335 points 737max 1 hour ago 275 comments
username_my1 1 hour ago | parent
idbnstra 1 hour ago | parent
w4yai 1 hour ago | parent
nitinreddy88 1 hour ago | parent
bigyabai 1 hour ago | parent
theplumber 58 minutes ago | parent
bigyabai 58 minutes ago | parent
modeless 1 hour ago | parent
llmslave 1 hour ago | parent
The fact that multiple companies can breach any benchmark means there is no ambiguity in terms of how to build AI, its just a matter of time.
Certainly Meta and Google are benchmaxxing to please public markets, but it still proves the above
efficax 1 hour ago | parent
alecst 1 hour ago | parent
verdverm 1 hour ago | parent
isqueiros 1 hour ago | parent
I wonder how much is actual improvements in the model and how much comes from better harnesses. I'd be willing to bet that the combination of better harnesses + the models being trained around agentic workflows (i.e the harnesses) has made it significantly better in many things, but it's hard to find other improvements imo.
llmslave 1 hour ago | parent
verdverm 1 hour ago | parent
A more intelligent model would not default to spaghetti throwing, it would pause to consider the problem fundamentals, the accuracy of assumptions, and ask questions that remove ambiguity. This however does not lend itself to increasing token sales while prices remain inflated from market and brand dominance.
efficax 7 minutes ago | parent
david-gpu 1 hour ago | parent
cma 1 hour ago | parent
CuriouslyC 20 minutes ago | parent
IanCal 1 hour ago | parent
Like a working scroll on a webpage.
God damn this is impossible to use of safari mobile.
rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 1 hour ago | parent
jedbrooke 1 hour ago | parent
InvisibleUp 1 hour ago | parent
jstummbillig 1 hour ago | parent
pierreozoux 1 hour ago | parent
oh_no 58 minutes ago | parent
tekacs 1 hour ago | parent
catigula 1 hour ago | parent
owlninja 1 hour ago | parent
verdverm 1 hour ago | parent
I like this phrasing and am curious what new word or phrase we might use to describe big companies over pushing Ai internally at the expense of their product quality. This pattern is so ubiquitous across google cloud products I have taken to calling them the 21st century IBM, having been a IBM baby and witnessing first hand their fall from exceptionalism.
wyldberry 1 hour ago | parent
catigula 1 hour ago | parent
cmrdporcupine 1 hour ago | parent
And took similar companies that were quality engineering focused -- like DEC or Palm -- down with them through acquisition.
mistic92 1 hour ago | parent
xbmcuser 1 hour ago | parent
w4yai 1 hour ago | parent
fridder 1 hour ago | parent
ano-ther 1 hour ago | parent
PorciiVorbesc 1 hour ago | parent
moecables 1 hour ago | parent
wslh 1 hour ago | parent
Gallows4574 1 hour ago | parent
melasadra 55 minutes ago | parent
EDIT:
Apparently Ultra subscribers gets Argon everywhere including in Google Antigravity
Pro subscribers only get them in Gemini app and Search
jonesy827 47 minutes ago | parent
https://antigravity.google/blog/gemini-4-argon-in-google-ant...
efficax 14 minutes ago | parent
caminanteblanco 1 hour ago | parent
https://one.google.com/about/google-ai-plans/?icid=microsite...
freakynit 54 minutes ago | parent
It seems to be rolling out gradually.. not available at once to everyone.
ChadNauseam 21 minutes ago | parent
It's crazy to me how care there is in most of these vibe-coded vibe-coding harnesses. I don't like oai's models much but I have to say their UI has by far the best attention to detail of any major player.
yegle 58 minutes ago | parent
It doesn't show in the desktop UI.
rahimnathwani 57 minutes ago | parent
frangonf 56 minutes ago | parent
> Gemini 4 Argon (Medium)
Unavailable · Gemini 4 Argon is currently available to Ultra plan subscribers.schleck8 55 minutes ago | parent
hnfong 53 minutes ago | parent
zf00002 1 hour ago | parent
mridulmalpani 1 hour ago | parent
aliljet 1 hour ago | parent
Now, I happen to believe that's an excellent strategy. I bet they actually resolve more LLM requests than any other company at this point. The lay person still uses Google exclusively.
nateb2022 1 hour ago | parent
hersko 33 minutes ago | parent
acmotifs 22 minutes ago | parent
paimapi 18 minutes ago | parent
I use the hell out of both. Kind of sad that they took Spark out of beta-access, being able to orchestrate via your phone on something that has direct access to your Drive meant I was authoring skills and other functionality on a schedule with spreadsheets serving as databases, deterministic tests, etc.
Hope they roll it out to a full feature soon
ASalazarMX 10 minutes ago | parent
paimapi 7 minutes ago | parent
freecodeio 9 minutes ago | parent
if they throw in youtube premium in that package then I might reconisder
sroussey 1 hour ago | parent
cubefox 59 minutes ago | parent
sroussey 55 minutes ago | parent
dbuser99 1 hour ago | parent
tireonfire 1 hour ago | parent
verdverm 57 minutes ago | parent
steego 40 minutes ago | parent
More specifically, who are they targeting with Argon and why is it behind the Ultra plan? Who is paying $99/month if not developers?
fschuett 11 minutes ago | parent
Corporate companies. Bog-standard office workers don't need top-of-the-line Mythos intelligence, just something to add to Google Workspace. I personally doubt developers use Gemini for coding beyond marketing materials.
alephnerd 11 minutes ago | parent
steego 44 minutes ago | parent
Because if it’s not, and it’s not available to all paying users (Right now, it’s only available to Ultra users), then they are behind the curve if they’re treating it like Fable.
It’s tone deaf.
I_am_tiberius 1 hour ago | parent
w4yai 50 minutes ago | parent
redox99 48 minutes ago | parent
Unique users, maybe. But a simple query that's answered in a paragraph is negligible compared to devs running agents continuously for tens of hours.
freecodeio 8 minutes ago | parent
sva_ 1 hour ago | parent
That was a long wait.
timpera 1 hour ago | parent
verdverm 1 hour ago | parent
postalcoder 1 hour ago | parent
I've been trying it out via the API and the model has been a delight so far. Clear in the head, not RL-fried, distinct writing style, and big model smell. That said, the em-dash is back w/ this model.
That said, I would be so frustrated with Sundar Pichai if I was on the Google team. The botched rollout of this model seems to be entirely a matter of capacity, and Pichai has been more than happy to give it to anybody but his own team.
algoth1 1 hour ago | parent
postexitus 59 minutes ago | parent
postalcoder 53 minutes ago | parent
At the same time, OpenAI had a disastrous dev day that led a lot of users to jump ship to Claude.
Couple weeks later, Gemini-4-argon is still unavailable on anything less than the ultra tier, which means there's no natural funnel to get ppl to pay for the more expensive ultra plan other than "trust us the model is good".
If Google had argon broadly available earlier this month they would have picked up a ton of new users.
polynomial 18 minutes ago | parent
Given FelonyBench, do we also have a FantasyBench?
axblount 1 hour ago | parent
Is it actually available?
robotmay 56 minutes ago | parent
chpatrick 47 minutes ago | parent
alex1138 36 minutes ago | parent
jordemort 1 hour ago | parent
"Hans, we're doing a new point release! What isn't crossed out on the periodic table yet?"
GodelNumbering 1 hour ago | parent
e.g.
X: The Parameters
Y: The "System"
Z: The "Ongoing Grind"
The first two prompts I tested in AI Studio does the same, unfortunately.Another quite unpleasant tick was that if you specify a peculiar term in your prompt as a conversational shortcut, it would keep repeating that throughout the conversation. e.g. "...What is a bitter lesson pilled way to do this?", then you'd see it will quote "bitter lesson pilled" at like 7 places in its response. This one seems to have eased off a little.
Corence 1 hour ago | parent
Insanity 1 hour ago | parent
"Across Google", wonder how much that is because of an effort by Google to curb usage of Anthropic models. MSFT and Meta similarly are pushing for in-house models. It doesn't mean the models are better when you push your engineers to dogfood and restrict access to other LLMs.
(Not that I know for sure this is the case, it's more of a hypothesis).
melasadra 52 minutes ago | parent
DataDaoDe 1 hour ago | parent
fyi: argon is an interesting choice of name, coming from the Greek argos meaning "lazy or living w/out labor".
aleksiy123 1 hour ago | parent
DataDaoDe 1 hour ago | parent
ralusek 1 hour ago | parent
I never touch 3.8, it's awful. Curious to try this, but I've yet to use any Gemini that is good for agentic work.
Also, unrelated but this made me look at Artificial Analysis to see where it lands on Cost per Task, and it ranks Opus 5.5 at almost double Astra 6. That does not align with my experience.
redox99 1 hour ago | parent
theplumber 1 hour ago | parent
damsta 1 hour ago | parent
Couldn't you just say what the price will be after the introductory period and when it'll take effect? Do they have some SKILL.md for these blog posts that requires the most important information to always be buried ten levels deep and hidden behind a login page?
simonw 1 hour ago | parent
$2/million input and $10/million output today. $4/$20 after December 1st.
nateb2022 57 minutes ago | parent
vineyardmike 49 minutes ago | parent
squidbeak 21 minutes ago | parent
damsta 56 minutes ago | parent
jklinger410 44 minutes ago | parent
simonw 1 hour ago | parent
Here's low, medium, high. Even low is better than pelicans from any other lab: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
low cost 10.185 cents, medium was 11.098 cents, high was 17.166 cents.
The costs are similar because it used more output tokens than reasoning tokens for all three pelicans, even for high.
zzulanas 1 hour ago | parent
simonw 1 hour ago | parent
32297 1 hour ago | parent
hyperparticles 37 minutes ago | parent
129751 1 hour ago | parent
algoth1 1 hour ago | parent
HelloMcFly 1 hour ago | parent
soperj 1 hour ago | parent
Medium and high are fixies apparently, (or they have a worm gear, although the hub doesn't look big enough for that), since neither has a derailleur. That would also explain the lack of brakes at least.
Low is still obviously failing the "test". It's pedals are not actually attached to the bike either.
Medium has a handlebar that goes through the pelican's beak. So I'd say also failing.
For the high, the only nitpick would be that the bell isn't quite on the handlebars and the stripes on his scarf don't line up correctly.
staticman2 26 minutes ago | parent
rdtsc 1 hour ago | parent
> If it's on HN and is a meme at this point, it will end up in the training set.
> It's kind of fun to imagine that there is an intern in every AI company furiously trying to get nice looking svg pelicans on bicycles.
Google listened and assigned a few interns, I guess, for the task
eli 1 hour ago | parent
PorciiVorbesc 35 minutes ago | parent
CuriouslyC 26 minutes ago | parent
sulam 53 minutes ago | parent
afavour 50 minutes ago | parent
compiler-guy 29 minutes ago | parent
gcanyon 30 minutes ago | parent
They look remarkably good, sure -- but not perfect.
orbital-decay 27 minutes ago | parent
pwython 26 minutes ago | parent
> How many pelican riding bicycle SVGs were there before this test existed? What if the training data is being polluted with all these wonky results...
But Simon has demonstrated before that asking for any animal doing something silly will still get similar results from the same model.
dominotw 23 minutes ago | parent
bilsbie 1 hour ago | parent
Modern models can make nearly photorealistic games in threejs. So why do they struggle with these pelicans?
simonw 1 hour ago | parent
The test is always going to be hard though, because it's an absurd image to ask for.
UPDATE: I like this theory about using an agentic harness that can render and iterate better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50073879#50074395
jephs 1 hour ago | parent
The pretty 3d stuff you see are agents controlling a Blender MCP in a loop where they look at the scene, think, adjust the scene, repeat.
simonw 55 minutes ago | parent
vineyardmike 51 minutes ago | parent
Perz1val 59 minutes ago | parent
sobiolite 51 minutes ago | parent
TeMPOraL 42 minutes ago | parent
charcircuit 31 minutes ago | parent
duckmysick 22 minutes ago | parent
https://www.gianlucagimini.it/portfolio-item/velocipedia/
HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17699017
mason55 18 minutes ago | parent
https://www.wired.com/2016/04/can-draw-bikes-memory-definite...
postalcoder 1 hour ago | parent
kart23 1 hour ago | parent
squidbeak 41 minutes ago | parent
huseyinkeles 59 minutes ago | parent
Fraterkes 59 minutes ago | parent
perardi 58 minutes ago | parent
Subtle highlights on the metal frame, sweat beads, jaunty little hat…it has style. At least compared to the rather literal ChatGPT outputs. https://static.simonwillison.net/static/2026/gpt-pelicans-gr...
jameshart 43 minutes ago | parent
Is the prompt context telling the models what their effort level is, and the ambient presence of that concept of ‘high effort’ in the context window is leaking through and affecting the portrayal?
simonw 38 minutes ago | parent
https://huggingface.co/Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B/blob/main/chat_templ...
xhigh: "Reasoning effort is set to xhigh. Please think carefully through the task, validate key assumptions, consider plausible alternatives, and prioritize correctness, consistency, and clarity in the final answer."
low: "Reasoning effort is set to low. Keep your thinking brief and focused, moving directly to the conclusion without unnecessary elaboration."
LarsDu88 51 minutes ago | parent
It's a simple manner of prompt...generate concept art with nanobanana, measure, llm creates svg with text, measure the distance between rasterized svg embedding to nanobanana art....do post-training RL on a 3 million such images and matching embeddings.
I swear this will be a canonical example of Goodhardt's Law in action.
You have to switch to a new benchmark that isn't so easy to run a verifiable rewards pipeline on...Perhaps a longer horizon task where it's easy to mess up midway.
jameshart 40 minutes ago | parent
Yes, Simon has made pelicans a benchmark and now models have grown very good at rendering them. Is there a reason to believe that this isn’t manifesting as useful skill in general in SVG generation?
yuhmahp 48 minutes ago | parent
simonw 43 minutes ago | parent
Here's 'Generate an SVG of an armadillo in fishnet tights jaywalking on Mars' for Gemini 4 Argon: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
Some other models for comparison: https://tools.simonwillison.net/markdown-svg-renderer?url=ht...
make3 39 minutes ago | parent
dyauspitr 34 minutes ago | parent
gcanyon 31 minutes ago | parent
As one point, the high pelican's arm is see-through/messed up.
They do look worlds better than previously, to be fair.
YZF 24 minutes ago | parent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelican#/media/File:Pelikan_Wa...
ASalazarMX 20 minutes ago | parent
ameliaquining 19 minutes ago | parent
geniium 21 minutes ago | parent
mroset 16 minutes ago | parent
osiris970 1 hour ago | parent
What’s the point lol. I’m not subbing to ultra to have it
rcr-anti 1 hour ago | parent
Edit: noble gases not noble taxes, though the latter would be a funnier naming scheme.
mistic92 1 hour ago | parent
robotmay 37 minutes ago | parent
skerit 23 minutes ago | parent
robotmay 11 minutes ago | parent
Trusteando 1 hour ago | parent
yoz-y 1 hour ago | parent
freakynit 1 hour ago | parent
This is crazy if it can work accurately.
ArashEdalat 58 minutes ago | parent
verdverm 55 minutes ago | parent
129751 1 hour ago | parent
Even after using the free model in Google search talking to Anthropic or OpenAI models feels like talking to an ox.
david-gpu 1 hour ago | parent
Havoc 1 hour ago | parent
God knows why the server different things to the same people on different interfaces
pietz 1 hour ago | parent
swaptr 54 minutes ago | parent
sureglymop 1 hour ago | parent
Pretty misleading.
tireonfire 1 hour ago | parent
protoman3000 1 hour ago | parent
The code is bad though.
jug 38 minutes ago | parent
TomGarden 35 minutes ago | parent
gradus_ad 9 minutes ago | parent
thisisauserid 1 hour ago | parent
meerita 1 hour ago | parent
d2kx 1 hour ago | parent
babelfish 59 minutes ago | parent
d2kx 54 minutes ago | parent
mattmanser 38 minutes ago | parent
Eyes glazed over again.
Did you even read your own site before you posted it?
One of the first pages I opened:
> Smoking-gun proof of plant-label ingestion: in Row 2, the central cut root is labeled okol (f88r.15), and directly underneath it on Line 2 (f88r.19) the recipe writes...chokol daiin qoekol qoekol qockhol okol cheol...!
It's just gibberish.
case540 28 minutes ago | parent
scotty79 57 minutes ago | parent
simonw 56 minutes ago | parent
But on December 1st Argon doubles in price - so it will be the same price as Opus 5.5.
isityettime 48 minutes ago | parent
Me: Gemini, navigate to nearest McDonalds.
Gemini: [Lists 10 McDonalds locations wnd asks which I want.]
Me: What were the priginal instructions just now?
Gemini: [Recites imperatives about tone and content from its memory system.]
Me: No. I told you to navigate to the NEAREST McDonalds. There's only one NEAREST McDonalds. Do that one.
Gemini: My mistake, navigating to the nearest McDonalds. [Opens Maps, navigating to a McDonalds across town.]
didibus 46 minutes ago | parent
kingstnap 33 minutes ago | parent
Flash lite is very noticeably more idiotic than 3.8 Flash. It's why the quick AI overview is often much worse than the AI mode one.
moffkalast 40 minutes ago | parent
jeffbee 35 minutes ago | parent
dyauspitr 28 minutes ago | parent
compiler-guy 26 minutes ago | parent
The only thing I can figure is that Google's consumer-facing free-to-use models are set to "reason as fast as possible with only the most basic plausibility checks." I have to correct them like this every single time.
staticman2 20 minutes ago | parent
LewisOrton 18 minutes ago | parent
foota 16 minutes ago | parent
polynomial 15 minutes ago | parent
ASalazarMX 14 minutes ago | parent
gorbot 11 minutes ago | parent
I think these companies have good models but expose them poorly like others have mentioned
RajuChacha108 5 minutes ago | parent
I tell it to "Play Let it go from frozen". It plays it on youtube music. 5 seconds later I tell it again 'Play let it go from frozen" it then just dies saying "I can't play videos in car".
eluusive 46 minutes ago | parent
I have found that Gemini often claims it did something, but didn't actually complete the task.
I just had 3.8 Flash do a major refactor -- that never should have needed to be done in the first place -- and switched to Argon 4, and had it review it.
Almost everything had been stubbed out by 3.8, and none of it was properly integrated into the codebase. :facepalm:
bushbaba 44 minutes ago | parent
karahime 42 minutes ago | parent
jdw64 41 minutes ago | parent
robotmay 38 minutes ago | parent
dmix 38 minutes ago | parent
Every time I try to generate one it's like a slot machine, where a different part will be messed up after fixing the first.
TomGarden 36 minutes ago | parent
ramoz 33 minutes ago | parent
DrProtic 31 minutes ago | parent
I told it to strip screenshots from our old basic explainer video to generate modern 3D video.
Pretty happy with the result. I told it to keep the audio and match the video and it did.
jjcm 34 minutes ago | parent
Argon build: https://html.non.io/lcars-argon/
GPT 6.1 sol: https://html.non.io/lcars-gpt-6.1-sol/
Opus 5.5 (currently SOTA for this): https://html.non.io/lcars-opus-5.5/
Original designs: https://diffui.ai/app/canvas/5093e689-1e74-4f26-b632-2a4500f...
jjcm 33 minutes ago | parent
sergiotapia 33 minutes ago | parent
jjcm 24 minutes ago | parent
capnjngl 10 minutes ago | parent
bobviolier 31 minutes ago | parent
(Chrome, also incognito)
MaxikCZ 15 minutes ago | parent
jjcm 15 minutes ago | parent
FWIW, I have literally the exact same configuration (M3 air, google chrome). Here's a recording on mine where I'm seeing 60fps: https://non.io/video/video-3587018401.mp4
hedgehog 13 minutes ago | parent
lxgr 33 minutes ago | parent
Gemini Live vs. Gemini Lite vs. Gemini Pro vs. Gemini Flash vs. Nano Banana Lite (that one apparently has no Gemini prefix?)... Please, just pick a metaphor and stick with it without wildly mixing reasoning modes, model sizes, and input/output modalities in the model name!
tonyhart7 33 minutes ago | parent
jawiggins 32 minutes ago | parent
I wonder if any of the AI safety people will begin encouraging AI researchers to swap jobs to work at a failing lab in order to keep them all extremely competitive with one another.
FinnLobsien 26 minutes ago | parent
At this point a lot of stuff happens at the product level.
OpenAI and anthropic have distribution and data advantages now that are hard to replicate.
jawiggins 6 minutes ago | parent
Trusteando 31 minutes ago | parent
dyauspitr 30 minutes ago | parent
mridulmalpani 30 minutes ago | parent
https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent/chat/pareto
For almost same intelligence (+15.56%, +15.18%), drastic difference in cost/task ($3.51 vs $0.41)
cwoolfe 29 minutes ago | parent
npn 29 minutes ago | parent
It still thinks Charlie Kirk is alive, though.
peter_d_sherman 29 minutes ago | parent
Now that needed to be done for some time!
Regardless of if an AI helped or not, regardless of whether that was Google's or some other AI or not (though Argon does sound pretty cool!), regardless of whether an AI cut the time from months to weeks or not, refactoring Chrome -- decomposing it into individual clearly demarcated non-tightly coupled software parts with core webpage handling at the center -- that needed to be done for some time!
Now all of that being said, Gemini 4 Argon does sound pretty cool, and we congratulate both teams at Google -- the team that created Gemini 4 Argon, and the team that refactored Chrome with it!
But all of that being said, while the advancements made for Gemini 4 Argon are important and impressive (and they are!)... refactoring Chrome properly (IMHO) is slightly more important and impressive!
(You know, one man's humble opinion! That is, I am not the guy who is responsible for awarding performance-based bonuses at Google at the end of the year, so take everything I say with the proverbial "grain of salt"! :-) I am probably biased, one way or the other! :-) )
efficax 16 minutes ago | parent
mchusma 10 minutes ago | parent