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Do you care about your microwave showing the correct date? Does your microwave even keep track of the date? Devices like your microwave won't magically stop wo
by anyfoo 8y ago
Do you care about your microwave showing the correct date? Does your microwave even keep track of the date?
Devices like your microwave won't magically stop working in 2038. For most non-networked and, in 2038, ancient appliances, there shouldn't be that much of a problem.
- klodolph 8y agoShouldn’t, but I have to deal with things that “shouldn’t“ happen all the time. Remember, the Zune wouldn’t boot in 2009 because 2008 was a leap year, and that wasn’t tested.
- anyfoo 8y agoYeah, but I specifically said non-networked appliances. Most microwaves I know don't even let you input the date. For those that do, and that you still want to keep in 2038, you can just enter a fake, old date. I understand that there might be some smart microwaves with Wifi and whatever (setting all sentiments about that aside), but those are not what are meant.
- c22 8y agoI can set the date on my microwave. I just set it to 2040 and it seems to be working fine, so I guess if anyone's really worried about this buy a Kenmore Elite while you still can.
- deytempo 8y agoTrying to imagine why you would want the date to be on a microwave
- opan 8y agoFirst thing that comes to mind is maybe more complicated than anything you can do, but something like running at a certain time 5 days a week to heat up a meal for your kids to eat after school while you're at work. You'd prep said meal and let it sit in there, heated right before it would've been eaten. Although there are a couple issues I can already think of. The microwave is not a fridge. This limits food that could sit there all day. Also, the kids could hit 'start' when they get in the door, so main appeal would be something cooking plus cooling enough to eat by the time they get home, or something with a long cooktime, which would maybe be mashed potatoes or something, and we're still just talking around 5 minutes most likely.
- dTal 8y agoMaybe so it can display the correct time when daylight savings rolls around? (I'm just trying to guess. Personally I think it's an absurd feature, and on the rare occasion I've had a microwave that even displayed the time, it was always wrong anyway)
- mulmen 8y agoI don't think the Zune was really a networked device. It just literally wouldn't turn on for a day. Having a date on your microwave could be useful for things like updating the clock for daylight savings time. Or it may be that the clock overflow causes the entire firmware to crash in 2038, bricking an otherwise still functioning device.
- isostatic 8y ago> updating the clock for daylight savings time That feature is unlikely to work well, tzdata is updated multiple times a year.
- berbec 8y agoHow expensive would putting a WWV shortwave receiver into a device? [1] 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWV_(radio_station)
- icebraining 8y ago"the station's future is in doubt, because it, along with WWVB and WWVH, has been recommended for defunding and elimination in the NIST's Fiscal Year 2019 budget request."
- Gibbon1 8y agoZune wouldn't boot because the real time clock keeps time in MM:DD:YY HH:MM:SS which is utterly wrong.
- exmadscientist 8y agoAnd yet, they're all that way! Hardware RTCs are horrible. (Well, almost all of them are that way. There are a few, precious few, sane parts that are just a 32-bit counter counting up at one second per second. These, of course, are rare, obscenely expensive, large, and missing useful features like trimming. Sigh.)
- Gibbon1 8y agoThe NXP Kinetis micro-controllers have a sane RTC that counts seconds as a 32 bit number and fractional 32khz ticks. Bonus survives a hardware reset. STMicro's RTC's are the usual POS everyone loathes. All the RTC IC's are also just like that.
- mulmen 8y agoI’m willing to accept “the device will function without update” and “the device will be outside its useful life in 2038” as reasons to not be concerned. I am not willing to accept “install a hot patch” as a solution unless it comes with an explanation of how the hot patch will be distributed.
- deelowe 8y agoI think most people replying haven't shopped for appliances in the past 5 years. For example, you have to choose the most basic HVAC system these days to avoid communicating systems with built in smart controls. A fair number of fridges now come with integrated screens. A lot of new homes come with ring door bells and smart security systems. Even washing machines and driers now have built in systems for notifying you when your clothes are done and other such things. Pedantics would say "well just don't buy this IOT crap," but the problem is that only the bottom line devices come this way in a lot of cases.
- stedaniels 8y agoThis is a very upper class problem. You are vastly over estimating the ratio of smart to dumb devices.
- opan 8y agoI believe it. We've seen it happen with TVs for sure.
- dmitriid 8y agoI think we're all both underestimating and overestimating the problem :) There are way more "smart" devices (devices with some kind of embedded software and clocks) than we assume, and there are way less of these devices than we fear. It's still gonna be a problem though.
- alxlaz 8y agoWhat's more, most smart devices will not last until 2038. Planned obsolescence is a standard feature of smart devices product development plans today, especially since fewer and fewer of them are doing anything without cloud integration. If this trend continues, I would bet a kidney that no smart product launched in 2025, regardless of target audience, will still be operating (and be incapable of receiving updates automatically) in 2035.
- mulmen 8y ago