Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by refulgentis | Hacker News Reader

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There hasn't been a non-preview Gemini since...November? The previews are the same as everyone else's release cadance, "preview" is just a magic wand that meant the Launchcal (google's internal signoff tool, i.e. "wave will never happen again) needs less signoffs. Then it got to the point date-pinned models were getting swapped in, in the name of doing us a favor, and it's a...novel idea, we can both agree at the least.

I bet someone at Google would be a bit surprised to see someone jumping to legalese to act like this...novelty...is inherently due to the preview status, and based on anything more than a sense that there's no net harm done to us if it costs the same and is better.

I'm not sure they're wrong.

But it also leads to a sort of "nobody knows how anything works because we have 2^N configs and 5 bits" - for instance, 05-06 was also upgraded to 06-05. Except it wasn't, if you sent variable thinking to 05-06 after upgrade it'd fail. (and don't get me started on the 5 different thinking configurations for Gemini 2.5 flash thinking vs. gemini 05-06 vs. 06-05 and 0 thinking)

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to say.

It's a preview model - for testing only, not for production. Really not that complicated.

So you don't have anything to contribute beyond, and aren't interested in anything beyond, citing of terms?

Why are you in the comments section of a engineering news site?

(note: beyond your, excuse me while I'm direct now, boorish know-nothing reply, the terms you are citing have nothing to do with the thing people are actually discussing around you, despite your best efforts. It doesn't say "we might swap in a new service, congrats!", nor does it have anything to say about that. Your legalese at most describes why they'd pull 05-06, not forward 05-06 to 06-05. This is a novel idea.)

This case was simply a matter of people not understanding the terms of service. There is nothing more to be said. It's that simple. The "engineers" should know that before deploying to prod. Basic competence.

And I mean I genuinely do not understand what you are trying to say. Couldn't parse it.

> And I mean I genuinely do not understand what you are trying to say. Couldn't parse it.

It’s always worth considering that this may be your problem. If you still don’t get it, the only valuable reply is one which asks a question. Also, including “it’s not that complicated” only serves to inflame.

John, do you understand that the thing you're quoting says "We reserve the right to pull things", not "We reserve the right to swap in a new service"?

Do you understand that even if it did say that, that wasn't true either? It was some weird undocumentable half-beast?

I have exactly your attitude about their cavalier use of preview for all things Gemini, and even people's use of the preview models.

But I've also been on this site for 15 years and am a bit wow'd by your interlocution style here -- it's quite rare to see someone flip "the 3P provider swapped the service on us!" into "well they said they could turn it off, of course you should expect it to be swapped for the first time ever!" insert dull sneer about the quality of other engineers

How is this so hard to understand? It's a preview service for testing only, not intended for production.

I am done with this thread. We are going around in circles.

Well, no. Well, sure. You're done, but we're not going in circles. It'd just do too much damage to you to have to answer the simple question "Where does the legalese say they can swap in a new service?", so you have to pretend this is circular and just all-so-confusing, de facto, we have to pretend it is confusing and/or obviously wrong to use any Gemini 2+ at all.

It's a cute argument, as I noted, I'm emotionally sympathetic to it even, it's my favorite "get off my lawn." However, I've also been on the Internet long enough to know you write back, at length, when people try anti-intellectualism and why-are-we-even-talking-about-this as interaction.

https://cloud.google.com/terms/service-terms

"b. Disclaimer. PRE-GA OFFERINGS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS OF ANY KIND. Pre-GA Offerings (i) may be changed, suspended or discontinued at any time without prior notice to Customer and (ii) are not covered by any SLA or Google indemnity. Except as otherwise expressly indicated in a written notice or Google documentation, (A) Pre-GA Offerings are not covered by TSS, and (B) the Data Location Section above will not apply to Pre-GA Offerings."

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