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Showing posts from June, 2017

The Star Trek stardate for a better UNIX timestamp

A large body of software will break in unusual ways on January 19, 2038. This is known as the UNIX 32-bit timestamp bug. However, UNIX-style timestamps are used in all OSes, so it is a global phenomenon and a poorly designed software defect. 64-bit timestamps merely extend the problems presented by 32-bit timestamps to identify what day it is (i.e. what the end-user actually cares about). Perhaps there is a better timestamp we should have been using all along: Star Trek stardates. Formal representations: 32-bit: 1 sign bit + 14 bit "day" + 17 bit percentage 64-bit: 1 sign bit + 31 bit "day" + 32 bit percentage If we were using Star Trek-style stardates for date/time storage, our timestamps would have better precision and the upcoming 32-bit software problems would have happened early 2014 instead of waiting until 2038 for the breakages to happen. That is, force the people who created the problem to clean up their mess instead of letting them retire an