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Gmail Proves That Some People Hate Smart Suggestions (techcrunch.com)
Citing a number of complaints following Google's Gmail makeover, TechCrunch's Romain Dillet makes the case for why some users don't want smart suggestions in the email service: There's a reason why Gmail lets you disable all the smart features. Some users don't want smart categories, important emails first and smart reply suggestions. Arguably, the only smart feature everyone needs is the spam filter. A pure chronological feed of your email messages is incredibly valuable as well. That's why many Instagram users are still asking for a chronological feed. Sure, algorithmic feeds can lead to more engagement and improved productivity. Maybe Google conducted some tests and concluded that you end up answering more emails if you let Gmail do its thing. But you may want to judge the value of each email without an algorithmic ranking.
VCs could spot the next big thing without any bias. Journalists could pay attention to young and scrappy startups as much as the new electric scooter startup in San Francisco. Universities could give a grant to students with unconventional applications. The HR department of your company could look at all applications without following Google's order.
VCs could spot the next big thing without any bias. Journalists could pay attention to young and scrappy startups as much as the new electric scooter startup in San Francisco. Universities could give a grant to students with unconventional applications. The HR department of your company could look at all applications without following Google's order.
"Smart". I don't think you understand what it means.
Dumb mail, dumb tvs and dumb software. There is a probably a billion dollars to be made from dumbware.
If it ain't broke don't fix it. How hard is this to understand?
Gmail proves that people hate being spied on. These same people do not hate Google until something draws their attention to the fact that they are being spied on. Face it folks, Microsoft is no longer the biggest threat to your digitial rights. Now, Google, Apple and Facebook are, and of those, Google is the worst threat even if not the most visible violator.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Yes, and Facebook remembers literally everything about you for decades, but it magically can't remember that you selected Chronological Order... You have to reselect it. Every. Fucking. Day.
Sorry, but you can eat shit with your smug condescending remarks.
I find that predictable behaviour is more convenient than smart. Case in point: the bash-completion package, it knows which arguments to a command are subcommands rather than filenames, and what filenames you don't care enough. It's right 95% of the time. But it's that 5% that's infuriating: a subcommand that was added only recently, a .tar.zst file not recognized as a tarball (zstd is awesome!), assuming that you want btrfs fi def only directories but not files (VM images anyone?), mysteriously skipping directories with a @ in name, etc.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
These days Facebook's "smart" means show you half a dozen of your friends' posts, then and endless scroll of paid placement newsfeed. Google News has gone downhill as well. It used to let you choose topics to follow, including as many locations as you like. About 5 years ago, setting more than one location stopped working, and as of a couple of months ago, local news is so heavily biased by their "smart" algorithms that any attempt to try to customize your feed is pointless, as it gets wiped out within a couple of days. I've had it with these companies deciding they know better than me what I want to see. It's ripe for another round in the GeoCities/Yahoo->MySpace/Altavista->Facebook/Google->... cycle. .