4 ms·
Wait a minute - is that true lol? I vaugely remember epoch time being a 32-bit signed integer, which seemed silly to me, but did they actually use that sign pri
by hotpotamus 4y ago
Wait a minute - is that true lol? I vaugely remember epoch time being a 32-bit signed integer, which seemed silly to me, but did they actually use that sign prior to 1970?
- saghm 4y agoI'm guessing that "Unix timestamps" were not used before Unix itself became widely used, which would be after the Apollo missions
- hotpotamus 4y agoYeah, I don't know the history here, though in thinking through this, it ocurred to me that of course computers might need to represent time before 1970 for some reason, hence the sign, but of course there is still the limitation of 32 bits. Time is one of those things that seems simple, but always seems to bite you somewhere - things like leap seconds or if Juneteenth counts as a business day always seem to throw a wrench in.
- narag 4y agoNobody would consider the present as negative. Maybe he meant that previous work had to be coded as negative, after the zero was set. Or maybe it's a joke. We used to say that some guy has his ID number in roman numerals... or used spears for the matter.