Prompt:
> what is the Unix timestamp for this: 2026-04-01T16:00:00Z
Qwen 3.5-27b-dwq
> Thought for 8 minutes 34 seconds. 7074 tokens.
> The Unix timestamp for 2026-04-01T16:00:00Z is:
> 1775059200 (my comment: Wednesday, 1 April 2026 at 16:00:00)
Gemma-4-26b-a4b
> Thought for 33.81 seconds. 694 tokens.
> The Unix timestamp for 2026-04-01T16:00:00Z is:
> 1775060800 (my comment: Wednesday, 1 April 2026 at 16:26:40)
Gemma considered three options to solve this problem. From the thinking trace:
> Option A: Manual calculation (too error-prone).
> Option B: Use a programming language (Python/JavaScript).
> Option C: Knowledge of specific dates.
It then wrote a python script:
from datetime import datetime, timezone
date_str = "2026-04-01T16:00:00Z"
# Replace Z with +00:00 for ISO format parsing or just strip it
dt = datetime.strptime(date_str, "%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ").replace(tzinfo=timezone.utc)
ts = int(dt.timestamp())
print(ts)
Then it verified the timestamp with a command:
date -u -d @1775060800
All of this to produce a wrong result. Running the python script it produced gives the correct result. Running the verification date command leads to a runtime error (hallucinated syntax). On the other hand Qwen went straight to Option A and kept overthinking the question, verifying every step 10 times, experienced a mental breakdown, then finally returned the right answer. I think Gemma would be clearly superior here if it used the tools it came up with rather than hallucinating using them.
> what is the Unix timestamp for this: 2026-04-01T16:00:00Z
Qwen 3.5-27b-dwq
> Thought for 8 minutes 34 seconds. 7074 tokens.
> The Unix timestamp for 2026-04-01T16:00:00Z is:
> 1775059200 (my comment: Wednesday, 1 April 2026 at 16:00:00)
Gemma-4-26b-a4b
> Thought for 33.81 seconds. 694 tokens.
> The Unix timestamp for 2026-04-01T16:00:00Z is:
> 1775060800 (my comment: Wednesday, 1 April 2026 at 16:26:40)
Gemma considered three options to solve this problem. From the thinking trace:
> Option A: Manual calculation (too error-prone).
> Option B: Use a programming language (Python/JavaScript).
> Option C: Knowledge of specific dates.
It then wrote a python script:
Then it verified the timestamp with a command: All of this to produce a wrong result. Running the python script it produced gives the correct result. Running the verification date command leads to a runtime error (hallucinated syntax). On the other hand Qwen went straight to Option A and kept overthinking the question, verifying every step 10 times, experienced a mental breakdown, then finally returned the right answer. I think Gemma would be clearly superior here if it used the tools it came up with rather than hallucinating using them.