4 ms·
Any time constant will be exceeded someday. An impossibly short period of time after the heat death of the universe on a system that shouldn’t even exist: ERRO
by bombcar 7mo ago
Any time constant will be exceeded someday.
An impossibly short period of time after the heat death of the universe on a system that shouldn’t even exist: ERROR TIME_TEST FAILURE
- unkl_ 7mo agoPosted on HN in 2126: 100 years ago, someone wrote a test for servo that included an expiry in 2126
- yetihehe 7mo agoNow I feel bad for using (system foundation timestamp)+100 years as end of "forever" ownership relations in one of my systems. Looking now, it's only 89 years left. I think I should use nulls instead.
- prerok 7mo agoWell, it won't be your problem /j
- bombcar 7mo agohttps://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-388 https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-388 - they wanted to use a 64 bit int for the tick count, but Lua doesn't have one; so they used the one available and worked out when it would lose precision. "More than 2 million years seems to be enough for us to not be around any more when the bug reports start appearing."
- prerok 7mo agoI once saw a pop-up in a game saying something along the lines of: wow, it's 10 years later and this game is still being played! Made me laugh out loud, nice little easter egg. Sadly, I don't recall which game it was. Maybe SpaceChem?
- jerf 7mo agoI've got some tests in active code bases that are using the end of 32-bit Unix time as "we'll never get there". That's not because the devs were lazy, these tests date from when that was the best they could possibly do. They're on track to be cycled out well before then (hopefully this year), so, hopefully, they'll be right that their code "won't get there"... but then there's the testing and code that assumes this that I don't know about that may still be a problem. "End of Unix time" is under 12 years now, so, a bit longer than the time frame of this test, but we're coming up on it.
- bombcar 7mo agoI seem to recall much smugness on Slashdot around the "idiot winblows users limited by DOS y2k" and how the time_t was "so much better". Even then a few were prophesying that it would come bite us eventually ...
- fny 7mo agoWho here remembers the fud of Y2K?
- NetOpWibby 7mo agoExciting times with an anticlimactic end; I was in middle school, relishing the chaos of the adult world.
- LocalPCGuy 7mo agoWhile there was a lot of FUD in the media, there were also a lot of scenarios that were actually possible but were averted due to a LOT of work and attention ahead of time. It should be looked at, IMO, as a success of communication, warnings, and a lot of effort that nothing of major significance happened.
- tejohnso 7mo agoYes, Y2K is a success story, similar to the alert and response related to ozone layer and CFCs. Dissimilar to the global climate catastrophe, unfortunately. --- The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/74/12/812/7808595 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/74/12/812/780859... "Tragically, we are failing to avoid serious impacts" "We have now brought the planet into climatic conditions never witnessed by us or our prehistoric relatives within our genus, Homo" "Despite six IPCC reports, 28 COP meetings, hundreds of other reports, and tens of thousands of scientific papers, the world has made only very minor headway on climate change" "projections paint a bleak picture of the future, with many scientists envisioning widespread famines, conflicts, mass migration, and increasing extreme weather that will surpass anything witnessed thus far, posing catastrophic consequences for both humanity and the biosphere"
- timschmidt 7mo agoI don't mean to lessen the impact of that statement. I think climate change is a serious problem. But also most of the geologic time that genus Homo has existed, Earth has been in an ice age. Much of which we'd consider a "snowball Earth". The last warm interglacial period, the Eemian, was 120,000 years ago.
- tacostakohashi 7mo agoYep - that's why I always choose my time constants to be during years when I will be retired, or possibly dead. If you're going to kick the can down the road, why not kick it pretty far?
- dlcarrier 7mo agoMost updates to avoid the 2038 problem really just delay it until 10889. Maybe in eight in a half millennia, they will have figured out something that lasts longer.
- delecti 7mo agoHow is 10889 a problem? I thought the move to 64 bit added billions of years.
- fc417fc802 7mo agoDepends on the unit and how you interpret the bits. Nanoseconds as a signed integer "only" make it about 300 years while seconds as a 64 bit IEEE float enjoy integral precision somewhere out past 250 million years (but if you need microsecond precision then it's the same number but as years instead of mega years).
- dlcarrier 7mo agoIt's for 48-bit timestamps.
- tclancy 7mo agoThis is why I always use the year 2525. Not my problem, assuming man is still alive.