6 ms·

I don't think I would believe myself if I found this being a specific gif. This is a great amount of coincidences in code to cause this. Grammarly is an applic

I don't think I would believe myself if I found this being a specific gif. This is a great amount of coincidences in code to cause this. Grammarly is an application that I don't get. The fact that people are installing, basically spyware, on their computers just to get grammar suggestions to make their writing more boring and add a spellchecker (which is already inside web browsers) is pretty astounding to me. The fact companies allow employees to have it, despite obvious security issues of sending everything one types to a saas, is even more wild.

eichin 3y ago
I worked with someone who really needed it, but we had the usual "keep sales users as far from the actual product as possible" organizational isolation so it worked out in practice. (For engineering, it was on the "don't install this in particular" list.)
_jal 3y ago
> Grammarly is an application that I don't get. You write like a native speaker, so I'm not surprised. But imagine having a few years of school-German, and then taking a German language job. I'd bet there would be times you'd want a writing assistant, too. There are also plenty of native English speakers who for whatever reason got a crappy education, and didn't get a lot of writing feedback. As far as corporate security goes, you are correct, and we ban it. But I get why people want it.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  > As far as corporate security goes, you are correct, and we ban it. But I get why people want it. That is what stuck out to me: Installing rando applications on your corporate computer that has access to internal stuff... Whoooaaaa Baby! That's just a security disaster waiting to happen. It's stuff like this that eventually leads to draconian and crappy "Nobody gets admin access to their machines" corporate policies coming down. Most TechCorp places I worked, if someone installed something like that on their corporate device, they'd get at least a stern talking-to and probably sent back to security training.
- generationP 3y ago
  Learning a language at school, you will soon be better than natives at grammar. It's the vocabulary, idioms and implicatures that will be tripping you up. Does grammarly really help with those?
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    hah better than a German at German grammar? don't think so
natbennett 3y ago
There are a lot of people whose professional outcomes are meaningfully constrained by their ability produce clear business English. I know a guy who used to get inexplicable feedback about his communication that boiled down to “write better.” This limited his ability to get promoted. He runs all his comms through ChatGPT and asks it to “make this more professional” and doesn’t get that feedback anymore.
- ianlevesque 3y ago
  I get that people don't care or understand this, but that's also saying he cc's OpenAI, and therefore probably Microsoft, and therefore almost definitely the NSA, on all his business communications. What a world.
  - beebeepka 3y ago
    I've seen people do this on the same week as mandatory trainings featuring this exact scenario. At multiple companies
  - gnulinux 3y ago
    People won't care until something major happens and after that they'll implement some draconian half-measure that doesn't fix anything like snooping on office WiFi.
    - exikyut 3y ago
      How's that even supposed to work, given that the average corporate ecosystem is so vastly cloud-based now that the majority of services use desktop and mobile apps that pin HTTPS certificates?
  - almostnormal 3y ago
    > [...] and therefore probably Microsoft [...] Where it will go through teams, outlook/exchange, or O365. Not leaking data is no longer as easy as it used to be. Just some forms are more accepted than others.
  - 3y ago
thaumaturgy 3y ago
People that are comfortable with text-based forums may not realize the extent of illiteracy and semiliteracy in the US. Decades ago, a small company was able to convince most of the education system (public and sometimes private) to use a teaching method based on junk science. The end result is that there are many millions of adults in the current workforce who can barely read, and many of them work in office settings. Some of those would install anything that would help them through text-based communications. [1]: "How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers" https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho... [2]: "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong" https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ [3]: "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level" https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/rqulik/til_that_according_to_the_us_department_of/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/rqulik/til_t...
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  I'm not sure that's specific to the US, and I don't even think that particular teaching method has been used here in Quebec, yet we still see broadly similar literacy rates and levels. Last I checked US students rank well and are near the top in most education global rankings, so I think bad education is more of a global problem than Americans think it is. Maybe that's outdated though, I'll do my research.
  - Aerbil313 3y ago
    That’s definitely outdated. Literacy rate of my “third world” country is %16 higher than US atm.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Be careful trying to compare countries or even historical numbers when standards vary. The US has a 99% literacy rate based on some metrics, but as often happens when metrics become useless the people tracking them raise the bar. Thus the US’s “Level 1” literacy rate, which represents being able to follow basic written instructions, was 92% in 2014. But in 2020 the standard changed yet again to: “54% of adults in the United States have English prose literacy below the 6th-grade level.” Noticeably being literate in a non English language suddenly doesn’t count, the prose at 6th grade level is also higher than it’s been in the past. Or as Wikipedia puts it: In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States
CobrastanJorji 3y ago
I have to wonder whether Grammarly's "Enterprise" tier and its underspecified "advanced security features" involve installing it on-site and offering am "all of your company's words don't get sent across the Internet to another company" feature.
Szpadel 3y ago
that. especially what is puzzling me is: > For security reasons, we do not have Chrome crash reporting enabled. so we do not want to have stack traces or whatever else this includes for security reasons, but installing basically keylogger that does spell check is ok there are companies that forbid using chatgpt for even html development because this could leak company secrets, but grammarly on confluence/jira is just fine
- bongodongobob 3y ago
  The vast majority of companies don't write any code ever. Not everyone is developing "apps". If you're going to generalize "everyone" you need to understand your business type is a tiny tiny minority of what most people do.
ozr 3y ago
I really like Grammarly as a product, but I exclusively use their web editor. I wonder what their web vs desktop usage is.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mrweasel 3y ago
Grammarly is perfectly reasonable product, the major issue is that no adults seems to be in charge at Grammarly This is clearly a product that should never ever be sold a service. This needs to exist solely as a local installation, there is no way to justify the current implementation and someone in charge at Grammarly should have pull the emergency break and demanded a re-implementation. I understand why Grammarly sells their product as a service, but it's irresponsible and they are just waiting for their Okta moment.

eichin 3y ago

I worked with someone who really needed it, but we had the usual "keep sales users as far from the actual product as possible" organizational isolation so it worked out in practice. (For engineering, it was on the "don't install this in particular" list.)

_jal 3y ago

> Grammarly is an application that I don't get. You write like a native speaker, so I'm not surprised. But imagine having a few years of school-German, and then taking a German language job. I'd bet there would be times you'd want a writing assistant, too. There are also plenty of native English speakers who for whatever reason got a crappy education, and didn't get a lot of writing feedback. As far as corporate security goes, you are correct, and we ban it. But I get why people want it.

ryandrake 3y ago
> As far as corporate security goes, you are correct, and we ban it. But I get why people want it. That is what stuck out to me: Installing rando applications on your corporate computer that has access to internal stuff... Whoooaaaa Baby! That's just a security disaster waiting to happen. It's stuff like this that eventually leads to draconian and crappy "Nobody gets admin access to their machines" corporate policies coming down. Most TechCorp places I worked, if someone installed something like that on their corporate device, they'd get at least a stern talking-to and probably sent back to security training.
generationP 3y ago
Learning a language at school, you will soon be better than natives at grammar. It's the vocabulary, idioms and implicatures that will be tripping you up. Does grammarly really help with those?
- willsmith72 3y ago
  hah better than a German at German grammar? don't think so

natbennett 3y ago

There are a lot of people whose professional outcomes are meaningfully constrained by their ability produce clear business English. I know a guy who used to get inexplicable feedback about his communication that boiled down to “write better.” This limited his ability to get promoted. He runs all his comms through ChatGPT and asks it to “make this more professional” and doesn’t get that feedback anymore.

ianlevesque 3y ago
I get that people don't care or understand this, but that's also saying he cc's OpenAI, and therefore probably Microsoft, and therefore almost definitely the NSA, on all his business communications. What a world.
- beebeepka 3y ago
  I've seen people do this on the same week as mandatory trainings featuring this exact scenario. At multiple companies
- gnulinux 3y ago
  People won't care until something major happens and after that they'll implement some draconian half-measure that doesn't fix anything like snooping on office WiFi.
  - exikyut 3y ago
    How's that even supposed to work, given that the average corporate ecosystem is so vastly cloud-based now that the majority of services use desktop and mobile apps that pin HTTPS certificates?
- almostnormal 3y ago
  > [...] and therefore probably Microsoft [...] Where it will go through teams, outlook/exchange, or O365. Not leaking data is no longer as easy as it used to be. Just some forms are more accepted than others.
- 3y ago

thaumaturgy 3y ago

People that are comfortable with text-based forums may not realize the extent of illiteracy and semiliteracy in the US. Decades ago, a small company was able to convince most of the education system (public and sometimes private) to use a teaching method based on junk science. The end result is that there are many millions of adults in the current workforce who can barely read, and many of them work in office settings. Some of those would install anything that would help them through text-based communications. [1]: "How a flawed idea is teaching millions of kids to be poor readers" https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-ho... [2]: "Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong" https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/ [3]: "According to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level" https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/rqulik/til_that_according_to_the_us_department_of/ https://old.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/rqulik/til_t...

mardifoufs 3y ago
I'm not sure that's specific to the US, and I don't even think that particular teaching method has been used here in Quebec, yet we still see broadly similar literacy rates and levels. Last I checked US students rank well and are near the top in most education global rankings, so I think bad education is more of a global problem than Americans think it is. Maybe that's outdated though, I'll do my research.
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  That’s definitely outdated. Literacy rate of my “third world” country is %16 higher than US atm.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Be careful trying to compare countries or even historical numbers when standards vary. The US has a 99% literacy rate based on some metrics, but as often happens when metrics become useless the people tracking them raise the bar. Thus the US’s “Level 1” literacy rate, which represents being able to follow basic written instructions, was 92% in 2014. But in 2020 the standard changed yet again to: “54% of adults in the United States have English prose literacy below the 6th-grade level.” Noticeably being literate in a non English language suddenly doesn’t count, the prose at 6th grade level is also higher than it’s been in the past. Or as Wikipedia puts it: In many nations, the ability to read a simple sentence suffices as literacy, and was the previous standard for the U.S. The definition of literacy has changed greatly; the term is presently defined as the ability to use printed and written information to function in society, to achieve one's goals, and to develop one's knowledge and potential.[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

CobrastanJorji 3y ago

I have to wonder whether Grammarly's "Enterprise" tier and its underspecified "advanced security features" involve installing it on-site and offering am "all of your company's words don't get sent across the Internet to another company" feature.

Szpadel 3y ago

that. especially what is puzzling me is: > For security reasons, we do not have Chrome crash reporting enabled. so we do not want to have stack traces or whatever else this includes for security reasons, but installing basically keylogger that does spell check is ok there are companies that forbid using chatgpt for even html development because this could leak company secrets, but grammarly on confluence/jira is just fine

bongodongobob 3y ago
The vast majority of companies don't write any code ever. Not everyone is developing "apps". If you're going to generalize "everyone" you need to understand your business type is a tiny tiny minority of what most people do.

ozr 3y ago

I really like Grammarly as a product, but I exclusively use their web editor. I wonder what their web vs desktop usage is.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mrweasel 3y ago

Grammarly is perfectly reasonable product, the major issue is that no adults seems to be in charge at Grammarly This is clearly a product that should never ever be sold a service. This needs to exist solely as a local installation, there is no way to justify the current implementation and someone in charge at Grammarly should have pull the emergency break and demanded a re-implementation. I understand why Grammarly sells their product as a service, but it's irresponsible and they are just waiting for their Okta moment.