4 ms·

Can someone explain to me the reason for including a leading zero? Is that just a stylist choice of the long now foundation?

mc32 7y ago
I had the same thought, but I read though a few articles and I only saw it there. Maybe it's a "thing" for some of their submissions, but yeah it takes a lot of getting used to. That said, they do that because it's _longnow_
YokoZar 7y ago
"Long term thinking" is the whole point of this website, so it's a stylistic choice meant to make you think about the year 10000
- projektfu 7y ago
  ... just to find out that by that time we've gone back to starting the epoch at the beginning of the emperor's reign.
zaphoyd 7y ago
The goal is awareness of the Y10K problem, and generally awareness of long term thinking and planning.
sbuttgereit 7y ago
It's an emphasis on their point to think in long periods of time. Remember that their (I believe) first big public splash was the 10,000 year clock project (http://longnow.org/clock http://longnow.org/clock). So in their representation of the year... they're really just playing the long game and avoiding the inevitable year 10,000 problem.... ... I wonder if all those COBOL systems still running will have the developers then to deal with the problem....
listenallyall 7y ago
Obviously, it's a constant reminder that they think in the tens of thousands of years. Does it come across as kind of arrogant? Yes. Like the PhD who will go out of his way to correct you if you address him as Mr., not Dr.
ddeville 7y ago
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 7y ago
  Huh? They haven't solved it, anymore than reading a thermometer "is to solve" climate change. No need to repeat propaganda.
- taneq 7y ago
  Still only pushes the problem back for an additional 100k years. If they were really serious they’d use prefix codes. :P
  - posnet 7y 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 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - Dylan16807 7y ago
      Well, timespec does have 34 bits it's not using...
  - Arcorann 7y 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.

mc32 7y ago

I had the same thought, but I read though a few articles and I only saw it there. Maybe it's a "thing" for some of their submissions, but yeah it takes a lot of getting used to. That said, they do that because it's _longnow_

YokoZar 7y ago

"Long term thinking" is the whole point of this website, so it's a stylistic choice meant to make you think about the year 10000

projektfu 7y ago
... just to find out that by that time we've gone back to starting the epoch at the beginning of the emperor's reign.

zaphoyd 7y ago

The goal is awareness of the Y10K problem, and generally awareness of long term thinking and planning.

sbuttgereit 7y ago

It's an emphasis on their point to think in long periods of time. Remember that their (I believe) first big public splash was the 10,000 year clock project (http://longnow.org/clock http://longnow.org/clock). So in their representation of the year... they're really just playing the long game and avoiding the inevitable year 10,000 problem.... ... I wonder if all those COBOL systems still running will have the developers then to deal with the problem....

listenallyall 7y ago

Obviously, it's a constant reminder that they think in the tens of thousands of years. Does it come across as kind of arrogant? Yes. Like the PhD who will go out of his way to correct you if you address him as Mr., not Dr.

ddeville 7y ago

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 7y ago
Huh? They haven't solved it, anymore than reading a thermometer "is to solve" climate change. No need to repeat propaganda.
taneq 7y ago
Still only pushes the problem back for an additional 100k years. If they were really serious they’d use prefix codes. :P
- posnet 7y 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 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    Well, timespec does have 34 bits it's not using...
- Arcorann 7y 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.