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Getting a Gemini API key is an exercise in frustration

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

#251

Post by Hendrikto »

makeitdouble wrote: post #142
cortesoft wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have had way too many arguments over the years with product and sales people at my job on the importance of instant self-signup. I want to be able to just pay and go, without having to talk to people or wait for things. 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, but I am never going to sign up for anything that makes me talk t…

> sales people > talk to people There will clearly be a gap in understanding, when their whole job is to talk to people, and you come to them to argue for clients to not do that. As you point out it's not that black and white, most companies will have tiers of client they want to spend less or more time with etc. but sales wanting direct contact with clients is I think a fundamental bit.

> sales wanting direct contact with clients

But what do the clients want? Your business should not be structured to make sales people happy.

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

#252

Post by 542354234235 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #124
the_snooze wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

(Shrug) No, I'll just park someplace else. I probably need a good walk anyway. There's no such thing as a monopoly when it comes to parking. If there is -- if every single parking spot within walking distance is locked behind a shitty app -- then you need to spend some quality time at your next city council meeting making yourself a royal PIA.

I don’t think a monopoly requires literally every possible option to be controlled by the monopolistic entity.

Also, I only have time for so many hills on which to die. I’m not sure parking reform, while worthy, makes the cut.

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

#254

Post by xmcqdpt2 »

lokar wrote: post #101
transcriptase wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire lab supply industry is disgusting in this respect. The funding (and recent grants) that a given professor or research lab has is generally publicly available information that vendors will buy in easily digestible formats from brokers and companies that scrape the websites of major granting agencies. All of their products, however realistically commoditized, will require a drawn out engagement with a rep wh…

A group of research universities should start a non-profit co-op to produce this for them. Getting just the university of California should be enough critical mass.

Depends on the product. Some products just have a single supplier for the whole world over, because they are extremely specialized.

It's not uncommon though for eg departments to have common equipment that they negotiate together.

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

#256

Post by pmontra »

cortesoft wrote: post #31
dannyobrien wrote: post #11

The odd thing about all of this (well, I guess it's not odd, just ironic), is that when Google AdWords started, one of the notable things about it was that anyone could start serving or buying ads. You just needed a credit-card. I think that bought Google a lot of credibility (along with the ads being text-only) as they entered an already disreputable space: ordinary users and small businesses felt they were getting…

I have had way too many arguments over the years with product and sales people at my job on the importance of instant self-signup. I want to be able to just pay and go, without having to talk to people or wait for things. 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, but I am never going to sign up for anything that makes me talk t…

If it's only pay and go why have Sales at all? At the very best you need only a slimmed down Sales Department, so being against pay and go is self preservation.

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

#257

Post by egorfine »

thecupisblue wrote: post #238
Ozzie_osman wrote: post #145

I was recently (vibe)-coding some games with my kid, and we wanted some basic text-to-speech functionality. We tested Google's Gemini models in-browser, and they worked great, so we figured we'd add them to the app. Some fun learnings: 1. You can access those models via three APIs: the Gemini API (which it turns out is only for prototyping and returned errors 30% of the time), the Vertex API (much more stable but lac…

Oh man let me add onto that! 4. If you read about a new Gemini model, you might want to use it - but are you using @google/genai, @google/generative-ai (wow finally deprecated) or @google-ai/generativelanguage? Silly mistake, but when nano banana dropped it was highly confusing image gen was available only through one of these. 5. Gemini supports video! But that video first has to be uploaded to "Google GenAI Drive"…

12. Release your first version.

13. Get your whole google account banned.

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

#258

Post by heymijo »

niwtsol wrote: post #34

The article lightly mentions it, but how AWS and Google Cloud Console are so absolute nonsensical in UX and ease of use is beyond comprehension.

The really fun part was after getting billing finally set up in the cloud console trying to find what model name you actually have to use to call it via the API. Conflicting information? Sure! Gemini cloud help being useless? Naturally.

Oh and don’t forget that error message being returned when you try to call the API is because you didn’t give your project the proper permissions in google cloud console. What permissions do you need? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Google Cloud Console feels like being stuck in the seventh circle of hell.

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

#259

Post by sceptic123 »

nicbou wrote: post #74
sh34r wrote: 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.

Certain purchases (like health insurance in my country) should be a conversation, because the options are fiendishly complex and the attributes people typically use for comparison are wrong. The consequences are lifelong.

I thought thees things were complex on purpose to make it hard for people to easily understand and compare so you have to speak to a sales person who can do the upselling
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