The problem is that the LLM only does one trick. When you start integrating other software with it, the other software's input has to be fed in the same way as your other tokens. As the last paragraph of TFS says, "every clock check consumes space in the model's context window" and that's because it's just more data being fed in. But the model doesn't actually ever know what time it is, even for a second; the current time is just mixed into the stew and cooked with everything else. It doesn't have a concept of the current time because it doesn't have a concept of anything.

You could have a traditional system interpreting the time, and checking the LLM's output to determine whether what it said made sense. But now that system has to be complicated enough to determine that, and since the LLM is capable of so much complexity of output it can never really be reliable either. You can check the LLM with another LLM, and that's better than not checking its output at all, but the output checking is subject to the same kinds of failures as the initial processing.

So yeah, we can do that, but it won't eliminate the [class of] problem.

Every tech company needs at least three things to start with: The business guy, the brain, and the lawyer. Ideally there should also be a marketing guy, but you can add them in later. Also, none of them have to be male, I just like saying "guy", buddy.

Yes and no, depending. If you are building an application in Excel, yes, all you said is true. If you are using one, no, none of it is. Spreadsheets can be set up such that the user just stuffs data into them where they are supposed to, then clicks a button to get results. Or maybe they don't even have to hit a button.

For the simplest useful example I can think of, I put together a spreadsheet which produces a table we use for asset valuation. This spreadsheet changes every year. If you load my spreadsheet, it will be correct for the current year. No user has to think about that at all, they just load it and get a correct table. You can extrapolate this to basically any level of complexity because Excel has VBA and you can script everything. The user just follows instructions, and they aren't even allowed to edit any cells which could break anything.

In case anyone is going this far down the hole, it turned out great. Even though the item was shipped from the US, because the seller didn't respond I got a refund without having to return it.

So far Aliexpress has been responsive to 100% of my issues and I only have needed to be a little patient and not expect everything to be solved immediately or arrive immediately.

I agree that a database-backed application is the right way to go for that much data. However, Finance used Excel because they could. We all like to talk about how bad an idea it is to do that, but Excel brought financial computations on large data sets to people who can't write any code. It has enabled thousands upon thousands of businesses to do things they couldn't do before without paying a programmer to develop a solution they cannot maintain. The fact that other spreadsheets regularly crater when handed data that Excel has no trouble with is exactly why we have so much Excel.

I like to use Drupal to rapidly create database applications which can handle a lot of data without writing code. But I wouldn't expect someone in accounting to be able to do that at all, and that just shifts the problem domain. Instead of getting stuck with Excel, now I'm getting stuck with Drupal. All of the logic just winds up in a different system that you can't trivially transfer it out of, so you have the same exact maintainability problem, except more people know how to work with Excel.

Or at least it's used as one.

And that does have it's advantages, believe it or not.

Any untrained office worker can open an Excel sheet and run the app that's built with it without any extra training or security and privilege stuff getting in the way. Office workers can build their own logic without having to shop around for some developer to take care of their problem and the ERP budget doesn't have to be touched. And it's even modern purely functional programming. ... That's how you eventually get Shadow IT that often becomes mission critical.

What SQL used to be in the 70ies Excel & VBA is today. Wether that's an improvement I couldn't really say für sure, but that's the way it is.

"They may customize it with their own communications gear, but they didn't pay for the R&D that went into it. "

Companies build the prior research cost into their current pricing. It isn't as though gov. is not paying for it when they buy off the shelf. They just are not paying for it up front, but they will pay.

Regardless, this brings up a dilemma for the alleged administration. They have two competing impulses. They want to decrease the cost of the care and upkeep of systems so they can spend more on systems and repair them quickly, and they want to preserve the kickbacks from industry into their greedy little hands. I'm guessing the latter impluse will win because industry has populated the regime with their cronies, and money is everything to them.

Just to repeat your downvoted post, I guess we have a Maggot with mod points:

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Sheinbaum earned a bachelor's degree in physics at UNAM in 1989, a master's degree in 1994, and a Ph.D. in energy engineering in 1995.

Contrast that to the USA.

Ask Stephen Miller. There are White Folk as far as his myopic eyes can see in America. The U.S. got rich and powerful because it welcomed (with hiccups) all races, nationalities, and creeds. Leave to the Maggots to turn that strength into something they hate.

Well, I'm about to find out if I need to do my first chargeback, I have a delayed response on a return authorization for where I was sent the wrong item. They advertised a different version. This might be confusing for them since the difference is small - yet critical. But there really should be no confusion because they advertised the other version both in the images and the product name/listing title.

... and should've closed with "Would you like a more concise or more elaborate version of this article?". 8-)

"Why would this require an FAA investigation?" So the alleged administration can shake down Amazon for a "contribution" to fight "terrorist drones". The Fed. Gov. is being turned into a Mafia organization.

In contrast, the U.S. is cutting basic research simply because the alleged administration cannot see a trail of bread crumbs back to its pocket.

All these places are streaming terrestrial TV & sports from god knows where but almost certainly not legally. Things like soaps, rugby, football, hurling etc. Bars are packed out when big matches are on. If Greece starts cracking down on this stuff these places are screwed.

An autonomous drone has to be able to cope with cables, pylons, trees, plastic bags & other blowing detritus, flag poles & flags, wind turbines, terrain, buildings, birds, light aircraft, drones, wind, gusts, down/up drafts, frost, heat, cold, strong sunlight, reflections, snow, rain, hail, lightning, etc. It has to be able to do this day or night. Drones also have their own failure modes on top of all this.

If a drone can't avoid obstacles and fail to safe then it has no business whatsoever flying near populated errors. Not to mention that even if did operate safely then it's still a noise nuisance. It would be very sad indeed if people start taking potshots at these things or griefing them.