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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

#751

Post by stetrain »

A big question about this push for AI/LLM features in products, and I think very related to public sentiment on AI, is that if these features were so desirable and useful why do they need to be so forcefully promoted?

If these features were so useful, the internet would be full of articles and viral videos about how to turn them on and use them.

Instead, every single software service you sign in to now has to stop you with popups, chat windows, and sparkle animations to show you all of the shiny new AI features they have added, like they're all Microsoft trying to convince you to switch your browser to Edge.

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

#752

Post by conductr »

dgellow wrote: post #683
conductr wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Don’t forget: - write verbose tickets - summaries the verbose tickets

Eh, well, I have been trained by IT staff long before to write very detailed explanations of issues, attempts at fixing, step by step reproduction instructions, include screenshots, etc. I am sure AI has elevated it but the summarizing nature is probably a net benefit for those reading/managing tickets. I’m not in a ticket queue position other than as an end user needing support, so my only data point I have on it is the desktop support guy in my office says he’s on board with it all simply because he can write his snarky comments as he’s always wanted to and then just tell the LLM to make it friendly before sending.

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

#753

Post by dangus »

The advantages Gmail had when it arrived on the scene just don’t exist anymore.

We have to remember that when Gmail was released, email providers were stingy on storage and decent web mail was unheard of.

Now, if you run over to a paid alternative like FastMail you’ll actually have a faster/better webmail experience.

I also think everyone should use email on their own domain so that it’s easy to kick your provider to the curb if they go downhill. As long as you own the domain you can do whatever you want.

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

#754

Post by dangus »

pmontra wrote: post #462
vachina wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Probably the nothing to install experience. Every Android phone comes with Gmail and every device has a web browser. Do people have to install Gmail on iOS? I'm using Thunderbird with POP3 accounts, download on my laptop then remove from the server, daily backups. My phone has K9 (the old one with the UI I like) and I never remove messages from the phone. When I send mail from the phone I bcc myself so I can see the…

The Apple Mail client works very well with Gmail. The only real negative is that it’s not true push email, though it is largely close enough.

The thing I miss most about macOS now that I’ve gone all-in on Linux is actually Apple Mail. It’s just a simple and clean Mail app.

My current choice is Evolution and I’ve had very good luck with it so far. But ultimately the best Mail experience is on my iPhone.

I was using Thunderbird/BetterBird, but now that a Windows client isn’t a requirement for me anymore, I much prefer Evolution. Thunderbird is a notable pain when it comes to an inability to reliably export/import your user profile to other machines. It’s also such a cluttered application and I find the calendar UI to be horrendous. Good luck using a trackpad to scroll through months of the year.

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

#755

Post by wildrhythms »

urbandw311er wrote: post #528

Exactly the same problem manifests itself in Google Docs. Hit RETURN. New paragraph. Begin considering what you will write. Prompt pops up: “Help me write.” Every time. It’s incredibly distracting and turning it off is hard wired into disabling about 1000 other features.

But when you accidentally typed into the prompt field and hit enter it registered a daily active user metric so the feature must be a hit!

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

#756

Post by mzmzmzm »

I use Fastmail for personal email, but my org is a Google shop. If you have "smart features and personalization" turned off it doesn't even try with AI tools, and I toggled that years ago to get it to stop doing the smart category stuff. The horrifying thing as they pile on "AI" features lately is realizing that most of my coworkers have a totally different email experience.

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

#757

Post by thenakulchawla »

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 indeed great. It’s been a pleasure to use.

You can add multiple domains to your account without making it a feel like an enterprise.

All the features relating to the aliases is available on the ios app. One doesn’t need to jump between the web and the app to do basic things.

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

#759

Post by newaccountman2 »

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.

I never understood why anyone would want to download an application to do something as simple as checking email.

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

#760

Post by brandonwindson »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #567
sph wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. I wrote about this a couple times. Here's how it works: the personal spam filter kicks in after having trained on ~100-200 spam emails. You need to mark them as spam (you might want to use a filter initially if they all have a common pattern) and delete them regularly from the spam folder. Spam training kicks in only when you a spam message is deleted (to avoid training on false positives) I went through th…

Are you talking about false negatives? The problem I have is with false positives. It regularly throws important legit email into spam. Just the other day it threw an invoice from AWS into spam! Regularly throws financial docs into spam. Like it’s hard for me to imagine how that happens.

Fastmail also uses global blocklists and reputation scores that can override your training. Could also be the sending IP is shared with bulk senders.

Marking as "not spam" should help over time. If it does not, create a rule to always deliver from that domain. That is the only way to guarantee it never happens again.

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