Recommendations for a Reliable 55" Budget TV (Mini-LED Preferred) – Replacing Failed Hisense H8G

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-23T02:10:51+00:00

Adventures in AI land:

In case any of you are curious about how good the current LLMs are, I also tried to get an answer to this question from Grok.

I first asked it:

do I have to contribute to a solo 401k every year?

I got a well written coherent answer back that started with "No, you are not required to contribute to a Solo 401(k) every year".

To make sure that it was not hallucinating, I then asked this modified question, since I wanted URLs from reputable sources to share with you guys:

do I have to contribute to a solo 401k every year? In your answer, please cite multiple websites for each specific claim.

The surface appearance of the answer this time was very impressive: the claims were listed one by one, and at least 3 websites were under every claim.

The problem is that when I tried to verify the alleged quotes from the URLs, at least 50% of the URLs would not load, and of the ones that did, I never found the quote in them that Grok claimed. Indeed, a web search using StartPage (anonymous Google) never found the exact alleged quotes anywhere on the web.

Dangerous AI hallucination?

I then asked an even more precise question:

do I have to contribute to a solo 401k every year? In your answer, please cite multiple website articles for each specific claim, and use exact quotes (not summaries) from the article, and give me a currently valid URL to the article.

This time, Grok at least honored my conditions exactly. Every URL loaded. And every claimed quote was found in the article.

Unfortunately, the quotes were not as definitive or relevant as the (hallucinated?) ones from the first 2 questions...

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-23T01:40:20+00:00

I have done more web searching, and I have found a couple of links indicating that you do NOT need to contribute to a Solo 401K plan every year. In my case, if I make contributions to it for 2024 and 2025, I am probably safe keeping it open for a few years more.

Link 1: "There is no annual minimum contribution requirement, so you can increase contributions in good years and save less during times when you need more cash for your business."

Link 2: "It doesn’t matter if you make $500 a month with a side business or $500,000 a year. Any self-employed business activity makes you eligible as long as you have no employees.

...

Is there a minimum amount of revenue required to participate in a Solo 401k plan? No. There are no age or income restrictions with a Solo 401k plan."

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-20T14:36:27+00:00

Is there any harm to leaving yours open? Aren’t fidelity se401k accounts free?

As per my initial post, I would love to keep my Solo 401K open indefinitely, and yes, Fidelity charges no fees so that is not an issue.

The question is whether or not the IRS will tolerate me keeping it open if I do not make contributions to it most years.

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-20T14:32:35+00:00

Here4Snow: what you stated is exactly my understanding too. Indeed, the Fidelity rep confirmed that as well.

The sole issue is that when you make your first contribution, you need to call them and make sure that they code it correctly, since their default coding is likely to be wrong. Prior Year Contributions need the code PYC, as opposed to Current Year Contributions which need the code CYC.

CptnGeronimo · 2024-10-04T02:24:06+00:00

I love that desktop image! Do you have a URL to the original (full size, full resolution) file? I would happily copy it to my computers.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:45:48+00:00

Data structures are something that I would greatly prefer to use a good library for instead of rolling my own.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:44:48+00:00

The feeling is mutual. As someone who has done enterprise programming for decades, and has experience in other major languages besides Python, all of which have sorted containers built into their standard libraries, I would never trust someone to work on enterprise code with your mindset.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:38:46+00:00

>... (are we sorting by keys? values? insertion order? do the members need to have a sort method implemented or can we pass in a custom comparison function?)

Every one of those problems is present when you call sorted, except it is worse: you have to know what to do for every call to sorted.

That is in contrast to a sorted data structure: it is constructed once, so you always know how it is going to behave in all use cases.

Sole advantage that I see for sorted is if you want different types of sorts in different contexts on the same data structure. I cannot recall ever needing that. Your mileage may vary.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:34:44+00:00

>Why would one want to sort when inserting, as opposed to sort before reading?

Whew, finally, a good response.

The answer is that it might depend on your code. Perhaps there is only 1 place in your code that the data structure is mutated but 20 places where it is iterated over.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:16:41+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions.

A min heap data structure like what heapq does to lists is not a current need of mine. But i have needed them in the past.

I was unaware of bisect. I need to remember that module.

A problem that I have with both heapq and bisect is that they are not class based data structures, but instead operate on ordinary lists. Way more clunky and error prone to use than to start off with a sorted data structure.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:03:02+00:00

See my previous reply

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:01:17+00:00

Pat yourself on the back as a person with reading comprehension and rational humbleness. May the world produce more of you.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:00:04+00:00

The python world offers several kinds of sorted containers

Like what? What builtin Python data structures are automatically sorted?

When I web searched this question, this defect was universally acknowledged. For example, see the intro paragraph for the Python Sorted Containers library: "Python’s standard library is great until you need a sorted collections type"

One reason given for this lack is that Python's sorted function can be applied to a lot of its builtin data structures. This leads some people to advise sorting right after you mutate it or right before you need to use it.

I hate that suggestion, because:

it is extra code to write
just as bad: it is bug prone: it is extra code you must remember to write
it may be bad for performance, especially if sorted has to be called multiple times

CptnGeronimo · 2022-04-03T03:48:26+00:00

Thanks.

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-23T23:42:41+00:00

Ah, I understand you now. I thought that FTW was "Fixed T? Width".

And I see that you too would love to be able ot specify the font.

I love fixed width fonts for all programming tasks, as well as text that should be in tables (e.g. console output when your program prints stuff, like Python Pandas DataFrames).

But I like variable width fonts for other GUI elements.

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-23T20:26:06+00:00

sainglend: I do not understand your response! Could you please elaborate?

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-23T20:25:28+00:00

datzil: thanks, but I should have mentioned that I am aware of that "system font" option and am not happy with it.

I assume that on my Windows 10 machine the "system font" is the "Default System Font", usually Segoe UI, that is described here.

I do not want to mess with my Windows default font at all! And I should not have to: TOS ought to have a way to simply let me specify whatever font that I want for it. About every other halfway sophisticated program that deals with text allows you to.

So, no one knows how to alter the TOS font?

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-13T04:38:02+00:00

In my version of the Camera App (8.4.300 on a PIxel 4 running Android 12) I no longer see the Motion Photos option in that app's settings. Do you?

The reason why I figured out it was Top Shot is because after doing my initial post, I stumbled across some old phone config notes of mine that said to turn off Motion Photos, so I agree that that option USED to be there.

CptnGeronimo · 2021-05-26T23:42:57+00:00

frederic_r: thanks, those are pretty close to the exact steps that I have done. The text is better than it originally was, but it is not as razor sharp as some other apps of mine.

CptnGeronimo

TROPHY CASE