[tz] The Y2038 problem is 20 years away

Tim Parenti tim at timtimeonline.com
Fri Jan 19 03:14:07 UTC 2018


It is now 03:14 UTC on 19 January 2018.  Twenty years from now, POSIX and
POSIX-based timestamps, which have more-or-less been counting seconds since
1970, will reach 2^31 and thus overflow signed 32-bit integers.  Since all
sorts of forward-looking date arithmetic abounds, it is inevitable that
there are still active applications that will mishandle this.  Twenty years
out is an interesting point when more of those seams might start to show,
and left unpatched, that would only increase as we approach 2038.  It's
much like Y2K, but in binary… and with seconds.

So keep your eyes peeled in the near future for anything suddenly thinking
it'll somehow be December 1901 in the slightly-more-distant future.  You
have some insight into just why that'll be happening.

--
Tim Parenti
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