gemini-api on S Anand

Things I Learned - 11 May 2025

Sun, 11 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

snapdom is a fast, light, element capture alternative to html2canvas but doesn’t work well with non-CORS images or iframes.
Sli.dev is a Markdown slide language. Similar to Marp
Don’t split your code into microservices until you need to scale. Ref
Vibe coding is like getting others’ code to work, which is exactly what most devs do. Simon Willison #ai-coding
Tofu Yakitori is a Japanese dish. It’s like a dhokla. Marinated tofu cubes brushed with that sweet‑savory tare (soy, mirin, sake, a hint of sugar), then grilled until caramel‑charred. One of the better (tasty + different) dishes I’ve had recently. I used ChatGPT to remind me of the dish name.
Trust, attitudes and use of artificial intelligence surveyed ~1,000 people across 47 countries on their views on AI. PDF
- Emerging economies trust and use AI more. It’s an opportunity to leapfrog.
- 26% of students use AI daily (vs 17% employees). Efficiency is the main benefit.
Gemini APIs now have automatic caching for 75% cost reduction if message is >1K (Flash) or >2K (Pro) tokens. Ref
YOLO is much better than Gemini at object detection. Use for pro-processing. Ref
Using [[n]] is probably the best citation format for inline search references in RAG. ChatGPT
⭐ Double-checking is surprisingly efficient since LLM hallucinations are mostly uncorrelated. LLMs perform human tasks (e.g. classifying customer support messages) at ~85% accuracy. This might be unacceptable. But by asking 2 moderately correlated LLMs and double-checking discrepancies, we reduce automation by ~20% but reduce errors to 0.25%. Triple-checking reduces automation by ~25% but errors to under ~0.01%! Ref
Anthropic introduces web search in the API at $10 / 1K searches. Here’s how it compares:
- $0.1: DuckDuckGo Search API (RapidAPI) (monthly pricing)
- $3: Brave Search API
- $5: Google Custom Search JSON API
- $15: SerpAPI
- $10: Zenserp
- $10: Anthropic Web Search Tool
- $25: Bing Search API
- $35: Gemini API
- $35: OpenAI API
India attacked Pakistan!
⭐ When writing notes, summarize at the end of the day the learnings and next steps.
GitHub does not let you control the cache duration, but there are many creative workarounds. ChatGPT
- HTML meta tags: <meta http-equiv="Cache-Control" content="no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate">
- Use a service worker (blog)
- Proxy through a CDN. Cloudflare, Netlify
- Move to another static host: S3 + CloudFront, Heroku, Vercel, Surge, Firebase Hosting
Notes from the PromptEvals paper:
- Good evals must be:
  - Objectively MEASURABLE (even if by an LLM). Otherwise, we won’t know if it’s right.
  - Directly RELEVANT to the input/prompt. Otherwise, we’re not evaluating the input.
- Typical evals fall into 6 categories
  - Structured output: Adhere to a schema (Markdown, HTML, DSL, JSON + Schema)
  - Multiple choice
  - Length constraints: N characters, words, sentences, list items, etc.
  - Semantic constraints: Exclude terms, topic relevance, follow grammar, etc.
  - Stylistic constraints: Style, tone, persona
  - Prevent hallucinations: Factual accuracy. Instruction following

Things I Learned - 17 Nov 2024

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

Anthropic has single-plage docs for LLMs. Condensed version and Full version
Malcolm Gladwell on the importance of self-correction
- Belonging to multiple social worlds is a good way to defend against no longer being good at what you used to be. Diverse values and social groups help.
- Self handicapping explains a lot about the world. You study late for a maths test - so you can fail for lack of trying, not aptitude. Ecosystems (e.g. sports teams) mitigate self-handicapping.
- You don’t have to be good in athletics to get the benefits. A slow runner gets the same discipline, pumping up, etc that a fast runner does
- Mono cultures are good to accomplish a known mission. Diversity is good to pivot during uncertainty. So, localize mono cultures
- Diversity helps only if there are sufficient numbers, or if they have enough power to change the organization’s thinking.
Use a standardized password strategy, e.g. use the month like GramNov2024 (via Namit)
Gemini has an OpenAI compatible API. Gemini Docs
Ethan Mollick says Claude is solving MBA case studies well. x.com
LLMs pay a lot of attention to the first 6 tokens. Ref
This is an interesting article on “UI in the age of Gen AI”. Ref
Google Open sourced Alphafold 3. Repo
Cloudflare R2 has the same API as S3 but is cheaper
Prefect.io is a good alternative to Airflow / cron. Can use for synchronisation tasks, e.g. Drive to server. But no Auth, UI params or config.
Gemini transcription does not give accurate timestamps. Whisper does. But the quality of transcription is similar.
Pass a complex data structure to Claude.ai and have it create an app to visualize it. It does well. Simin Willison
Tech Council Ventures and Sunicon VC invest in early stage startups, and aloso provide them technology support (via Naveen)

Things I Learned - 27 Oct 2024

Sun, 27 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This week, I learned:

LanceDB is a more scalable alternative to ChromaDB. Written in Rust. Does not require a separate HSNW library.
Meta has a bunch of image embedding models:
- DINOv2 creates image embeddings (Apr 2023)
- ImageBind is an embedding model for text, images, audio, and more (Jun 2023)
Gemini has a code execution API!
0x0.st is an open API-based file upload + URL shortening service. You can dump files there temporarily.
noVNC is a JavaScript VNC client. You can control a remote (virtual) machine from your browser.
Friend is an always recording pendant that you can ask questions to.
Anthropic’s new Sonnet model is even better at code. Plus it has the ability to extract coordinates from images. Ref
Gemini sort-of supports diarization. Ref. I tried it and it’s OK but not perfect.
- #IMPOSSIBLE LLMs cannot diarize reliably yet. (Gemini just guesses the speaker differences.)
Replit is good for hobbyists, Cursor for developers, and Pythagora & Bolt for non-developers building business apps. Ref