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Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

ankursethi.com

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Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#111
post #64
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I know part of it is that sales wants to be able to price discriminate and wants to be able to use their sales skills on a customer You say that as if it isn’t the entire reason why these interactions should be avoided at all costs. Dynamic pricing should be a crime.

> You say that as if it isn’t the entire reason why these interactions should be avoided at all costs. Dynamic pricing should be a crime. Does segmentation also count as dynamic pricing? -- The IT guy at Podunk Lutheran College has no money: Gratis. The IT guy at a medium-sized real estate agency has some money: $500. The IT guy at a Fortune 100 company has tons of money: $50,000. https://blog.codinghorror.com/oh-you…

Not parent poster, but I think a more practical approach is to ban secret discriminatory pricing.

If everybody can see the prices that would be quoted in other circumstances, that exerts a strong moderating force against abuse.

It won't help you if there's a monopoly, but I consider that a separate problem needing separate solutions.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number one rule of business that should just be passively reiterated to everyone working in any type of transactional field: 1. Never make it hard for people to give you money.

Parking apps don’t seem to care much for that. They know you’ll jump through their shoddy UIs and data collection because they have a local monopoly. Often with physical payment kiosks removed and replaced with “download our shitty app!” notices.

There's also the unfortunate stick of a much larger parking ticket that is even more trouble to contest.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#114

I don't understand the multiple posts / comments I've seen about this. I google `gemini API key` and the first result* is this docs page: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/api-key That docs page has a link in the first primary section on the page. Sure, it could be a huge CTA, but this is a docs page, so it's kinda nice that it's not gone through a marketing make over. * besides sponsored result for AI Studio (Ma…

As the article states, generating the key itself is easy. But getting credit and billing are the issues.

I have it running and calling but it's not showing the usage and I set it up the day gemini 3 came out

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#115
Hi if the Gemini API team is reading this can you please be more transparent about 'The specified schema produces a constraint that has too many states for serving. ...' when using Structured Outputs.

I assume it has something to do with the underlying constraint grammar/token masks becoming too long/taking too long to compute. But as end users we have no way of figuring out what the actual limits are.

OpenAI has more generous limits on the schemas and clearer docs. https://platform.openai.com/docs/guides/structured-outputs#s....

You guys closed this issue for no reason: https://github.com/googleapis/python-genai/issues/660

Other than that, good work! I love how fast the Gemini models are. The current API is significantly less of a shitshow compared to last year with property ordering etc.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#116

Add me to the list of "saw nano banana pro, attempted to get an API key for like 5min, failed and gave up." Maybe I am a dummy (quite possible) but I have seen many smart people similarly flummoxed! You can walk into a McDonalds without being able to read, write, or speak English, and the order touchscreen UI is so good (er, "good") that you can successfully order a hamburger in about 60 seconds. Why can't Google (of…

I tried at some point to sign up for whatever IBMs AI cloud was called. None of the documentation was up to date, when you clicked on things you ended up in circular loops that took you back where you started. Somehow there were several kinds of api keys you could make, most seemingly decoys and only one correct one. The whole experience was like one of those Mario castle levels where if you don’t follow the exact right pattern you just loop back to where you started.

It makes sense for IBM, seems like google is just reaching that stage?

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are also a developer though, and developers are notorious for wanting self serve. Someone who works in finance or conpliances might want a demo, or views those things as signals the product is for serious use cases.

Sure, and they should have that option. But in my experience business-folks ask techies to evaluate services all the time, and ideally we can just start out in the low-/no-touch tier to feel things out. If that tier isn't available, us techs might just try a different service.

The kind of products hidden behind sales calls are generally the sort where the opinion of IC-level tech staff is next to irrelevant. With these kinds of products, the purchase decision is being made at a group level, the contract sizes are large, and budgetary approvals are required. It’s a snowball the size of a house, and it started rolling down the mountain months (or years) before it got to your desk. Literally nobody cares if you buy a single license or not, and if you (personally) refuse to try it because it doesn’t have self-service, you’ll be ignored for being the bad stereotype of an “engineer”, or worse.

About the only time you’ll be asked to evaluate such a product as an IC is when someone wants an opinion about API support or something equivalent. And if you refuse to do it, the decision-makers will just find the next guy down the hall who won’t be so cranky.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#119
I think now the Google One AI Pro subscription directly works for raising limits on the CLI? But otherwise, there is an Individual subscription. The problem is it doesn’t work out of the box. You have to create a whole Google Cloud project and attach the API to it to get it to work. Otherwise the CLI would stop logging you in, which it did when the account was free. The worst part is if that cloud project had any code in it, CLI will use it as context on every prompt.

Re: Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

holy hell google cloud is so confusing i just ended up using (a much more expensive) digital ocean droplet instead for a little project. I guess they only really care about enterprise customers who can burn tons of money figuring it out, but it made me never want to use it again. Same with google ads - super fuckin shit UI/UX, super confusing to understand what is going on. companies like digital ocean, supabase, etc…

DigitalOcean is such a dream to use. I also really appreciate all their guides for almost everything web server related.

How is their managed Kubernetes product nowadays? I've realized all I really use on GCP and AWS is managed Kubernetes and Postgres, and I feel like I must be overpaying particularly for GPU instances.
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