7 ms·

I remember staying up late (UK) at the Billenium (2:46 AM Sunday Sep 9th 2001), thinking that was bound to be the most newsworthy event of the week, watching th

I remember staying up late (UK) at the Billenium (2:46 AM Sunday Sep 9th 2001), thinking that was bound to be the most newsworthy event of the week, watching the seconds tick past on a "while(sleep 1); do date" loop, with slashdot in one window, IRC in another, all running on an enlightenment window manager. 500M seconds later I was in Washington DC in a hotel, watching it tick up on an rxvt on my laptop, with HN in a window. Who knows where I'll be in 2033, hopefully not in Europe as I'll be too old for night shifts, but wherever I am, I suspect it will have a bash prompt.

jrimbault 6y ago
(guenine curiosity) Why do you wait for these events ? Myself I consider these to be complete non-events.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  For the same reason people wait for midnight on new year. It's an arbitrary thing people do for fun.
- slim 6y ago
  it's like any holyday, it's a rendezvous for the community that recognizes it. it strengthens the social bonds
- drvdevd 6y ago
  You got downvoted for this question but it’s such a great question in this context because like the UNIX epoch, the answer is arbitrary :) Incidentally, I guess the windows/NT epoch started in 1601.
dripton 6y ago
A former employer's telephony software had a 9-character intstring field for the Unix timestamp, so there was a bug when it rolled over to 1000000000 in 2001. Pretty rare, I think. Unix timestamps back then were usually 32-bit ints, so good until 2038. And hopefully they'll be 64 bits everywhere that matters well before 2038.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Or unsigned 32 bits, which takes us to 2106. Almost all things that have a timestamp leave you in no doubt which 136-year period they were taken in. For those, 32 bits is plenty.
  - MatthiasWandel 6y ago
    Making time an unsigned 32 would break any code that computes a difference of times.
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      Not really. Addition and subtraction don't care about unsigned vs signed status, because overflow is identitcal in both cases. Think of an odometer for a car with 999999 as its max number. 999,999 is equivalent to -1. So 500 + 999999 == 499 on the odometer. A 32-bit register is simply a binary odometer, so the above concept happens with bits. In "signed int", we print the number "999999" as "-1". With "unsigned int", we print the number "999999" as "999999". They are one-and-the-same. The only difference is your print() function. ----- Multiplication and division change however. Your compiler tracks signed/unsigned status for idiv vs div, or mul vs imul instructions. -------- With that being said: I think 64-bits is fine. Most computers these days are 64-bits, and those 4-extra bytes aren't very costly. Standard compression algorithms, like GZip, do a good job of finding those redundant bits and shrinking things down.
      - shakna 6y ago
        > Addition and subtraction don't care about unsigned vs signed status, because overflow is identitcal in both cases. Except signed overflow invoking Undefined Behaviour in any C compiler, whereas unsigned overflow does not. This invokes undefined behaviour: foo(int x) { return x + 1 > x; }
        enedil 6y ago
        We're not talking about C, were talking about how it works on the computers.
lozf 6y ago
> a "while(sleep 1); do date" loop, There's always "xclock -d -update 1 -strftime %s -face Inconsolata-190:bold "
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Upvoting for Inconsolata.
- crooked-v 6y ago
  You could at least give the event some proper gravitas by using Comic Sans instead.
- MayeulC 6y ago
  Why not just `watch date` ?
  - codemarauder 6y ago
    watch updates every 2 seconds by default. `watch -n1 date` will update every second.
- bdcravens 6y ago
  > I remember staying up late (UK) at the Billenium (2:46 AM Sunday Sep 9th 2001) Inconsolata wasn't released until 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata
quicklime 6y ago
Hah nice, I remember doing that too! At the time I thought it was important to keep the irc log, which I've just dug up and thrown up on pastebin. I don't actually remember which network this was (EFNet maybe?) > 03:46:49 -crier- THE BILLENNIUM HAS ARRIVED!!!!! Uh, you might want to play auldlangsyne.wav. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY! more at https://pastebin.com/71H7eR8r https://pastebin.com/71H7eR8r For some reason the billennium arrives at 3:46:49, which doesn't make sense - I wasn't in UTC+2, and anyway this should've been at 01:46:40am UTC (40 seconds past the minute, not 49 seconds). Most likely reason is simply that my local machine's clock was wrong.
- ramshorns 6y ago
  Sounds a bit like leap seconds, except there were 22 leap seconds before 2001.
throw_away 6y ago
I remember holding a similar billionth second party in Soda Hall (Wozniak Lounge) at Berkeley as an undergrad. Never realized how close that was before 9/11.
drvdevd 6y ago
I’m currently on an iPhone 7S. I’ve got a mosh session open to a remote raspberry pi 4B (time looks right), bash shell, “while(sleep 1); do date +%s”, running in Blink SSH while I read HN cause I couldn’t sleep. Have an alarm set for 12:26 UTC so I can grab that screenshot. Following along with you :)

jrimbault 6y ago

(guenine curiosity) Why do you wait for these events ? Myself I consider these to be complete non-events.

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
For the same reason people wait for midnight on new year. It's an arbitrary thing people do for fun.
slim 6y ago
it's like any holyday, it's a rendezvous for the community that recognizes it. it strengthens the social bonds
drvdevd 6y ago
You got downvoted for this question but it’s such a great question in this context because like the UNIX epoch, the answer is arbitrary :) Incidentally, I guess the windows/NT epoch started in 1601.

dripton 6y ago

A former employer's telephony software had a 9-character intstring field for the Unix timestamp, so there was a bug when it rolled over to 1000000000 in 2001. Pretty rare, I think. Unix timestamps back then were usually 32-bit ints, so good until 2038. And hopefully they'll be 64 bits everywhere that matters well before 2038.

ncmncm 6y ago
Or unsigned 32 bits, which takes us to 2106. Almost all things that have a timestamp leave you in no doubt which 136-year period they were taken in. For those, 32 bits is plenty.
- MatthiasWandel 6y ago
  Making time an unsigned 32 would break any code that computes a difference of times.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    Not really. Addition and subtraction don't care about unsigned vs signed status, because overflow is identitcal in both cases. Think of an odometer for a car with 999999 as its max number. 999,999 is equivalent to -1. So 500 + 999999 == 499 on the odometer. A 32-bit register is simply a binary odometer, so the above concept happens with bits. In "signed int", we print the number "999999" as "-1". With "unsigned int", we print the number "999999" as "999999". They are one-and-the-same. The only difference is your print() function. ----- Multiplication and division change however. Your compiler tracks signed/unsigned status for idiv vs div, or mul vs imul instructions. -------- With that being said: I think 64-bits is fine. Most computers these days are 64-bits, and those 4-extra bytes aren't very costly. Standard compression algorithms, like GZip, do a good job of finding those redundant bits and shrinking things down.
    - shakna 6y ago
      > Addition and subtraction don't care about unsigned vs signed status, because overflow is identitcal in both cases. Except signed overflow invoking Undefined Behaviour in any C compiler, whereas unsigned overflow does not. This invokes undefined behaviour: foo(int x) { return x + 1 > x; }
      - enedil 6y ago
        We're not talking about C, were talking about how it works on the computers.

lozf 6y ago

> a "while(sleep 1); do date" loop, There's always "xclock -d -update 1 -strftime %s -face Inconsolata-190:bold "

ncmncm 6y ago
Upvoting for Inconsolata.
crooked-v 6y ago
You could at least give the event some proper gravitas by using Comic Sans instead.
MayeulC 6y ago
Why not just `watch date` ?
- codemarauder 6y ago
  watch updates every 2 seconds by default. `watch -n1 date` will update every second.
bdcravens 6y ago
> I remember staying up late (UK) at the Billenium (2:46 AM Sunday Sep 9th 2001) Inconsolata wasn't released until 2006. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconsolata

quicklime 6y ago

Hah nice, I remember doing that too! At the time I thought it was important to keep the irc log, which I've just dug up and thrown up on pastebin. I don't actually remember which network this was (EFNet maybe?) > 03:46:49 -crier- THE BILLENNIUM HAS ARRIVED!!!!! Uh, you might want to play auldlangsyne.wav. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY! more at https://pastebin.com/71H7eR8r https://pastebin.com/71H7eR8r For some reason the billennium arrives at 3:46:49, which doesn't make sense - I wasn't in UTC+2, and anyway this should've been at 01:46:40am UTC (40 seconds past the minute, not 49 seconds). Most likely reason is simply that my local machine's clock was wrong.

ramshorns 6y ago
Sounds a bit like leap seconds, except there were 22 leap seconds before 2001.

throw_away 6y ago

I remember holding a similar billionth second party in Soda Hall (Wozniak Lounge) at Berkeley as an undergrad. Never realized how close that was before 9/11.

drvdevd 6y ago

I’m currently on an iPhone 7S. I’ve got a mosh session open to a remote raspberry pi 4B (time looks right), bash shell, “while(sleep 1); do date +%s”, running in Blink SSH while I read HN cause I couldn’t sleep. Have an alarm set for 12:26 UTC so I can grab that screenshot. Following along with you :)