5 ms·

>Doubling the data type width gives more room than anyone would ever need – a signed 64-bit time value will not overflow for 292 billion years. This sentence r

>Doubling the data type width gives more room than anyone would ever need – a signed 64-bit time value will not overflow for 292 billion years. This sentence reminds me of "The last question" by Asimov. Well, it's good enough for us, but "humans" 292bi years from now will still have to deal with it.

anonporridge 5y ago
Meh. Even if the transition to a 128 bit time value takes a billion years to roll out, it's no big deal. There's no reason to think it would be drastically more challenging for whatever intelligence to deal with it then than it is now.
- virchau13 5y ago
  Yeah, but they're not going to do it 1 billion years in advance, they'll do it 2 years before :p
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    I’m sure some AI at the time will do a quick lookup of it’s global history to point back to this comment and say “see, they called it”.
    - withinboredom 5y ago
      Roko’s basilisk thanks you for your service.
    - zelon88 5y ago
      In reality, 1,000 years in the epoch will be just arbitrary. By then they might as well pick a new epoch that isn't 128 bits. What would they need to preserve that they wouldn't be able to emulate or virtualize?
      - eyelidlessness 5y ago
        At epoch 0 it was already arbitrary.
    - oh-4-fucks-sake 5y ago
      Git blaming code from billions of years ago would be hilarious. Imagine understanding the few hundred keywords in a long-lived language but not being able to understand the git commit messages.
      - Piskvorrr 5y ago
        How is that different from today? ;)
- CWuestefeld 5y ago
  One interesting idea in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky was the job of "code archaeologist". A far future society, they were saddled with ongoing maintenance of centuries-old code, and needed to be able to figure out what those historical programmers were trying to do.
  - Piskvorrr 5y ago
    Held that title (unofficially) in a company. Figuring out "what did we mean by this, twenty years ago" was already a nontrivial task, even with a theoretically similar tech stack.
beached_whale 5y ago
That depends on the granularity. If its nanoseconds, its slightly less than 600 years

anonporridge 5y ago

Meh. Even if the transition to a 128 bit time value takes a billion years to roll out, it's no big deal. There's no reason to think it would be drastically more challenging for whatever intelligence to deal with it then than it is now.

virchau13 5y ago
Yeah, but they're not going to do it 1 billion years in advance, they'll do it 2 years before :p
- Aeolun 5y ago
  I’m sure some AI at the time will do a quick lookup of it’s global history to point back to this comment and say “see, they called it”.
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    Roko’s basilisk thanks you for your service.
  - zelon88 5y ago
    In reality, 1,000 years in the epoch will be just arbitrary. By then they might as well pick a new epoch that isn't 128 bits. What would they need to preserve that they wouldn't be able to emulate or virtualize?
    - eyelidlessness 5y ago
      At epoch 0 it was already arbitrary.
  - oh-4-fucks-sake 5y ago
    Git blaming code from billions of years ago would be hilarious. Imagine understanding the few hundred keywords in a long-lived language but not being able to understand the git commit messages.
    - Piskvorrr 5y ago
      How is that different from today? ;)
CWuestefeld 5y ago
One interesting idea in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky was the job of "code archaeologist". A far future society, they were saddled with ongoing maintenance of centuries-old code, and needed to be able to figure out what those historical programmers were trying to do.
- Piskvorrr 5y ago
  Held that title (unofficially) in a company. Figuring out "what did we mean by this, twenty years ago" was already a nontrivial task, even with a theoretically similar tech stack.

beached_whale 5y ago

That depends on the granularity. If its nanoseconds, its slightly less than 600 years