State Tax Changes

Last November 1, New Jersey raised its state gas tax by 23 cents a gallon.  This was a pretty big increase, the old rate was 14.5 cents per gallon so the tax more than doubled but I didn't really object. The old rate was anomalously low and the roads have to be paid for somehow.  And the effect on me was insignificant.  I estimate I buy about 300 gallons of gas a year in New Jersey so the increase will cost me about $70 a year or a bit more than a penny a mile.

As part of the deal to raise the the gas tax the New Jersey sales tax was cut from 7% to 6.875% starting January 1, 2017 and to 6.625% starting January 1, 2018.  This affects me even less.  I estimate I spend about $10,000 a year subject to this tax.  So I will eventually save about $37.50 a year in sales tax or just over half of what the gas tax increase will cost me.

As noted above the first stage of the sales tax decrease was supposed to take effect on January 1, however I was a bit surprised to see the my local upscale supermarket still charging the old rate on Tuesday January 3.  However this was fixed by Wednesday and they apologetically refunded my nickle when I complained.

Sales tax rules tend to be complex and constantly changing so they impose a considerable compliance burden on businesses.  This is especially true for companies like Amazon who have to keep up with all the changes nationwide instead of just those affecting their particular location.  In my view any effort to make more out of state merchants collect sales tax needs to be coupled with simplification to reduce the compliance burden.

Leela

Earlier this year I recommended the web based free computer Go program, Cosumi.  Leela is another free computer Go program.  Unlike Cosumi it runs on your computer.  I downloaded version 0.7.0 (the current version is 0.8.0) a few months ago.  I have played both programs quite a bit, mostly 9x9 games.

The programs have distinct styles.  Cosumi apparently plays to maximize its score.  This reduces its winning percentage because it doesn't play safe when ahead or take more risks when behind.  I have won many lost games because Cosumi loses a live group (or allows me to revive a dead group or both) while trying for 1 or 2 more points and misreading something.  Cosumi doesn't resign and will play games out to the end.  I like this as it allows me to practice my endgame and counting skills even if the game isn't close.

Leela on the other hand appears (like other Monte Carlo tree search programs such as Alpha Go) to play to maximize its winning percentage. This has some weird effects when Leela doesn't think the game is close as a bad move which loses some points may be hard to distinguish from a good move in terms of winning percentage.  So when Leela is ahead it will often chuck away points and end up winning by half a point although the game wasn't actually close.  And when Leela is behind at some point it will start making unsound moves in a desperate attempt to catch up.  If you keep your head and reply correctly Leela will then soon resign.  I don't like this behavior as I like to know what the margin of victory (or defeat) was.  Leela does have a "no resign" option which I haven't tried. By itself it won't help much as Leela still won't always be playing good moves if it doesn't think the game is close and the margin of victory may not be an accurate reflection of how close the game was.

Leela is the stronger program especially on the full 19x19 board.  Cosumi is competitive on the 9x9 board.  I matched the programs against each other in a 10 game 9x9 match and Leela only won 6-4. But when I tried a couple of 19x19 games Leela crushed Cosumi.  This is consistent with my experience.  I usually lose to Cosumi on 9x9 but easily won the two 19x19 games I tried against it. Cosumi seems to have trouble evaluating the safety of large groups and sometimes loses them because it fails to adequately secure them.  It's hard to win if you keep losing large groups.

Leela is a pretty simple program but it does have more options than Cosumi.  It has a rated game option in which it tries to adjust its strength to match yours.  And it has an analysis feature in which you can go over a game and see how Leela evaluates each position.  There isn't much documentation and there are additional features I would like to see but I can't complain too much about a free program.

Another difference between the programs is Cosumi uses Japanese (territorial) scoring while Leela uses Chinese (area) scoring.  This usually doesn't matter (it didn't come up in the games I had them play each other) but it can make a point or two difference which could change the result of a close game so it is something to be aware of.  There are also some slight differences in the rules which usually don't matter but sometimes do.

So in summary I would also recommend the Leela program if you are looking for a free computer Go opponent.  I found it easy to download and install on my Windows laptop (there also seems to be a Apple macOS version).  Leela is stronger especially on 19x19 and has more features but Cosumi also has things to recommend it.  And the different styles mean you can vary your experience by playing both.  It is said that constantly playing the same computer opponent can teach you bad habits as a computer program may consistently let you get away with certain bad moves.  Hopefully playing two quite different programs will lessen this problem.

Mercury Dime

A few days ago I noticed a strange dime sized silver coin in my change purse.  When I had a chance I looked at it more carefully.  It was very worn and I didn't immediately realize it was American.   However I eventually figured out it was a Mercury dime.  These were minted from 1916 to 1945.  My coin is dated 192?, perhaps 1920 with only the top left curve of the 0 still apparent.  It looks something like this but even more worn.  I must have received it in change fairly recently.  This is unusual as although the coin is too worn to have much value to collectors it has a silver value of about $1.15 and most such coins were removed from circulation long ago.  It is interesting to speculate on its history.  It obviously has been circulated heavily but presumably not recently or someone would have recognized it (as I did) and set it aside.  So my guess is it was out of circulation for a long time and then recently found and spent by someone who didn't recognize it as rare.

Tax Loss Sale

Monday was Columbus Day.  This is a federal holiday which my employer observed but the stock market was open.  I took the opportunity to sell my position in ConocoPhillips (COP), a large American oil producer.  This was another of my ill-fated bets on peak oil so I realized a loss.  This will save me some money on my 2016 taxes. When I made a similar tax sale last year I estimated I would recover 25% of my loss.  This turned out to be low, according to TurboTax my actual recovery was about 32%.  I am unsure why the savings were in excess of the nominal statutory rates, perhaps my marginal rate is actually higher because I am subject to some phase outs of exemptions or credits. In any case this makes tax loss selling an even better idea.  I still find it painful however and had been putting it off.

I didn't reinvest the sale proceeds.  I had considered buying some more VDE (Vanguard's energy sector ETF) waiting 35 days (to avoid the wash sale rule) and then selling my current position in VDE (which also has an unrealized loss) and repurchasing the COP so as to maintain my current exposure to the energy sector (more or less) while realizing both losses. However I decided to just take the money out of the market for the moment.  My short term timing was okay as the COP is currently down some since I sold.

Vin Scully

Last Sunday Vin Scully worked the final regular season Dodgers game (against the Giants in San Francisco) and then retired as the Dodgers play-by-play announcer.  He had started in 1950, before I was born and when the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn.  So a pretty remarkable career.

I can't say I listened to a lot of his broadcasts.  Growing up in Livermore, California I started following the Giants after they made the World Series in 1962.  Scully already had a reputation as a good announcer back then and some Giants fans preferred to tune in to the Dodgers broadcast when the two rivals played.  I don't recall being one of them but I certainly knew who he was and must have heard him at least a few times on the radio.  So his retirement brings back thoughts of times gone by.

Corrupt user profile

One annoying thing that can happen to you on a Windows computer is your user profile can get corrupted in a way that prevents you from logging into your account.  Instead you get the error message "The User Profile Service failed the logon.  User profile cannot be loaded."  Last weekend this happened to me for the second time on my Windows Vista machine.  I am unsure of the cause, perhaps a power glitch at just the wrong time (I also got an error message about Windows not having shut down properly).  Fortunately this time the fix proved relatively simple once I figured out what to do.

This is apparently a fairly common problem with lots of advice on the web about what to do. Unfortunately some of this advice seems flawed. For example this Microsoft page has several suggestions but they have drawbacks.  For this reason once rebooting the system fails the next thing you should try is using the System Restore function to return your computer to an earlier working state.  When this succeeds as it did in my case it solves the problem with little effort.  However the Microsoft web page does not suggest this and instead offers some (in my view) inferior alternatives.

The first suggestion is to "fix" your user account profile by editing the registry.  However as best I can tell this doesn't actually fix your profile, instead it replaces it with the default profile you get when you first set up your account.  This will allow you to logon but you won't have your accustomed environment.  I am not sure how serious the differences are as I didn't pursue this further.

The second suggestion is to create a new account and then copy most of your files from your old account to your new account.  This is what I ended up having to do the first time I had this problem and it worked more or less.  But it was quite a lot of trouble, things didn't end up exactly the same as before and I found the involuntary account name change annoying.

The earlier instance of this problem was a delayed effect of a malware infection.  This was made worse by the fact that I (due to laziness) had not created separate user and administrator accounts. This is a bad idea which made fixing things harder as in order to create a new user account I first had to create an administrator account without being able to login normally which fortunately is possible but a bit complicated.  This time my now separate administrator account was unaffected.

Be patient when using System Restore, I initially thought it was failing to launch but it was just taking its time (several minutes or so it seemed) to come up.    

Social Security Update

In my last post I complained about the government recently making it impossible to access your Social Security Statement online if you don't have a cell phone.  This managed to annoy me enough that I sent a complaint (via email) in late August to my US Congresswoman, something I don't recall ever doing before (I did once email my state representatives when I lived in New York).  As if by magic on September 1, I got another email from Social Security stating they were making the new security features optional (at least for now).  And in fact I was able to log in and download my statement.  Which was in English instead of Spanish and had some different numbers as well (apparently because the Spanish statement assumed my future income would be zero while the English statement made the more reasonable assumption that I would continue to earn at the same rate which is what the earlier statements I received had always done).  So I could have saved myself some trouble if I had just waited a month for the government to come to its senses.

The response was too quick for it to be a result of my email and in fact I later received a pro forma reply from my Congresswoman's office which was unaware of the reversal in policy.  However it seems to be a pretty safe assumption that I wasn't the only person complaining.