Horizon Burning posted:

grammarly was really useful for a while but i dropped that poo poo the moment they made noise about feeding everything into an AI

skooma512 posted:

Exiting hardware and focusing on just software worked really good for SEGA.

Palladium posted:

lack of hardware will allow us to poo poo further on our flagship IP that is currently already in the dumpster

mawarannahr posted:

1000 employees for a grammar checker

triple sulk posted:

The campaign was horrible and I stopped after a couple hours or so iirc

err posted:

i think they are moving it to PS4/5

there has been lots of talk about Xbox games going to PS5 and Xbox exiting the console market

https://twitter.com/XboxP3/status/1754598552548904973

sleep with the vicious posted:

Grammarly has some of the most tech bubble careers pages I have ever seen. What the gently caress

Good Soldier Svejk posted:

do they have any linguists or teachers or writers or did they do the usual silicon valley thing and say "let's disrupt this archaic industry" and spend their first 5 years "discovering" a college 101 level understanding of their industry

Vox Nihili posted:

Honestly that sounds more useful than 99% of what these tech startups are making

In Training posted:

statistically you dodged dozens

RealityWarCriminal posted:

does microsoft profit anything from titles on pc? consoles used to be lossleaders, with revenue made up from licensing games for the system. windows doesn't have similar barriers.

Dr_0ctag0n posted:

SKULL.GIF posted:

Salt Fish posted:

enshittification is cringe sorry the name sucks hate to report this here

DickParasite posted:

Grammarly's entire business model is replicating the blue squiggly underline that MS Word gives you when you use the passive voice.

Salt Fish posted:

enshittification is cringe sorry the name sucks hate to report this here

Vox Nihili posted:

Word is really loving bad at it so if they can do it better then good for them

www.seattletimes.com - Thu, 08 Feb 2024 posted:

A search engine rating firm with offices in Kirkland will sack nearly 3,700 remote employees after losing a major contract with Google, but only a dozen of the affected workers live in Washington.

On Tuesday, RaterLabs notified the state it was laying off 3,657 workers effective April 6, according to the state Employment Security Department.

Although the initial notice didn’t say where the affected workers are located, a subsequent inquiry by ESD determined 12 were Washington residents, the agency reported Thursday.

The high number of layoffs led ESD to contact Appen and clarify the in-state effect “so state and local entities [and] agencies knew what level of support to prepare for,” an agency spokesperson said Thursday.

RaterLabs is what’s known as a quality rater, a third-party contractor that helps evaluate the quality and relevance of websites that appear in search results, according to media reports.

The company also helps train artificial intelligence systems technologies. Its client list has included top names in tech, including Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook parent Meta.

Two weeks ago, Google terminated its contract with RaterLab’s parent company, Australia-based Appen, according to a Jan. 22 announcement by Appen. Google had hired Appen to help train Bard, its AI chatbot, according to the Verge.

“These workers provide critical support that keeps Google’s flagship search results and Bard AI safe and functional for the company’s billions of users,” said Alphabet Workers Union, which represents Google workers and contractors, in a statement shortly after the contract was canceled.

RaterLabs is in a Kirkland office park just west of Interstate 405, which the Appen website lists as its U.S. headquarters. Appen hadn’t responded to a request for information as of Thursday.

A LinkedIn page for RaterLabs’ Kirkland location indicated that just under 300 employees worked there, but Tuesday’s notice described the company as “an organization with fully remote workers based in Kirkland.”

RaterLabs, founded in California in 2017, also evaluates “the quality and relevance of ads, content, and search results from social media sites,” according to Wahojobs.com, a news site about work-from-home jobs.

According to the announcement, Appen is associated with “more
than 1 million skilled contractors who speak over 235 languages, in over 70,000 locations and 170 countries.”

The rating business has been known for its low wages. In 2022, Appen employees were part of a successful push by Alphabet Workers Union to boost raters’ pay from as low as $10 an hour to nearly $15, according to Forbes.

Appen saw a boom during the pandemic, when its stock price soared, and its market valuation ballooned to $4.3 billion in late 2020, according to CNBC.

The company has been in a slide since, and shares are now trading at around 19 cents.

Although Appen blamed that decline on “challenging external operating and macro conditions,” former employees said the company had suffered “years of weak quality controls and a disjointed organizational structure,” according to CNBC.

In its announcement, Appen said Google gave no prior notice it was canceling the contract, which had accounted for $82.8 million, or nearly 30%, of Appen’s 2023 revenue.

Given that loss, the cancellation was expected to have “a devastating impact on at least two thousand subcontracted Alphabet workers and their families in the U.S. and Canada,” Alphabet Workers Union said.

skaboomizzy posted:

how the gently caress does a "search engine rating firm" have 3700 employees to lay off and still keep operating

that's not a real job or company

DickParasite posted:

Grammarly's entire business model is replicating the blue squiggly underline that MS Word gives you when you use the passive voice.

Vox Nihili posted:

My impression of the MS Word grammar tool has been very poor. Misses most stuff other than obvious typos like repeated or misplaced words, and I find myself using maybe 1/4 of its recommendations.

But I also haven't tried any other grammar tools so maybe they just all suck.

gradenko_2000 posted:

They should change business models to helping people write in passive voice

DickParasite posted:

IME Australians all write emails with the passive voice. It's the weirdest thing.

DickParasite posted:

IME all emails written by Australians are in passive voice. It's the weirdest thing.

DickParasite posted:

IME Australians all write emails with the passive voice. It's the weirdest thing.

Salt Fish posted:

enshittification is cringe sorry the name sucks hate to report this here

DickParasite posted:

IME Australians all write emails with the passive voice. It's the weirdest thing.

Horizon Burning posted:

grammarly was really useful for a while but i dropped that poo poo the moment they made noise about feeding everything into an AI

HazCat posted:

This made me curious enough to go check the email templates I've made for work, and this definitely doesn't apply to me.

Do you work in Canberra? I could definitely believe that place is full of civil servants practicing their 'citizen affected by outcome of a cop-related action' passive-language skills.

mawarannahr posted:

They're fundamentally a passive people. Sad to witness.

DickParasite posted:

Grammarly's entire business model is replicating the blue squiggly underline that MS Word gives you when you use the passive voice.