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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

#721

Post by kakacik »

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.

Wife is a GP and has to frequently write emails to either insurances or lawyers/judges. All done in french which is a messy language full of obsolete over-the-top completely dishonest empty fluff, but native speakers tend to get quickly offended if its missing, done by non-native speaker. Mistakes can easily have legal consequences.

She uses chatgpt for such with appropriate checks afterwards, all the time. It saves her tons of time, and time is money, time is life spent with kids instead of useless bureaucratic work.

I have tons of similar stories, friends (surgeons, radiologists, all non-native speakers) using chatgpt to write some official application for work permits, motivation letters etc. Just because you don't have certain way of working or work situation doesn't mean its valid for all of us.

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

#722

Post by al_borland »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #554
al_borland wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It sounds like you may have been using very strange or not-working-properly devices. No-one really needed to care about partitioning.

I was using a Thinkpad mostly, which were usually considered some of the best options. Some of the bigger issues may have been 25 years ago, not 20.

I remember spending a lot of time partitioning stuff in those early days, especially if trying to dual boot.

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

#723

Post by Tor3 »

univocal wrote: post #165

You know what's even worse? That if he had tried any of those "here look! we can write it for you!" tools he’d have found out that they don't even work . Gmail summaries are nonsensical most of the times. The suggested replies completely miss the intent of the original message I was trying to write. Most AI integrations around are basically alpha-quality code, that if there wasn't this forced pressure to adopt AI, AI…

Research on LLMs show that they so far can't summarize. They fake it by just extracting stuff, i.e. making the text shorter. They, as you found, can't understand intent. Or what's actually important. I never read summaries generated by AIs, it's a waste of time, and worse.

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

#724

Post by internet_points »

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 -…

Another happy Fastmail user here. They have great IMAP support (with app password) so I have a full local copy on my laptop that I can search instantly with notmuch or read/write from Emacs, but lately I've also started using their web UI a lot because it's just so fast and simple and well-thought-out. When they ship new features, it's stuff that makes you think "oh, that's actually a good idea – and they even made a very logical keyboard shortcut for it". And they've been very responsive to the few support requests I've made.

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

#725

Post by zeta0134 »

vachina wrote: post #454
sshine wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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 exten…

Why are people accessing emails from the webUI. Email is SMTP and IMAP, use any number of clients to access your email.

Well I usually already have my browser open, and "Ctrl+T, 'fa', [enter]" loads up my email basically instantly. I don't want email notifications (or any notifications, really) so a local app just seems like it would introduce a lot of clunk for not much benefit.

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

#726

Post by upofadown »

dhdjddhx wrote: post #162
green_wheel wrote: post #71

> This time I’m doing things the right way by connecting my own domain to a mail host. I’m currently with Fastmail since they were by far the most popular option when I asked for suggestions on the fediverse. Question for the general public: why Fastmail over Proton?

I have anecdotally heard that proton has some more deliverability issues than Fastmail since it’s more preferred by scammers for its privacy features. That influenced my decision since I was probably already going to face some delivery challenges being on a custom domain.

Deliverability issues with which email provider(s)? Often times it turns out the problem is just with Gmail.

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

#727

Post by philipwhiuk »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #661
dspillett wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also zero chance that there are not a fair few people who consider their messages to be UCE¹ even if they are actually due thruppence-ha'penny as their share of the class action win , and who therefore mark them as such which is a signal that automated filter management algorithms will pick up on. -------- [1] They are email, from a commercial entity, and in many cases were not asked for, after all.

And those automated algorithms based on feedback need to not cross user accounts in this case. Or be disabled entirely for the domain. I'm not accusing them of making the problem on purpose, I'm accusing them of not fixing it on purpose. The notice may be from a commercial entity but it's court-ordered. It's not spam.

> it's court-ordered. It's not spam.

Personally my definition of spam allows for court-ordered spam

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

#728

Post by Tor3 »

distances wrote: post #496
ern wrote: post #354

Something I hate about ChatGPT is that it assumes I want my text to be rewritten instead of engaging with the content. I like my writing style. Sure it may leave some sort of linguistic fingerprint and it may not meet some LLM’s idea of what “good” looks like, but I don’t care. What’s worrying is that the rewrite-by-default behavior is probably there because most users want it.

I can't allow LLMs write my messages in any language I'm fluent in. They just don't sound like me at all. It would feel dirty and dishonest to send that slop out. They can be good at grammar checks, but even then I wouldn't fix quite everything, it's better to let some of my natural flaws go through.

My wife translated some text she had written in her own language to my native language, as she didn't feel she could do it. I found grammar errors, surprising ones. I found places where pronouns were used so far into the sentence that a reader would be lost finding what that pronoun actually referred to. And more. In the end I rewrote the LLM-generated text myself, many pages of it.

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

#729

Post by theYipster »

I'm amazed at how many folks on this forum see the Web UI as intrinsically tied to the service. As someone else rightly said, e-mail = IMAP + SMTP. That is true of Gmail as well.

Frankly, I've always hated the Gmail web UI, so I never use it. Not in the 22 years I've had a Gmail account.

IMHO, Superhuman gets a ton right... A Superhuman clone (maybe in VIM or Emacs) would be ideal if you don't want the AI features or the $40/month fee. Don't even need to change your mail address, since it connects to Gmail.

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

#730

Post by thesuitonym »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #543
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a littLe annoyed by that, too, but mostly because there isn't an option to pay for an ad-free experience.

You already overpay the iphones, what more you want to pay ?

I don't want to pay more, but if compared to having results tainted by ads, I'd rather pay.
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