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The Epochalypse Project

epochalypse-project.org

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Re: The Epochalypse Project

#61

Post by Sardtok »

rvba wrote: post #50
mkj wrote: post #42

Are they doing anything to fix it or just raising awareness? Here's an example of measuring packages that report warnings for software that has suspicious conversions. Compile with `-Wconversion` with both 32-bit and 64-bit time_t, and see what the difference is. https://github.com/mkj/yocto-y2038 That is using yocto, but you could probably do something similar with other less-embedded distros too, if you can rebuild…

It looks mostly like a project for self promotion of the two authors. Maybe they offer some consulting services. Funniest is that one of them wrote that they have "learned about it after Y2K bug". I thought one learns about this overflow in a "introduction to programming" class...

It also says nothing about a formal education, just that he has worked in IT since his teens. I didn't hear of the 2038 problem myself until the whole Y2K debacle, but then, I was in my teens at the time.

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#62

Post by phtrivier »

I witnessed my first y38 bug a couple weeks ago - just as a matter of someone doing forecasting in a system with an incorrect casting.

At least, the good part is that people will get "hunches" about y38, just like you start getting "hunches" about bugs related to locales, time zones, character encodings, currency roundings, etc...

I don't know if there are courses, books, etc... about all those matters that are definitely non "computer sciency", but occupy so much of our engineering time ?

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#63

Post by phtrivier »

sroussey wrote: post #53
Henchman21 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? I was starting my career during Y2K. It was widely regarded as a bust , and I’d anticipate people expecting the same damned thing?

It was largely regarded as a success. Why do you say a bust?

I don't know about "largely", but I can point to a least one instance where the most week know comedy show at the time in France ("Les guignols") had a bit about how the Y2K bug was a "scam" orchestrated by "Big Tech" to make people buy new computers - given that nothing terrible happened on Y2K.

The sketch was a riff about the kindergarten joke :

- why do you [insert weird action] ?

- to scare the girafes away

- but there are no girafes here

- of course, I've been [insert weird action here]

And I was a software engineering student at the time, and I tried explaining they were missing the point, but I think it will be how we're approached this time.

So, I think nothing will be done, or not enough, and bugs will happen in 12 years.

But, thankfully, all our computers will have been replaced to allow running js.

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#64

Post by phtrivier »

christophilus wrote: post #11
stuaxo wrote: post #3

(Not) Looking forward to 2038 onwards as people ignore the fact we coordinated to fix this and start saying it was all a big hoax.

Same thing happened with Y2K. You can’t let such people bother you, or you’ll be miserable.

Except "those people" are the ones who will run the USA for the foreseeable future.

Fixing Y38 will require some public spending. If "researching cancer" is not considered worthy of public spending any more, I'm curious about how the nerds will manage to justify replacing lots of embedded chips "because maths".

If it takes the usual 8 years to replace the current administration with one that accepts listening to experts, and unless big donors can make a profit by organizing the transition, we can expect serious efforts to only start around 2032 globally. No idea if that will be enough this time, we'll see...

(On the bright side, maybe they can charge customers ? That would work.)

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#65

Post by mulmen »

jmbwell wrote: post #31
jbeninger wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. My point is that the orgs paying for all these updates were mostly motivated by the vague claims of experts rather than concrete examples

It was pretty easy for orgs with affected systems to produce concrete examples for themselves. Maybe to everyone else it seemed vague, but for the people who had to deal with it, it was taken pretty seriously from top to bottom. It was thankless work that is still glossed over and waved away today, but it was all a very big deal throughout the late 90s.

> It was thankless work that is still glossed over and waved away today, but it was all a very big deal throughout the late 90s.

Mike Judge even made a movie about it! Office Space might be the most recognition turn of the millennium programmers will receive.

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#66

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #16

Telling home users to check that their existing smart devices will still work in 13 years seems like overkill. It seems unlikely that more than a tiny fraction of them will still be in use then, if any. Businesses installing new smart infrastructure and devices will need to pay attention to this, and in 10-15 years they'll need to work out what to replace, of course.

Agreed. A serious approach to this problem would be: Identify critical computers which are currently 13+ years old (most likely embedded systems). Assume that the same sorts of systems will be 13+ years old in 2038. Focus on raising awareness with that particular target audience, e.g. give talks about the 2038 problem at embedded systems conferences. Try to get it included in university curricula. Etc.

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#67

Post by panzi »

OutOfHere wrote: post #60
panzi wrote: post #8

When will milliseconds since the Unix epoch not be precisely representable in IEEE double anymore? (As it's used in JavaScript.)

Fwiw, it's much worse for 64-bit nanoseconds, running out in the year 2262 for signed, and the year 2554 for unsigned. As for who needs nanoseconds, trading systems, particle physics, and globally distributed systems do.

Which systems use a single variable for nanoseconds time? The APIs I know of all use a struct with two members, one for seconds and the other for the nanoseconds within the second.

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#68

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

luckylion wrote: post #39
mmwako wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly? asking for a friend

"You still know php4? We need someone to fix this 50000 loc file that was written in 2005. Willing to pay big money."

Wouldn't it just be a matter of recompiling as 64-bit? No need to mess with the 50000 LOC.

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#69

Post by zokier »

mkj wrote: post #42

Are they doing anything to fix it or just raising awareness? Here's an example of measuring packages that report warnings for software that has suspicious conversions. Compile with `-Wconversion` with both 32-bit and 64-bit time_t, and see what the difference is. https://github.com/mkj/yocto-y2038 That is using yocto, but you could probably do something similar with other less-embedded distros too, if you can rebuild…

btw yocto has been using 64 bit time_t since last year: https://docs.yoctoproject.org/dev/migration-guides/migration...

Re: The Epochalypse Project

#70

Post by moffkalast »

luckylion wrote: post #38
calibas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst case scenario, it bricks your device: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/36928638?pli=1 Even if the system boots properly, there's various critical systems that depend upon having the correct time. Say goodbye to things like HTTPS and SSL/TLS certificates.

Will the root-certificates still be trusted in 12 years? Will we largely use the same TLS versions? And if systems can be updated to account for that, shouldn't they also be able to be updated to deal with the timestamps limitation?

For comparison I've revived a decade old Axis PTZ camera recently and it can't be used with HTTPS because it only supports TLS 1.0 which is deprecated across the board these days lmao. The UI is so bugged out it's not possible to change the default username and password anymore.

There's two kinds of internet connected devices these days, those that keep getting updated and those that drift into incompatibility and die as the rest of the ecosystem evolves around them. If these supposed critical devices will still be in use in 12 years without any maintenance then they're unlikely to have any actual importance.

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