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Comment by lpolovets | Hacker News Reader

Related to this, I hate how aggressively Google pushes Gemini and all of the privacy implications involved with that.

1) Lots of features got moved around and there are now many "Write with AI", "Generate image with AI", etc buttons polluting user interfaces even though I don't use them and don't want to use them.

2) Actually, I would use some of these features if I didn't have to do a full opt-in to Smart Features for Google Workspace. If I'm writing a blog post and want to generate a cat picture, that doesn't mean I want to turn on invasive AI-enhanced features in every Google App under the sun. Gemini's chat interface is similar from I can tell: either I can see my search history but Google can train off of it, or if I don't want Google to train off of my chats then I can turn History off but then I can't view it myself. Why isn't there an option for me to see my history but not Google?? They're just the worst at caring about UX.

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They've always been this way. I think until recently Google Maps would refuse to save your home address unless you enabled location history, so you had to type it in every time.

I chose typing every time.

And I chose to set a browser bookmark with the corresponding GET parameters.

Bookmarks is a surprisingly underutilized feature of browsers, I constantly see tons of people doing 5-6 clicks going to some page, I'm guessing simply they don't know about it. Similarly, lots of powerusers who don't know about "javascript:" bookmarks that basically behaves like tiny like browser extensions (the content-script part specifically) when you click on them.

That's because due to modern PWAs (and less modern POST requests and cookies) you can bookmark a URL and it still won't actually work when you try to recall it. It's become a feature for power users.

For example, a naive user will think they can bookmark their shopping cart page and that'll snapshot the exact items in the cart.

I've noticed people tend to use their website's native bookmark feature, like insta saved posts, or they share pages with the google app to save them to a list. If a site has a Share button then you at least know it'll work.

And even when people use bookmarks they often don't bother to change the titles. Very irksome.

And you guys think that by typing or using bookmark with the same address didn't figure out it's your home address? :)

I chose using OpenStreetMap where possible, and in other cases, things like Here We Go etc.

It's the same on phones. You can't use Gemini as your default smart assitant without it also then becoming your default smart assistant for Android Auto, where it is useless.

It will happily find you some restaurant reviews for a town you are going to, but useful stuff like "Send a whatsapp to Jane Smith saying I will be 10 minutes late." or "Play XXX from Spotify" it totally fails at.

Their AI push is what convinced me to leave gmail and go buy my own domain. I don't want it.

what do you use as your client?

I'm not the poster you're replying to, but i did the same thing and use Purelymail (and their web interface, which i think is open-source)

it's a very cheap no-nonsense service, i recommend it

I just signed up given the low price, got it setup with K-9 POP on my phone. Gotta say that is a very simple and easy to follow setup. Compared with something like Zoho where I get lost everytime I need to navigate around.

I'm really liking this, thanks for the recommendation.

Over the years I've recommended Migadu and still do. Affordable and reliable with usage based pricing.

As for the email client I personally prefer Thunderbird on PC and FairEmail on Android.

https://migadu.com/

https://email.faircode.eu/

Fairemail is great. Better than Thunderbird and any other mail client around. Every so often I see a new mail client pop up for Android advertising that it does X better than any other client; I look at it and it's either built on top of either aosp or some other oss email client (or a rewrite of same) with X feature bolted on, often with numerous features missing. If you want a full email client, go with fairemail.

Reminder to take a look at what nontrivial OSS software you use every day that you've never paid for, and consider a donation (I recommend GitHub sponsorship as a method that currently charges no fees to either the donor or the recipient)

Also not the poster you're replying to, but I get email with ProtonVPN, which I've linked to my domain.

I'm not without my questions about them as a company, but Google are getting beyond a joke.

Full migration away is coming with next phone upgrade.

+1 for Purelymail. Most things that appear to be too good to be true are not true. Purelymail is the real deal.

I've been pretty happy on Fastmail as a custom-domain email host the last few years.

I ended up on Zoho because I wanted to be cheap. So far that's worked out well for me.

That chat history dark pattern is the main reason I never use Gemini. Its a shame.

Which dark pattern is that?

I've had similar complaints about GCloud, they shove Ai callouts everywhere, there are pages with half a dozen of these. Completely unnecessary, just need one button, not in every form and multiple callouts how "ai can help with..."

They have over indexed hard and turned off (formerly) loyal customers. I'm on proton + vivaldi + digital ocean + opencode-go now, replacements for almost every product area. Still need to make the switch to GrapheneOS

At least they reverted the shitty mobile Keep integration that was not only an insanely distracting UI but made the whole interface laggy as hell.

It's like Google Plus buttons and integrations everywhere but with AI.

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