Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

moddedbear.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 865 posts

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#331

Post by shye »

edoceo wrote: post #294
sebmellen wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most frustrating thing to me is to receive a 5-paragraph-plus email that was clearly written with some AI that filled in the email with vapid and useless talking points, like "Let me know if you need any other blah blah blah; While there is clearly a need for system improvement, we are working hard to address the underlying and fundamental issue; This is a lesson that it's not just a feature, it's a critical path…

> more volume shows more effort I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. - M. Twain

It wasn’t Twain who wrote that letter: that quip was posthumously attributed to him, and have been used by multiple others.

The earliest source we have for it is a letter by Blaise Pascal, some 250 before Twain ever thought about writing letters, or anything else for that matter.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#332

Post by munk-a »

keithnz wrote: post #268
munk-a wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, lets imagine LLMs as compilers - you're passing your prompt through to get some pretty language at the end. Don't send me your compiled code, send me your prompt. Let it be rude, if the wording is awkward I guarantee I can understand it just as well as an LLM, ignore the fact that my daughter just graduated and offering hallucinated platitudes. Send me the actual question, don't make me try and decompil…

if you are prompting such that the LLM isn't pulling context that the recipient doesn't have access to, then your email is likely marginal. ie the prompt "Send 'bob' an email with a description of why the VPN bridge isn't working so they can debug their side" is a mostly useless as a prompt for anyone, it's only useful when the LLM has all the context of some analysis of the particular issue and what is going on and…

Does the recipient already have that context? If you want to share some internal context (say you're a front-end specialist and the recipient is quite unfamiliar with the limitations of your framework) then maybe that'd be helpful? If it's just regurgitating already communicated information then either

1. You are restating the information because you don't believe the recipient understood it the first time and thus you should be very precise in your expression to make sure it isn't too arcane for them 2. The recipient appears to understand the information already in which case why restate it?

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#333

Post by RobRivera »

andrekandre wrote: post #322
outofpaper wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost as though someone was put in charge of AI growth and all they care about is token burn.

thats completely illogical and no business would ever waste their money something like that (eyes-looking emoji)

O ho ho - [hearty laugh]

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#334

Post by edoceo »

shye wrote: post #331
edoceo wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more volume shows more effort I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead. - M. Twain

It wasn’t Twain who wrote that letter: that quip was posthumously attributed to him, and have been used by multiple others. The earliest source we have for it is a letter by Blaise Pascal, some 250 before Twain ever thought about writing letters, or anything else for that matter.

TIL. Thanks

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#335

Post by phyzome »

I can heartily recommend going into your Google settings and disabling the global "smart features" option. It removes a huge amount of crap all at once.

For GMail, go to Settings -> General (https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#settings/general) and scroll down to "Smart features" and disable that.

Then go to the next option, "Google Workspace smart features" and disable them across your entire workspace with 1 or 2 more toggles.

Finally, just switch to Fastmail or something. :-)

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#336

Post by munk-a »

ikrenji wrote: post #240
munk-a wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, lets imagine LLMs as compilers - you're passing your prompt through to get some pretty language at the end. Don't send me your compiled code, send me your prompt. Let it be rude, if the wording is awkward I guarantee I can understand it just as well as an LLM, ignore the fact that my daughter just graduated and offering hallucinated platitudes. Send me the actual question, don't make me try and decompil…

Just because you yourself are OK with being talked to rudely, doesn't mean others are. In fact I'd wager most aren't consciously or unconsciously...

I think rude was the wrong word to use. I more meant lacking the pomp and circumstance fluff. I always appreciate considerate and polite speech and think it's requisite to being taken seriously. However, I think directness within the bounds of politeness is optimal.

Also, if it's wall-o-text or "staging must be updated before our os version is deprecated sunday" I prefer the latter.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#337

Post by TonyAlicea10 »

Gmail’s summaries are both intrusive and poor quality. They actively make the email experience worse.

This is all a solution looking for a problem, pretending that people don’t have time to read or write their own email.

With both Google search and email Google is willing to replace reality with uncertain pseudo-reality. I find it extraordinary.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#338

Post by Havoc »

Similar experience. Google products in general are becoming really tedious.

It feels almost like these companies have too many devs just cramming in features to justify their existence & year end performance review, rather than considering whether it is an actual improvement to the user's use case.

Gmail is also starting to really get on my nerves with their enshitified UI. Every button looks different (presumably each "owned" by someone else). It's full of popup overlays you need to click away to get to the interface. On iphone 1/3rd of my inbox real estate is currently a banner about data sharing controls?

I just want to write emails guys...

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#339

Post by shye »

flobosg wrote: post #246
1e1a wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple does this as well with MacOS update notifications Upgrade to MacOS Tahoe? [ ] Yes [ ] Remind me later

> switch to the Sequoia public beta channel! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47198977#47202707

Not a real solution if you’re averse to using pre-release software like macOS 26.

Recent betas also seem to break some small things, not sure if due to change in code itself or a faulty migration.

Re: Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

#340

Post by dspillett »

It looks like you are writing an email. Would you like some help with that?

Seems somewhat familiar from somewhere…

I got a new Samsung phone a few months ago (my last phone was showing signs of dying soon, and I'd promised to never touch Xiaomi again). It took a while to convince the two competing sets of GenAI features (Gemini and Bixby, and related features) that if I wanted their help I'd come calling, and until then they should sod off and leave me to do things myself.

Post reply on HN