progress.

Height limiting is anti-progress, which was his point.

Ok SF needs somewhat higher-density housing. But wanting something good for yourself and your peers isn't anti-progress. If the benefits accrue to only a few people, it's not progress.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#42
post #13
post #7

Prompt engineering tip for Google employees: just add "P.S. Make sure the page works in Firefox too."

It is in their business interest to ignore Firefox.

Hot take: Google keeps Mozilla/Firefox alive through the default search engine placement (which makes Mozilla millions each year) so they don't get designated as a monopoly with their browser.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#43
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's hilarious to see some people here go on about how they're proud to work so that they can be replaced I think too many just expect that they can get by like before because they're a 10x engineer or whatever

It won't happen to me is what I used to think

> It won't happen to me is what I used to think

In my experience this is what almost everyone thinks, right up to the point where it starts happening to them.

And it isn't just an individual blind spot, organizations suffer from the same thing in the sense that many companies will be happy to automate away all their labor to avoid paying the "human tax" without giving much thought to the fact that the need for the company itself will also be automated away soon after.

If you can replace nearly all of your workers with some cheap tokens and prompts, everyone else who previously would have been a customer can replace your whole company with the same thing.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#44
post #4
post #2

I heard a radio spot recently and I wondered if the voice was a real person or AI. It makes we wonder how such industries are dealing with this gen-AI revolution. We spend a lot of time here thinking about how it affects software developers, but I hardly ever see any commentary on how it is affecting screen and voice actors.

Many screen and voice actors are unionized, and the unions have been striking and bargaining specifcially over these points. For example: https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unau... Software developers, unfortunately, have been convinced that they don't need to unionize, so have no collective bargaining power for dealing with situations like this.

>The union demanded clear protections to ensure that recordings of actors’ performances could not be copied without consent and compensation.

>California’s legislation passed AB 2602 and AB 1836 in September 2024, prohibiting media companies from using AI to replicate actors’ performances without their consent.

it's a very reasonable law, but it is not the win you seem to believe it to be. the actors who refuse to consent will simply be passed over in favor of those who don't. no law will ever be passed to force companies to employ humans over machines, and if it were, the industry would move elsewhere. this is not without precedent :)

speech models have got so good so quickly that you can already replace a VA -- even an AAA prima donna -- with a teenager from Fiverr, who will simply bruteforce the right inflection.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#45
post #8
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many screen and voice actors are unionized, and the unions have been striking and bargaining specifcially over these points. For example: https://sites.suffolk.edu/jhtl/2025/10/30/game-over-for-unau... Software developers, unfortunately, have been convinced that they don't need to unionize, so have no collective bargaining power for dealing with situations like this.

Half of them are from India or China. Racial diversity is known to be detrimental to unionization. In fact, Amazon used this exact strategy to bust nascent Somali unions. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252481961/Amazons-Whole-...

Here is the obligatory scientific paper for those who cannot observe simple facts without a statistical analysis:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01762...

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#46

I'm still getting major uncanny valley from any of the videos featuring humans, something about them disgusts me. I guess I should be glad I'm still able to distinguish them.

I don't think I can see the difference. I just have my skin crawl because I'm expecting to see something off and generally have a bad feeling about it.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#47

Google does anything except launch a new version of Gemini Pro.

Just because Anthropic and OpenAI really want there to be an arms race justifying the outsized investment, doesn't mean the optimal play is to build larger, more expensive, models. The capital infusion the frontier labs have received has gotten to a size where many believe it may not be possible to recoup this investment without some very unrealistic things happening. I think it's reasonable to not completely drain o…

If the Chinese labs can compete on a shoestring budget with access to much less powerful hardware, Google should be able to compete as well. They're becoming almost irrelevant for agentic coding right now.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#49
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they need to? For search, instant models are more important and fit the use case better. Pro models are mainly for coding agent work; it doesn't necessarily make them any money.

I think they also have the problem of having given away their pro subscription to 10s or 100s of millions of students worldwide. They're tightening down on that now, and I have a feeling that this goes into them not releasing a larger model.

They blew up my interest when the stole my money by cutting me off from Gemini CLI with no explanation or recourse. I did not violate the terms of service and my only crime seemed to be not wanting to use Antigravity. They still took my money for the rest of that month and gave me nothing for it.

Re: Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash

#50
post #42
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is in their business interest to ignore Firefox.

Hot take: Google keeps Mozilla/Firefox alive through the default search engine placement (which makes Mozilla millions each year) so they don't get designated as a monopoly with their browser.

That's lukewarm at most, doubt you'll find many people disagreeing here!
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