Live data from Hacker News

Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

blog.google

671–680 of 699 posts

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A strong hint this is the case is the fact that nobody can define consciousness.

Why would the impossibility of defining consciousness suggest that it's not a big deal?

Because it's completely dwarfed by florpedness. I can't define that either, but I just know it's more important.

Less facetiously: A debate of the importance of something needs a shared understanding of what is being debated. Without that, any discussion is merely people shouting that their belief is the right one, and the others are the heathens/idiots - because there isn't even agreement on what is debated.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#672
post #113

I've been using Gemini 3.7 for my personal trip planning app. Across multiple benchmarks, it ranks higher on everything I tried: - Real world knowledge (when a thing opens and closes, the geographic region, historical facts). It's also the best at taking a cluster of places and working out a visiting order. - Photo ranking (which photo should be the hero). Gemini can tell whether a photo is of the thing or of the vie…

> Real world knowledge For awhile now I've found Gemini will use Google search for pretty much any real world knowledge, which is a huge plus IMO. It's basically Google with a much better frontend and no ads/seo nonsense.

Maps grounding is an amazing interface for Google Maps - „I’m at x, need to be at y by 5pm. Find me a route that’s walkable and has a good vegan restaurant and a toy store“

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#673
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the appropriate shortening here is "security." Calling it cyber is like shortening email to "e".

...? There are lots and lots of fields of security that have nothing to do with cybersecurity...

Cyber as a prefix basically just means "related to a computer network."

If you're of a certain age, "cyber" primarily means cybersex. There's also cybernetics, cybercafes, and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-related_prefixes#%22C...

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty typical "cool HTML toy" LLM output, tbh. The only thing impressive about this is how fast it generated it (13 seconds is wild!), but that's more of testament to Google's infrastructural advantage than to the quality of the model. For comparison's sake, I tried something similar with a couple other cheap models I've used lately, with the prompt "Impress me. Make something cool in HTML. Ensure that it is mobile…

I think it's not using GPU, because on my Firefox browser all the animations are going 3fps max.

Plays perfectly smoothly for me, fwiw (Librewolf 154.0.1-3, windows 11)

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can substantiate your assertion that LLMs aren't conscious without a definition of consciousness, you're welcome to do that too. I don't see why a definition is necessary. The actual problem is you just don't have a way to substantiate that belief without resorting to complete nonsense about brain atoms being more specialer (!!) than atoms that exist outside of a skull. It would be simple to disprove us by jus…

I literally just wrote about consciousness being undefined, and now you're asking me to define it? I'm not a philosopher, ask someone more qualified. Better yet, ask your LLM to give you a mealy-mouthed answer which fits your narrative. > I don't see why a definition is necessary. Don't waste my time with your sophistry. Words mean nothing to you beyond how you can twist them.

I said specifically you don't need to explicitly and cleanly define it.

Is your position now that in order to substantiate your belief that LLMs are not conscious, you'd first have to define it explicitly? I don't see why that'd necessarily be true, but if that's what you're arguing, then that's fine.

In that case: if you need to define consciousness in order to substantiate your belief that LLMs are not conscious, and you can't define consciousness, then we're back to the original question: where does your confidence they're not conscious come from?

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#676
post #200

The speed combined with the fact that this thing is really good at HTML JavaScript is pretty exciting. Here's what I got for 1.8 cents and 13 seconds from the prompt "make me a cool thing in html": https://gisthost.github.io/?6a77bc41a81718c6aaa10d4ab243c59f Transcript here (it was part of a chat): https://gist.github.com/simonw/b6149a49d327164d67d62c3d12992...

good to see people still value trinket toys

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It bugs me a little that "fidelity" has connotations other than "faithfulness to an original"---fidelity should be basically the same as correctness here!

That’s really not the highest fidelity interpretation of “fidelity.”

Fair, but correctness should be a necessary component of fidelity.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Management still pushes for more ai and will rather hire more heads to "handle" issues.

Hiring? Seems to me that market’s rough right now and AI is being used for cost cutting.

I know but in our case they really did put out a few job ads. The market is full of different small contexts where things are a bit flipped.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the impossibility of defining consciousness suggest that it's not a big deal?

Because it's completely dwarfed by florpedness. I can't define that either, but I just know it's more important. Less facetiously: A debate of the importance of something needs a shared understanding of what is being debated. Without that, any discussion is merely people shouting that their belief is the right one, and the others are the heathens/idiots - because there isn't even agreement on what is debated.

I'm not asking for a definition of consciousness or an argument for whether it's here or there. I'm asking why the heuristic of "if X is undefinable, then X probably doesn't matter" is a reasonable heuristic.

Re: Gemini 3.8 Flash and 3.8 Flash Cyber

#680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hiring? Seems to me that market’s rough right now and AI is being used for cost cutting.

I know but in our case they really did put out a few job ads. The market is full of different small contexts where things are a bit flipped.

I’m glad to hear it truly
Post reply on HN