The name Superhuman makes a lot more sense for a company with a suite of AI productivity products. The "Grammarly" name was too focused on their original use case of just improving writing.
I know it has a positive connotation with super heroes in US culture but for me it sounds like Übermensch. Especially as it is the direct opposite of "subhuman".
Plus outside of tech bro circles, people either actively hate generative AI or are at least super annoyed by the over-hype of it. Duolingo went all in on AI and got a huge shitstorm.
Branding your company on a current hype that might either burst soon or/and leave lots of people unemployed is maybe not a wise decisions.
Are you a native English speaker? I can't think of a scenario where "superhuman" has negative connotations in American English. When we say someone has superhuman skill, or speed, or strength, it is always a positive thing.
There are instances where the term is used in a positive sense, yes, but those are limited in scope. "Superhuman strength" rather than just "superhuman".
"Superhuman" on its own is a term that has long been tightly associated with a wide variety of horrible things. Eugenics, for example.
I honestly think most American English speakers are not thinking about eugenics when they hear that term. I believe you when you say that it has those connotations for you but I think you are in a small minority.
I like superhuman as an adjective, it implies some quality of a man is superhuman, but a superhuman as a standalone item is very frightening as it spells obsolescence for the rest of us ( I guess this is the plot of X-Men )
Nope. You must be thinking of the terms "Untermensch" (used a lot by Nazis) and "Übermensch" (introduced by Nietzsche, and rarely used by Nazis). "Supermensch" was never used at all.
What do you think ‘super’ means ? It is latin for ‘over’, wich in German is über. In English it has come to take on a broader meaning, but Nietzsche’s übermensch is called ‘superman’ in most English translations, even if ‘superhuman’ would be more accurate.
GP doesn’t imply Nazis used ‘Supermensch’, just that the ‘superhuman’ translates to übermensch and that the branding might evoke this concept for European ears.
Growing up in the 90s in Sweden, we definitively were taught that "Übermensch" ("Övermänniska" in Swedish, literally "Above Human") was something the Nazis promoted during their time, together with demoting "Untermensch". Maybe that's wrong, and if so I thank you for the correction, but "Superhuman" does give me similar vibes regardless, not because of the exact wording, but because of the ideas/concepts.
Nietzsche’s sister tried to garner favor with the Nazi regime. After Nietzsche’s death, she took his notes, published them under the title “Will to Power” and made it all sound as though Hitler was the fulfillment of Nietzschean ideas. Even scholars who built their careers on Nietzschean philosophy fell for this. For example Ayn Rand. So your teachers were in good company. In truth, everything about the Nazis would have made Nietzsche sick to his stomach: group-think, racism, big government, socialism, robbery, personality cult, lack of intellect, mass appeal, Gleichschaltung, militarism.
Elisabeth and Bernhard were rabid nationalists and antisemites long before the NSDAP. They established their vegetarian-antisemitic-'Aryan' colony in Paraguay in 1887, two years before Adolf Hitler was born.
It failed for financial reasons and the rather harsh environment. They ditched the vegetarianism and started selling meat to get some money, spiraling into alcohol and morphine abuse. In 1889 Bernhard killed himself with strychnine, after which Elisabeth started her career as a fake chronicler by writing a book aimed at creating a much nicer and 'Aryan' image of Bernhard and the colony than the truth would have allowed.
As you allude to, Friedrich Nietzsche poured buckets and buckets of abuse over people like his sister and other german nationalists, refusing for the entirety of his life to identify as german, and towards the end of his life he even claimed to be a polish nobleman, free of the tainted blood of the germans.
Why would Germans be an authority on what words should or shouldn't be used in English?
This is sort of a reverse version of the very common trend of American political correctness / sensitivity language being exported around the world. Our ancestors committed heinous crimes, therefore we get to tell you how to speak, even though you had nothing to do with it.
A German person just said that it gives them nazi viber, nothing about English words that should be used.
Person above argues that the words are different therefore such connection can't be made which is just... wrong because they reply in a thread where someone literally said they made that connection.
In short, we're explicitly talking about what Europeans see (me too, I'm not German), not what Americans should do.
The comment I'm replying to says, verbatim, "hey maybe this specific word shouldn't be used" (as a paraphrase of that commenter's understanding of the argument being made by the German). That is what I'm responding to.
If someone says a particular word or phrase is problematic for them, no one can tell them they're wrong. You cannot dictate how other people respond to language, and it's really weird to see people trying to do that.
Sure, I can't tell them they're "wrong", i.e. I think the self-reported subjective feeling is probably accurate.
What I object to is the implication that Americans should punish themselves by refraining from using normal words in their own language because Germans feel bad about something Germans did.
The implication is that if they want to market to Europeans (which I'm sure they do), they probably shouldn't use that word. I agree Americans see it in a positive light, including me, though I find superhuman generic to the point of background noise.
Because Ubermensch comes from Nietzche a century before the Nazis, as said, and had also a big influence on anarchists. No-one suggested that "Superhuman" shouldn't be used, either. A some point people need to put things in context and not "get the creeps" over any little things. I am sure that Germans don't even notice all those "Volkswagen" around them...
I'd say stay away from policing at least one's own evils. People that are idiotic enough to connect the superhuman in this context to Naziism should stay away from policing any meanings (but now I'm guilty of policing what people should police)
You cannot expect other countries to stop using normal words because they remind you of the bad things your country did.
Shame for what Germany did during the Nazi regime is something for Germans to bear, not Americans. We are not at fault for that, and we have no obligation to change our own culture to accommodate your guilt.
That’s quite a leap. The parent commenter didn’t call for them to withdraw the branding, they were just sharing something interesting and unique about their perspective as a German.
Just to be clear, I never said that the word should be banned.
I am not sure how important the German or general European market is so hard to say whether it even should be a consideration for Grammarly.
That said the ideas of some people being intrinsically better than other people isn't specific to Germany. Eugenics used to be popular in many countries including the US. It is very advisable for other countries to learn from German history so our mistakes are not repeated.
I still use Arc as my primary browser. I prefer tabs on the side - I like how you can just drag tabs up and they will be saved (like Bookmarks, but I actually use it) I like pinned tabs which I use for calendar and my other top used "web apps"
It also has good support for profiles and spaces. For example, I have a "Work" space, a "Demo" space (with tabs open for sales demos), a "Personal" space, and even a "Travel" space for travel planning stuff.
And another killer feature is the ability to "route" specific urls to specific spaces, so for example I can have all github links open in my "Work" space.
It's a great browser, and I hope Atlassian doesn't ditch ongoing support for it.
For what it's worth, and from what you've described (I haven't used Arc myself), most of those features are also available in Firefox with the Sidebery extension. Instead of "spaces" it has "tab panels", with a horizontal row of icons above your tabs that lets you switch to different panels of vertical tabs. You can pin tabs in a panel, you can setup URL patterns to automatically move tabs to the right panel, and it works with Firefox's multi-account containers so you can even have an URL automatically re-opened in a specific container associated with that panel.
[Side note: I'm hooked on Firefox's multi-account container feature because I can have different containers for general use, for work, isolated social media containers, etc, without needing an entirely different profile as in Chrome/Chromium and its variants. I've tried Vivaldi and other Chrome-based alternatives recently, but profiles are just too big of a separation by comparison, with separate extensions, bookmarks, settings, etc. I want all those things in one synced account where I can just open new tabs with their own set of signed-in accounts. Does Arc's profile feature have the same level of separation as Chrome? Am I missing something about how Chrome profiles work?]
And for anyone concerned about Firefox's recent statement about personal data, there's a great Firefox-based alternative called Waterfox that adds some nice features and has a much stronger emphasis on privacy.
Yes, most of these features are available in Brave. You have Vertical tabs, split view, pinned tabs, grouped tabs, tab sneak previews, tab search, in built AI assistant. Instead of 'spaces' you have old fashioned profiles, single windowed space switcher would be nice to have in Brave. Arc also has a nice Tidy tabs feature.
Given all of the NextJS hate on here, I feel like I'll get downvoted for saying this...but we run Next.JS, don't host on Vercel - and really don't have many problems at all.
That being said, our app is largely built like a standard React app, we aren't using much server-side-rendering, and we use TanStack Query for loading most data. So, the main value of Next.JS is mostly just the routing and project organization.
To be fair I haven't tried Zen, but Arc still works well. I don't particularly need any new features - so as long as they continue to keep up with timely security patches and Chromium updates I'll probably keep using it. Also - as a developer I would prefer using a Chromium-based browser since it's the most common one used.
I tried Dia a few weeks back and was disappointed in its sidebar and profile features.
I like that idea. If you opened an article you wanted to read, you could be prompted to pay a few cents. You click "yes", funds are transferred, and you read the article.
Interesting, although I wouldn't say that's the audience that the author says he's targeting.
Also - for most people who had accidents they'd probably rather click on "Dislocated Kneecap" and then have the software suggest exercises to help with that condition - vs needing to bring that knowledge to the app.
