Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin
Year 2038 problem (wikipedia.org)
15 points by turingspiritfly on Aug 25, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 4 comments


From the linked Deep Impact space probe page:

The spacecraft was lost and: "the most probable reason of software malfunction was a Y2K-like problem. August 11, 2013, 00:38:49, was 2^32 of one-tenth seconds from January 1, 2000, leading to speculation that a system on the craft tracked time in one-tenth second increments since January 1, 2000, and stored it in a signed 32-bit integer, which then overflowed at this time, similar to the Year 2038 problem"


Museums and old-computer enthusiasts will feel the pain of this; most modern systems have long moved on to 64-bit.


a lot of software uses 32 bit integers to store dates so it doesn’t matter on what cpu it runs


I remember Y2K (there was a weekend lost), and that 38 seemed a fair length of time away.

We're almost halfway there, now.

"Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."

(Context/origin of the phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objects_in_mirror_are_closer_t... )




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: