[HN Gopher] Year 2038 problem is still alive and well
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Year 2038 problem is still alive and well
 
Author : protomyth
Score  : 114 points
Date   : 2022-02-27 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
 
web link (cookieplmonster.github.io)
w3m dump (cookieplmonster.github.io)
 
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Assuming we're all still alive by 2038 :-) With all these things
| happening recently and with the further problems due to: climate
| change, pandemics, energy crisis, global warming, economy
| problems, conflicts between superpowers and all the rest,
| forecasting 16 years ahead is a little bit tricky (to put it
| lightly).
 
  | NavinF wrote:
  | Most people, even those who self-select to participate in
  | discussions about such risks, place a 3% probability of any of
  | that killing a large chunk of humanity:
  | https://www.metaculus.com/questions/2568/ragnar%25C3%25B6k-s...
 
  | LorenPechtel wrote:
  | I committed a 2038 bug probably 25 years ago. A salesman found
  | it the hard way fat-fingering a job into the 2060s. You don't
  | have to reach the trigger date to set these things off,
  | anything that looks to the future can trip them.
  | 
  | (I knew it wouldn't work past 2038, I didn't realize it would
  | keep anyone from seeing the production schedule if it contained
  | an offending job.)
 
  | imoverclocked wrote:
  | Almost all, if not all, of the things you list as imminent
  | problems were foreseen before they were imminent.
 
    | echelon wrote:
    | I don't know about the other problems OP listed, but nuclear
    | annihilation seems more probable now than any time since the
    | cold war. We'd almost forgotten about the problem until
    | recently.
    | 
    | A cornered, unhinged, elderly dictator with access to a huge
    | nuclear arsenal does not give me comfort.
 
      | vlovich123 wrote:
      | I'll put any amount of money down that Putin won't deploy
      | nuclear force unless Russia's territory is invaded (this
      | includes anything he's annexed and claimed as his)
 
  | davidmurdoch wrote:
  | I recently fixed a 2038 bug in Ethereum simulation software I
  | work on.
 
  | vlunkr wrote:
  | We've survived all that before. (Well, different kinds of
  | climate change)
 
| vmception wrote:
| Cant this just be Epoch 0 and the next one be Epoch 1 and so on?
| 
| Adding a designation before the number, or date parsers knowing
| to separate the first or last digit from the rest of the number,
| meaning that its not just an overflowing large number its two
| numbers
| 
| Any undesignated timestamp being part of epoch 0
 
  | jackpirate wrote:
  | That's a good solution for _future_ code, but not for past
  | code. For example, lots of past code makes the assumption that
  | current_unix_time+1 second > current_unix_time
  | 
  | which won't be true when the wraparound happens.
 
    | kevin_thibedeau wrote:
    | This is also a good case for why unsigned integers are
    | useful. Time calculations using delta values are insensitive
    | to a single wraparound event.
 
  | __s wrote:
  | You might as well just use a 64 bit int if you're going to be
  | changing code anyways
  | 
  | But this blog post is about how code which is already using 64
  | bit ints can have code which silently truncates. Another case
  | of C's loose handling of types, whereas in Rust there would've
  | been an explicit cast required (granted, in this case the macro
  | expands to having explicit type casts)
 
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| Unrelated to the particular Int32x32To64 bug in this post, but
| Wine suffers from the Year 2038 bug and can't access directories
| with an access time past 2038 (generally caused by software
| bugs). This has broken the Wine installations of a few people on
| the Internet.
 
| SMAAART wrote:
| Oh no! Y2K all over, this time Y2K38.
| 
| Incidentally Y2K38.com was registered in 2002.
 
  | unwind wrote:
  | Awesome acronym magic, only 25% larger than the thing it
  | "expands" to ...
  | 
  | /s
 
  | sigio wrote:
  | Yeah, i regged Y2038.nl a couple of years back as well.... nice
  | plan for my retirement ;)
 
| MisterSandman wrote:
| Ayy, nice to see an OpenRCT devs on here! One of my favourite
| Open Source projects out there right now.
 
| toomanydoubts wrote:
| >Doubling the data type width gives more room than anyone would
| ever need - a signed 64-bit time value will not overflow for 292
| billion years.
| 
| This sentence reminds me of "The last question" by Asimov. Well,
| it's good enough for us, but "humans" 292bi years from now will
| still have to deal with it.
 
| dqpb wrote:
| 2038 is approximately the Omega point, according to Jurgen
| Schmidhuber, so this makes sense.
| 
| https://youtu.be/pGftUCTqaGg
 
| tyingq wrote:
| Mysql closed out a long-standing one in January of this year:
| 
| https://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=12654
 
  | mackal wrote:
  | I was just trying to find that bug report to comment on it,
  | should have just read the comments XD
 
    | tyingq wrote:
    | What's kind of funny is that there seems to be a time related
    | bug with the comments on the bug report page. All the
    | timestamps look like [22 Dec 2021 9:43], except the last one,
    | apparently made in 2022, which has a time of 20:22, and the
    | year is missing: [3 Jan 20:22]
    | 
    | Maybe it's intentional that the year is omitted for current
    | year, and just a coincidence that the time is 20:22?
 
      | bombcar wrote:
      | It's likely the case, but it also goes to show why "cutesy"
      | timestamps are annoying - even the "a few seconds ago" type
      | you get.
 
| dkasper wrote:
| Convince me it won't be largely a nothing burger like the Y2K
| problem?
| 
| My guess is in 2037 everyone will frantically test their systems
| and make some patches and life will go on, no?
 
  | snailmailman wrote:
  | How many smart lightbulbs, washing machines, thermostats, and
  | TVs:
  | 
  | - will have literally anywhere that time is 32-bit
  | 
  | - won't be actively updated, but still in use.
  | 
  | This problem has the potential to break clocks on _so many_
  | devices. Some may not be easily updatable.
 
    | Gigachad wrote:
    | I have seen stuff breaking already. 2020 caused the firmware
    | on my nintendo ds piracy flashcart to stop functioning. Have
    | to reset the console date to earlier to get it to start.
 
    | phamilton wrote:
    | Embedded systems for sure are going to be problematic. https:
    | //github.com/arduino/esp8266/blob/master/tools/sdk/lib...
    | says that at least some Arduino/esp8266 installations are
    | using a long (which I believe is signed 32 bit) for time_t.
 
  | Xylakant wrote:
  | The Y2K problem was a nothingburger because legions of people
  | worked to make it one. Still, critical systems failed - for
  | example the system managing the emergency call lines for the
  | Firefighters in Berlin
  | https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Computer-GAU-Das-Sil...
 
    | LorenPechtel wrote:
    | And there were lots of little gotchas from Y2K that actually
    | did manifest when they concerned dates in the future. Nothing
    | spectacular, just wrong answers. "Expired" stuff being thrown
    | away, improper cost projections etc.
 
    | niccl wrote:
    | And it's little known that New Zealand/Aotearoa would have
    | run out of accessible petrol on about Jan 3 if things hadn't
    | been fixed
    | 
    | A lot of the y2k thing was badly framed and over-hyped by
    | Large Consulting Companies, but it was a real problem
 
    | pjscott wrote:
    | That's the thing about seeing a problem coming and working to
    | fix it before it happens: an adequate reaction looks the same
    | as an overreaction from the outside, and the "lol
    | overreaction" narrative is way more viral.
 
  | siffland wrote:
  | You are probably correct. Again people will bet on current
  | system not being in use 15 years from now and it is not a
  | problem until it is a problem.
  | 
  | On a better note Y2K brought us the movie "Office Space", so
  | perhaps Y2K38 will give us another equally awesome movie.
 
    | MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
 
  | nwallin wrote:
  | Depends.
  | 
  | It's going to hit the embedded world pretty hard. It's going to
  | hit the "no need to update the legacy software that still
  | works" enterprise world pretty hard.
  | 
  | It's not even going to be a blip on the open software world
  | because 64 bit `time_t` has been the default since the mid
  | 2000s.
 
  | peteri wrote:
  | There was a lecture given at Gresham college:
  | 
  | https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/what-really-ha...
  | 
  | Which does have a decent list of failures due to the Y2K issue.
 
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