It depends on what you mean by “good alternative”.
We use a self-hosted OSS LanguageTool server that's containerized and runs in a private, on-prem cluster to provide good performance and be HA, but it only works on our corporate network or when using a VPN connection while roaming/remote.
It's incredibly reliable.
It's also devoid of AI/LLM bullshit for writing. Spelling and grammar rules, a few notes about long sentences, that's it.
However, LanguageTool nerfs their other plugins (like mail plugins) to require a subscription service.
I've pleaded with them for years to please allow me to pay a subscription price but use our internal server simply because we don't want/need a spelling/grammar tool to send content to the cloud.
We don't want free. We want private.
The odd thing is that the official LanguageTool browser plugins DO allow use of a self-hosted LanguageTool server; clearly it's doable. There's a poorly maintained obsidian plugin that also works(ish). But that's about it.
A properly funded education works only if you pair it with writing practice and continued correction of grammatical errors that creep in as you develop writing habits. A properly funded education doesn't fix grammatical errors caused by language-processing deficits. Tools like Grammarly give the language-deficient writer more confidence and willingness to write. To me, they are as essential as a spell checker.
A properly funded public education doesn't cover speech-recognition-driven errors. I've talked about this before, but when you write using speech recognition, you need to shift from speaking spoken speech to speaking written speech.
Spoken speech is very sloppy with grammar. We forgive a tremendous amount of detail, forgive a lot of errors because we're focused on what they are saying, not how they are saying it. Grammarly also catches speech-recognition errors.
The usual retort is that one should spend more energy on proofreading your writing; many speech recognition users come to understand that your brain sees what you said, not what's on the page. The fix is to stick your writing in a drawer long enough to forget what you wrote, which isn't a great plan when you need an email in 5 minutes.
Thanks for the reference. I'm trying it out now, and I'll see how well it works over the following days, but assuming it works right for me, I'll probably ditch my Grammarly subscription and go to this package (assuming it's a saner company).
Just went through my first corrections, and I think I like it. It isn't as aggressive as Grammarly, and I have mixed feelings about that, as I thought Grammarly did improve my writing, clarity, and presentation. It also feels easier to learn by example and reinforce better grammar from the start.
I tried out the AI rewrite, and man, it hits the uncanny valley hard.
---- Below is the above corrected by grammarly
Thanks for the reference. I'm trying it out now and will see how well it works over the next few days, but if it works for me, I'll probably ditch my Grammarly subscription and switch to this package (assuming it's a saner company).
Just went through my first corrections, and I think I like it. It isn't as aggressive as Grammarly, and I have mixed feelings about that, since I thought Grammarly improved my writing, clarity, and presentation. It also feels easier to learn by example and reinforce better grammar from the start.
I tried out the AI rewrite, and man, it hits the uncanny valley hard.
[Edit: Corrected a sentence that was missed by both Grammarly and LanguageTool. See if you can figure out which one it was]
Is Plex/jellyfin even necessary for Infuse? I've been using Infuse for years now and it has direct access to my NAS to look for media content and just directly plays it. It's a such an amazing app and it plays everything I throw at it without any buffering or transcoding issues. The Pro version pretty much has all the necessary codecs, including all the dolby things for hdr/atmos. It just works so well.
Yeah I have Infuse only, and am happy with it. No need for jellyfin or whatever else. Honestly Infuse may be one of my best app purchases of these past 10 years…
I'm approaching a year now on CachyOS and it has been a wonderful experience. All the games that I play run just fine, maybe a few FPS drop compared to Windows, but it's not a big deal for me. I also don't play any competitive online games that require 3rd party anti-cheat spyware. Biggest positives, I got very comfortable with terminal and CLI work. My development work has definitely improved.
I've been slowly developing my hermes agent to do something similar but is very customized towards my needs. I should spin up another agent and give this one a shot and see what it's capable of. This is hilarious.
Don't forget Grey Media grabbing the rural circuit.
We've been absorbed by Grey and lost so much local news programming while it gets replaced with "must run" soft story segments from a national "investigateTV" that runs bullshit soft stories for gullible yokels to feel that they're getting news.
Meanwhile my local station (over 60 miles away) can't even run stories in the county they're supposed to cover; when presented stories and footage of rabies vaccine airdrops they'd rather run a story about some old lady watching their syndicated Mr. Food cooking segment they don't even produce for 40 years.
Would love to read that blog post. I'm toying with running local AI model with Claude and GLM as well depending on a task. Pretty decent success but it could be better.
We're in late-stage capitalism here. The pitchforks are already out and spreading across the globe. Unless the big companies get broken up, this nation will split into either a police state or socialist state.
I have to admire the double-dipping business model of private companies getting paid by local governments to setup surveillance cameras and harvest data. Then the same goverment will pay to get warrantless access to that same data.
is it just double-dipping the spending (this might be your point)
or it is actually doing an end-run around laws against governments doing the surveillance themselves, instead they get private companies to do it and then it's perfectly legal to buy the data
just like government buys cellphone tracking data and mortgage data from private brokers when there are laws blocking them doing it directly
it's called "government contracting", but you were thinking of "fascism", weren't you?
Fascism does mix state and corporate power, but that's not a definitive part of it. Fascism mixes all powers because the nature of fascism is to only tolerate one power, which is itself. This doesn't mean that every time the government and corporations work together, it's fascism.
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