this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
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[–] qjkxbmwvz@startrek.website 0 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Similar with Y2K


it was only a nothingburger because it was taken seriously, and funded well. But the narrative is sometimes, "yeah lol it was a dud."

[–] FractalsInfinite@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The question is, what will happen in 2038 when y2k happens again due to an integer overflow? People are already sounding the alarm but who knows if people will fix all of the systems before it hits.

[–] zik@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It's already been addressed in Linux - not sure about other OSes. They doubled the size of time data so now you can keep using it until after the heat death of the universe. If you're around then.

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 0 points 2 years ago

All this hysteria over nuclear weapons is overblown. We've known how to build them for 75 years yet there hasn't been a single one detonated on inhabited American soil. They're harmless

[–] Tranus@programming.dev 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Y2K specifically makes no sense though. Any reasonable way of storing a year would use a binary integer of some length (especially when you want to use as little memory as possible). The same goes for manipulations; they are faster, more memory efficient, and easier to implement in binary. With an 8-bit signed integer counting from 1900, the concerning overflows would occur in 2028, not 2000. A base 10 representation would require at least 8 bits to store a two digit number anyway. There is no advantage to a base 10 representation, and there never has been. For Y2K to have been anything more significant than a text formatting issue, a whole lot of programmers would have had to go out of their way to be really, really bad at their jobs. Also, usage of dates beyond 2000 would have increased gradually for decades leading up to it, so the idea it would be any sort of sudden catastrophe is absurd.

[–] TheOctonaut@mander.xyz 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The issue wasn't using the dates. The issue was the computer believing it was now on those dates.

I'm going to assume you aren't old enough to remember, but the "only two digits to represent the year" issue predates computers. Lots of paper forms just gave two digits. And a lot of early computer work was just digitising paper forms.

[–] Scrollone@feddit.it 0 points 2 years ago

I remember paper forms having "19__" in the year field. Good times

[–] frezik@midwest.social 0 points 2 years ago

With an 8-bit signed integer counting from 1900...

Some of the computers in question predate standardizing on 8 bits to the byte. You've got a whole post here of bad assumptions about how things worked.

I can't remember the name but I think this is some kind of paradox.

Like the preventative measures we're so effective that they created a perception that there was no risk in the first place.