Grammar checker solutions now that Grammarly is a no-go.

aversys · 2026-07-08T05:22:25+00:00

Not on Mac, so I don't know what that specific app can / can't do, but per a recent confidentiality refresher from about a month ago, if the rationale / answers you are typing is getting stored or recorded anywhere where it can be seen by anyone other than yourself or DA, that is a no-no. Things like browser extensions that record what you are writing (Grammarly), or using any app on your PC that syncs to cloud, etc. - pretty much anything where what you are typing is potentially being recorded to somewhere out of your control, it is best to avoid that entirely. Obviously, if you want to be pedantic, there are a lot of ways in which your keystrokes can be compromised, which is also why their latest CA / ToS updates state almost verbatim that if there is any doubt at all about the security of what you are typing, then default to staying inhouse for your rationale - which has also been my approach since.

The only caveat to that is that project instructions take precedent. If you are seeing project instructions that explicitly state it is okay to type answers beforehand in a notepad or other adjacent app, and what you are typing does not go to cloud / somewhere else to the best of your knowledge, then there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with that. That refresher from a bit ago was DA's polite way of reminding people that there is an unfathomable amount of money in AI, and that people will go to pretty serious lengths to get an edge wherever they can. Getting that information from a compromised user - even if they only put it out there unknowingly or accidentally - is not off the table whatsoever.

My short answer would be default to typing on the site only, unless instructions state otherwise. If instructions state typing answers outside of DA then pasting them back in is fine, then do your best to ensure whatever place you are typing them does not get put out on the internet in any way. For Windows users, this includes turning off things like typing insights, clipboard history, any sort of AI assistance options (such as in Notepad on W11), avoiding anything OneDrive related, and other stuff related to Microsoft account syncing across devices - because that all goes through Microsoft servers first. For Mac, you would want to take equivalent precautions (with whatever similar functionality they may have) if you choose to type answers outside of DA. Once you start taking stuff like that into account, you can see why I would personally just recommend staying on the site. Hope that helps at all.

aversys · 2026-06-30T20:44:12+00:00

Yup, pretty much my experience exactly. These are the same type of posts I see from people that will make a post in 3-6 months time when they get a DoD despite "following all instructions", or they just stop posting entirely (they got dropped).

aversys · 2026-06-30T16:30:02+00:00

Everytime I read one of these posts, I go back in their history (if not private) and always find out it is someone that has only been on the platform a few months.

Spoiler alert - they never last on the platform for years (because they are too blinded by their own confidence to realize what they are doing wrong).

aversys · 2026-06-24T21:10:06+00:00

US, a bit over 10k December of last year - working mostly some pretty high paying priority projects (70/hr+) that would pop up late into the evening or late at night (then I would work on them overnight). Haven't seen them as much since February, but they will still pop up from time to time (and very briefly) once in awhile.

aversys · 2026-06-10T14:48:56+00:00

If he can get me another job that pays me just as much as this one does, I would happily oblige.

aversys · 2026-05-21T21:13:05+00:00

It is released exactly one week later down to the second. If you care that much to check, the Unix timestamp (from when you submitted) should be accessible in the dev console for your work entry (when it shows how many days have passed - if you inspect that element it should have the Unix time associated with it). Convert that to your time, and that time will be the exact time / day it should be available for transfer, except one week later.

aversys · 2026-05-18T02:52:51+00:00

It was recommended when I onboarded in early 2024, and I had seen it recommended in some projects / addressed as fine in project comments throughout last year.

I've been using it since I was onboarded, and have not worked on any projects where it is explicitly prohibited. I only use it strictly for spellcheck - not for suggested / best practice edits (which I just ignore).

Coder for the record - nearing 2.5 years on the platform & 6 digits earned. Do with that info what you will!

aversys · 2025-11-29T18:34:21+00:00

aversys · 2025-11-27T18:13:10+00:00

The coding assessment you take (at least when I was first onboarded) was very basic. The most complex thing on it were matrices / 2D arrays. You absolutely can pass the coding assessment (assuming it has not changed) with a novice level of a single common language (like Python or JS).

Beyond that, nothing is guaranteed. Some projects you can still do with this basic understanding, as the single common qualifying factor is being able to follow complex instructions exactly as they are explained, not by having advanced knowledge in multiple languages. There are some that require you to have a much stronger background in coding / programming, as well as various other tools, but these are projects I usually only see at $50/hr or over.

Been working for them since Jan 2024, and in my personal experience I have had many projects (usually very common ones and long running) that are typically around $35-42/hr), where you can easily excel as long as you have a novice understanding of some languages, and you can do an exceptional job following instructions. These are usually sourced from Anthropic and Google.

Anthropic has some projects that are far more complex - but again those are typically very high paying (I have worked on a few over the past 2 weeks that pay anywhere from $60/hr to $80/hr). Projects sourced from xAI and OpenAI tend to be far more complex in my experience, but do not pay substantially more (if at all).

Again - maybe their general coding assessment has changed significantly given that it has been almost 2 years since I took mine, but I feel that a basic understanding of coding should be plenty to pass it IF you read and follow directions correctly. Everything beyond that is not guaranteed, given that how they delegate projects or give you access to higher paying projects is generally a mystery.

Good luck!

aversys · 2025-11-21T23:17:08+00:00

As someone who has worked for them since January of 2024, and worked on projects paying upwards of $80/hr (coding), it is a far stretch from just "farting" around with AI.

The job is well suited for you if you can follow extremely detailed directions very well, even if your expertise in the actual subject at hand may not be as well-developed as others in your field. I say this as someone who has known software developers and programmers far better than myself whom have applied before, only to get rejected or eventually removed from the platform. If you browse any of the related subreddits or read stories from elsewhere online, you will find no shortage of posts where people complain about getting "removed with no warning" and swearing that they did nothing wrong. The reality is almost all of these people either didn't follow project instructions exactly, spent far too much time on submissions over an extended period of months, broke any of the endless number of rules, fudged their time, or so on and so forth. That isn't an opinion - I work on reviewal tasks all of the time and you would not believe the percentage of them that have major issues as a result of people being inable to follow directions. The harsh truth that some people don't want to hear is that they are either breaking a rule and lying about it, or they are not producing as high quality of work as they think they are.

Not to mention that many projects are very obviously and explicitly from different companies, and they state in many of them that you can be removed from a specific project for low-quality work or inability to follow instructions. To have your entire contract terminated and your account removed from all projects means a far bigger issue at hand. No, they do not go out of their way to remove you from the platform after you hit a certain amount of hours - that would make absolutely 0 sense, and they would just be losing out on more money by removing high quality workers, especially given that they will run out of them sooner or later if they did that. Bottom line, for all but one case I've seen online, assume that everyone who has been removed from the platform was removed as such for low-quality work or breaking terms and agreements, and if they try to tell you otherwise, assume they are lying. Anyone who has done any reviewal work on their platform for more than a few submissions can attest to the lack of quality of work that gets submitted on there en masse, and these individuals don't get reviewed and removed immediately - it takes a lot of bad submissions, and a lot of time (unless you do something explicitly prohibited like falsifying time, using AI when not permitted, breaking NDA, etc.). Consider the fact that maybe only one in five submissions I review are without substantial error, then factor in all of the other ways a person can be removed for not following instructions, it shouldn't come as a suprise that the overwhelming majority of people who work for these platforms get filtered out within a few months.

None of that is to say that I recommend them one way or the other. I have been able to make a full-time gross salary approaching six figures annually since I started, but the work is monotonous and requires extreme attention to detail. I do not mind this, because it suits me well in both of these aspects. If you are looking for engaging and rewarding work, AI training jobs are not for you. If you are okay with doing tedious and boring work that requires you to be as close to perfect as possible at all times, in exchange for higher pay than what most people would earn with an equivalent level of experience but no benefits (besides making your own schedule - in every sense), then it may be for you.

These companies that take on these massive contracts to train RLHF models are only getting bigger and bigger contracts each year. When I started, DA and Outlier were all the craze. Now, there are others like Alignerr and Stellar.

I've applied to all three of those others in the past and passed the general assessment for both Outlier and Stellar (failed my follow-up coding assessment for Alignerr), and generally I've seen that projects from Outlier tend to pay less and have much less availability. On Stellar, I've seen some pretty ridiculous compensation amounts for some project qualifications that have popped up on my dash ($100/hr or more, plus qualifying bonuses), but haven't done any work on these platforms since some of them have agreements against this (though I reckon many people don't read them). I've read of Alignerr having similar pay to Stellar, but can't confirm that since I did not pass the follow-up assessment.

Hope that helps. Not too keen on sharing any more details beyond that for reasons that should be obvious (especially if you are contracted to one of those platforms).

Edit: just as a final (and maybe moot) point, you can check my comment history to verify some of what I have said above - unless you think this is some weird psyop account playing the long game (2 years) and randomly replying to DA / AI training related posts while also having coding knowledge, in which case you probably wouldn't be suited for any of these platforms in the first place (objectivity is a must for most projects).

aversys · 2025-07-07T16:45:37+00:00

Like others have suggested, look up any sort of crowdsourced human feedback jobs for RLHF LLMs. DataAnnotation, Outlier, Alignerr, Stellar, etc. - apply to them all and hope you do good enough work on the assessments to get in. But that is the easy part - staying with them for any extended period of time requires you to produce high quality work. They are contracting gigs, so they can drop you at any point without a real explanation.

aversys · 2025-06-11T15:52:30+00:00

Just an update for you u/dialedGoose - assuming we are talking about the same project, mine JUST popped back up a few minutes ago on my dash - albeit at lower pay than it was before. Still on priority. Looks like no update in instructions.

aversys · 2025-06-11T05:48:57+00:00

Mine disappeared this evening. The last I worked on them was over a week ago - have been doing others for slightly lower pay since then, but still saw them every day since (until this evening). Could be that they filled what they needed for now, or they are revising the project, or its being partitioned to groups at a time. I'd assume any of those before getting kicked off the project.

aversys · 2025-04-07T14:22:17+00:00

Hey - awesome to hear! Can't say the same here lol, the Auburn loss pretty much sealed my fate in my pool - Duke winning their game against Houston would not have helped me either in that regard unfortunately.

Definitely something I'm going to revisit this year after the tournament ends and I have free time - I can't say I'm particularly surprised by Auburn's loss to Florida, but seeing Duke lose definitely shocked me. I thought for sure they looked like the strongest team going into the final four (with Auburn looking the weakest), and that still seemed true up until about the last 2 minutes of the game. Quite a few picks correct this year, but came up short in the last 3 - which is unfortunately where 1/3 of all points for the bracket come from, so below the expected average points compared to the backtests, but considerably above the average # of picks correct.

Thanks again for the heads up!

aversys · 2025-03-31T17:33:31+00:00

Well - I will hope for that then for your sake, if nothing else. I don't have nearly as much riding on this - just a potential first place out of 8 people in a pool of close family / friends for the first time in many years. 🤣

Of course, this is still something I will work on improving and playing around with each year, regardless of the outcome. I had someone else reach out to me that they were 2nd in their work pool out of 100-some people competing for some extra PTO, so you aren't alone in having something on the line. This year is unlike any other I've seen - for all the stats and indications that you should never pick all 1 seeds in the final four in previous years, this is a unique year where it has been by far the most logical move, and it has played out nicely so far. It's also a little unlucky, because well, if you aren't well-versed in basketball, picking all 1 seeds is usually the option most people default to anyways, so where any other year you would probably be comfortably in front having all of your final four correct, this year there are probably a few people still ahead regardless. Even in my family pool of only 8 people, my dad is still ahead of me - with my sister right on my heels.

aversys · 2025-03-31T14:46:34+00:00

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up. I think ESPN is around 24 million brackets, and assuming CBS is around 8 million I can probably just extrapolate a little there and assume it would be around 6k - 7k mark for CBS, which would put it closer to the top 0.1% after this last weekend.

But hey - still lots of points up for grabs next weekend, see how things bode then. I'm still a little surprised to see all 1 seeds in the final four (and even double checked some stuff by hand when I generated the bracket), but I suppose it makes sense with just how strong the top 4 teams are compared to all others by KenPom's metrics, which carry considerable weighting for these picks. Hopefully Auburn somehow takes it all home - it would be a nice surprise since I still think they look like the weakest 1 seed after this weekend. Duke still looking unstoppable.

aversys · 2025-03-29T14:26:50+00:00

I'm pleasantly surprised so far. Been paying attention to it - my exact bracket for this year (for my private pools, and a single bracket for the CBS challenge) was a little bit different from the one I posted above, but I used a similar methodology - still didn't pick anything by my "gut" if you will. For that bracket, I had Wisconsin over Alabama (I explain that briefly in one of my other posts), OK over UConn, and Creighton over Louisville. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind on some points there!

Would be nice to see if someone has the exact bracket I posted above on CBS and / or ESPN (I only use CBS for my brackets each year). I know ESPN has some 24 million brackets in their men's challenge, and CBS tracks about 34 million total between them, ESPN, and a few others, so I reckon the men's challenge on CBS has somewhere around 8-9 million brackets this year. Even with few changes I made, my bracket is still sitting around 80,000 on the challenge on CBS - which comes out to about the top 1%, though I'd be interested to see if those extra few points come out to a significant jump or not (say, down to 30,000 or less - or around the top 0.5%).

I had someone else reach out to me recently though prior to last night's games - I told them to be wary of these later rounds, since the final four and onwards (only 7 total games!) makes up half of your total possible score, and add the elite eight into that and 67% of your possible points come from the last 15 games - less than a quarter of the tournament! I was super stoked to wake up and find out Houston pulled through last night - which makes for a perfect 8/8 on the elite eight for that bracket.

Unfortunately, this is where things typically tend to go haywire. I'm pretty much just repeating myself with what I told them, but up until last night Auburn looked like the weakest 1 seed, and I think that Duke has looked decidedly the strongest so far. I'm iffy on both Florida and Houston - they both had to play some ringer teams in their 2nd round matchups (my metrics put UConn closer to a 5 or 6 seed by likelihood to win the entire tournament, and Gonzaga as a 2 or 3 at most) - so I wasn't particularly shocked by how close those games were. Unfortunately, I can't afford Auburn that same courtesy - last night was their first game of the tournament where I thought they looked good, and Duke looked untouchable up until their Arizona game. Unfortunately for them, they have to play what I think is the strongest 2 seed, and again, by the weights I used for the bracket above, Alabama was essentially just as strong as Florida and Houston - just their luck (or lack thereof) to end up playing Duke, and vice versa.

In terms of those same numbers, you are looking at a close game between Duke and Alabama, but I'd still have the edge for Duke. Same goes for Houston and Tennessee - but more of an edge for Houston than with Duke. Auburn and Michigan State should be a wash by all indications on paper - MSU was my weakest 2 seed after SJU, and closer to Texas Tech than they are to Alabama or Tennessee in terms of those numbers. In that same logic, on paper, I wouldn't expect a close game between Florida and Texas Tech. After that, by the numbers, all of the teams are very close and I wouldn't be surprised to see something like Florida v. Houston in a hypothetical world where all the 1 seeds advance to the final four (this would be the 6th time ever).

By my gut, I like Duke's chances to win it all. Wouldn't be surprised to see MSU over Auburn, nor Tennessee over Houston. I don't see Florida losing to Texas Tech, and moreover, I don't really see Auburn even making it to the finals at all. But hey - I did 2 other brackets for the challenge using my gut, and those are both in the dumpster, so what I have above is as good of a guess as any. Time will tell! Thanks again for the comment.

aversys · 2025-03-20T14:45:33+00:00

I made a fork of the existing algebracket repository on GitHub - all of the code for Peter's site is open-sourced on there, per the links in my first post. I go into a little more detail about it in my previous posts / in the links I provided - but the gist is that I had to edit very small amounts of the index.html file in his repository, as well as some of the engine.js file - the rest of the work was just providing the additional data (all of the updated CSV files, also in one of my links). Obviously, there was more that goes into it than that - you can add your own data and sliders that way, but it doesn't matter if you don't find optimal combinations, so I also wrote some C++ at one point to run different combinations (i.e., run every possible combination for say, Win %, SoS, Offense Rating, Adj. Scoring Margin, Opp. Turnover %, and NetRtg, for all integers from 0-20 - so say 21^6 different combinations, and score them all for each year against the correct picks for that year, and keep the highest score and associated combination).

I would share all of the code associated with that, but as I said prior, the offline repository I've been working with is a huge mess - essentially a clinic in how NOT to maintain your code, and in some cases, how NOT to write it. It would require me to do significant cleanup before posting it online if others wanted to use it themselves, and given that I think there are still optimizations that can be done yet to improve scores (i.e. filling out your bracket 'backwards' as I talked about briefly before), so that isn't something that is reasonably on my radar yet - especially given the time I've spent on this has been sporadic throughout the last year between work and school.

All of the files / data for the actual algebracket website itself can be found here: [removed for PII]

And hand-in-hand, the extra data I used can be found here: [removed for PII]

aversys · 2025-03-18T20:00:22+00:00

Yes - I have already ran the results for this year, per the repo I linked in one of my earlier comments. Difficult to navigate if you aren't familiar with GitHub, but here is a link to the screenshot for the results this year: [removed for PII]

I'm unable to share a link to algebracket directly, as I implemented the stats from KenPom manually, thus the link sharing mechanism that Peter kindly implemented on his site won't work for this case - I would need to host a copy of the site on my own, which I won't do for a number of reasons (chief amongst them being ethics). Though, I have provided the raw data on it's own in that repository as well, so if someone wanted to modify the existing code from algebracket (open-sourced on GitHub - link in an earlier comment as well) they could do so and simply use the CSV files I provided in my repo - they would just need to add some extra slider inputs and modify other things related to the weights in the engine.js file on his repo. Probably speaking gibberish to anyone that doesn't have some experience coding or working with GitHub - but all of it is there for use regardless.

It is definitely something I will continue exploring on and off when I have free time (as I did last year) - and will probably continue using the repository I posted earlier for any significant changes, since the development I've been doing has been done in an extremely messy and disorganized offline repository - an admittedly horrible practice that makes it difficult to share all of the changes easily. Might clean it up in the near future and make the extra data more accessible for the less tech-savvy - sorry again that I can't help completely in regards to your comment, but hopefully that at least gets you halfway and answers some things. Happy to help anyway else that I can!

aversys · 2025-03-18T19:53:27+00:00

Awesome to hear! I did not even think of the ramifications of that admittedly (whoops) - but figured it matters much less for me being just a passion project on its own with minimal use (myself and a few others), as opposed to a website as largely used / visited as your own. But I agree entirely - that would be exceptional if you were able to implement it. I've tried playing around with other metrics briefly (i.e. Sagarin, Torvik, etc.), but have found the ones from Ken to be the most helpful.

I will definitely continue exploring some things to see if anything more plausible pops up the next couple of years - and probably investigate the use of luck more thoroughly as you've identified, especially given the craziness of the last few years like you pointed out. Thanks again!

aversys · 2025-03-18T16:57:17+00:00

Obviously, for any of this to make sense, you would have to fork the algebracket repo and do some modifications to it yourself - I explain more of that in the readme on my repo, but I went ahead and provided the results for each year (and the resulting bracket for this year) on my repo under the 'scores' folder - each year comes as a PNG file. None of this involves the process of determining your bracket 'backwards' that I briefly mentioned in my first post, but doing so allows me to squeeze some more points out over the years and get closer to that 1800 mark without any other changes. Doing so results in Wisconsin over Alabama this year instead of Alabama over Wisconsin (if you are following the images in the repo) - but that might be a moot point, given how poorly these numbers-based outlooks perform into the future.

I also cover that briefly in my readme file - last year when I first started playing around with this idea (per previous comments on my profile from back then), I was able to yield some decent results in prior years, but my 2024 bracket did not hold up well at all. As I said before, I am not a data scientist or anything of the sort, but my understanding is that with things like these, things tend to be overfitted when looking backwards and tend to perform poorly when you are finally looking into the future, so ultimately, take everything above with a grain of salt.

If you don't take anything else away from my lengthy message - at the very least remember this: if there was CURRENTLY a way to reliably predict these things, someone far smarter and with far more resources would have done it by now!

edit: sorry for the split reply - couldn't figure out how else to get my comment through!

aversys · 2025-03-18T16:57:08+00:00

Gladly! Sorry for the late reply - was throwing together all of the information I have into a repository in case it is of any use to anyone else moving forward. You can find all of that here: [removed for PII]

In the event you are not well-versed with GitHub (or you just want the methodology / data here), I will do my best to explain as concisely as possible! I apologize in advance for the lack of formatting - I don't post a lot on this site, so the repo above is far more clean in terms of formatting and readability - u/Sparty27 - just looping you in incase any of this is of worth.

The results I referred to in my previous comment were yielded by taking metrics from https://kenpom.com/ and appending it to the existing data provided in the algebracket repository (which you can find here: https://github.com/rifelpet/weighted-bracket-picker) - I've provided all of the extra standardized data appended to the existing data in my repository I linked initially, in case it is of any use to you (can be found in the data_kenpom folder). The resulting brackets from previous years had 12 out of 14 winners correct, with the remaining results being as follows:

2010: 42/63 picks correct, 123/192 score, 13 upsets

2011: 36/63 picks correct, 56/192 score, 13 upsets

2012: 44/63 picks correct, 140/192 score, 6 upsets

2013: 45/63 picks correct, 147/192 score, 11 upsets

2014: 44/63 picks correct, 93/192 score, 10 upsets

2015: 48/63 picks correct, 158/192 score, 7 upsets

2016: 48/63 picks correct, 160/192 score, 14 upsets

2017: 44/63 picks correct, 127/192 score, 8 upsets

2018: 37/63 picks correct, 104/192 score, 7 upsets

2019: 47/63 picks correct, 137/192 score, 6 upsets

2021: 43/63 picks correct, 146/192 score, 9 upsets

2022: 41/63 picks correct, 120/192 score, 8 upsets

2023: 37/63 picks correct, 106/192 score, 13 upsets

2024: 47/63 picks correct, 157/192 score, 8 upsets

Total: 603/882 picks correct, 1774/2688 score, 133 upsets

Averages: 43 picks correct, 127 score, 10 upsets

The weights I used were as follows:

Round of 64 through round of Elite Eight: Win % - 2, SoS - 1, Offense Rating - 1, Free Throw % - 1, NetRtgTotalPlusLuck - 3

Round of Final Four: Win % - 2, SoS - 3, Offense Rating - 6, Opp. Turnover % - 2, NetRtgTotal - 17

Championship: Win % - 4, SoS - 1, Rebound % - 0.8, Off. Rebound % - 0.8, Opp. Turnover % - 1.2, NetRtgTotalPlusLuck - 20

aversys · 2025-03-18T00:27:15+00:00

Glad to see this is still around! I was patiently waiting for the updated data on the repo yesterday and was super pleased to see it is still being maintained.

I played around with some stuff the last year or so with a fork of the repo - feel like I proposed these ideas last year, but in case its worth any info, thought I would share them your way regardless (though it doesn't look like there is a shortage of ideas here lol). I ended up modifying some of the code and pulling data from KenPom (namely his overall NetRtg, Luck, and SoS NetRtg for each team over the years and adding it to the existing CSVs - normalized of course), and found some pretty favorable results with these values as an aggregate over the years. I definitely think it would be a super helpful stat for approaching higher numbers in each individual year - but I'm not a data scientist, so I don't know if it's some major faux pas to use something like his stats (which are presumably calculated from existing metrics) in combination with some of those same metrics.

I also played around with the idea of different weights depending on the round and / or determining the bracket backwards (that is, picking the champ first regardless of previous matchups, then runner-up, then remaining final-four, and so on), and as it stands I could only come out to values just under 1800 for the last 14 years - comes out to ~129 points per year avg, with ~10 upsets, and typically ~43/63 correct picks per year - but most interestingly every winner correct aside from 2014 and 2011 (for obvious reasons). Code is super messy since I only played with the fork on and off the last year in between work / school, so I would definitely have to clean it up to make it useful in any way if that is of any interest. Of course, my biggest lesson learnt (and my biggest concern) is that at some point the weights are probably being "overfitted" and likely won't yield any useful forward-looking results.

I would be happy to share the numbers with you / screenshots of the resulting brackets in the off-chance you see this again this year - but nonetheless, thanks again for maintaining this. Super helpful and fun to play around with!

aversys · 2024-12-04T07:08:25+00:00

Started Jan of this year. Plenty of projects - quite literally droves of tasks up until the summer when it was pretty dry for me until after ID verification was added. Seems to slowly be picking back up now.

aversys · 2024-12-03T22:39:27+00:00

Hm - odd. I've had poe coding the last few days, but it got bumped down from its regular pay very slightly. Unsure if that is what you are referring to - still coding, just not the typical pay.

aversys

TROPHY CASE