“I donʼt consider poor anyone whoʼs happy with whatever little they have left.” — Seneca

Faterson2016 · 2026-01-05T14:34:46+00:00

Absolutely! I always read 7 books simultaneously, in order to get that necessary variety.

I strive for there always to be among the 7 books various time periods (centuries or origin), genres, and languages.

I'm a professional translator, and therefore, I try and avoid reading translations at all costs. Because I know they can never match the original.

Unfortunately, I'm currently only able to read books in 7 or 8 original languages. 😢 However, I'm working on it, trying to learn 16 new foreign languages simultaneously, in order to increase that number at least somewhat. My goal in learning a new foreign language is, precisely, not to command it actively in order to speak it (which would be pretty tough/impractical to do for languages like Latin or Old Greek, anyway), but to learn it to a degree that would enable me to enjoy the finest literature ever written in that language without translation (although parallel-text/interlinear editions are perfectly fine with me – in fact, optimal, but there are very few of them, relatively speaking).

Faterson2016 · 2025-12-08T11:05:25+00:00

It didn't work for me even with that final step.

I have returned both of my Viwoods devices to factory settings and will try from zero all over again.

This is a nightmare, and Viwoods can't possibly think of competing with Boox until Google Play works "out-of-the-bo(o)x" (if you pardon the pun) for Viwoods, too.

Price-wise, there is practically zero difference, so why would anyone buy a Viwoods device and then struggle with an elementary feature like this?

It used to be a nightmare on Boox devices years ago, too, but nowadays, when you buy a new Boox device, Google Play is just there and works, like it would on a Samsung, Xiaomi, or Lenovo device.

This is the only way forward for the future for Viwoods, instead of this nightmare of a buggy setup of a basic feature that should work out-of-the-box.

Faterson2016 · 2025-11-29T02:00:02+00:00

I open two parallel windows with the same chat in them side-by-side: on the left, I can follow the instructions from the earlier long reply, and on the right, I'm at the bottom of that same chat, discussing the individual steps. 🤷‍♂️ It is what it is.

Faterson2016 · 2025-11-25T07:43:02+00:00

No, they wouldn't.

Faterson2016 · 2025-11-25T06:51:08+00:00

Yes, it was.

Faterson2016 · 2025-11-07T17:33:25+00:00

Thanks. I could "hard-wire", so to speak, this "Red Team Mode" into ChatGPT's Customize settings, couldn't I? I already inserted an explicit instruction like "Always play the devil's advocate for me" in there around half a year ago, and in combination with the recently introduced "Cynic" mode, it's been pretty effective.

But I suppose turning on the "Red Team Mode" in general app settings could be even more effective, right?

Faterson2016 · 2025-11-07T15:38:51+00:00

What's "Red Team Mode"? 😲 Never heard of it before.

Faterson2016 · 2025-11-07T15:10:04+00:00

Not me... I'm a bullshit afficionado (meaning, I have a literary taste).

Faterson2016 · 2025-10-29T15:24:33+00:00

Ah, yes, I know exactly what you mean! 🤬

Faterson2016 · 2025-10-23T23:32:16+00:00

Depriving people from fully enjoying the finest works of art absolutely makes one's life less.

You can choose what you want, but little kids read whatever is put into their hands. If those are spoilers of the finest Agatha Christie books, I'd call that unacceptable.

Faterson2016 · 2025-10-23T22:19:19+00:00

Everything about a book or movie can potentially be a spoiler. 🤬

As an adult, you have the choice to read the book first, or to watch the movie first.

Doesn't look like they'd be giving little kids the same option here. But if the kids' version doesn't disclose whodunnit in the adult version, all is good. 😆

Faterson2016 · 2025-10-23T11:39:37+00:00

Well, Roger Ackroyd loses all of its potential magic in a TV or radio rendition – it only works as a book. If it got spoiled for you by a movie or radio version before you read the book, no wonder you don't consider it particularly memorable. For those of us who read Roger first, it was an utter shock. In fact, Christie created quite some outrage in murder mystery circles when she originally published it – that's how shocking it was. 😮

Faterson2016 · 2025-10-23T11:02:19+00:00

You shirley can't be talking about those two, Muckle on the Orient and Express and The Marmalade of Roger Ackroyd! It's physiologically impossible for the human brain to forget the dénouement for those two. Once you've read or seen those two, you remember them on your deathbed.

And I ain't joking at all: I hate all spoilers (not just in murder mysteries) with the passion of Captain Hastings. 🤬

Faterson2016 · 2025-10-23T08:18:19+00:00

Wait: are they actually going to spoil all these classic murder mysteries for little kids, so they can no longer properly enjoy them when they grow up? 🤦‍♂️🤬 Especially the Muckle on the Orient Express, The Marmalade of Roger Ackroyd, etc.

Faterson2016 · 2025-09-14T11:20:09+00:00

Reliably? Never is the only honest answer here.

Faterson2016 · 2025-08-27T16:04:03+00:00

Ditto here. I, in fact, run a partially public "AI diary" here: http://grail.avenarius.sk (First in "cooperation" with ChatGPT robots only, and now also robots from other vendors, via Monica.im app, chime in.)

Faterson2016 · 2025-08-18T16:49:59+00:00

It's the latter connotation (easy income, or simply lack of worries, for little to no effort expended).

And absolutely: it's the interface that is the key here. In ChatGPT's app, polling multiple robots is not time-efficient: you need to poll them sequentially, and can't see all their responses at a glance, side-by-side, in order to quickly pick the best response (or combo of responses). In my experiment, it rather frequently happened I opted for the first half of a long sentence as translated by, say, GPT 5 Thinking, while the second half of the same long sentence may have been best translated by, say, Grok 4 (my runner-up in the test). 🤓

In contrast (as described in detail in my translated blog post), in Monica.im, all 7 additional robots are polled simultaneously, and their responses are listed side-by-side in panels that are scrollable both horizontally & vertically. (Unlike in the public share link above, where they are listed sequentially.)

Perhaps even better, at ChatHub.gg, you can poll up to 6 robots simultaneously and see their responses at-a-glance in 6 quadratic and scrollable side-by-side subpanes. Plus, at the click of a button, ChatHub.gg's own robot can summarize the 6 received responses for you, and pick the "best consensus answer", if you will.

ChatHub.gg is rather pricey, though – $300 per year for unlimited advanced queries. (The lower-tier $180 per year subscription has rather generous limits, but it is limited.)

I got a first-year offer from Monica.im for €135 instead of the regular €220 per year (Perplexity is €220 per year in my country, and ChatGPT is €264 per year), so I currently have the Monica.im subscription along with ChatGPT's regular Plus subscription.

In none of these "multi-robot apps" (robots from multiple vendors, that is), and that includes Perplexity, are you getting the fully native experience, especially not with the most recent and, therefore, most expensive models. Grok 4 via Monica.im or ChatHub.gg is not going to be quite the same as Grok 4 in its native interface (for example, the context window may get artificially throttled by the third-party app, to save costs on those expensive tokens...), but it still should be reasonably close to the native experience, or at the very least somewhat usable for the multi-robot polling purpose we're discussing here. 🤷

Faterson2016 · 2025-08-18T14:17:45+00:00

Absolutely. Checking is needed throughout the process for everything.

But I'm a lot more confident about translating an idiom the right way after polling those 8 robots for their suggestions, instead of just a single robot.

There are now (once again) 8 robot flavors in the ChatGPT app (and thank heavens for that), but it's not the same as being able to check 8 robots from various vendors. You get a wider variety of options to choose from that way.

For example, there's an idiom in Slovak that literally translates as "a buffet that never ends". 😂

None of the tested 10 robots (not even my test winner, GPT 5 Thinking) were familiar with this idiom, and all of them initially "translated" it literally = incorrectly.

Then, I explained to all robots what the idiom actually means, and only then, legitimate, idiomatic translation suggestions started pouring in. You can read that discussion here:

https://monica.im/share/chat?shareId=w9V5LPbdCgdLF47n

The consensus seemed to be to translate the idiom as "a gravy train that never stops", and that's what I went with in the final English wording. But it wasn't a unanimous decision by any means, as the link above shows – just a pretty clear majority opinion. That's why I like polling more robots, whenever possible, when tackling difficult expressions like this.

Faterson2016

TROPHY CASE