I did this same thing and this was my first result too. I am just not seeing how the author ended up where they did, unless knowing how to use Google search is not a core skill.

▲

mediaman 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Read the full post. Partway down you will see they agree with you that getting an API key is not hard.

Paying is hard. And it is confusing how to set it up: you have to create a Vertex billing account and go through a cumbersome process to then connect your AIStudio to it and bring over a "project" which then disconnects all the time and which you have to re-select to use Nano Banana Pro or Gemini 3. It's a very bad process.

It's easy to miss this because they are very generous with the free tier, but Gemini 3 is not free.

▲

malfist 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I did notice in their post instead of searching for answers, they asked Gemini how to do things, and when that didn't work, they asked Claude.

I often see coworkers offload their work of critical thinking to an AI to give them answers instead doing the grunt work nessecary to find their answers on their own.

▲

dugidugout 3 days ago | parent [-]

This rhetoric worries me. If you insist on degrading others at least fix it to something like:

> [They seemingly] can't think on their own without an AI [moderating]

They _literally_ can think on their own, and they _literally_ did think up a handful of prompts.

A more constructive way to make what I assume to be your point would be highlighting why this shift is meaningful and leaving the appeal to ego for yourself.

	▲	malfist 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I agree with your assessment, I am in the wrong here. It's easy to be extra judgmental to anonymous figures on a blog you'll never meet. Thank you for reminding me to give people the benefit of doubt and not jump to worst case assumptions. I've edited my post to be more charitable
	▲	ipaddr 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		There is some truth in that statement. Low energy afternoons you might be able to come up with a prompt but not the actual solution. There are people offloading all thoughts into prompts instead of doing the research themselves and some have reached a point where they lost the ability to do something because of over AI use.