Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/607/
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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If only we'd chosen 1944-12-02 08:45:52 as the Unix epoch, we could've combined two doomsday scenarios into one and added a really boring scene to that Roland Emmerich movie.
But that's not a solution, it's just postponing the problem!!1!one
True, but only if the latest theories on Big Crunch being back on the table don't hold up. Debian ought to not only push out 64 bit time, but place "now" right in the middle to cover any discoveries of an older universe. Hell, they ought to do that and make it 128 bit, to cover anything.
Exponentials can be profound when you grasp them for that fleeting second.
"it's just postponing the problem!!1!one" The thing of including a "one" to make the irony of your exclamation abundantly clear is a delightful bit of internet-ese. I always find it funny when I see it
For me the giveaway was 2^64 being 1.8*10^19 years from now.
Thanks! I find it nicer than including "/s" at the end :)
'...(potentially setting time back to 1900)...'
From my understanding, unless I'm mistaken, wouldn't the 32 bit time reset back to 1970 after the overflow/rollover?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
Timestamps that use signed int will go back to 1901 (-2,147,483,647)
Oh shit, I missed that part, I always thought it was an unsigned int.. 🤦♂️
Well today I learned 👍
you're wrong, but so was the article, so I guess that cancels out :D it's late 1901
There are 2 hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-1 errors.
That's just a really solid joke.
The actual transition happened ages ago - 2024 or so. A bunch of transitional packages in Testing and Sid had -t64 appended for a while.