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| Y2K and 2038 |
 Title text: It's taken me Ϫ years, but I've finally finished rebuilding all my software to use 33-bit signed ints. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a Y2K-BRICKED BOT (MADE JAN 1, 1970). Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
The Y2K bug, or more formally, the year 2000 problem, was the computer errors caused by two digit software representations of calendar years incorrectly handling the year 2000, such as by treating it as 1900 or 19100. The year 2038 problem is a similar issue with timestamps in Unix time format, which will overflow their signed 32-bit binary representation on January 19, 2038.
While initial estimates were that the Y2K problem would require about half a trillion dollars to address, there was widespread recognition of its potential severity several years in advance. Concerted efforts among organizations including computer and software manufacturers and their corporate and government users reflected unprecedented cooperation, testing, and enhancement of affected systems costing substantially less than the early estimates. A major problem had struck IBM mainframes on and after August 16, 1972 (9999 days before January 1, 2000) that caused magnetic tapes that were supposed to be marked "keep forever" instead be marked "may be recycled now."[actual citation needed] But on New Year's Day 2000, few major errors actually occurred. Those that did usually did not disrupt essential processes or cause serious problems, and the few of them that did were usually addressed in days to weeks. The software code reviews involved allowed correcting other errors and providing various enhancements which often made up at least in part for the the cost of correcting the date bug.
It is unclear whether the 2038 problem will be addressed as effectively in time, but documented experience with the Y2K bug and increased software modularity and access to source code has allowed many otherwise vulnerable systems to already upgrade to wider timestamp and date formats, so there is reason to believe that it may be even less consequential and expensive. The 2038 problem has been previously mentioned in 607: 2038 and 887: Future Timeline.
The caption in this comic provides a punchline: everyone should have completed their "Y2K recovery" as it has been a full 22 years since the year 2000. It is highly unlikely that there are more than a very few consequential older systems that still suffer from this bug, and systems built since already handle years after 1999 correctly.
The title text refers to replacing the 32-bit signed Unix time format with a hypothetical new 33-bit signed integer time and date format, which is very unlikely as almost all contemporary computer data structure formats are allocated no more finely than in 8-bit bytes. Taking 20 years to develop and implement such a format is not entirely counterproductive, as it would add another 68 years of capability, but it is far more counterproductive than upgrading to the widely available and supported 64-bit Unix time replacement format and software compatibility libraries.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
[A timeline rectangle with 37 short dividing lines between the two ends, defining it into 38 minor sections, with the label "2000" above, associated with the leftmost edge, "2038" associated with the rightmost edge and "2019" directly over the centremost division that starts the section which covers that year, which is also extended to form a dotted line divided the whole height of the timeline into two equal 19-section halves. The left half has the label "Recovering from the Y2K bug" and the right half is labeled "Preparing for the 2038 bug". A triangular arrowhead labeled "Now" is also above indicating a rough position most of the way through the section that would represent the year 2022.]
[Caption:] Reminder: By now you should have finished your Y2K recovery and be several years into 2038 preparation.
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