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Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left

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

#341

Post by munk-a »

monkpit wrote: post #287
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…

Either rely upon everyone else changing their behavior, or give up and use your LLM to re-compress incoming messages to be informationally dense as you see fit.

Personally, I'm confident with my level of output so I'll continue to dutifully read all the crap that gets sent to me on company time. I'll just prefer to engage with people who communicate well and encourage that in others.

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

#342

Post by ryandrake »

justaregulanerd wrote: post #185
supertroop wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t happen on mac either, right?

Coming from 10 years of Linux to macOS, Apple deserves praise for this point too. I don't use Apple Intelligence, Safari, or Siri on my Mac, and I'm extremely happy to report that Apple does not nag me to use these features at all. THANK YOU APPLE. Windows would open Edge for random reasons instead of my preferred browser to nudge me to use it, Cortana was a constant reminder in W10 because it was part of Windows Sea…

To be fair, Apple does do a one-time sales pitch during OS setup, but if you say NO, it remembers you mean NO.

macOS does have its own user-hostile issues, but they are more in the form of making things like running downloaded software and modifying your system irritatingly difficult, and not Windows's pathetic and desperate attempts to cajole you into using their features.

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

#343

Post by Unai »

programmertote wrote: post #285

Not related to using LLMs for writing email, but something that bothers me about using Gmail lately. There were a couple of lass action lawsuits (like this one: www.GoogleWebAppActivityLawsuit.com) against Google. The emails from both lawsuits went straight to my Gmail account's 'Spam' folder. I'm glad I review my spam box regularly. Hopefully, it's just the false positive effect of the Gmail's spam filter.

If you're gonna go off-topic, I wanna join.

How absolutely terrible is the box where you write the emails in web Gmail? I get you need more features than what a simple provides, but how can a trillion dollar company make such an absolutely broken piece of crap as the most important part of one of their key products? You delete something and the cursor goes to the end of the email. You ctrl-z and the cursor goes before the first character of the email, not before modifying a string of a completely random length. Like a year ago, and for like a month, there was an area on the right side that didn't accept any clicks at all. Native keyboard shortcuts constantly violated.

We figured out WYSIWYG decades ago, how can it be this bad? I've resorted to writing my emails on a notepad app and pasting them when they are done. I thought it had to be an issue with some browser extensions or something, because I've never heard anyone else complaining about it, but no, it really is that bad.

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

#344

Post by ToucanLoucan »

gs17 wrote: post #330

It's really bizarre at this point. I'm okay with things like having one-click options for simple replies like "That time works for me" (Google Messages on Android is hilariously bad at these but it's at least useful occasionally). I'm not okay with it suggesting a whole point-by-point response to someone else. Today I had an email from a colleague where it had a suggested reply so large it didn't fit in the preview b…

Are we shocked, really? We have evidence from discovery of them actively making search results worse to pad query volume. Of course they’re using enabled-by-default, run-without-asking AI features to pad Gemini usage.

The Valley is tripping over themselves to convince the world fancy autocomplete is worth 800 billion.

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

#345

Post by ryandrake »

smohare wrote: post #145
happymellon wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who uses more than one monitor, my Mac has far more issues than my Linux boxes.

Huh, I’ve never once had a problem with multiple monitors and macs over the last 15 years. But at most I’m running two monitors.

I have a iMac with two external monitors, and during boot it does this crazy dance where one monitor goes on, then off, then two monitors go on, and so on for a few rounds until shit settles and all three are on.

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

#346

Post by munk-a »

bigiain wrote: post #319
munk-a wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My ADHD rejects modernity. I shall type novels when engaged in discussions about feature design decisions and if your question has an easy answer I will give it to you shortly. I absolutely agree with your opinion and I loathe it.

I (mostly) welcome _people_ writing medium to long form emails, slack posts, and pull request comment (and the like). What really grinds my gears is when the clearly desired response is a few words or a single sentence, and what I get is a link to an obviously llm generated 3 page pdf full of em-dashes and emoji bullet pointed lists with very little relevance or context about the question. If I wanted Claude or ChatG…

Hey, speaking of gear grinding - have you run into LLM generated comments? I have always loathed JavaDoc and friends as I think it encourages vapid space filling comments that are inherently knowable from the code - when it's connected to a renderer (as was the original JavaDoc) so that the comments can be exposed without the code that is fine-ish - it serves a purpose and I can comprehend the rational but in most cases I've seen those comments committed without any intent to ever render them separately.

In the modern world we've got comments written by LLMs because "You've got to write a comment, of course, it's required!" but now the actually significant comments (the Why comments - as opposed to the What ones) are lost in a sea of LLM slop so no one will read them. Considering it'd be just as easy for the reader to point a conversational LLM at the codefile if they want the LLM interpretation of what's happening why are we bothering committing it at all?

Gosh that really grinds my gears. It's definitely a tangent but that being encouraged is a huge red flag for me.

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

#347

Post by dspillett »

hogwasher wrote: post #306
programmertote wrote: post #285

Not related to using LLMs for writing email, but something that bothers me about using Gmail lately. There were a couple of lass action lawsuits (like this one: www.GoogleWebAppActivityLawsuit.com) against Google. The emails from both lawsuits went straight to my Gmail account's 'Spam' folder. I'm glad I review my spam box regularly. Hopefully, it's just the false positive effect of the Gmail's spam filter.

YES. Not just the Google class action notices - though those, which Google was court-ordered to send and deliver , are the most egregious - but ALL class action or settlement related emails get automatically chucked into to my gmail spam folder no matter what. And they don't ever forward spam, even if you've set up mailbox forwarding to an external address. There's no option for it. So to ever see those messages, I h…

> but ALL class action or settlement related emails get automatically chucked into to my gmail spam folder

Every now and then I get a glut of “if you bought X in timeframe Y you might be due a pay-out” junk mail, so this might be genuine false positives rather than something more sinister.

Though the cynic in me, that has been right so many times over the years wrt corporate behaviour, is inclined to agree with your much less generous assessment!

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

#348

Post by sshine »

cadamsdotcom wrote: post #327

Looking for your alternative? Let me give you some (non financially motivated) praise for Fastmail. It has everything Gmail has - even app passwords, hide my email, and ios integration. The only criticism is the calendar doesn’t autocomplete addresses so that’s a bit more typing than I would like. But everything you do in Fastmail is instant . They live up to the name! Once you try it and go back, you’ll be shocked -…

+1

When I migrated from Gmail to Fastmail years ago, I thought Fastmail felt... less featureful.

When I rarely visit my abandoned Gmail, I can't believe I put up with the clunkiness.

Lean software stands the test of time.

Fastmail hasn't had a noteworthy UI change ever.

Minor annoyances:

  - Clicking an iPhone notification opens the app, but never brings me to the actual email
  - It is difficult to unfold the full extended header section on iPhone
  - ...I can't think of more...
It saves my drafts, it's not annoying, it has a mobile app.

I might switch away for a solution that is more affordable when hosting emails for many family members and organisations. But for a handful, I really can't recommend it enough.

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

#350

Post by apparent »

PaulHoule wrote: post #57
diegocg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part for me are the false positives. I frequently need to get into the spam folder to discover emails that Gmail thinks they are spam, even though there is absolutely no reason for it. I have been thinking about leaving it.

There is a reason for it. They don't want you to receive messages from anyone who doesn't use gmail!

I have had mail from other gmail users, whom I had emailed and received emails from, sent to spam.
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