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Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

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Re: Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

#381

Post by littlestymaar »

nvader wrote: post #310
Izkata wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to know that a word is made up of the individual character tokens A token is the smallest unit, it's not made of further tokens. It maps to a number.

I think what of is getting at is that given {the:1, t: 2, h:3, e:4} There should be somewhere in the corpus, "the is spelled t h e" that this system can use to pull this out. We can ask gpt to spell out individual words in NATO phonetic and see how it does.

> There should be somewhere in the corpus, "the is spelled t h e" that this system can use to pull this out.

Such an approach would require an enormous table, containing all written words, including first and last names, and would still fail for made up words.

A more tractable approach would be to give it the map between the individual tokens and their letter component, but then you have the problem that this matching depends on the specific encoding used by the model (it varies between models). You could give it to the model during fine-tuning though.

Re: Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

#384

Post by xandrius »

tgtweak wrote: post #314

I have a friend who was born on Feb 29, and in Quebec your driver's license fees must be paid on or before your birthday or your license is effectively revoked (It's a convenient reminder). He was on his way to pay them on the 29th and got pulled over for having an expired license... after some awkward common confusion with the police they came to the conclusion that the license bureau moves your "reminder" birthday…

I mean, they could have paid it any day before then, right?

I would have just gone on the 28th and be done with it.

Re: Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

#385

Post by botanical »

pquki4 wrote: post #207
littlestymaar wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wired: LLM are practically AGI Tired: ChatGPT thinks February 29th isn't a valid date.

My favorite prompt: asking "How many e's are there in the word egregious". Always says three (ChatGPT 3.5, 4, 4 turbo). When you ask it which three, it realizes its mistake and apologizes (or sometimes tells you where they are that is completely wrong). Looks like it just outputs gibberish for these things.

I just asked it with Gemini; at first, it got it right. Then I asked if it was sure and it apologised and said 3 is the correct answer. When asked what are the 3 "e"s, it says:

> The three "e"s in "egregious" are: > > 1. The first "e" is located in the first syllable, between the "g" and the "g". > 2. The second "e" is located in the second syllable, following the "r". > 3. The third "e" is located in the third syllable, following the "i" and before the last "o".

Re: Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

#387

Post by makoto12 »

esalman wrote: post #339
jewel wrote: post #103

We have a product that uses ChatGPT via the API, using the 3.5 turbo version. Our query involves some dates. Instead of giving back text like it usually does, today it has been giving errors because it does not think 2024-02-29 is a valid date. This is easy to reproduce with the web interface, at least sometimes [0]. It start out by saying it's not a valid date and then as it's explaining why it isn't it realizes its…

Blows my mind that people consider using ChatGPT for serious applications. I mean it's fine as a code autocorrect/autocomplete tool as in GitHub copilot. But it should not replace the code itself. You encounter a bug in the code, you fix it, you never encounter it again. But ChatGPT will repeat the same mistake sooner or later. That's not how we should engineer solution for critical problems.

If you sandbox your connection to openAI correctly, then you can get the benefit of a llm without making your application look silly at the same time. Identifying the correct places in your business to use it is tricky, but imo it certainly makes sense in a lot of specific areas. Just not a catch all that can run your business for you

Re: Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

#388

Post by quietbritishjim »

paulddraper wrote: post #340
js2 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is March more logical? Feb 29 + 1 year = Feb 28.

You're begging the question. [1] "Feb 29 + 1 year" is verbatim restatement. --- You can say Feb 29 + 365 days = Feb 28. (And Feb 29 + 730 days = Feb 27.) --- EDIT: Note that in the context of birthdays, people use "calendar years," not "unit of time which is ~1 revolution around the sun." Birthdays aren't celebrated every X million seconds after the moment of birth. They are celebrated the same day each calendar year…

> Feb 29 + 365 days = Feb 28.

Correct.

> And Feb 29 + 730 days = Feb 27

Incorrect. It's Feb 28 again. In a normal, non-leap year, if you add 365 days then you get back to the same date.

Re: Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

#389

Post by stevage »

xandrius wrote: post #384
tgtweak wrote: post #314

I have a friend who was born on Feb 29, and in Quebec your driver's license fees must be paid on or before your birthday or your license is effectively revoked (It's a convenient reminder). He was on his way to pay them on the 29th and got pulled over for having an expired license... after some awkward common confusion with the police they came to the conclusion that the license bureau moves your "reminder" birthday…

I mean, they could have paid it any day before then, right? I would have just gone on the 28th and be done with it.

Sure...if you knew about this bug in the system.

Re: Ask HN: Did you encounter any leap year bugs today?

#390

Post by hilux »

rodface wrote: post #238
huytersd wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, 2024 is not a leap year. Leap years are years divisible by 4, except for years that are divisible by 100 unless they are also divisible by 400. Therefore, the next leap year will be 2024.

As the proud new owner of a leap day baby, I find this to be extra hilarious

Congratulations!

Big savings on parties and cake!

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