6 ms·

From their about page: > The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about

From their about page: > The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years.

listenallyall 6y ago
Huh? They haven't solved it, anymore than reading a thermometer "is to solve" climate change. No need to repeat propaganda.
taneq 6y ago
Still only pushes the problem back for an additional 100k years. If they were really serious they’d use prefix codes. :P
- posnet 6y ago
  I am more worried about what we will do when we run out of 64 bit seconds for unix time. 500 billion years is barely half way through the star forming age of the universe.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    Well, timespec does have 34 bits it's not using...
- Arcorann 6y ago
  RFC 2550 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2550 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2550) remains one of my favourite April Fools' RFCs. It even has support for negative dates.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    That seems like a needlessly complex way to store datetime Dark era starts in 10^106 years time, or about 10^157 plank times, so any time can be respresented in 20 bytes. Just 44 bytes will allow encoding of any point in spacetime, and they are using far more than that to simply encode years.
    - hexane360 6y ago
      The RFC admits that and then says: >2.4.2 Transcending Environmental Considerations >However, we might get lucky. So, Y10K dates are able to represent any possible time without any limits to their range either in the past or future.
thanatropism 6y ago
But who currently says that Rome fell in the year 0476?
- ken 6y ago
  The Romans didn't have computers, so they didn't worry bout using only 3-digit years back then. And today, looking back, using fewer digits than available doesn't cause any problem. There's only an issue going forward, when more digits are needed, which the Long Now is trying to mitigate (8000 years early).
  - philipswood 6y ago
    Precient Romans: didn't use a digit based system. MIM -> MM What problem?
  - alvarelle 6y ago
    Romans needed many more than 3 "digit" (or rather letter) to represent this date. Also, the AD system (counting the year since the birth of Jesus Christ) was introduced much later.
ptr 6y ago
But aren't they running the risk of computers treating these as octal numbers instead?

From their about page: > The Long Now Foundation uses five-digit dates, the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years.

listenallyall 6y ago

Huh? They haven't solved it, anymore than reading a thermometer "is to solve" climate change. No need to repeat propaganda.

taneq 6y ago

Still only pushes the problem back for an additional 100k years. If they were really serious they’d use prefix codes. :P

posnet 6y ago
I am more worried about what we will do when we run out of 64 bit seconds for unix time. 500 billion years is barely half way through the star forming age of the universe.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Well, timespec does have 34 bits it's not using...
Arcorann 6y ago
RFC 2550 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2550 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2550) remains one of my favourite April Fools' RFCs. It even has support for negative dates.
- iso1210 6y ago
  That seems like a needlessly complex way to store datetime Dark era starts in 10^106 years time, or about 10^157 plank times, so any time can be respresented in 20 bytes. Just 44 bytes will allow encoding of any point in spacetime, and they are using far more than that to simply encode years.
  - hexane360 6y ago
    The RFC admits that and then says: >2.4.2 Transcending Environmental Considerations >However, we might get lucky. So, Y10K dates are able to represent any possible time without any limits to their range either in the past or future.

thanatropism 6y ago

But who currently says that Rome fell in the year 0476?

ken 6y ago
The Romans didn't have computers, so they didn't worry bout using only 3-digit years back then. And today, looking back, using fewer digits than available doesn't cause any problem. There's only an issue going forward, when more digits are needed, which the Long Now is trying to mitigate (8000 years early).
- philipswood 6y ago
  Precient Romans: didn't use a digit based system. MIM -> MM What problem?
- alvarelle 6y ago
  Romans needed many more than 3 "digit" (or rather letter) to represent this date. Also, the AD system (counting the year since the birth of Jesus Christ) was introduced much later.

ptr 6y ago

But aren't they running the risk of computers treating these as octal numbers instead?