Surveys, Polls, and Other Interruptions

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Email Surveys

I get a constant stream of email surveys from businesses that I have used. The surveys usually start with something like "would you recommend this business to a friend?". That indicates to me is that all that they care about is sales, not improving their product. Furthermore, what I want is not necessarily what my friends want. Delete.

If still going, I will start answering the questions, each one rating some aspect of their product/service. These aspects rarely get to the things that I care about. After about ten - Delete.

If still going, maybe they offer me the option to write something. If not - Delete.

So now I can give them some useful information. If I still care about the business, I will take some time to answer. I wonder if they will read my answer.

Phone Polls

I get calls regularly that are polls. My answer - "I don't do polls" and hang up.

To politicians who use these polls - tell me your positions and I will vote for you or not. Don't choose your positions based on polls. My big issue with politicians is that when they say something to me, it is them telling me what they think I want to hear. I want to know what they really think. Well, another big issue is stupidity.

To news services that use polls that are biased with leading questions to push a narrative - I'm not participating.

Twitter

And on a related topic. To news services that use Twitter to judge public opinion - I don't use Twitter and I don't care what people who do use Twitter think.

Spam Phone Calls

I am not selling my house to you. And I do not want you to turn my web page into the kind of garbage that most web pages have become.

Web Pages

And speaking of web pages - if I am looking at your web page on my phone, that likely means that I do not want to use your app. Please stop annoying me with nag screens that ask me to use your app.

And to the European Union - your requirement that web pages nag me about whether to allow cookies is far more annoying than the cookies. Why couldn't you have requested a small browser switch that lets people choose to allow or disallow cookies, saved for each URL. My search for relief found this Firefox browser add-on - "I Still Don't Care About Cookies". It doesn't look optimal but it might lower my stress level a bit.

Television Tech

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In a previous post, I complained about the difficulty of turning closed captions on and off on my television. This was primarily so that I could watch a basketball game without captions covering the hoop. It led me to think that maybe I could find a TV that had closed captions on/off on the remote control. And a friend suggested that soundbars offer TV speech enhancement. So I set out to get a new and better system.

I have room for a 32 inch TV and 26 inches for a sound bar. (Not that I need or want anything bigger.) This shuts me out of high end TVs.

A few TVs have "CC" on the remote. Smart TVs abound - these have internal handling of streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. I use, on a rotating basis, Netflix, Prime Video, Paramount+, Peacock, and Hulu. Many smart TVs have voice control, for which I have little use.

Soundbars replace a TV's speakers with a bar shaped package that sits in front of or below the TV. They have a several speakers, built in amplification, sound processing, and multiple interfaces to TVs. Not being limited to the thin packaging of modern TVs, and with signal processing, they can put out better sound than a typical TV.

I would have liked to get a soundbar to use on my old TV before getting a new TV. But you need a compatible audio interface - optical or HDMI-ARC (ARC is audio return channel). These isolate the audio signal and send it to the soundbar. HDMI-ARC is newer and has the bandwidth needed for seven channel audio. Only five channels for optical. Two channels is enough for me.

So a Samsung 1080p smart TV and Sonos Ray seemed like they would get the job done. After some work, the Sonos is doing pretty good. Default, it has boomy bass that ruins the sound. I set the bass way down and the treble way up. Then the sound was okay. I had to look online to figure out how to make the soundbar volume adjustable from the TV remote, but it was easy. Then I found speech enhancement. A huge improvement. And it works well with neutral tone controls.

Then I was looking through the Sonos phone app (required to set up the soundbar) and wanted to figure out how do turn speech enhancement on and off. It was not there. I did an exhaustive search of the menus. Finally a web search. You must have the TV turned on and sending sound. Then you just look in System and choose your device and the option appears. Sigh. Couldn't they have put a note in the app explaining that little detail.

On to the TV. Very small captions. And "enlarge" didn't do anything. Very confusing controls and very small text. The "smart" channels included Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Peacock, but NOT Paramount+. I couldn't see any way to download an app for Paramount+. I put my Roku stick into HDMI 1. Works well but I have to use two remotes. I was hoping to get it down to one.

Anyway, the captions are useless and I will return the TV tomorrow. Insignia makes a dumb (i.e. not "smart") TV with a remote that looks useful (has a CC button). 720p resolution. Two remotes required, but that's my current situation. I should get easy caption on/off and enhanced sound. Maybe not enough to justify the price of the Sonos Ray.

The Next Day

Best Buy makes it very easy to return things. I returned the Samsung and got the Insignia in 15 minutes.

YES! The Insignia dumb TV is great. Reasonable captions with easy caption on/off. Easy to configure. Easy to set up with the soundbar. The picture is as good as my old TV.

Of course basketball season is about over. This year's UK team is wildly inconsistent - not good for doing well in tournaments. Likely won't need the CC button for nine months.

Lessons Learned

Getting a smart TV means giving up useful buttons on the remote. If that's okay, make sure that the smart TV has all of the streaming services that you want. Otherwise you will have to add an external device anyway.

If you want a high quality, high resolution TV, it will likely be smart. And you will likely get a stupid remote control with it. Perhaps voice control will make up for the stupid remote. But I find voice control to be annoying.

You can't win.

I wonder if there is some accessibility option that helps people who have lost their voice use voice control. Maybe a lip reading TV or a TV that understands sign language.

Tomorrow

Oh no - boxes, packing material, old hardware scattered about my living room. Cleanup day.

 A Tip for Streaming Services (2023-03-16)

I just signed up for Netflix. The menu showed three options - 720p with ads ($6.99), 1080p ($15.99), and 4k ($19.99). My TV is 720p, so there's no point in paying for any higher resolution. But I'm willing to pay to avoid ads. Ah - a button at the bottom - show all options. This displayed the above three options plus one more. 720p without ads - $9.99. I'll take it. The higher resolution options allow watching on multiple devices simultaneously, but I have no use for that feature.

I have also purchased episodes of shows on Amazon Prime Video. If you look carefully you can find (at least in some cases) 720p versions for a significantly lower price than 4k or 1080p versions.

What is Wrong with Linux?

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My Chrome version is very old. I have been using Firefox.

Chrome says it is out of date, can't update, must reinstall. Okay, I follow the link to download a new version.

Downloaded the .deb file (used by Ubuntu Linux) and ran it.

And? What do I do from this screen???

Apparently I can't do anything since the .deb file MIGHT be a security risk. I trust it - Chrome led me to it. Linux doesn't trust it. What do I do?

I clicked on the yellow circle. This led me through some incomprehensible way of telling Gnome that the .deb file was trustworthy. How many hours will it take me to decipher the procedure and make it work? I have no idea.

I will stick with Firefox.

As much as I dislike Windows and Microsoft, I must say that I have never had a problem like this. I can't remember having a problem installing anything under Windows.

Update 16 May 2023

A tip from the internet and I finally have the current version of Chrome installed.

Uninstall Chrome, from the command line - sudo dpkg -r google-chrome-stable .

Install Chrome by double clicking on the previously downloaded .deb file. Now you still get the screen that says it's potentially unsafe, but there is also an install button. It works! I don't know if it's unsafe, although I expect that any version of any browser is unsafe. And I don't know what will happen when another update is needed.

General Stupidity

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Computer Caches

CNET headline today - Don't Forget to Clear Your iPhone Cache.

Caches hold data that might be useful to have on hand in the future. The article explains that the web browser cache fills up and the data in the cache becomes stale, and a stale cache slows down internet access. It goes on to explain how to empty the cache.

When an Android app is not functioning correctly, the first fix to try, according to Google, is to empty that app's cache. This often fixes the problem for a while.

We have "artificial intelligence" that can understand human language, write articles and paint pictures that are "indistinguishable" from human works, and guide automobiles around roads that are full of terrible human drivers. But no one has figured out how to empty a cache once a month or every night? Or maybe (it might require an artificial intelligence to program this), whenever the cache hits 75% full, you could delete the oldest unused data in the cache until it is only 50% full.

Something is very wrong in the world of computer programming.

Closed Captions

Closed captions for television - captions are text of what is being said on the picture. They are needed by people with hearing problems. Closed refers to captions that can be turned on and off by the user. (Subtitles translate or clarify poor sound.)

I generally have closed captions turned on because I have trouble understanding television speech. But while watching a basketball game (I watch University of Kentucky games if they are on antenna television) the closed captions cover the basket. Very annoying to have to wait for the announcer to find out if the ball goes through the hoop. Can't they choose a better location, or use a transparent background?

Other

You might think that I could find a lot more examples of stupidity to complain about. I must be slipping. Or maybe it's just that I have done a good job of covering them in past posts.

But one more thing - shortages. No canned or jarred mushrooms in Kroger. No large dispensers of Original Wet-Naps (hand/face wipes, unscented, no alcohol).

No Gildan size 13-15 gray crew socks (other brands, styles, colors are inferior). And why are the black socks tighter than gray? Why are the ankle length socks tighter than crew length? I haven't tried white - I can't handle the bright white band between dark shoes and dark pants.

I Forgot

Two days later - I forgot - when a reporter says that a car was being driven at a "high rate of speed" he/she means the car was being driven at a high speed. The word "rate" is either completely meaningless or it changes the meaning to the car was accelerating abnormally. If you need to dramatize the speed, how about "high rate of travel". A small example of the high rate of poor journalism in the world today.

Investing - Index Funds, ETFs, Advisors

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Indexing vs Active Management for Mutual Funds

A quick definition - for an actively managed mutual fund, a manager or management team selects stocks or bonds to put in the fund. It is hoped that the stock selections will perform better than whatever index there might be for the chosen strategy. For an index fund, the choice of stocks or bonds matches an index such as the S&P 500 (and is kept in sync).

Typically, index funds trade assets less than active funds, have lower management fees, are very diversified, and aren't subject to management changes. The choice of assets in the index is subject to strategy and how they are chosen.

Choosing what index fund to invest in was once easy. Just find the lowest fee S&P 500 fund. No more. Now the question is - what segment of the market do you want to invest in. Big company, medium, small, growth, value, dividends, capital weighting or equal weighting, market segment (health, tech, utilities, ...), what part of the world.

I have always had a philosophical bias against indexed mutual funds. A corporation gets into an index by being successful. But it stays in the index by having a high stock value. And the stock value is enhanced by being purchased by index funds. So once a corporation is in an index, it stays in the index because it is in the index - index funds must buy it. I'm not saying that this is the sole support of the stock price, but it is a factor. And as index funds take over the market, it becomes a bigger factor.

Index funds trade very little. VFINF (Vanguard S&P 500 Index) lists turnover at 4%. Low turnover active fund are typically 25% to 50% (much higher for speculative funds). In addition to trading costs (which I would think are close to zero these days), this incurs taxes. Mutual funds must distribute capital gains and dividends every year, so with active funds in taxable accounts, you will be paying some of the taxes now instead of later.

But performance is what counts. I haven't tried to verify this statistic, but it is commonly reported that 80% of active funds underperform their benchmark index. So 20% of active funds equal or outperform their benchmark index. Can you choose a fund that will outperform? Yes. Will it continue to outperform long term? Maybe.

But performance isn't all that counts. If the funds are in an IRA or Roth IRA, taxes don't matter - yearly distributions and capital gains from sales are not taxed (but of course anything that you take out of an IRA is taxed as income). For tax un-advantaged accounts taxes are critical. Dividends are taxed and capital gains caused by turnover or selling to cover redemptions are taxed. You can't control this. In a down market, redemptions may cause big capital gains right when you can't handle them. If you don't need the distributions for income, you are paying taxes now instead of later. And if you need to sell the fund because of underperformance, capital gains can be prohibitive. This is where index funds are far superior - there is little capital gain from turnover and the fund won't crash due to bad management, so you shouldn't need to sell it.

Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) vs Indexed Mutual Fund

ETFs started in the late 1990s and have become very popular. They are baskets of the stocks, usually chosen from a stock index, that are traded on the stock market. They cover the same investment area as indexed mutual funds. (Actively managed ETFs exist, but not a lot so far).

ETFs have two important advantages over indexed mutual funds. First, you can buy or sell shares whenever the stock market is open, rather than only at the end of the day.

Second (this is my understanding), when someone trades ETF shares, they are usually buying or selling to other people, via the market. Since the fund is not selling stocks there is no tax event for other shareholders. And when someone wants to sell shares but there is no buyer, rather than selling the stocks that comprise the share and paying the seller in cash, the fund gives stocks to the seller who is responsible for the tax event. So no tax event for the fund. This is all transparent to the shareholder. This makes holding an ETF significantly more tax efficient than a mutual fund.

Advisors

I am not going to take a position on whether or not you need an advisor. But here are a couple of things to consider.

A fee based advisor takes a fixed fraction of your assets every year, typically 1%. They like to advertise that they are incentivized for you to make money - as your assets grow their advisor fee grows. This is true. But they still make money even if your assets shrink. They are taking a fraction of your assets, not a fraction of your asset growth.

So is the advisor management going to cover the cost of the 1% fee? Apparently active mutual fund management generally fails to deliver above index performance. So why expect an advisor to do better?

But without an advisor, it's all up to you - choosing a strategy, implementing the strategy, monitoring the implementation, adjusting to the current situation. And this is through distinct investment phases, each having different rules -

• before retirement
• after retirement but before taking Social Security payments
• after taking Social Security payments but before RMDs
  
• after RMDs start.

Samsung Galaxy S22

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I've had my Samsung Galaxy S22 phone for about a month now, having replaced a Google Pixel 4a.

The Pixel 4a is a very nice phone, but riddled with bugs, due in part to constant updating of the operating system. For example the always on lock screen works well for months, then after a monthly OS update, I pull it out of my belt pack and the screen is black. This happens regularly until another OS update. Gmail crashes once every few days, then an OS update and it's crashing multiple times every day. My Airpods (wireless earphone) work well for over a year, then an OS update and they will not work on a phone call (but work upon ending the call). Google doesn't seem to understand the importance of basic function.

My search for a reasonably sized phone led me to the iPhone 13 Mini - returned for lack of important function (always on lock screen, clock with current time zone). And there is no 14 Mini. On to the S22.

The S22 is slightly larger than the Pixel 4a, but much heavier. It has an aluminum frame and glass back. It baffles me why plastic isn't the standard - light and tough.

Because of the very narrow screen bezel, a case is needed that lets you hold the phone without accidentally touching the screen (this is common these days). Spigen make a nice one. Of course it covers the back glass, so what was the point of using glass?

It has wireless charging - very handy. I got a phone stand charger (holds the phone upright). Set the phone down a half inch from centered to avoid charging it - the extra half inch should be built into the stand. I added a Magsafe compatible steel ring to the case. This lets you use a Magsafe compatible car phone holder/charger. Very handy.

   

The cameras (3 of them) are on the side of the back of the phone, raised by about a millimeter. When you lay the phone on a table, and touch the screen, the phone inevitably wobbles. Very annoying. I drilled and tapped a hole in the case for a 3mm screw, got a nylon screw and ground the head down to 1mm, cut the thread to 1mm length, screwed it in - no more wobble. I should have paid the extra for black nylon.

   

The fingerprint reader is on the display. If your finger is too dry, it doesn't work - touch it to your tongue to make it work. The Pixel 4a location, on the back of the phone, is much easier to use. But Google decided that Samsung was right and changed their newer phones.

Samsung left off the next alarm time from their lock screen. The next alarm is important since I use my phone as my alarm clock. I would like to glance at it to verify that the correct alarm is set. Sigh.

I installed Nova Launcher, Gboard, Gmail, Calengoo, Talking Alarm Clock Beyond, True Phone Dialer, and my own clock widget, weather widget, calculator, MP3 player. Everything worked. My Airpods work, Gmail hasn't crashed, the lock screen works correctly.

Android 13 came along in early December. Everything still worked!

The camera(s) work well. Nice zoom. I don't use it very much.

So, a successful new phone, but could be better.

Thankfully, Samsung gave up on the rounded display edge. I didn't ever try one, but it must have been torture trying to avoid unintended screen touches. And it made no sense at all if the rounded screen was buried in a case. The vertical elevator control that went along with it is still there, but useless with a case, and I don't know what use it ever had anyway.

I think Google has given up on their squeeze cover. But they shouldn't have given up on the back fingerprint reader.

Why is there a camera bump? On (almost?) all new phones. Why not have the rest of the case as thick as the camera and use the extra volume for a bigger battery?

There is a neat case with a sliding camera cover for the S22 (and others). But is too bulky for me, and the slide is too hard to operate.

A long time ago, I complained about phones not improving. This one has two major improvements since that time - the always on lock screen and wireless charging. Better camera if that's important to you. Better water resistance if that's important to you. 5G maybe a little faster than 4G.

Google - you have lost a customer because of a constant stream of bugs.

Apple - you have lost a potential customer because of basic function. A clock that doesn't tell you what time zone it's displaying the time in isn't telling you the time. An OLED screen that doesn't give you an always on lock screen is not taking advantage of the technology.

Samsung - the next alarm time should be on the always on lock screen. Right now, my screen reads "Sun, December 18". Why abbreviate "Sunday", but not "December"? And the fingerprint symbol has a lot of wasted on pixels. Just a dot would get the job done.

Apple and Google - not everyone wants a monster sized phone.

Lyrical Thoughts

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It's tough to find good topics to write about. I often have an idea, write about it, then throw it out - maybe not enough to write about, maybe it sounds uninteresting after I see it in writing, maybe I decide it makes me sound too strange. I will take a bit of chance today.

I listen to songs for the music, not the lyrics. I like the voice as a musical instrument, but I don't much care about the lyrics. (Occasionally the lyrics will be so disturbing that it ruins the music.) I love many of Schubert's songs and the singing that is integral to them, even though I don't understand the German lyrics. And I like much instrumental music - symphonies, piano pieces mostly, but that's incidental to this post.

(At last - I have reached the point of this post.)

Sometimes a phrase from a song, along with its melody fragment, sticks with me and makes me think. Here are a few.


"Obladi, Oblada, life goes on, brah, Lala, how the life goes on" - no matter what happens, life goes on (so far). (In my head it's "Lalalala life goes on".)

"All that you have is your soul" - my new philosophy as I get older.

"A line from a poem of my childhood has said that visions of sugarplums were gonna dance in my head" - ideas are always good, even bad ideas.

"Going to the candidates' debate, laugh about it, shout about it, when you've got to choose, every way you look at it, you lose" - why can't we put "none of the above" on the ballot?

"And wept when it was all done for bein' done too soon" - whenever I finish a project - it's the journey, not the destination.

"And the first one now will later be last" - whenever things change.

"Today can last another million years, today could be the end of me" - live in the present.

"Oh lord above, you gotta save the fool" - whenever I do something stupid.


In case you want to quiz yourself on where these came from -
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In order (which was just the order that they came to mind as I wrote this) -

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da - Paul McCartney
All That You Have Is Your Soul - Tracy Chapman (for me, Emmylou Harris' cover)
Leftover Wine - Melanie Safka
Mrs. Robinson - Paul Simon
Done Too Soon - Neil Diamond
The Times They Are A-Changin' - Bob Dylan
11:59 - Jimmy Destri (Blondie)
Sweet Misery - Melanie Safka

(The internet can be very useful. The lyrics for just about any song are a quick search away.)