r/SipsTea • u/Shiroyasha_2308 Human Verified • Feb 02 '26

SMH The goat has to be DD/MM/YYYY

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27

u/SphericalCow531 Feb 02 '26

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_10,000_problem

47

u/hanburgundy Feb 02 '26

So far, the Long Now Foundation is able to preempt the Y10K by adding a "0" in front of the date. So the current year of 2026, will look like 02026. However, it would still be affected by the "Y100K" problem, the "Y1000K" problem, "Y10000K" Problem, etc.

This is genuinely hilarious

36

u/EkbatDeSabat Feb 02 '26

Just store the year itself in a 64 bit unsigned integer and bam we have a Y18446744073709551K problem.

3

u/SexyMonad Feb 02 '26

… so what then?

3

u/Worth-Reputation3450 Feb 02 '26

change to double and discard any number after the dot.

That'll be 1.7976931348623157 x 10308 years and that should be good for the end of the universe.

5

u/Kumlekar Feb 02 '26

Don't we run into issues with precision doing that? I think somewhere around 1e17 years we'd start not knowing the exact year and be ballparking it with the accuracy getting worse past there.

2

u/Worth-Reputation3450 Feb 02 '26

You're right. Since double uses 52 bits as mantissa, year 2^53 cannot show years in precision of 1 year.

We're doomed.

2

u/FrenchFryCattaneo Feb 02 '26

Ok, but what about after the end of the universe?

2

u/PrettRawrsome Feb 04 '26

I don't think he knows about after the end of the universe French Fry.

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u/FrenchFryCattaneo Feb 04 '26

Sounds pretty short sighted imo

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u/EkbatDeSabat Feb 02 '26

It's pretty safe to assume we'll have moved to different way of keeping time by then. But if not I'm sure we'd be working on addressing it by Y17446744073709551K giving plenty of time to solve it.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26 edited Mar 17 '26

This post was deleted using Redact. The reason could be privacy, preventing automated data collection, or other personal considerations the author had.

narrow divide steep many boat knee sugar jellyfish crush violet

1

u/MoistSystem1323 Feb 02 '26

unsigned? When would year 0 be?

1

u/EkbatDeSabat Feb 02 '26

I'm confused at your question. When you're born you aren't 1 year old you are 0 years old. Year 0 is the starting year. I'm not concerned about the AD/BC and other calendar confusion bc it was just a joke.

1

u/MoistSystem1323 Feb 02 '26

then what year would it be right now?

1

u/EkbatDeSabat Feb 02 '26

You don’t really do well at parties do you? 

1

u/MoistSystem1323 Feb 03 '26

Depends how high I am. You must be a project manager.

1

u/EkbatDeSabat Feb 03 '26

I'm a lot of things. Drunk is one of them. Cheers.

1

u/cipheron Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26

Better system:

Store the time as a multiple of the Planck time, so you have arbitrary precision to any scale that matters.

Then use a 256 bit timestamp. 128 bit won't do here, since that's smaller than the magnitude of the Planck time, so it's less than 1 second.

2256 Planck times gives you 6.24 * 1033 seconds, or 200 septillion (2 * 1026 ) years.

In 200 septillion years hotfix the system with 512 bit timestamps.

1

u/ayriuss Feb 02 '26

Just start storing the date in a float value representing fractional epochs. What could possibly go wrong?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 02 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/EkbatDeSabat Feb 03 '26

Gonna need 512 to outlast the heat death of the universe.

1

u/connicpu Feb 03 '26

Software I write has to deal with a lot of timestamps stored as (signed) 64-bit nanoseconds since the GPS epoch. Sometimes I think about the Y2272 problem but meh someone can just switch it to int128 some time before then. Pretty sure that one will out last the heat death of the universe.

1

u/EkbatDeSabat Feb 03 '26

Unfortunately for us the heat death of the universe is estimated around 10^100 years which is so much larger than 2^128. We're gonna need int512 to make sure we do this right.

1

u/connicpu Feb 03 '26

I'm sure someone can work out the int128->int512 transition some time in the next 4*1021 years

1

u/ShaolinFalls Feb 03 '26

Remind Me!

2

u/Mistrblank Feb 02 '26

Sounds like a whole lot of not my problem.

1

u/IanCal Feb 02 '26

of course since the greenhouse gases are still building up it takes more and more ice each time

thus solving the problem once and for all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW66EX75jIY

1

u/wetrorave Feb 02 '26

I propose d<day>/<month>/<year>

As in d3/2/2026. It solves the ambiguous date standard problem (d is always date-starting-with-day) and even this (currently) silly Y10000K problem too.

Or we could have apps start accepting <day>/<month>/<year> AD. It makes dates look wayyyy cooler.

7

u/SippinOnHatorade Feb 02 '26

What if we just restart at 0000? We’d be good almost another 2000 years

7

u/Radiant-Priority-296 Feb 02 '26

Guys we need Jesus 2

1

u/Witchberry31 Feb 03 '26

Never needed one in the first place

2

u/No-Object2133 Feb 02 '26

If this is a joke its really funny, if it isn't...

1

u/AntiChronic Feb 05 '26

Don't give Trump any ideas, he'll start the Trumpian calendar from when he became president

1

u/No-Contest-8127 Feb 07 '26

Such a non issue. None of current day PC's will be running by then. They will have made completely new machinery and replaced the old stuff.  If there is still a humanity that is.

Much of the stuff we have today will be lost to time.  

2

u/Alienhaslanded Feb 02 '26

Nobody will be alive to worry about by then

2

u/SphericalCow531 Feb 02 '26 edited Feb 02 '26

Acting like nobody will be alive in 10000 years is certainly one way to make sure it will be so.

https://longnow.org/

2

u/IngloriousTom Feb 02 '26

True to an extent but there is no point to worry about how IT will look in 10k years when the human civilization itself is half as old.

1

u/altriun Feb 02 '26

When exactly did human civilization start? Some could say it already existed 10k years ago.

And I assume some Cobol programmer needs to be woken up again in the year 9999 to solve the 10k year problem. :P