Day: March 21, 2024

In the rapidly evolving world of large language models (LLMs), a new challenger has emerged that claims to outperform the reigning champion, OpenAI's GPT-4. Anthropic, a relatively new player in the field of artificial intelligence, has recently announced the release of Claude 3, a powerful language model that comes in three different sizes: Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus.

Compared to previous models, the new Claude 3 model displays enhanced contextual understanding that ultimately results in fewer refusals (as shown in the above image). The company claims that the Claude 3 Opus model rivals or even surpasses GPT-4 considering performance across various benchmarks. Experts engage in lively debates regarding the possible superiority of Claude 3 over GPT-4 as the pre-eminent language model on the market.

This post continues my exploration of concepts and techniques related to both the way so-called “Jewish times” (zmanim) are calculated; as well as the techniques needed to use the PHP Zmanim library – a library of functions that let you easily calculate Jewish times. Once again I owe a huge debt of gratitude to several folks – including Eliyahu Hershfeld, creator of the Kosher Java library, Zachary Weixelbaum (owner of the PHP Zmanim library, a port of Kosher Java), Elyahu Jacobi (who built RoyZmanim.com with those tools and patiently explained so many concepts to me), and Maor Neim, who offered explanations that turned theory into practice.

Introduction

In my last post, I explored both the foundational concepts of Jewish time calculations (zmanim) and also the initial steps needed to install and use PHP Zmanim. We got as far as calculating sunrise with that library.