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Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

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Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#441

Post by rstuart4133 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #354
altmanaltman wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> basically Google with a much better frontend and no ads/seo nonsense so far

I think it already has them but it's much more subtle. Also useful. When I've made certain sorts of queries I've had the distinct impression that it was attempting to very gently steer the conversation with suggestions. But it was brief, still answered usefully, and didn't resist going in the direction I wanted. So a win-win tactic I guess. For example find a beautiful landscape shot of a place that just so happens t…

It definitely steers. For example if it suggests travel plans, the booking links it provides give Alphabet a cut.

As you say it was subtle, along the lines of "oh, if you are planning on going to the place you are researching, here are some helpful links to places you can stay". Subtle, in that it didn't get in the way of main result, so I didn't mind overly. Insidious, as I only noticed because I wondered why it was providing those particular links and looked them up. I can't see how you could ad-block them if I did object.

And worrying, because these unblockable sneaky ads are just a first foray coming from a company that prostitutes its own app store searches, by making the first and most obvious result utterly unrelated to to the search topic. Instead it's who paid them the most to be there. That behaviour is why everyone dumped Alta Vista when an alternative came along. Alternative Android app stores can't come soon enough.

They already skim off 15% of purchases which I'm sure makes their Android operation return a profit that makes other industries drool. Debasing their search to ad a tiny bit extra on top must by driven pure greed. Senseless, as I'm sure it will come back to bite them in the end.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#442

Post by Galorious »

Is anyone here using using these models via google subscription (not api). I tried to in the past using gemini cli and then agy - headless invoked by codex and claude code, but they were so incredibly buggy that it stalled 1/2 times and I cancelled. Interested to know if that has changed!

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#443

Post by mredigonda »

dcchambers wrote: post #426
ryanscio wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pi [1] is amazing. Since using it I've felt no need to switch harnesses anymore. Or choose Oh My PI [2] for batteries included [1] https://github.com/earendil-works/pi [2] https://github.com/can1357/oh-my-pi

Can you use Pi with a Google Pro AI sub or do you need to use API billing?

Using API billing would be a bummer because, as far as I know, there's no way to set up a spend cap or pre-pay the API key, correct?

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#444

Post by pdimitar »

robertn702 wrote: post #391
mvdtnz wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has stubbornly stuck with Claude Code, what's a good harness for Gemini models?

I highly recommend just getting out of Anthropic's (or anyone's) vendor lock-in. Use opencode or pi. You can still use your subscription pricing using a proxy. I switched to opencode and haven't looked back.

How do you do the proxy thing?

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#445

Post by zuzululu »

not really getting the excitement over this, its at opus 5 medium level, and opus 5 is not really the go to model , claude purists hate it

so its fast sure and decent at non coding usage but for developers nothing can really top sol or fable.

even grok 4.6 is so so and i would not choose 3.8 flash over it.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#446

Post by spacebanana7 »

throwaway219450 wrote: post #403
cousinbryce wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Gemini because I feel like Google will win the AI race, and it’s Good Enough

I want to believe this, but every time I try Gemini coding assistance within Colab it's utterly dire. Code gen in a cell is OK, but things fall apart when you try to get into a feedback loop. The system prompt/harness fails to inform the agent about what it can and can't do, or does and doesn't have access to. It will confidently tell you it's done a thing, and then you ask, it admits can't actually do that but will…

I suspect Gemini doesn’t focus that much on coding, at least compared to frontier labs. It’s not part of Gemini’s core business case.

Gemini’s integration with maps and search is more important for Google.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#447

Post by zuzululu »

refulgentis wrote: post #102
andai wrote: post #18

Wait, I didn't realize 3.7 Flash was already beating Sol on a bunch of the benchmarks. Isn't it a way smaller models?

They're quite selective in benchmarks, c.f. notably only bad one is 10% on TerminalBench. It's a really addled model, one time I said "Hi" and it built out a 4 panel hello world app with (fake) weather, a todo list, and a couple other things I forgot. I wouldn't be comfortable saying "ignore the #s!" except when I complained it was trash and way overcooked on agentic coding yet not good at it, and a couple DeepMind M…

i discount people who lean too heavily into benchmark as the authoritative truth when it comes to evaluation of coding capability of these models.

experience tells me that those people simply have not used models for a long period of time specifically on coding and have run their own comparisons

to someone who uses all vendors, the differences are very palpable and drives purchase decisions.

also keep in mind Gemini and other labs have repeatedly done benchmaxxing, you must have your own benchmarks to evaluate these models.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#448

Post by zuzululu »

WASDx wrote: post #285
eis wrote: post #244

3.8 uses nearly twice as many tokens as 3.7. One might be inclined to think that they just increased the thinking budgets... 3.7 used 64M on high: https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gemini-3-7-flash 3.8 used 120M on high: https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/gemini-3-8-flash Even their own chart showed more than 2x higher cost compared to 3.7: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ima...

3.7 high and 3.8 medium are essentially the same on AA intelligence and cost. Output tokens on DeepSWE gives the same picture. So there might be something to it but they have done other things as well. At least the tokens are really fast.

i find deepswe not very reliable for instance it puts grok 4.6 xhigh over sol medium

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#450

Post by zuzululu »

mythz wrote: post #29

I'm trying it now for token heavy coding tasks, it's capable for many tasks but in noway compares to Claude/Sol - requires more prompts and the output isn't as good. So just another mid-tier flash model, nothing exciting, but Antigravity has very generous quotas so it's a good workhorse model when your Claude/OpenAI subs run out. And whilst it's a fast model, having to baby sit through and approve prompts every few s…

not sure why you are being downvoted, but that has been my experience with 3.7 flash and sol/fable comparisons

i think luna-max has the best cost value offer when it comes to coding, but i note the multi modality of gemini flash as a win

i might consider 3.8 flash for simple side hobby projects or quick scaffolding but would not trust it for long agentic tasks, that really is the realm of sol/fable

agy cli still has a lot of issues not sure if its due to the underlying model hallucinating or the harness or both

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