Yesterday I tried to google "can the Halifax Wanderers still make the CPL playoffs?"
So obviously what appears right at the top is the AI summary, which told me "they've already secured their #4 position and made the playoffs". I knew this wasn't true, and I guess I could have just scrolled down a bit further and found my answer but now I was curious.
So I said "that's not true, they're still #5, what I want to know is _could they still make the playoffs_"
It says they've got an upcoming game against Ottawa, and if they win their chances are good. That game has already taken place, so I correct it again and finally I get a reasonable answer.
My question is: what's the point of the AI in the search engine if it itself isn't going to use the search engine first before answering? Like, I can't wrap my head around that. The answer is on the same page as its hallucination. It could have done a cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information. It's meant to be A SEARCH ENGINE!
I similarly noticed Gemini absolutely refuses to look at a url when I give it one and will instead just hallucinate based on what it thinks the url is. Here I am assuming Google will have the best web capabilities in its AI.
Literally every experience I've had with Gemini / Google Search AI answers followed this exact pattern, often repeated several times more if I remained persistent instead of just giving up.
Typical example:
"Where can I buy <thing I'm looking for that I can't find anywhere using normal search terms>?"
> You're looking for <related but different and widely available thing>. It is sold by <sites I never heard of>.
"No, that's different. I'm looking for <that thing but with the exact differences spelled out again>."
> Ah, my mistake. You're looking for <thing I described>. It is sold by <sites I never heard of but which don't actually sell it>.
"I've checked your links and none of those sites actually sell it, one doesn't even sell products and instead only offers manufacturing - but also not for what I asked you for."
> I'm sorry, my bad. Those sites don't sell what you are looking for. Instead you should check out <more sites I've never heard of>.
"Those sites sell the thing you initially thought I was asking about but not the thing I described."
> I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. You can find the thing you actually described at <yet more sites including some of the same>.
"No. None of these sites sell anything close to what I asked you for and two of them don't actually exist."
> Oh, sorry about that. You're completely right. The thing you asked me about isn't actually being sold by anyone. However you could buy <thing it first thought I meant and that wouldn't bring me any closer to solving my problem>.
The few times I've resigned myself to asking Gemini or ChatGPT something I couldn't find an answer to, my experience has been the same. 100% of the time. An LLM has never, not once, given me a correct answer or not lied to me. It's always been the same experience you describe. It goes in circles "Try X... Try Y... Try X?" Until I tell it to stop telling me X or Y, and then it goes, "LOL you can't do that at all, I was just wasting your time."
Most recently, I was considering moving away from iterm2 on MacOS, and I wanted to know if any other terminal emulator supported gestures for switching between tabs. So I asked Gemini, and it says, "Yes Ghostty supports gestures for switching between tabs."
"Ok I just installed Ghostty and I can't find anything about gestures."
"You need to add foo=bar to your conf file."
"I added foo=bar to my conf file and now it's saying the conf file is invalid."
"Sorry bro, remove foo=bar and add baz=boo to the conf file."
"It says baz=boo is invalid too."
"baz=boo isn't a real option. Remove that and add foo=bar to your conf file."
"You already told me to do that and I already told you that doesn't work."
"You shouldn't put foo=bar or baz=boo in the Ghostty conf file. Both are invalid. Ghostty doesn't support gestures. Have you considered iterm2?"
Gemini is utterly useless, but every other modern model would be capable of answering this correctly. If you ran a local coding agent, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could one-shot implement gesture support in Ghostty. It’d definitely configure BTT for you.
Here’s GPT 6’s answer to the prompt “What macOS terminal apps support gestures? Include a reference to the docs on how to enable/configure them.”:
iTerm2 supports configurable three-finger taps and swipes for switching tabs/panes, creating splits, pasting, etc. Set them up under Settings > Pointer > Bindings. Check for conflicting macOS trackpad assignments. [1]
The others are more limited: Ghostty supports macOS lookup/Quick Look gestures [2], while WezTerm lets you bind scroll events—for example, Ctrl+scroll to change font size. [3] Neither is equivalent to iTerm2’s gesture bindings.
For custom gestures without switching terminals, BetterTouchTool can map app-specific trackpad gestures to the terminal’s existing keyboard shortcuts. [4]
Pretty sure it's the harness here, not Gemini per se. Plug Gemini into pi or any harness that has any competence pointing to web search and the hallucinations drop 75% immediately.
Hugsbox · · focus · HN ↗
So obviously what appears right at the top is the AI summary, which told me "they've already secured their #4 position and made the playoffs". I knew this wasn't true, and I guess I could have just scrolled down a bit further and found my answer but now I was curious.
So I said "that's not true, they're still #5, what I want to know is _could they still make the playoffs_"
It says they've got an upcoming game against Ottawa, and if they win their chances are good. That game has already taken place, so I correct it again and finally I get a reasonable answer.
My question is: what's the point of the AI in the search engine if it itself isn't going to use the search engine first before answering? Like, I can't wrap my head around that. The answer is on the same page as its hallucination. It could have done a cursory look around before first hallucinating something completely false, and when corrected the first time giving me outdated information. It's meant to be A SEARCH ENGINE!
jswelker · · focus · HN ↗
hnbad · · focus · HN ↗
Typical example:
"Where can I buy <thing I'm looking for that I can't find anywhere using normal search terms>?"
> You're looking for <related but different and widely available thing>. It is sold by <sites I never heard of>.
"No, that's different. I'm looking for <that thing but with the exact differences spelled out again>."
> Ah, my mistake. You're looking for <thing I described>. It is sold by <sites I never heard of but which don't actually sell it>.
"I've checked your links and none of those sites actually sell it, one doesn't even sell products and instead only offers manufacturing - but also not for what I asked you for."
> I'm sorry, my bad. Those sites don't sell what you are looking for. Instead you should check out <more sites I've never heard of>.
"Those sites sell the thing you initially thought I was asking about but not the thing I described."
> I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. You can find the thing you actually described at <yet more sites including some of the same>.
"No. None of these sites sell anything close to what I asked you for and two of them don't actually exist."
> Oh, sorry about that. You're completely right. The thing you asked me about isn't actually being sold by anyone. However you could buy <thing it first thought I meant and that wouldn't bring me any closer to solving my problem>.
(ad nauseam)
coldfloor · · focus · HN ↗
Most recently, I was considering moving away from iterm2 on MacOS, and I wanted to know if any other terminal emulator supported gestures for switching between tabs. So I asked Gemini, and it says, "Yes Ghostty supports gestures for switching between tabs."
"Ok I just installed Ghostty and I can't find anything about gestures."
"You need to add foo=bar to your conf file."
"I added foo=bar to my conf file and now it's saying the conf file is invalid."
"Sorry bro, remove foo=bar and add baz=boo to the conf file."
"It says baz=boo is invalid too."
"baz=boo isn't a real option. Remove that and add foo=bar to your conf file."
"You already told me to do that and I already told you that doesn't work."
"You shouldn't put foo=bar or baz=boo in the Ghostty conf file. Both are invalid. Ghostty doesn't support gestures. Have you considered iterm2?"
fcarraldo · · focus · HN ↗
Here’s GPT 6’s answer to the prompt “What macOS terminal apps support gestures? Include a reference to the docs on how to enable/configure them.”:
iTerm2 supports configurable three-finger taps and swipes for switching tabs/panes, creating splits, pasting, etc. Set them up under Settings > Pointer > Bindings. Check for conflicting macOS trackpad assignments. [1]
The others are more limited: Ghostty supports macOS lookup/Quick Look gestures [2], while WezTerm lets you bind scroll events—for example, Ctrl+scroll to change font size. [3] Neither is equivalent to iTerm2’s gesture bindings.
For custom gestures without switching terminals, BetterTouchTool can map app-specific trackpad gestures to the terminal’s existing keyboard shortcuts. [4]
[1] <a href="https://iterm2.com/documentation-preferences-pointer.html" rel="nofollow">https://iterm2.com/documentation-preferences-pointer.html
[2] <a href="https://ghostty.org/docs/features#macos" rel="nofollow">https://ghostty.org/docs/features#macos
[3] <a href="https://wezterm.org/config/mouse.html" rel="nofollow">https://wezterm.org/config/mouse.html
[4] <a href="https://docs.folivora.ai/docs/trackpad-mouse/magic-mouse-trackpad/" rel="nofollow">https://docs.folivora.ai/docs/trackpad-mouse/magic-mouse-tra...
jswelker · · focus · HN ↗
selestify · · focus · HN ↗