#Like the Y2K bug‚ developers thought this would be sufficient because- ideally- any software using this standard would be replaced
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A good and relateable way to introduce the heart of the Y2K bug and the Year 2038 problem.
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#The Year 2038 problem is based on the UNIX timestamp#which-rather than storing the actual time- instead counts how many seconds have passed since midning UTC Jan 1 1970#It makes date calculations easier to store and work with.#A03‚ just like the UNIX timestamp‚ uses a 32-bit integer#which means it can count up as high as 3:14:07am Jan 19 2038.#One second later and the intefer overflows and crashes the system.#Like the Y2K bug‚ developers thought this would be sufficient because- ideally- any software using this standard would be replaced#We've already run into problems with computers trying to calculate figures into the future beyond this point.#The date needs to be speciall handled.#So now the UNIX timestamp has been boosted up to a 64-bit integer (adding an extra binary digit).#This means it can store timestamps up to 292 billion years into the future. That's about 21 times the age of the universe.#Well. 21 times the age of the universe plus the 13.1 billion years between the birth of the universe and Jan 1 1970.
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