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The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

unixtimestamp.com

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Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#111

Post by ncmncm »

dripton wrote: post #98
iso1210 wrote: post #59

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 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.

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.

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#112

Post by crehn »

moralestapia wrote: post #54
fred256 wrote: post #41

I hope you are running an up-to-date Splunk version: Beginning on September 13, 2020 at 12:26:39 PM Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), un-patched Splunk platform instances will be unable to recognize timestamps from events with dates that are based on Unix time, due to incorrect parsing of timestamp data. https://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/latest/ReleaseN...

I'm always left wondering how something like this could happen. I kind of get Y2K and stuff like overflows ... but this one? Really? Did someone put a regex like /^15... to "match" dates?

And how would such a solution not be immediately thrown out during code review?

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#113

Post by bitpow »

sltkr wrote: post #89
dylan604 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a second just how long light takes to travel 299,792,458 m? Also, "since Unix time was created before leap seconds." I found this interesting for the simple reason I've never spent any time thinking about Epoch vs Leap Second histories.

Yes, but the point is that the UNIX timestamp doesn't count the the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970. It counts 86400 seconds per day, regardless of how many seconds the day actually has (which can vary due to leap seconds).

Is this accurate though? Isn’t the number of seconds since 1970 absolute, and it’s up to the library generating the Gregorian date to take into account leap seconds? I suppose if these libraries are not taking into account leap seconds, then the actual rollover will be a few seconds earlier (or later?) than what we think.

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#114

Post by lozf »

iso1210 wrote: post #59

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 "while(sleep 1); do date" loop,

There's always "xclock -d -update 1 -strftime %s -face Inconsolata-190:bold "

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#115

Post by ncmncm »

moonbug wrote: post #92
thinkmassive wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vernor Vinge sounds like an intriguing author! “Most years, since its inception in 1999, Vinge has been on the Free Software Foundation's selection committee for their Award for the Advancement of Free Software.”[0] Since “A Deepness in the Sky” was written in 1999 as a prequel to “A Fire Upon the Deep” (from 1992), which do you recommend to read first? [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernor_Vinge

Fire, then Deepness, then stop.

Or Fire, then The Peace War. Maybe dip into True Names, followed by Shockwave Rider by John Brunner.

Many people didn't like Deepness much. But the sequel to Fire, Children of the Sky, was interesting.

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#116

Post by ncmncm »

kazagistar wrote: post #80
komali2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but if we're going to use a "number of seconds since ..." Type system like Unix time, SOMEONE has to be the origin point, so I don't think this is a knock against Unix time.

Its unfortunate to use an accelerating reference (earth rotating sun, sun rotating galaxy, galaxy intermixing with andromeda) because it requires you to awkwardly keep track of the astronomy of earth for timekeeping. Instead, you would want a standardized reference time frame, say, "unix time assuming earth in 1970 never experienced any acceleratiom or dilation" and then everyone, including earth people, would track…

Quasar time plus position, motion vector, and acceleration vector should be a good enough reference for anybody.

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#117

Post by Drdrdrq »

sltkr wrote: post #89
dylan604 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a second just how long light takes to travel 299,792,458 m? Also, "since Unix time was created before leap seconds." I found this interesting for the simple reason I've never spent any time thinking about Epoch vs Leap Second histories.

Yes, but the point is that the UNIX timestamp doesn't count the the number of seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970. It counts 86400 seconds per day, regardless of how many seconds the day actually has (which can vary due to leap seconds).

IIUC unix timestamp simply counts seconds (well defined interval of time) from epoch onwards. It is then up to different calendars to interpret this number as a given day / hour /... This is the beauty of it - it is always an accurate (well, at low speeds at least ;) ) measure of time. In other words, no, some days might not last 86400 seconds.

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#118

Post by ncmncm »

secondraft wrote: post #30
browserface wrote: post #18

The crazy thing is there has only been 1.6 billion seconds since 1970. There have been more babies since 1970 than there have been seconds. Which is crazy. Back then, Earth's population was on 3.7 billion. Now it's 7.8 billion. That means that (ignoring deaths) 2.5 babies have been born for each unix second. Or roughly 1 baby every 400 milliseconds.

According to https://ourworldindata.org/peak-child (2018) the number of children in the world is plateauing ("very close to a long flat peak") meaning that the total number of children may stay constant in the future.

Except in Africa. It is pretty important to everyone to increase the median wealth of people in Africa.

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#119

Post by Drdrdrq »

lukebennett wrote: post #73
moralestapia wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always left wondering how something like this could happen. I kind of get Y2K and stuff like overflows ... but this one? Really? Did someone put a regex like /^15... to "match" dates?

Yep, that's exactly what Splunk have done - scroll down the release notes linked to by the grandparent and the faulty regex is shown. What's super daft is the proposed fix is only a further sticking plaster, adding support for the 16... range (and the 2020s decade) rather than all future dates. So in a couple of years a further patch will be needed...

To fix the fire this is probably the best solution because the risk of unintended side effects is very low. I would just hope it is then followed by a proper fix.

Re: The Unix timestamp will begin with 16 this Sunday

#120

Post by mindcrime »

ncmncm wrote: post #115
moonbug wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fire, then Deepness, then stop.

Or Fire , then The Peace War . Maybe dip into True Names , followed by Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. Many people didn't like Deepness much. But the sequel to Fire, Children of the Sky , was interesting.

In either case, definitely read The Shockwave Rider by Brunner.
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