Are you ready for... 2038?

[GlitchyZorua]

2038. The year that marks the end for 32-bit operating systems. Are you ready for it? Because its gonna be the new Y2K!

Remember the Y2K problem? All hands were on deck! If you were buying a computer (at least, in best buy) in the year 1999, you would notice that there were these stickers all over place! tell you to turn off your computer at the end of the year 1999, i suppose this was to contain the damage caused by the Y2K crisis? 

The Y2K problem was pretty fascinating! (and... chaotic  ), Computers were not ready for the year 2000, and everyone thought the world was gonna end! (thankfully, it didn't...)
However, that's in the past, and we are way, WAY past the year 2000. The year is 2025. Tech has become more advanced (and... dumber?) then before. However, that isn't to say that technology isn't fool proof, (or bug-free), because there are computers that still rely on outdated old software, that is being held together by duct-tape and sticks, and still running a decade old operating system, like Windows XP. If that does sound familiar, that's because some, if not, most, governments are still using Windows XP, Windows 95, and... perhaps Windows 98. That's because the software that they use is critically needed, but the developers decided to stop working on it a long time ago, which means that they also could not be bothered to make it compatible for newer, more modern operating systems, or even modern architectures like 64-bit.

The problem exists in systems which measure Unix time—the number of seconds elapsed since the Unix epoch (00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970)—and store it in a signed 32-bit integer. The data type is only capable of representing integers between −(231) and 231 − 1, meaning the latest time that can be properly encoded is 231 − 1 seconds after epoch (03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038). Attempting to increment to the following second (03:14:08) will cause the integer to overflow, setting its value to −(231) which systems will interpret as 231 seconds before epoch (20:45:52 UTC on 13 December 1901). The problem is similar in nature to the year 2000 problem, the difference being the Year 2000 problem had to do with base 10 numbers, whereas the Year 2038 problem involves base 2 numbers.

Analogous storage constraints will be reached in 2106, where systems storing Unix time as an unsigned (rather than signed) 32-bit integer will overflow on 7 February 2106 at 06:28:15 UTC.

Computer systems that use time for critical computations may encounter fatal errors if the year 2038 problem is not addressed. Some applications that use future dates have already encountered the bug.[4][5] The most vulnerable systems are those which are infrequently or never updated, such as legacy and embedded systems. Modern systems and software updates to legacy systems address this problem by using signed 64-bit integers instead of 32-bit integers, which will take 292 billion years to overflow—approximately 21 times the estimated age of the universe.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

From what I understand, is that once the year 2038 hits, computers running 32-bit will start overflowing and reset back to the year 1901, because the binary line will not have enough ones to fit! so it fills the binary with zeros, thus resetting it back to the year... 1901!



So, yeah, thats gonna be a puzzling bug to fix! Perhaps one day they'll find a work around for 32-bit systems! (maybe they will be forced to upgrade to 64-bit...)

Here is some good videos talking about the 2038 bug!

Question for everyone on the forum! What will you do if the year 2038 hits! and what suggestions would you give to survive the nemesis known as the Y2K38 bug?  , or even tips on how you can prepare yourself for the y2k38 crisis!


til next time...

Resources:
https://melonking.net/melon?z=/hidden/2k - Melon's 2K
https://www.timeanddate.com/countdown/generic?iso=20380119T031407&p0=%3A&msg=Unix+2038+Clock+rollover&csz=1&swk=1 - 2038 year count down.

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

I was young back then, but I still can tell you that there was a sort of panic about the Y2K-Bug (called usually "Millenium-Bug" or "-Problem" here). There were newsreels going about it, but in the end, things went out pretty smoothly, with only a few systems being in lock afterwards.

Unix time in 32 bit ints can also affect 64-bit systems, and even software that runs within systems that were basically prepared. I'm pretty sure that it will affect some machines and softwares, especially within commercial- and industrial contexts. User-systems shouldn't encounter many problems, as the problem is well known, and updates are much more easier to roll out (and are much more common) than they were in 1999.

[Melooon]

So while it's a long way off, I do wonder about old code like this forum! Was this forum programed with some sort of 32 bit limit that Im unaware of?

From what I can tell the dates and times on the forum depend on PHP and MySQL ideas of what dates and times are, so I suspect in this case it's totally fine since we use the latest versions of those; however you never know! One thing I leaned the hard way is that this forum cannot support IPv6 in anyway.

I think the main worry for me is how I'll handle dates on old systems; I'll have to come up with an agreed standard, like.. 1980 = 2030 or something - but that totally messes with old files dates. I just powered up my DOS computer and put in what I thought was a blank floppy, but it had a bunch of school educational games dated from the early 80s (or maybe the 2030s?) 

There's a poetic quality to feeling the sand of time following out from underneath the feet of old code and knowing you and code share that in common 

[nobo]

There's a poetic quality to feeling the sand of time following out from underneath the feet of old code and knowing you and code share that in common 

the most beautiful thing i've heard all day.