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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

#331

Post by nicbou »

cortesoft wrote: post #311
nicbou wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every time I go to a presentation about the health care options I have, it ends up just being the representative reading off a slide with the actual information. All the information I need is in print. I have never received a single piece of valuable information that wasn’t easier to get just reading the docs myself.

We might live in a different country and serve a different demographic.

My guy saved a lot of people from making dumb mistakes. Then again he's good at his job, and if he was not I would wipe his business. Aligning incentives was very important for me. Most brokers are just bad.

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

#332

Post by baobun »

Mashimo wrote: post #330
baobun wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way this is not a degradation compared to a physical meter accepting cash plus whatever. My country doesn't really have parking apps yet here and paying for parking is never a friction.

> There is no way this is not a degradation compared to a physical meter accepting cash plus whatever. Well you can extend the parking time while not at your car. That is a big plus.

Or just pay whetever's due when you return to exit. Having to schedule and reschedule sounds unnecessary to begin with.

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

#333

Post by Mashimo »

baobun wrote: post #332
Mashimo wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way this is not a degradation compared to a physical meter accepting cash plus whatever. Well you can extend the parking time while not at your car. That is a big plus.

Or just pay whetever's due when you return to exit. Having to schedule and reschedule sounds unnecessary to begin with.

You can only do that at a dedicated and fenced of garage or parking lot. You can't do that at the curb in the inner city. You have to pay upfront.

Without the app you have to find the meter, pay, print the receipt and get back to your car to put in in the window. Remember the time and get back.

With the app you can just start walking towards your destination while you start the metering.

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

#334

Post by smagdali »

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…

Hi, as the original-thought-haver here (and a buyer of DoubleClick's services on various projects 1998-2003), I should clarify -the problem with Google's acquisition of DoubleClick wasn't just about customer scale, or even market power, it was that DoubleClick was already the skeeziest player on the internet, screwing over customers, advertisers and platforms at every opportunity, and culturally antithetical to Google at the time. And there wasn't any way that "Don't Be Evil" was going to win in the long run.

Look how quaint this seems now: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/consumer-gro...

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

#335

Post by sh34r »

pooper wrote: post #64
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.

> 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…

While I can certainly think of ways in which ordinary segmentation can be stretched beyond the limits of what’s reasonable, the example you give is categorically different.

In your example, you’re paying extra for additional capabilities. Doesn’t really matter if it’s a nonlinear increase in cost with the number of seats. Two companies buy 500 seats and pay the same price.

What I object to is some sales bro deciding I should pay 5x more for those same licenses because of who I am, what I look like, where I’m from, etc. It’s absolutely repulsive. Why can’t you simply provide a fair service at a fair price and stop playing these fuck-fuck games? You’re making a profit on this sale either way. Stop trying to steal my profit margin.

Instead of trying to scam me by abusing information asymmetry, why not use your sales talents to upsell me on additional or custom services, once you’ve demonstrated value? Honest and reliable vendors generally get continued (and increasing) business.

Conversely, these Broadcom/private-equity/mafia tactics generally have me running for the exits ASAP. Spite is one hell of a motivator.

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

#336

Post by gfdvgfffv »

specproc wrote: post #178
CSMastermind wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some other fun things you'll find: - The models perform differently when called via the API vs in the Gemini UI. - The Gemini API will randomly fail about 1% of the time, retry logic is basically mandatory. - API performance is heavily influenced by the whims of the Google we've observed spreads between 30 seconds and 4 minutes for the same query depending on how Google is feeling that day.

I have also had some super weird stuff in my output (2.5-flash). I'm passing docs for bulk inference via Vertex, and a small number of returned results will include gibberish in Japanese.

I’ve gotten Arabic randomly in Claude Code. Programming is becoming more and more like magic.

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

#337

Post by aamoscodes »

phantasmish wrote: post #308
downsplat wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah at $WORK we use various LLM APIs to analyze text; it's not heavy usage in terms of tokens but maybe 10K calls per day. We've found that response times vary a lot, sometimes going over a minute for simple tasks, and random fails happen. Retry logic is definitely mandatory, and it's good to have multiple providers ready. We're abstracting calls across three different APIs (openai, gemini and mistral, btw we're get…

It'd be kinda nice if they exposed whatever queuing is going on behind the scenes, so you could at least communicate that to your users.

IIRC this is almost exactly the use case for OpenRouter, down to provider fallback https://openrouter.ai/docs/guides/best-practices/uptime-opti...

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

#338

Post by kunley »

gilrain wrote: post #262
kunley wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. Seinfeld reference does it. About the "hard way", everything in the article is screaming that OP's new way of coding is the hard way, not the other way around

You came in hot with a wrong assumption couched in absolute terms… and, after correction, you’re flouncing out with the same irrelevent message. I’m an AI skeptic, but this ain’t it.

I see I am dealing with people treating the topic in a religious way.

OP explains his enormous and ridiculous struggles yet you say it is irrelevant.

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

#339

Post by logankilpatrick »

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…

Will take a pass with the team to see what we can do to tighten up this experience, very valid feedback on the confusion between the three APIs.

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

#340

Post by logankilpatrick »

prodigycorp wrote: post #204
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…

Also, usage and billing takes a DAY to update. On top of that, there are no billing caps or credit-based billing. They put the entire burden on users not to ensure that they don't have a mega bill.

Usage updates much quicker in the AI Studio UI, near realtime (but can take ~5 min in edge cases).

We are working on billing caps along with credits right now. Billing caps will land first in Jan!

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