[HN Gopher] Gemini 2.0 is now available to everyone
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Gemini 2.0 is now available to everyone
        
       Author : meetpateltech
       Score  : 361 points
       Date   : 2025-02-05 16:03 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blog.google)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blog.google)
        
       | lowmagnet wrote:
       | Here's me not using Gemini 1 because the only use case for me for
       | old assistant is setting a timer. Because of reports that Gemini
       | is randomly incapable of setting one.
        
         | progbits wrote:
         | How does release of LLM API relate to assistant?
        
           | w0m wrote:
           | Pixels replaced Assistent w/ Gemini a while back and it was
           | horrendous; would answer questions but not perform the basic
           | tasks you actually used Assistant for (setting timer,
           | navigating, home control, etc).
           | 
           | Seems like they're approaching parity (finally) months and
           | months later (alarms/tv control work at least now), but
           | losing basic oft-used functionality is a serious fumble.
        
             | KeplerBoy wrote:
             | It's not just pixels. That feature rolled out to billions
             | of android phones.
        
             | VenturingVole wrote:
             | I feel as though some of the rigour of systems engineering
             | is missing from AI model development/integration. Not a
             | negative per-se, as velocity is _incredibly_ important: But
             | it seems a lot of lessons have to be learned again.
             | 
             | I sometimes forget - it is still very early days relatively
             | speaking.
             | 
             | As a user of Gemini 2.0, so far I have been very impressed
             | for the most part.
        
             | progbits wrote:
             | Thanks, didn't know, never really used these voice
             | assistants.
             | 
             | It's a weird choice, I suppose the endless handcrafted
             | rules and tools don't scale across languages and usecases
             | but then LLM are not good at reliability. And what's the
             | point of using assistant that will not do the task
             | reliably, if you have to double-check you are better of not
             | using it...
        
               | w0m wrote:
               | The issue wasn't inconsistency it was "had no home
               | integration at all" at launch. They rushed to roll out
               | the 'new' assistant and didn't bother waiting for the
               | basic feature set first.
               | 
               | Today; it works ~perfectly for TV control/Alarm setting -
               | I can't think of it not working first try in the last
               | month or so for me. Maybe more consistent than prior?
               | 
               | The rollout was simply borked from the PM/Decision making
               | side.
        
       | butlike wrote:
       | Flash is back, baby.
       | 
       | Next release should be called Gemini Macromedia
        
         | VenturingVole wrote:
         | Or perhaps it'll help people to weave their dreams together and
         | so it should be called.. ahh I feel old all of a sudden.
        
           | benob wrote:
           | You made me feel old ;)
        
             | VenturingVole wrote:
             | Everyone old is new again!
             | 
             | On a serious note - LLMs have actually brought me a lot of
             | joy lately and elevated my productivity substantially
             | within the domains in which I choose to use them. When
             | witnessing the less experienced more readily accept outputs
             | without understanding the nuances there's definitely
             | additional value in being... experienced.
        
           | sbruchmann wrote:
           | Google Frontpage?
        
             | VenturingVole wrote:
             | I feel seen!
             | 
             | Also just had to explain to the better half why I suddenly
             | shuddered and pulled such a face of despair.
        
               | butlike wrote:
               | Why the p[artition?
        
           | lamuswawir wrote:
           | Dreamweaver!
        
         | drewda wrote:
         | Google Gemini MX 2026
        
         | ChocolateGod wrote:
         | This is going to send shockwaves through the industry.
        
           | seydor wrote:
           | .SWF is all we need
        
         | sho_hn wrote:
         | How about Gemini Director for the next agentic stuff.
        
         | weatherlite wrote:
         | Gemini Applets
        
       | sho_hn wrote:
       | Anyone have a take on how the coding performance (quality and
       | speed) of the 2.0 Pro Experimental compares to o3-mini-high?
       | 
       | The 2 million token window sure feels exciting.
        
         | mohsen1 wrote:
         | I don't know what those "needle in haystack" benchmarks are
         | testing for because in my experience dumping a big amount of
         | code in the context is not working as you'd expect. It works
         | better if you keep the context small
        
           | airstrike wrote:
           | I think the sweet spot is to include _some_ context that is
           | limited to the scope of the problem and benefit from the
           | longer context window to keep longer conversations going. I
           | often go back to an earlier message on that thread and
           | rewrite with understanding from that longer conversation so
           | that I can continue to manage the context window
        
           | cma wrote:
           | Claude works well for me loading code up to around 80% of its
           | 200K context and then asking for changes. If the whole
           | project can't fit I try to at least get in headers and then
           | the most relevant files. It doesn't seem to degrade. If you
           | are using something like an AI IDE a lot of times they don't
           | really get the 200K context.
        
         | TuxSH wrote:
         | Bad (though I haven't tested autocompletion). It's
         | underperforming other models on livebench.ai.
         | 
         | With Copilot Pro and DeepSeek's website, I ran "find logic
         | bugs" on a 1200 LOC file I actually needed code review for:
         | 
         | - DeepSeek R1 found like 7 real bugs out of 10 suggested with
         | the remaining 3 being acceptable false positives due to missing
         | context
         | 
         | - Claude was about the same with fewer remaining bugs; no
         | hallucinations either
         | 
         | - Meanwhile, Gemini had 100% false positive rate, with many
         | hallucinations and unhelpful answers to the prompt
         | 
         | I understand Gemini 2.0 is not a reasoning model, but
         | DeepClaude remains the most effective LLM combo so far.
        
       | gwern wrote:
       | 2.0 Pro Experimental seems like the big news here?
       | 
       | > Today, we're releasing an experimental version of Gemini 2.0
       | Pro that responds to that feedback. It has the strongest coding
       | performance and ability to handle complex prompts, with better
       | understanding and reasoning of world knowledge, than any model
       | we've released so far. It comes with our largest context window
       | at 2 million tokens, which enables it to comprehensively analyze
       | and understand vast amounts of information, as well as the
       | ability to call tools like Google Search and code execution.
        
         | Tiberium wrote:
         | It's not _that_ big of a news because they already had gemini-
         | exp-1206 on the API - they just didn 't say it was Gemini 2.0
         | Pro until today. Now the AI Studio marks it as 2.0 Pro
         | Experimental - basically an older snapshot, the newer one is
         | gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05.
        
           | Alifatisk wrote:
           | Oh so the previous model gemini-exp-1206 is now
           | gemini-2.0-pro-experimental on aistudio? Is it better than
           | gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-exp?
        
       | mohsen1 wrote:
       | > available via the Gemini API in Google AI Studio and Vertex AI.
       | 
       | > Gemini 2.0, 2.0 Pro and 2.0 Pro Experimental, Gemini 2.0 Flash,
       | Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite
       | 
       | 3 different ways of accessing the API, more than 5 different but
       | extremely similarly named models. Benchmarks only comparing to
       | their own models.
       | 
       | Can't be more "Googley"!
        
         | sho_hn wrote:
         | I think this is a good summary:
         | https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-developer-goog-blog-asse...
        
           | vdfs wrote:
           | - Experimental(tm)
           | 
           | - Preview(tm)
           | 
           | - Coming soon(tm)
        
             | esafak wrote:
             | Don't forget the OG, "Beta".
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Gmail#Extended_bet
             | a...
        
         | llm_trw wrote:
         | You missed the first sentence of the release:
         | 
         | >In December, we kicked off the agentic era by releasing an
         | experimental version of Gemini 2.0 Flash
         | 
         | I guess I wasn't building AI agents in February last year.
        
           | soulofmischief wrote:
           | Yeah some of us have been working on agents predominately for
           | years now, but at least people are finally paying attention.
           | Can't wait to be told how I'm following a hype cycle again.
        
         | raverbashing wrote:
         | Honestly naming conventions in the AI world have been appalling
         | regardless of the company
        
           | belval wrote:
           | Google isn't even the worst in my opinion. From the top of my
           | head
           | 
           | Anthropic:
           | 
           | Claude 1 Claude Instant 1 Claude 2 Claude Haiku 3 Claude
           | Sonnet 3 Claude Opus 3 Claude Haiku 3.5 Claude Sonnet 3.5
           | Claude Sonnet 3.5v2
           | 
           | OpenAI:
           | 
           | GPT-3.5 GPT-4 GPT-4o-2024-08-06 GPT-4o GPT-4o-mini o1 o3-mini
           | o1-mini
           | 
           | Fun times when you try to setup throughput provisioning.
        
             | jorvi wrote:
             | I don't understand why if they're gonna use shorthands to
             | make the tech seem cooler, they can't at least use mnemonic
             | shorthands.
             | 
             | Imagine if it went like this:                 Mnemonics:
             | m(ini), r(easoning), t(echnical)            Claude 3m
             | Claude 3mr       Claude 3mt       Claude 3mtr       Claude
             | 3r       Claude 3t       Claude 3tr
        
           | jug wrote:
           | Google is the least confusing to me. Old school version
           | number and Pro is better than Flash which is fast and for
           | "simple" stuff (which can be effortless intermediate level
           | coding at this point).
           | 
           | OpenAI is crazy. There may be a day when we might have o5
           | that is reasoning and 5o that is not, and where they belong
           | to different generations too, snd where "o" meant "Omni"
           | despite o1-o3 not being audiovisual anymore like 4o.
           | 
           | Anthropic crazy too. Sonnets and Haikus, just why... and a
           | 3.5 Sonnet that was released in October that was better than
           | 3.5 Sonnet. (Not a typo) And no one knows why there never was
           | a 3.5 Opus.
        
             | NitpickLawyer wrote:
             | > And no one knows why there never was a 3.5 Opus.
             | 
             | If you read between the lines it's been pretty clear. The
             | top labs are keeping the top models in house and use them
             | to train the next generation (either SotA or faster/cheaper
             | etc).
        
             | esafak wrote:
             | 4o is a more advanced model than o1 or o3, right!?
        
           | dpkirchner wrote:
           | Mistral vs mistral.rs, Llama and llama.cpp and ollama, groq
           | and grok. It's all terrible.
        
             | danielbln wrote:
             | Claude Sonnet 3.5...no, not that 3.5, the new 3.5. o3-mini,
             | no not o2. yes there was o1, yes it's better than gpt-4o.
        
         | seanhunter wrote:
         | I don't know why you're finding it confusing. There's Duff,
         | Duff Lite and now there's also all-new Duff Dry.
        
           | whynotminot wrote:
           | I tend to prefer Duff Original Dry and Lite, but that's just
           | me
        
         | justanotheratom wrote:
         | They actually have two "studios"
         | 
         | Google AI Studio and Google Cloud Vertex AI Studio
         | 
         | And both have their own documentation, different ways of
         | "tuning" the model.
         | 
         | Talk about shipping the org chart.
        
           | bn-l wrote:
           | > Talk about shipping the org chart.
           | 
           | Good expression. I've been thinking about a way to say
           | exactly this.
        
             | lelandfe wrote:
             | A pithy reworking of Conway's Law
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | I love this phrase so much.
             | 
             | Google still has some unsettled demons.
        
           | jiggawatts wrote:
           | > Talk about shipping the org chart.
           | 
           | To be fair, Microsoft has shipped like five AI portals in the
           | last two years. Maybe four -- I don't even know any more.
           | I've lost track of the renames and product (re)launches.
        
             | felixg3 wrote:
             | They made a new one to unite them all: Microsoft Fabric.
             | 
             | https://xkcd.com/927/
        
           | itissid wrote:
           | I wonder what changelog of the two studio products tell us
           | about internal org fights(strifes)?
        
         | ssijak wrote:
         | Working with google APIs is often an exercise in frustration. I
         | like their base cloud offering the best actually, but their
         | additional APIs can be all over the place. These AI related are
         | the worst.
        
       | butz wrote:
       | Does "everyone" here means "users with google accounts"?
        
       | esafak wrote:
       | Benchmarks or it didn't happen. Anything better than
       | https://lmarena.ai/?leaderboard?
       | 
       | My experience with the Gemini 1.5 models has been positive. I
       | think Google has caught up.
        
         | og_kalu wrote:
         | Livebench is better. llmarena is a vibes benchmark
        
         | Hrun0 wrote:
         | Some of my saved bookmarks:
         | 
         | - https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/
         | 
         | - https://www.prollm.ai/leaderboard
         | 
         | - https://www.vellum.ai/llm-leaderboard
         | 
         | - https://lmarena.ai/?leaderboard
        
       | yogthos wrote:
       | I wish the blog mentioned whether they backported DeepSeek ideas
       | into their model to make it more efficient.
        
         | weatherlite wrote:
         | Only DeepSeek is allowed to take ideas from everyone else?
        
       | singhrac wrote:
       | What is the model I get at gemini.google.com (i.e. through my
       | Workspace subscription)? It says "Gemini Advanced" but there are
       | no other details. No model selection option.
       | 
       | I find the lack of clarity very frustrating. If I want to try
       | Google's "best" model, should I be purchasing something? AI
       | Studio seems focused around building an LLM wrapper app, but I
       | just want something to answer my questions.
       | 
       | Edit: what I've learned through Googling: (1) if you search "is
       | gemini advanced included with workspace" you get an AI overview
       | answer that seems to be incorrect, since they now include Gemini
       | Advanced (?) with every workspace subscription.(2) a page exists
       | telling you to buy the add-on (Gemini for Google Workspace), but
       | clicking on it says this is no longer available because of the
       | above. (3) gemini.google.com says "Gemini Advanced" (no idea
       | which model) at the top, but gemini.google.com/advanced redirects
       | me to what I have deduced is the consumer site (?) which tells me
       | that Gemini Advanced is another $20/month
       | 
       | The problem, Google PMs if you're reading this, is that the
       | gemini.google.com page does not have ANY information about what
       | is going on. What model is this? What are the limits? Do I get
       | access to "Deep Research"? Does this subscription give me
       | something in aistudio? What about code artifacts? The settings
       | option tells me I can change to dark mode (thanks!).
       | 
       | Edit 2: I decided to use aistudio.google.com since it has a
       | dropdown for me on my workspace plan.
        
         | ysofunny wrote:
         | hmm did you try clickin where it says 'gemini advanced'? I find
         | it opens a drop down
        
           | singhrac wrote:
           | I just tried it but nothing happens when I click on that.
           | You're talking about the thing on the upper left next to the
           | open/close menu button?
        
             | easychris wrote:
             | Yes, very frustrating for me as well. I consider now
             | purchasing Gemini Advance with another Non-Workspace
             | account. :-(
             | 
             | I also found this [1]: " Important:
             | 
             | A chat can only use one model. If you switch between models
             | in an existing chat, it automatically starts a new chat. If
             | you're using Gemini Apps with a work or school Google
             | Account, you can't switch between models. Learn more about
             | using Gemini Apps with a work or school account."
             | 
             | I have no idea why the workspace accounts are such
             | restricted.
             | 
             | [1] https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/14517446?hl=en
             | &co=G...
        
         | rickette wrote:
         | "what model are you using, exact name please" is usually the
         | first prompt I enter when trying out something.
        
           | lxgr wrote:
           | You'd be surprised at how confused some models are about who
           | they are.
        
             | freedomben wrote:
             | Indeed, asking the model which model it is might be one of
             | the worst ways to find that information out
        
           | mynameisvlad wrote:
           | Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking responds with
           | 
           | > I am currently running on the Gemini model.
           | 
           | Gemini 1.5 Flash responds with
           | 
           | > I'm using Gemini 2.0 Flash.
           | 
           | I'm not even going to go on a limb here and say that question
           | isn't going to give you an accurate response.
        
             | jug wrote:
             | Yeah, they need something in their system prompt to tell
             | their name or else they have absolutely no idea what they
             | are and will hallucinate to 100% based on training data. If
             | you're lucky, the AI just might guess right based on these
             | circumstances.
             | 
             | It's not unusual for AI's to think they're OpenAI/ChatGPT
             | because it's become so popular that it's leaked into the
             | buzz it's trained on.
        
         | miyuru wrote:
         | changes must be rolling out now, I can see 3 Gemini 2.0 models
         | in the dropdown, with blue "new" badges.
         | 
         | screenshot: https://beeimg.com/images/g25051981724.png
        
           | singhrac wrote:
           | This works on my personal Google account, but not on my
           | workspace one. So I guess there's no access to 2.0 Pro then?
           | I'm ok trying out Flash for now and see if it fixes the
           | mistakes I ran into yesterday.
           | 
           | Edit: it does not. It continues to miss the fact that I'm
           | (incorrectly) passing in a scaled query tensor to
           | scaled_dot_product_attention. o3-mini-high gets this right.
        
             | vel0city wrote:
             | As someone with over a decade of Google Apps management
             | history, my experiences is Workspace customers are
             | practically always the last to get the shiny new features.
             | Quite frustrating.
        
               | basch wrote:
               | Isn't that generally how it goes? Windows Vista was
               | tested on consumers to make 7 Enterprise appropriate?
        
           | panarky wrote:
           | If you subscribe to Gemini the menu looks like this, with the
           | addition of 2.0 Pro.
           | 
           | https://imgur.com/a/xZ7hzag
        
             | glerk wrote:
             | It doesn't for workspace users. No dropdown appears.
        
         | behnamoh wrote:
         | The number one reason I don't use Google Gemini is because they
         | truncate the input text. So I can't simply paste long documents
         | or other kinds of things as raw text in the prompt box.
        
           | radeeyate wrote:
           | If you have the need to paste long documents, why don't you
           | just upload the file at that point?
        
             | heavyarms wrote:
             | The last time I checked (a few days ago) it only had an
             | "Upload Image" option... and I have been playing with
             | Gemini on and off for months and I have never been able to
             | actually upload an image.
             | 
             | It's basically what I've come to expect from most Google
             | products at this point: half-baked, buggy, confusing, not
             | intuitive.
        
             | Xiol32 wrote:
             | Friction.
        
               | johnisgood wrote:
               | Claude automatically uploads it as "Pasted text" if it is
               | too long that you paste into the textarea. Works either
               | way anyways.
        
             | behnamoh wrote:
             | Because sometimes the text is the result of my whisper
             | transcription.
        
         | nudpiedo wrote:
         | Today I wasted 1 hour looking in how to use or where to find
         | "Deep Research".
         | 
         | I could not. I have the business workplace standard, which
         | contains the Gemini advance, not sure whether I need a VPN, pay
         | a separate AI product, or even pay a higher workplace tier or
         | what the heck is going on at all.
         | 
         | There are so many confusing products interrelated and lack of
         | focus everywhere that I really do not know anymore whether it
         | is worth as an AI provider.
        
           | gerad wrote:
           | You need to pay for Gemini to access it. In my experience,
           | it's not worth it. So much potential in the experience, but
           | the AI isn't good enough.
           | 
           | I'm curious about the OpenAI alternative, but am not willing
           | to pay $200/month.
        
             | nudpiedo wrote:
             | if it would make whole market research on products and
             | companies I would gladly pay for it... but a bit unsure
             | from Europe where it seems to be everything restricted due
             | political boundaries.
        
               | A_D_E_P_T wrote:
               | I have OpenAI Deep Research access in Europe and it is
               | extremely good. It's also particularly good at niche
               | market research in products and companies.
               | 
               | Happy to give you a demo. If you want to send me a
               | prompt, I can share a link to the resulting output.
        
         | coolgoose wrote:
         | Plus one on this it's so stupid, but also mandatory in a way.
         | Sigh
        
         | vldmrs wrote:
         | This is funny how bad UI is on some of websites which are
         | considered the best. Today I tried to find prices for Mistral
         | models but I couldn't. Their prices page leads to 404...
        
           | PhilippGille wrote:
           | Just in case you're still interested in their pricing, it's
           | towards the bottom of [1], section "How to buy", when
           | changing the selection from "Self-hosted" to "Mistral Cloud".
           | 
           | [1] https://mistral.ai/en/products/la-plateforme
        
           | behnamoh wrote:
           | if only these models were good at web development and could
           | be used in agentic frameworks to build high quality
           | website... wait...
        
       | gallerdude wrote:
       | Is there really no standalone app, like ChatGPT/Claude/DeepSeek,
       | available yet for Gemini?
        
         | bangaladore wrote:
         | Presumably any app that is API agnostic works fine.
         | 
         | I'm not sure why you would want an app for each anyways.
        
         | silvajoao wrote:
         | The standalone app is at https://gemini.google.com/app, and is
         | similar to ChatGPT.
         | 
         | You can also use https://aistudio.google.com to use base models
         | directly.
        
         | browningstreet wrote:
         | What do you mean by an app? I have a Gemini app on my iPhone.
        
       | pmayrgundter wrote:
       | I tried voice chat. It's very good, except for the politics
       | 
       | We started talking about my plans for the day, and I said I was
       | making chili. G asked if I have a recipe or if I needed one. I
       | said, I started with Obama's recipe many years ago and have
       | worked on it from there.
       | 
       | G gave me a form response that it can't talk politics.
       | 
       | Oh, I'm not talking politics, I'm talking chili.
       | 
       | G then repeated form response and tried to change conversation,
       | and as long as I didn't use the O word, we were allowed to
       | proceed. Phew
        
         | xnorswap wrote:
         | I find it horrifying and dystopian that the part where it
         | "Can't talk politics" is just accepted and your complaint is
         | that it interrupts your ability to talk chilli.
         | 
         | "Go back to bed America." "You are free, to do as we tell you"
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/TNPeYflsMdg?t=143
        
           | falcor84 wrote:
           | Hear, hear!
           | 
           | There has to be a better way about it. As I see it, to be
           | productive, AI agents have to be able to talk about politics,
           | because at the end of the day politics are everywhere. So
           | following up on what they do already, they'll have to define
           | a model's political stance (whatever it is), and to have it
           | hold its ground, voicing an opinion or abstaining from
           | voicing an opinion, but continuing the conversation, as a
           | person would (at least as those of us who don't rage-quit a
           | conversation when they hear something slightly
           | controversial).
        
             | freedomben wrote:
             | There aren't many mono-cultures as strong as silicon valley
             | politics. Where this intersects with my beliefs I love it,
             | but where it doesn't it is maddening. I suspect that's how
             | most people feel.
             | 
             | But anyway, when one is rarely or never challenged on their
             | beliefs, they become rusty. Do you trust them to do a good
             | job training their own views into the model, let alone
             | training in the views of someone on the opposite side of
             | the spectrum?
        
               | falcor84 wrote:
               | I don't know if I trust them as such, but they're doing
               | it anyway, so I'd appreciate it being more explicit.
               | 
               | Also, as long as it's not training the whole model on the
               | fly as with the Tay fiasco, I'd actually be quite
               | interested in an LLM that would debate you and possibly
               | be convinced and change its stance for the rest of that
               | conversation with you. "Strong opinions weakly held" and
               | all.
        
             | xnorswap wrote:
             | Indeed, you can facilitate talking politics without having
             | a set opinion.
             | 
             | It's a fine line, but it is something the BBC managed to do
             | for a very long time. The BBC does not itself present an
             | opinion on Politics yet facilitates political discussion
             | through shows like Newsnight and The Daily Politics (rip).
        
               | ImHereToVote wrote:
               | BBC is great at talking about the Gaza situation. Makes
               | it seem like people are just dying from natural causes
               | all the time.
        
               | jay_kyburz wrote:
               | Australia's ABC makes it fairly clear who is killing who
               | but also manages to avoid taking sides.
        
           | freedomben wrote:
           | I agree it's ridiculous that the mention of a politician
           | triggers the block so feels overly tightened (which is the
           | story of existencer for Gemini), but the alternative is that
           | the model will have the politics of it's creators/trainers.
           | Is that preferable to you? (I suppose that depends on how
           | well your politics align with Silicon Valley)
        
             | danenania wrote:
             | I think it will still have the politics of its creators
             | even if it's censored with a superficial "no politics"
             | rule. Politics is adjacent to almost everything, so it's
             | going to leak through no matter what you talk about.
        
           | duxup wrote:
           | Online the idea of "no politics" is often used as a way to
           | try to stifle / silence discussion too. It's disturbingly
           | fitting to the Gemini example.
           | 
           | I was a part of a nice small forum online. Most posts were
           | everyday life posts / personal. The person who ran it seemed
           | well meaning. Then a "no politics" rule appeared. It was fine
           | for a while. I understood what they meant and even I only
           | want so much outrage in my small forums.
           | 
           | Yet one person posted about how their plans to adopt were in
           | jeopardy over their state's new rules about who could adopt
           | what child. This was a deeply important and personal topic
           | for that individual.
           | 
           | As you can guess the "no politics" rule put a stop to that.
           | The folks who supported laws like were being proposed of
           | course thought that they shouldn't discuss it because it is
           | "politics", others felt that this was that individual talking
           | about their rights and life, it wasn't "just politics". Whole
           | forum fell apart after that debacle.
           | 
           | Gemini's response here is sadly fitting internet discourse...
           | in bad way.
        
             | FeepingCreature wrote:
             | To be honest, the limiting factor is often competent
             | moderation.
        
               | duxup wrote:
               | Yup.
               | 
               | I sometimes wish magically there could be a social
               | network of:
               | 
               | 1. Real people / real validated names and faces.
               | 
               | 2. Paid for by the users...
               | 
               | 3. Competent professional moderation.
               | 
               | Don't get me wrong I like my slices of anonymity, and
               | free services, but my positive impressions of such
               | products is waning fast. Over time I want more real...
        
           | redcobra762 wrote:
           | Eh, OP isn't stopped from talking politics, Gemini('s owner,
           | Google) is merely exercising its right to avoid talking about
           | politics with OP. That said, the restriction seems too tight,
           | since merely mentioning Obama ought not count as "politics".
           | From a technical perspective that should be fixed.
           | 
           | OP can go talk politics until he's blue in the face with
           | someone willing to talk politics with them.
        
           | bigstrat2003 wrote:
           | There's nothing wrong with (and in fact much to be said in
           | favor of) a "no politics" rule. When I was growing up it was
           | common advice to not discuss politics/religion in mixed
           | company. At one point I thought that was stupid fuddy-duddy
           | advice, because people are adults and can act reasonably even
           | if they disagree. But as I get older, I realize that I was
           | wrong: people really, really can't control their emotions
           | when politics comes up and it gets ugly. Turns out that the
           | older generation was correct, and you really shouldn't talk
           | politics in mixed company.
           | 
           | Obviously in this specific case the user isn't trying to talk
           | politics, but the rule isn't dystopian in and of itself. It's
           | simply a reflection of human nature, and that someone at
           | Google knows it's going to be a lot of trouble for no gain if
           | the bot starts to get into politics with users.
        
             | avar wrote:
             | As an outsider's perspective: This aspect of American
             | culture seems self-reinforcing.
             | 
             | It's not like things can't get heated when people in much
             | of the rest of the world discuss politics.
             | 
             | But if the subject isn't entirely verboten, adults will
             | have some practice in agreeing to disagree, and moving on.
             | 
             | With AI this particular cultural export has gone from a
             | quaint oddity, to something that, as a practical matter,
             | can be really annoying sometimes.
        
         | petre wrote:
         | I find it kind of useless due to the no politics and I usually
         | quickly lose my patience with it. Same with DeepSeek. Meanwhile
         | you can have a decent conversation with Mistral, Claude, pi.ai
         | and other LLMs. Even Chat GPT, although the patronizing
         | appologizing tone is annoying.
        
           | greenavocado wrote:
           | Can censorship damage to LLMs be mitigated with LoRA fine-
           | tuning?
        
         | everdrive wrote:
         | This is AI. Someone else decides what topics and what answers
         | are acceptable.
        
       | leetharris wrote:
       | These names are unbelievably bad. Flash, Flash-Lite? How do these
       | AI companies keep doing this?
       | 
       | Sonnet 3.5 v2
       | 
       | o3-mini-high
       | 
       | Gemini Flash-Lite
       | 
       | It's like a competition to see who can make the goofiest naming
       | conventions.
       | 
       | Regarding model quality, we experiment with Google models
       | constantly at Rev and they are consistently the worst of all the
       | major players. They always benchmark well and consistently fail
       | in real tasks. If this is just a small update to the gemini-
       | exp-1206 model, then I think they will still be in last place.
        
         | falcor84 wrote:
         | > It's like a competition to see who can make the goofiest
         | naming conventions.
         | 
         | I'm still waiting for one of them to overflow from version 360
         | down to One.
        
           | cheeze wrote:
           | Just wait for One X, S, Series X, Series X Pro, Series X Pro
           | with Super Fast Charging 2.0
        
             | kridsdale3 wrote:
             | Meanwhile:
             | 
             | Playstation
             | 
             | Playstation 2
             | 
             | Playstation 3
             | 
             | Playstation 4
             | 
             | Playstation 5
        
               | miohtama wrote:
               | Unlike Sony, Google attempts to confuse people for people
               | to use their limited models as they are free to run and
               | most won't pay.
        
         | tremarley wrote:
         | Thankfully the names aren't as bad as how Sony names their
         | products like earphones
        
         | Skunkleton wrote:
         | Haiku/sonnet/opus are easily the best named models imo.
        
           | throwaway314155 wrote:
           | you mean sonnet-3.5 (first edition, second edition)?
        
             | kridsdale3 wrote:
             | I have a signed copy of the first-edition
        
           | risho wrote:
           | as a person who thought they were arbitrary names when i
           | first discovered them and spent an hour trying to figure out
           | the difference i disagree. it gets even more confusion when
           | you realize that opus, which according to their silly naming
           | scheme is supposed to be the biggest and best model they
           | offer is seemingly abandoned and that title has been given to
           | sonnet which is supposed to be the middle of the road model.
        
         | lamuswawir wrote:
         | Flash Lite is the least bad.
        
         | vok wrote:
         | https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/version
        
       | mtaras wrote:
       | Updates for Gemini models will always be exciting to me because
       | of how generous free API tier is, I barely run into limits for
       | personal use. Huge context window is a huge advantage for use in
       | personal projects, too
        
       | silvajoao wrote:
       | Try out the new models at https://aistudio.google.com.
       | 
       | It's a great way to experiment with all the Gemini models that
       | are also available via the API.
       | 
       | If you haven't yet, try also Live mode at
       | https://aistudio.google.com/live.
       | 
       | You can have a live conversation with Gemini and have the model
       | see the world via your phone camera (or see your desktop via
       | screenshare on the web), and talk about it. It's quite a cool
       | experience! It made me feel the joy of programming and using
       | computers that I had had so many times before.
        
       | Ninjinka wrote:
       | Pricing is CRAZY.
       | 
       | Audio input is $0.70 per million tokens on 2.0 Flash, $0.075 for
       | 2.0 Flash-Lite and 1.5 Flash.
       | 
       | For gpt-4o-mini-audio-preview, it's $10 per million tokens of
       | audio input.
        
         | sunaookami wrote:
         | Sadly: "Gemini can only infer responses to English-language
         | speech."
         | 
         | https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/audio?lang=rest#techni...
        
         | KTibow wrote:
         | The increase is likely because 1.5 Flash was actually cheaper
         | than all other STT services. I wrote about this a while ago at
         | https://ktibow.github.io/blog/geminiaudio/.
        
           | radeeyate wrote:
           | I feel that the audio interpreting aspects of the Gemini
           | models aren't just STT. If you give it something like a song,
           | it can give you information about it.
        
       | denysvitali wrote:
       | When will they release Gemini 2.0 Pro Max?
        
       | msuvakov wrote:
       | Gemini 2.0 works great with large context. A few hours ago, I
       | posted a ShowHN about parsing an entire book in a single prompt.
       | The goal was to extract characters, relationships, and
       | descriptions that could then be used for image generation:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42946317
        
         | Alifatisk wrote:
         | Which Gemini model is notebooklm using atm? Have they switched
         | yet?
        
           | msuvakov wrote:
           | Not sure. I am using models/API keys from
           | https://aistudio.google.com. They just added new models,
           | e.g., gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05. Exp models are free of charge
           | with some daily quota depending on model.
        
       | jbarrow wrote:
       | I've been very impressed by Gemini 2.0 Flash for multimodal
       | tasks, including object detection and localization[1], plus
       | document tasks. But the 15 requests per minute limit was a severe
       | limiter while it was experimental. I'm really excited to be able
       | to actually _do_ things with the model.
       | 
       | In my experience, I'd reach for Gemini 2.0 Flash over 4o in a lot
       | of multimodal/document use cases. Especially given the
       | differences in price ($0.10/million input and $0.40/million
       | output versus $2.50/million input and $10.00/million output).
       | 
       | That being said, Qwen2.5 VL 72B and 7B seem even better at
       | document image tasks and localization.
       | 
       | [1]
       | https://notes.penpusher.app/Misc/Google+Gemini+101+-+Object+...
        
         | Alifatisk wrote:
         | > In my experience, I'd reach for Gemini 2.0 Flash over 4o
         | 
         | Why not use o1-mini?
        
           | jbarrow wrote:
           | Mostly because OpenAI's vision offerings aren't particularly
           | compelling:
           | 
           | - 4o can't really do localization, and ime is worse than
           | Gemini 2.0 and Qwen2.5 at document tasks
           | 
           | - 4o mini isn't cheaper than 4o for images because it uses a
           | _lot_ of tokens per image compared to 4o (~5600 /tile vs
           | 170/tile, where each tile is 512x512)
           | 
           | - o1 has support for vision but is wildly expensive and slow
           | 
           | - o3-mini doesn't yet have support for vision, and o1-mini
           | never did
        
       | SuperHeavy256 wrote:
       | it sucks btw. I tried scheduling an event in google calendar
       | through gemini, and it got the date wrong, the time wrong, and
       | the timezone wrong. it set an event that's supposed to be
       | tomorrow to next year.
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | > Gemini 2.0 is now being forced on everyone.
        
       | rzz3 wrote:
       | It's funny, I've never actually used Gemini and, though this may
       | be incorrect, I automatically assume it's awful. I assume it's
       | awful because the AI summaries at the top of Google Search are so
       | awful, and that's made me never give Google AI a chance.
        
         | Alifatisk wrote:
         | The huge context window is a big selling point.
        
         | blihp wrote:
         | I don't think your take is incorrect. I give it a try from time
         | to time and it's always been inferior to other offerings for me
         | every time I've tested it. Which I find a bit strange as
         | NotebookLM (until recently) had been great to use. Whatever...
         | there are plenty of other good options out there.
        
       | leonidasv wrote:
       | That 1M tokens context window alone is going to kill a lot of RAG
       | use cases. Crazy to see how we went from 4K tokens context
       | windows (2023 ChatGPT-3.5) to 1M in less than 2 years.
        
         | Alifatisk wrote:
         | Gemini can in theory handle 10M tokens, I remember they saying
         | it in one of their presentations.
        
         | monsieurbanana wrote:
         | Maybe someone knows, what's the usual recommendation regarding
         | big context windows? Is it safe to use it to the max, or
         | performance will degrade and we should adapt the maximum to our
         | use case?
        
         | Topfi wrote:
         | We have heard this before when 100k and 200k were first being
         | normalized by Anthropic way back when and I tend to be
         | skeptical in general when it comes to such predictions, but in
         | this case, I have to agree.
         | 
         | Having used the previews for the last few weeks with different
         | tasks and personally designed challenges, what I found is that
         | these models are not only capable of processing larger context
         | windows on paper, but are also far better at actually handling
         | long, dense, complex documents in full. Referencing back to
         | something upon specific request, doing extensive rewrites in
         | full whilst handling previous context, etc. These models also
         | have handled my private needle in haystack-type challenges
         | without issues as of yet, though those have been limited to
         | roughly 200k in fairness. Neither Anthropics, OpenAIs,
         | Deepseeks or previous Google models handled even 75k+ in any
         | comparable manner.
         | 
         | Cost will of course remain a factor and will keep RAG a viable
         | choice for a while, but for the first time I am tempted to
         | agree that someone has delivered a solution which showcases
         | that a larger context window can in many cases work reliably
         | and far more seemlessly.
         | 
         | Is also the first time a Google model actually surprised me
         | (positively), neither Bard, nor AI answers or any previous
         | Gemini model had any appeal to me, even when testing
         | specificially for what other claimed to be strenghts (such as
         | Gemini 1.5s alleged Flutter expertise which got beaten by both
         | OpenAI and Anthropics equivalent at the time).
        
         | torginus wrote:
         | That's not really my experience. Error rate goes up the more
         | stuff you cram into the context, and processing gets both
         | slower and more expensive with the amount of input tokens.
         | 
         | I'd say it makes sense to do RAG even if your stuff fits into
         | context comfortably.
        
           | lamuswawir wrote:
           | Try exp-1206. That thing works on large context.
        
       | Alifatisk wrote:
       | Exciting news to see these models being released to the Gemini
       | app, I would wish my preferences on which model I want to default
       | to got saved for further sessions.
       | 
       | How many tokens can gemini.google.com handle as input? How large
       | is the context window before it forgets? A quick search said it's
       | 128k token window but that applies to Gemini 1.5 Pro, how is it
       | now then?
       | 
       | My assumption is that "Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental is
       | just" "Gemini 2.0 Flash" with reasoning and "Gemini 2.0 Flash
       | Thinking Experimental with apps" is just "Gemini 2.0 Flash
       | Thinking Experimental" with access to the web and Googles other
       | services, right? So sticking to "Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking
       | Experimental with apps" should be the optimal choice.
       | 
       | Is there any reason why Gemini 1.5 Flash is still an option?
       | Feels like it should be removed as an option unless it does
       | something better than the other.
       | 
       | I have difficulties understanding where each variant of the
       | Gemini model is suited the most. Looking at aistudio.google.com,
       | they have already update the available models.
       | 
       | Is "Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental" on gemini.google.com
       | just "Gemini experiment 1206" or was it "Gemini Flash Thinking
       | Experimental" aistudio.google.com?
       | 
       | I have a note on my notes app where I rank every llm based on
       | instructions following and math, to this day, I've had
       | difficulties knowing where to place every Gemini model. I know
       | there is a little popup when you hover over each model that tries
       | to explain what each model does and which tasks it is best suited
       | for, but these explanations have been very vague to me. And I
       | haven't even started on the Gemini Advanced series or whatever I
       | should call it.
       | 
       | The available models on aistudio is now:
       | 
       | - Gemini 2.0 Flash (gemini-2.0-flash)
       | 
       | - Gemini 2.0 Flash Lite Preview (gemini-2.0-flash-lite-
       | preview-02-05)
       | 
       | - Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental (gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05)
       | 
       | - Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental (gemini-2.0-flash-
       | thinking-exp-01-21)
       | 
       | If I had to sort these from most likely to fulfill my need to
       | least likely, then it would probably be:
       | 
       | gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-exp-01-21 > gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05 >
       | gemini-2.0-flash-lite-preview-02-05 > gemini-2.0-flash
       | 
       | Why? Because aistudio describes gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-
       | exp-01-21 as being able to tackle most complex and difficult
       | tasks while gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05 and gemini-2.0-flash-lite-
       | preview-02-05 only differs with how much context they can handle.
       | 
       | So with that out of the way, how does Gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-
       | exp-01-21 compare against o3-mini, Qwen 2.5 Max, Kimi k1.5,
       | DeepSeek R1, DeepSeek V3 and Sonnet 3.5?
       | 
       | My current list of benchmarks I go through is
       | artificialanalysis.ai, lmarena.ai, livebench.ai and aider.chat:s
       | polygot benchmark but still, the whole Gemini suite is difficult
       | to reason and sort out.
       | 
       | I feel like this trend of having many different models with the
       | same name but different suffix starts be an obstacle to my mental
       | model.
        
       | simonw wrote:
       | I upgraded my llm-gemini plugin to handle this, and shared the
       | results of my "Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle"
       | benchmark here: https://simonwillison.net/2025/Feb/5/gemini-2/
       | 
       | The pricing is interesting: Gemini 2.0 Flash-Lite is 7.5c/million
       | input tokens and 30c/million output tokens - half the price of
       | OpenAI's GPT-4o mini (15c/60c).
       | 
       | Gemini 2.0 Flash isn't much more: 10c/million for text/image
       | input, 70c/million for audio input, 40c/million for output.
       | Again, cheaper than GPT-4o mini.
        
         | zamadatix wrote:
         | Is there a way to see/compare the shared results for all of the
         | LLMs you've tested this prompt on in one place? The 2.0 pro
         | result seems decent but I don't have a baseline if that's
         | because it is or if the other 2 are just "extremely bad" or
         | something.
        
           | nolist_policy wrote:
           | Search by tag: https://simonwillison.net/tags/pelican-riding-
           | a-bicycle/
        
         | iimaginary wrote:
         | The only benchmark worth paying attention to.
        
         | qingcharles wrote:
         | Not a bad pelican from 2.0 Pro! The singularity is almost upon
         | us :)
        
         | mattlondon wrote:
         | The SVGs are starting to look actually recognisable! You'll
         | need a new benchmark soon :)
        
       | serjester wrote:
       | For anyone that parsing PDF's this is a game changer in term of
       | price per dollar - I wrote a blog about it [1]. I think a lot of
       | people were nervous about pricing since they released the beta,
       | and although it's slightly more expensive than 1.5 Flash, this is
       | still incredibly cost-effective. Looking forward to also
       | benchmarking the lite version.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.sergey.fyi/articles/gemini-flash-2
        
       | mmanfrin wrote:
       | It sure is cool that people who joined Google's pixel pass
       | continue to be unable to give them money to access Advanced.
        
       | staticman2 wrote:
       | I have a fun query in AI studio where I pasted a 800,000 token
       | Wuxia martial arts novel and ask it worldbuilding questions.
       | 
       | 1.5 pro and the old 2.0 flash experimental generated responses in
       | AI studio but the new 2.0 models respond with blank answers.
       | 
       | I wonder if it's timing out or some sort of newer censorship
       | models is preventing 2.0 from answering my query. The novel is
       | pg-13 at most but references to "bronze skinned southern
       | barbarians" "courtesans" "drugs" "demonic sects" and murder could
       | I guess set it off.
        
       | barrenko wrote:
       | If you're Google and you're reading, please offer finetuning on
       | multi-part dialogue.
        
       | crowcroft wrote:
       | Worth noting that with 2.0 they're now offering free search tool
       | use for 1,500 queries per day.
       | 
       | Their search costs 7x Perplexity Sonar's but imagine a lot of
       | people will start with Google given they can get a pretty decent
       | amount of search for free now.
        
       | mistrial9 wrote:
       | Why does no one mention that you must login with a Google
       | account, with all of the record keeping, cross correlations and
       | 3rd party access implied there..
        
       | m_ppp wrote:
       | I'm interested to know how well video processing works here. Ran
       | into some problems when I was using vertex to serve longer
       | youtube videos.
        
       | bionhoward wrote:
       | I always get to, "You may not use the Services to develop models
       | that compete with the Services (e.g., Gemini API or Google AI
       | Studio)." [1] and exit
       | 
       | - [1] https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms
        
       | foresto wrote:
       | Not to be confused with Project Gemini.
       | 
       | https://geminiprotocol.net/
        
       | user3939382 wrote:
       | I wonder how common this is, but my interest in this product is 0
       | simply because my level of trust and feeling of goodwill for
       | Google almost couldn't be lower.
        
       | sylware wrote:
       | This is a lie since I don't have a google account, and cannot
       | search on google anymore since noscript/basic (x)html browsers
       | interop was broken a few weeks ago.
        
       | tmaly wrote:
       | I am on the iOS app and I see Gemini 2.0 and Gemini 1.5 as
       | options in the drop down. I am on free tier
        
         | dtquad wrote:
         | Try the Gemini webapp. It has a powerful reasoning model with
         | Google Search and Maps integration.
        
       | CSMastermind wrote:
       | Is it still the case that it doesn't really support video input?
       | 
       | As in I have a video file I want to send it to the model and get
       | a response about it. Not their 'live stream' or whatever
       | functionality.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-05 23:00 UTC)