Gmail thinks I'm stupid, so I left • Hacker News Board

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

#411

Post by al_borland » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:58 AM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #256

kraquepype wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently built 2 mini PCs for my kids to play games on, and went with Bazzite. It was really surprising how put together it all is. The steam integration is seamless and it can play a ton of stuff even on an older NUC w/out a GPU. It was the first time I can say that installing a linux OS was easier and friendlier than Windows.

> It was the first time I can say that installing a linux OS was easier and friendlier than Windows. It's been that way for about 20 years. Where have you been?

Installing maybe… getting all the hardware to actually work was a completely different story. Broken WiFi was the norm. Bad display drivers that only worked in 640x480 or 800x600. Not to mention consulting website before installing to see how well your laptop was supported and what you could expect to never work.

So years ago you also generally had to understand partitioning and filesystem formats, which most people are clueless about.

Sure, they were learning opportunities, but most people weren’t trying to learn anything. They just wanted to get on MySpace, download free music, chat with friends.

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

#412

Post by andrewflnr » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

Slow_Hand wrote: post #361

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 -…

Does it automatically filter my email into tabs for primary, promotions, social, and updates? Cause that is the single most useful feature offered by Gmail that I have yet to find elsewhere. I'm not talking about manually tagging, setting up, and filtering all incoming email before my inbox can self-organize. I mean automatically. Only show me the true primary items in my inbox from the jump. Everything else can wait…

One of the handy things that Fastmail (among other providers) lets you do is set up a wildcard email address, so literallyanything@mydomain goes to a specific folder. Any time I want to sign up for some service I don't trust, I'll give them a specific email address. Long-standing practice, blah blah. Also, as my sibling said, "mash that unsubscribe button".

Less practically, it is pretty obnoxious for you to act superior about inbox 0, while pretending not to judge people who "let their inbox be overrun", and at the same time refuse to accept any solution to your inbox that isn't fully automatic. There are lots of options available to you besides leaning entirely on Google's machines of loving grace watching over your inbox.

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

#413

Post by cadamsdotcom » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

rc_mob wrote: post #386

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 -…

I been using proton but the UI is just a little bit of a let down. missing things that just were natural on gmail and i never had to think about dunno ok maybe I'll try fastmail

Agreed. Proton is not up to my personal standard.

That’s ok - they have a wonderful VPN service that I use every day.

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

#414

Post by conductr » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 1:59 AM UTC

sebmellen wrote: post #169

why_at wrote: post #151

I can appreciate LLMs for some use cases, but writing emails for the user is the one that really baffles me. It's one thing if you don't speak English well and could use some help making yourself understood, but the amount of native speakers using this is so strange to me. How does this help you? If you can write to the LLM telling it what kind of email to write, you might as well just write the email.

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…

It seems to me like adoption of AI in the workplace has become mostly 1) authorship of verbose emails and 2) summarizing verbose emails for non-tech industries

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

#415

Post by jbaber » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:01 AM UTC

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 -…

Fastmail is fast enough and has rich enough keyboard shortcuts that I stopped using mutt for it. It's very good.

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

#416

Post by hbwang2076 » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:04 AM UTC

[flagged]

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

#417

Post by Our_Benefactors » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:05 AM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #207

Our_Benefactors wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Skill issue

I prefer my OS to not require “skill” (there’s no skill left in the age of AI anyways, just wasted time)

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

#418

Post by gsinclair » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:05 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #412

Slow_Hand wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it automatically filter my email into tabs for primary, promotions, social, and updates? Cause that is the single most useful feature offered by Gmail that I have yet to find elsewhere. I'm not talking about manually tagging, setting up, and filtering all incoming email before my inbox can self-organize. I mean automatically. Only show me the true primary items in my inbox from the jump. Everything else can wait…

One of the handy things that Fastmail (among other providers) lets you do is set up a wildcard email address, so literallyanything@mydomain goes to a specific folder. Any time I want to sign up for some service I don't trust, I'll give them a specific email address. Long-standing practice, blah blah. Also, as my sibling said, "mash that unsubscribe button". Less practically, it is pretty obnoxious for you to act supe…

I think seeing superiority or obnoxiousness in the comment you replied to was a pretty large reading error on your part. The tone was sympathetic to people whose inboxes receive more than they can handle.

The last sentence of your comment sounds quite condescending.

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

#419

Post by BTBurke » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:15 AM UTC

Slow_Hand wrote: post #376

EchoReflection wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes. Fastmail can "automatically" do that, if you configure it to have those rules.

If I configure my rules today and then tomorrow I sign up for a new site do I have to amend my rules to also filter the new site? Because that's too much manual management. It's not a lot for a single site, yes, but x10 new sites a month it is too much. It's death by 1,000 cuts. I don't ever have to do it with Gmail, and that is a tremendous amount of time saved. It is a lifesaver.

If the email body contains the word unsubscribe, send it to the promotional folder.

One rule to rule them all.

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

#420

Post by andrewflnr » Wed, Jun 03, 2026, 2:15 AM UTC

gsinclair wrote: post #418

andrewflnr wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the handy things that Fastmail (among other providers) lets you do is set up a wildcard email address, so literallyanything@mydomain goes to a specific folder. Any time I want to sign up for some service I don't trust, I'll give them a specific email address. Long-standing practice, blah blah. Also, as my sibling said, "mash that unsubscribe button". Less practically, it is pretty obnoxious for you to act supe…

I think seeing superiority or obnoxiousness in the comment you replied to was a pretty large reading error on your part. The tone was sympathetic to people whose inboxes receive more than they can handle. The last sentence of your comment sounds quite condescending.

The part of their comment I quoted is not particularly subtle in my opinion. It undercuts the superficially "sympathetic" tone. If they actually intended it to be sympathetic they should be more careful in their phrasing. I'm skeptical.