Why is it never the other way around? I’m sick of EULA updates silently enrolling me into things i never asked for
They are asking for legal trouble anyway, at least in Europe
And we’ll just watch them either get slapped by an insignificant fine, or watch them weasel their way out of this again, by claiming they made you agree to some perpetual abandonment of rights, like they always do
Or pay a fine of half a billion or so, but only 15 years later
it says you need to have smart features on for this to work. I went looking for how to turn it off, but aparently in the EU, UK, Japan and others it’s off by default
Plus the options are frequently hidden and unclear.
I thought disabling One Drive on my Windows machine would keep it from syncing to the cloud. Nope, it just changed where the files were stored but Windows copies it to One Drive even when One Drive isn’t running.
In the case of google, I assume that turning off the Gemini bullshit doesn’t have any impact on it copying all the content to their servers even if you don’t see it happening.
but Windows copies it to One Drive even when One Drive isn’t running.
I don’t understand why users and our justice system let them get away with this. This is malicious. Your operating system is literally literally malware. It does not respect your choices and it steals your information.
That’s just untrue though, onedrive doesn’t work like that. I’m not saying Microsoft doesnt steal data either, but onedrive isn’t required for that. In fact it can suck so hard it won’t sync shit while running.
Defender can literally submit anything it wants to Microsoft by default and doesn’t hide it.
It absolutely does work like that.
Maybe the even more important question: Why can you even opt out? Why is this not done on-device, without anything going anywhere to begin with?
I mean, I know the answer, you know the answer, everyone knows the answer. If this was truly privacy preserving, there would be no need to opt out.
to shove it in people’s faces who would never go out of their way to turn it on. probably like 99% of people.
It’s part of the abuse.
As Louis Rossmann likes to say, this is a rapist mentality.
Ask for forgiveness instead of permission.
A single message now generates 20 different summaries and analyses, requiring a rack of GPUs and a diesel generator.
We’re so lucky that electricity is unlimited and free, otherwise it might’ve caused a serious problem.
Don’t worry, this stuff is why companies like Google want to build and run their own nuclear power plants. What could possibly go wrong?
Most email is short. I don’t see a need to summarize it. Google is run by idiots and assholes.
Ai will write complicated long mails, you’ll need an Ai to summarise it
If an email needs to be summarized, I’m not going to read it anyway.
ive actually used it at work for stuff like “when did Wendy approve the design? did she send it to brian?” when I have 5 different email threads over 3 different organizations, with 10 different respondees. But in personal use I would never.
If mine could do that “find me the approval email for x last week” I’d use it, but if outlook had a decent search I wouldn’t need it.
Outlook has search?!
I’d settle for AI clipping out everyone’s redundant signatures, .gif logos, comic sans bible quotes, and everything else packed into email that people use as direct messaging. Or my coworkers could just use WebEx for chats instead of emails.
I put a tl;dr sentence or two at the top of any e-mail more than a couple of paragraphs. Sometimes for those too.
Eat more AI! We’ve spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this fucking garbage, so EAT IT! Yeah! It’s in your email! It’s in your car! IT’S IN YOUR TEETH (launch date: Q2 2026)!
You jest, but I’ve already seen “AI-powered” toothbrushes on shelves. Let’s give even more health data to corporate giants!
You go ahead and waste resources on summarizing the 200 emails a day in my spam account, you fucking morons.
I agree fuck Google but also poor earth :(
How the hell can they even afford that?! There are so many Gmail users and so many emails a second and Gemini will summarize them all? That sounds so expensive and like a waste of resources
It is, but the bubble mustn’t burst or the grifters will stop making money selling “the end of skilled labor” to braindead capitalists.
Actually, investment in AI is necessary for competing with other nations.
The “end of skilled labor” selling point is just to cover up that fact that we need AI because other nations will have it.
Countries are modern-day fiefs.
Alright, let’s tear this idea apart in plain, no-BS language. The whole “we gotta invest in AI to keep up with other nations” argument is like saying you need the flashiest new phone just because your neighbor got one—even if your old phone still works perfectly fine. Sure, some countries are all-in on AI like it’s the latest craze, but that doesn’t mean we have to jump on the bandwagon and mess up our lives.
The whole “end of skilled labor” hype is really just a cover-up. People have been doing amazing work with their hands and brains for ages—long before AI even existed. And let’s talk downsides: more people losing jobs, a privacy mess, and decisions being made by glitchy algorithms that might not give a damn about real-life problems. We didn’t need AI to build everything we have today. We’ve been doing just fine without handing over our lives to a bunch of computer code.
So, if you’re buying into the “we need AI to keep up with the cool kids on the global stage” nonsense, you’re ignoring the fact that the smart move might just be hanging on to good old human skill. Instead of racing into an AI-fueled chaos, maybe we should just keep doing what we do best—using our brains and common sense.
Google makes a lot of money, and summarising stuff uses a surprisingly small amount of energy. You can do it trivially on-device on a laptop and on plenty of phones.
When it comes to LLMs, training the models is generally the thing that requires ridiculous amounts of energy.
This is dumb as fuck, though. I don’t want Google’s LLM to miss out critical details in my emails. That shit could be important. If people want this they should opt in.
They probably use a smaller model for summarizing.
It’s so weird that we have to go through hoops and loops to get rid of this stuff! I was sick of my Android responding to a long press of the power button, meant to shut it down, with a Gemini prompt. Took me an hour to figure out I can’t get rid of the function, but I can switch back (for now) to old style Google Assistant.
If you have to force functionality down your users’ throat despite them not wanting it, you already lost. Gemini is Google’s Clippy, just less iconic and more also-ran.
If you have to force functionality down your users’ throat despite them not wanting it, you already lost.
As much as I’d like to think so, they’re not stupid, they know what they’re doing. They cram it in your face to make sure you know it’s there. And most people don’t care.
Unless I opt out of Gmail? Yep, already done.
Meh. I can’t find a good sub for YouTube and Gmail is my “uh oh did I mess up my email server back”.
I’ve been considering hush mail. I don’t like Europe. I’d rather move to Canadian
Canada isn’t going to be a safe bet in the long run. They have a reprieve for now but they always end up doing whatever America does just a few years later.
I’ll take my chances. I don’t have enough of a connection to Europe to put full trust in Europe. Maybe if the Netherlands wins euro 2025
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buy domain
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buy hosting
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get email
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use thunderbird
I run my own email and I have to say I wouldn’t recommend it.
The biggest hassle is dealing with either Spamhaus or Microsoft, who apparently at random decide to put my IPs on blacklist, and who provide hurdles to working around this (for Spamhaus) or just say “no” (for Microsoft).
Mega brain move right here. Combined with a multitude of open source web mail clients and ur golden. SOGo and roundcube my beloved.
that takes me back to mid 2000s and horde webmail :)
solid recommendations roundcube is goat
Would having aliases be a good way to bypass when a website denies your emails from your domain (which is known occurrence for who self-hosts their own email system)?
Your new dentist/GP practice when you try to sign up?
@ Thunderbird? What is that?
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More opt outs… Everyone, just opt out of big tech
We should opt into little tech. A guy in Venezuela just trying to buy a couple days food will read your email and summarize it for you!
This made me think of the South Park episode where they’re hiring people to replace the Amazon Alexa and stuff.
In reply to all of the complaints here: I’ve never seen anything about Gemini on my Graphene OS device. 🤷♂️
But your recipient uses it.
Exactly.
Communication with people is hard enough already without an LLM deciding what parts are important.
Idiots using LLMs to write emails to people using LLMs to summarise them. It’s just slop all the way down.
One of my co-workers uses AI to write every single one of his reports. Ugh…
Damn. It was 3 at night and i’ve read gemini somehow as gmail and it still makes sense.
I’m surprised so many people who probably use Linux use a stock operating system on their phones
Despite efforts to the contrary, PC is still an inherently far more open platform, with better alternatives available.
I’m not sure what you mean? Are you saying Linux is a better alternative to windows than, e.g., LineageOS is to android?
I can fully encrypt my PC/BIOS password/secureboot if I have Linux on it. If I relock my bootloader with Android then I’m completely fucked if anything goes sideways. If I leave it open the phone gives a fucking warning on boot that the phone is unlocked and may be insecure and that warning can’t be disabled or locked. (Pixels)
I hope Android gets taken away from Google, 11 was the last somewhat useful upgrade.
In my opinion the last great was Android 7. Just getting more locked down since.
But also it was kinda funny when manufacturers left over some of their software. I think it was ZTE which had a hidden menu to change the fucking IMEI.
conveniently my phone’s last update was 11 (god I wish there were more security updates past 11 2023)
Why would you admit that where others can potentially use that information to attack your device? Some cards you have to play close to the chest.
fair, but I am going to try and get a pinephone soon anyway ¯\(ツ)/¯
Linux is a better alternative to windows than, e.g., LineageOS is to android?
It’s true. Camera apps for example are much, much worse than the OEM version.
Unless it’s quite shitty.
I’ve got Ulefone, and the default audio source (software) is dogshit quality. And that’s what the camera app uses, unless I use something like Open Camera where I can manually select “Unprocessed” rather than default.
For the idea
Default: https://files.catbox.moe/d2n7sg.flac
Unprocessed: https://files.catbox.moe/xf9ab8.flacVery obvious, at least with earphones.
I’m saying it’s more accessible, and probably better known.
PCs are fundamentally designed to be OS-agnostic, Android hardware is not.
Better known, sure, but idk if it’s fair to say it’s more accessible. I’ve had less trouble using custom ROMs on my smartphones than I’ve had with Linux on PC
Why would you use Gmail in the first place?
I have been moving away from all of the big name companies for big name products.
It’s a shame, because I used to be very supportive of Google.
Ex-Google fan boy here. Been riding the fuck Google wagon for about 7 years now, no regrets, and certain I’m missing out on absolutely nothing. Moving away from all these self-serving BS “tech giants” is the smartest and healthiest move anyone can do.
Do any other email services/clients have a very similar search function? Where I can search for date ranges and email sizes in addition to the more typical operators.
At my workplace I have to deal with Outlook, and it’s a pile of crap in comparison.
Use Thunderbird as a client with any email service. Thunderbird has all the features you want.
Thanks, actually I was already using it for backing up my Gmail inbox, so now I looked at its search features, and found the Expression (Power) Message/Calendar Search - NG addon that provides Gmail-like filtering :)
I have a Google account at work with the domain name of the company. The AI is annoying and I wished they used something else.
Ok this is the first step where I feel an actual urge to look for Gmail alternatives. (Been a Gmail user since like 2007.) I’m a desktop-only Gmail user, but I can see where this is going… :/ Also heavy user of Google Drive and Sheets, so it’s going to be annoying if I have to replace all of them :/
For me it was: Gmail to Tuta, Drive to Filen.io (some cheap German guys). But Sheets would be the most difficult. Maybe Zoho or Infomaniak? Infomaniak has the complete package IIRC.
thanks, I’ll check them out!
So this is why I got an email that was completely wrong.
I told a guy I used to work for that I moved and it’s the perfect place to help him and his company.
He replied that he hopes I found a house where I used to live.
wtf it’s like he never read the email at all, now that this AI trash was added, the email makes sense.
I guess he is fucked and doesn’t get the help he needs for his company.
Cool, how do I disable this shit feature?
Stop using the shit service.
