No, this is not an April Fool's joke! It is simply the observation that many programs and operating systems use a timestamp—or, more precisely, a duration—calculated as the number of seconds elapsed since midnight on January 1st, 1970. This number, represented in binary, is encoded as a 32-bit signed integer. The largest value in this representation is 01111111 11111111 11111111 11111111; the next is 10000000 00000000 00000000 00000000, corresponding to December 13, 1901, at 8:45:52 p.m.!
Most computer systems designed since the beginning of the 21st century use 64-bit encoding, pushing the deadline back several hundred billion years, while scientists estimate that the Earth, along with the Sun, will disappear within 4 billion years… This effectively eliminates the problem. But many systems designed earlier—or using layers designed earlier—still run on 32-bit architectures. The problem is thought to be far more difficult to solve than the Y2K bug, which cost several hundred billion euros worldwide. There is still time to deal with this one—but only if we start paying attention to it!
