What is the Year 2038 problem?

really a celebration. Yeah, you know that song came out in I know that, Okay, off the top of my head. That's a long time ago. Yeah, well, you know that was so twentieth century. We're talking. Yeah, we're talking about twenty first century. Here. We actually have a topic that is comes to us courtesy of a little listener mail. This listen mail comes from Todd, and Todd says, Hi, there, tech stuff. My name is Todd, and I live in Adelaide, Australia.

At school we were talking about what would have happened if Y two K did go ahead. Here's a thing, Todd. Why two K did go ahead? Otherwise we wouldn't be in two thousand at nine. I think he's talking about the computer problem. My bad. Let me just finish the email. Then then one of my friends brought up something about the year thirty eight. It happens to thirty two bit systems. But that's as far as I know. Actually, Todd is going to happen to everybody, because this goes back to

the similar problem before. He's talking about a computer. Oh right, I'm sorry, I'm being kind of picky. Uh so I would like more information or, if possible, a podcast. Thanks Todd, Todd, I'm really not making fun of you. I'm just being kind of a jerk face right now. That's me being a jerk face, not you. So, but yes, the problem, as it is known, is somewhat similar to the Y two K problem. So let's start by talking about the Y two KVE problem, because that's that's easy to grasp.

It's a pretty easy, simple problem. Okay, So so here's here's what the deal was with the Y two k problem. The deal was that, in several lines of code for various applications, programmers got a little lazy when they were filling out the space for a year, and they only allowed two digits to express the year, thinking well, that's

more than enough. Because by the time the year two thousand rolls around, which would be zero zero if you're if you're designating in two digits, by the time that rolls around, will be on totally different computer programs, totally different systems. Besides, this is just a line of code. I can change it later, nothing to worry about. Let's just PLoP it in there. It'll save me time. I

don't have to worry about two extra digits. See. The thing is, if it had reached zero zero, it still would have assumed that the first two digits would be ninety, So instead of rolling over from, it would have rolled over from thus turning your computer or other device us into a time traveling machine. You know. And if you don't like it, you can get in your horse and buggy and you can see the construction of the railways from sea to shining Sea. Actually, that's not what would happen.

It would here. Here's the thing is that the cause serious problems. Well, the media picked this up, and yeah, here's the real problem. The media picked this up and began to proclaim a an era of chaos would soon descend upon us, thrusting us back into the Stone Age. Satellites would fall from the sky planes would plummet to the ground, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, housewives

would be eaten bite toasters. It was just gonna be horrible, and most of us were wondering exactly how bad this

was going to be. I mean, really, they were talking about this affecting microchips that were in everything from computers and supercomputers, which you would expect to seemingly innocent devices like smoke detectors, and you really I begin to begin to envision something like the realization of the movie Maximum Overdrive, which was based off Stephen Kings screenplay and is absolutely terrible don't watch it, but the machine live and attack people.

So so, based upon the media's reports, it sounded like we were all going to be destined to a fiery, nasty death at the hands of our electronics. And the funny the thing that that kind of got me was when when it was all over with, you know, January second on two thousand, everybody was going, ah, see, I knew there was not going to be any big deal, But actually there would have been if people hadn't been working on fixing it over that you know, year to

two years beforehand. There are a lot of things that had to be correct. There were a lot of people who went in and would change lines of code so that they so that the year would roll over properly, and that you know, we're talking about going through hundreds and hundreds of thousands of lines of code for some of these applications. And I mean, I think it probably

was overhyped by the media. Yes, and I'm sure, I'm sure there were several systems out there that were not fixed that did roll over to zero zero and nothing happened, because really, the only thing that would happen is if if the systems depended upon the date. Most systems don't depend upon the date. They depend upon just keeping time like they're they're they're counting time in a matter of clicks or seconds or whatever. Two o seven am. It's two oh seven am, no matter what the years. Yeah,

they don't. It's not dependent upon the date. Now, if you have a calendar software and you're dating system in the code was two digits long, yes, that's gonna be a problem because of anything that you would schedule for the the week following the last week of ninety nine would seem to appear in ninet and that that turns out to be an issue for most of us UM, but most pro problem programs that were running on some sort of date UM system. We're not reliant on a

two day jet year designations. So it ended up being a big non story. Was one of those things where the media had really really drummed it up and it sounded like it was gonna be armageddon UM. I was actually more worried about the how people would react more

than the machines. I was worried that people were going to be convinced that this was going to be the end of civilization and start, you know, like we're gonna have to create our own militia and we're gonna have to depend upon ourselves, and I mean there are stories of people stockpiling food and water and all that kind of stuff. I was more worried about what those guys were gonna do rather than the machines. And of course it turned out to be pretty much a big story

about nothing at all. So now that brings us to the problem. It is similar to the Y two K problem, and that again it has something to do with the date yes, and in this case it does have to do with UM thirty two bits, yes, and a very specific date. Seat. Now, according to Unix and see based programming languages, time began on January one, nineteen seventy midnight Cridage meantime. Yeah, that that that value is zero. Yeah,

it starts at zero. That's when time began. Now well, actually, I guess technically you could argue that you could have a negative integer, in which case time did not begin. Then that's just the zero that would be as if we went from BC to a D. Actually we're getting ready to get into the negative integers. Yes, because see there is a limit to the amount of time as

expressed in this form. Right that that that limit? Should I say with the limit, Well, before we can say what the specific limit is, we can say why there's a limit. It's because it's the standard four byte format. Yes, yes, or four bytes which four times eight, because remember there's eight bits to a bite. That means so thirty two bits. One bit H represents the sign whether it's positive or negative. The other thirty one bits can represent the actual numbers.

And with thirty one bits plus the positive minus that means that you have a mag s some mum number that you can reach. Do you have that number in front of you if you want to read it off. Yes, it's two billion, one million, free thousand, six hundred seven. So now, on Unix based systems they count time in seconds, so each of those integers represents one second, So one second after in January one, nineteen seventy uh zero o'clock, if you want to talk about military time, you know,

one second after that would be the first on this journey. Well, that means that once you hit two billion, one seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six hundred forty seven seconds after zero o'clock, you've reached the maximum that that thirty two bit system can count up to. It cannot count higher than that. And what date does that translate to? That would be January. Yes, so on January eight, any system that is based on this thirty two bit architecture

is going to hit its limit. And then one of two things really is probably gonna happen. Either it's gonna roll over to the negative number, which would be negative two seven thousand, seven million up exactly. And and some people say, well that would mean that it would start at December, like in December nineteen one or something like that. But um so it's either going to do that or it's going to just totally crash because it can't handle the fact that it's it's gone beyond the amount of

time it can count up to. And this actually will happen. We'll be able to see some evidence of this before because any kind of software that projects into the future, like like calendar software, anything like that, where you're looking ahead, is going to encounter that problem once you start to try and look beyond January thirty eight. UM. So it is a real problem now. It's a real problem for thirty two bit based systems. If you are not using a thirty two bit based system, it is not a

problem for you. And sixty four bit based systems are becoming more popular right And we should also point out that by the year eight, I don't think they're going to be that many thirty two bit based systems out there at all. There might be some legacy systems and some legacy software that was programmed using language that uses the same that follows the same format. That's gonna be a problem that's gonna need to be adjusted, and it's

not easy to do. You can't just flip a switch and change it from thirty two bit to sixty four bit. It's actually really complex. Well, there is another way to deal with it, and that's to adjust the way it handles time. Yeah, you know, because it could be a switch to UH a new library system that uses you know, an eight byte value for you know, time storage format. Well there, yeah, that's one time by going to sixty four bit. But that's that's eight time date to sixty

Well yes, um, but yes, you can do that. What I'm saying is that it's not the easiest thing in the world to do, especially if you're talking about software, because you're likely going to encounter multiple instances of that that thirty two bit based UH timekeeping system within a particular program and you have to change all of those. It's not like you can just you know, pour it

over and is what I'm saying. No, that's true, and it would be easier with the way things are right now, to go ahead and you know, transfer over to a more sophisticated machine with a more sophisticated operating system. Right, So, if you did transfer over to a sixty four bit system, do you know how many seconds that can accommodate? No, Jonathan, how many seconds could that he was easy to get ready.

He was practicing earlier. I heard him. This is how many seconds it can and again this is both positive and negative. So you can double this because it's actually twice as many seconds. Okay, so you're looking at positive negative nine quintillion, two hundred twenty three quadrillion, three hundred seventy two trillion, thirty six billion, eight hundred fifty four million,

seven hundred seventy five thousand, eight hundred seven seconds. I'm guessing that the sun will go to red dwarf before you. It's not quite that bad, but it will be. It will be a long long time before you have to

worry about it. I just wanted to say that because because you're tallis years, I'm I'm not facing the scientific factor around now with the the two billion, one hundred forty seven million, four hundred eighty three thousand, six seven forty seven seconds that we're talking about before, Yes, that translates to thirty five million, seven hundred thousand, three hundred ninety four minutes or five hundred nine six thousand, five hundred twenty three hours or four thousand, eight hundred fifty

five days or sixty eight years give or take you figure in leap years in there, so it kind of messes things up. Can I start calling you Sheldon? Now? Oh wow, I'd prefer C three point Sheldon. I think I'm a little more socially adjusted than Sheldon is. I don't know. Is is C three po more well adjusted than than Sheldon Cooper? Yes, you make a point. Well, I'd also like to think that if you dismembered me, I'd still be talking C three po. You definitely can

do that, Sheldon. I. I haven't seen that episode yet, so I don't know. But anyway, so obviously you switched to a sixty four bit system. That's a much greater capacity as far as counting up the year. Um, this, as we said, this is not you can't say that this is a non trivial problem because if you are running legacy machines or legacy software, you will have to address this issue in one way or another if it's something that you can't just you know, switch to the

newest version. Because that's true. I mean, they're there are businesses out there that refer on you know, they rely on old programs, and their whole system is built around an old program and they can't just port to something new, right, So in that case, you have to fix the old one rather than you know, just say let's switch to

a different system. Right. And I apologize for speaking out of turn um, but I don't But I don't think that that you're going to see the hype in twenty six and seven that you saw about the problem, because I think it's going to be for the most part, a moot point. Yeah, most people will be on newer systems. You might hear some reports about how old systems may

not work properly. Uh, you know, you want to keep an eye on things like bank accounts and stuff like, hey, do you know, Yeah, here's the things that some of the older systems also happened to be with some of the more important ones. I mean, like because they are hard to change over the electric grid, you know. I mean that means that we have to make sure the electric grid is running on the A sixty four bit

or better system. Again, if you went to eight bit system, I don't even have the breakdown of how many how many seconds that would be It would be huge lots. Let's use the technical term of lots. We do have twenty eight years or so to yeah, well twenty yeah, sure, okay, yeah. And of course, by then, as I was pointing out to Tyler earlier, will be in the Singularity for three years, So why would we worry. We're gonna be evolving so

quickly that problem. We're gonna have so many different kinds of problems by then, Like how do we stop the terminators from ruining our gardenias? I mean, they just they have no sense of propriety, those those jerks. Okay, wow, I don't even know what I got, Chris, but he's like giving me a look right now? Is it because I brought in the terminator? Can talk about I can talk about Johnny five? Right, I mean, we can talk about nice robots if you like. Asimo Asthma's very nice guy.

I met him once. Actually I shouldn't say him, I met it once. It actually had the voice of a little girl, which was very disturbing. You know what what ASIMO's spouse said when it came home. What's that? Hi, Honda, I'm home? Oh my dear. Okay, we're just uh, I'm gonna take a moment here. Um. So anyway, I hope that answers your question. Todd. Uh, Yeah, and we should also point out that the Unix space systems are not the only ones to have this kind of an issue. Um,

there are other systems. There was an IBM PC hardware that could suffer from a problem similar problem where uh, it'll start counting over once we hit the year sixteen. I don't think of us are gonna have to worry about that. Um No, I don't know. Wait, the Singularity, maybe we will if we're all PC based robots. You know, that's gonna really be weird because when the singularity hits, all the PC based robots will be like really utilitarian, and all the Mac based robots will be like kind

of like the sexy celebrities. Yeah, and all the Linux based robots will be the ones at home playing D n D on the tabletop. Yeah, please don't write me right. So, I'm not sure, you know, if we're gonna have to worry too much about it, because I just think that most of the problems now are very selective, and they're they're they're specific to a subset of computing at this

point and not as widespread as the Y two K problems. So, you know, I think in general now, especially because of the uh, the dramatic amount of hype that went around with the Y two K situation that it uh. I think people are sort of attuned to what may be coming up more so than they would have been before that, or at least they don't care as much. And then there's that. Well, let's finish this off with a little extra listener mail. Okay. This listener mail comes from Matthew

and he says, Hey, Crispy, Hey Jonathan. First, I wanted to say you guys are awesome. I love to listen to you guys, and I love your puns. Now to business. In your Tech Conspiracies podcast, you said that the Mr Fusion power generator on the Dolorean powered the car. As a big fan of Back to the Future, I just wanted to let you know that Mr Fusion did no such thing. He only powered the time traveling circuit, hence

the absence of the need for plutonium or lightning. In fact, this crucial detail is the entire basis for the story in part three, when Marty can't get back home because the DeLorean is out of gas and there is none available. In just thought you guys would like to know your faithful listener Matthew Seattle, Washington, ps. Part three is superior to Part two simply because the fact that it is a Western, which was the same point I made, Thank you, Matthew.

When you remove the Western aspect of it, then you don't have a movie. You have the end of Part two, which we already established was the worst of the three films. Ding alright at any rate, Yes, you are correct. The mr fusion did only power the flex capacitor as opposed to the entire car. So what powered the car when it was flying around at the end of it was gasoline and it was a Delorian. They got horrible, horrible miles pro gallen when it was flying. You know where

we're going. We don't need roads. Yes, gasolene powered the engine that allowed it to create whatever anti gravity field it used to fly. Okay, maybe it was the battery too. Maybe it was the battery too, because you look what powered the hoverboard, Mattel product placement. Delorian was powered by Mattel. It all falls into place. Thank you, Matthew for sending

us off on a bizarre tangent. If any of you have any of your favorite movies that you want us to talk about on tech stuff instead of actual technology. Please let us know because we love to do that. Apparently you can write us. Our email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember we've got tech stuff live every Tuesday one pm Eastern. You want to check that out, go to the blogs now stuff works dot com. And um, did you do you have

something else you wanted to say? Chris? Yeah? I wanted to ask you what you might be doing. I don't know on November Chris, are you asking me out on a date? No? Damn, I would have to wait another day for that one. Now, I was going to ask you if if you were going to be tuned into the Science Channel at eight o'clock. Yeah, actually I am, because you know what's coming at eight o'clock on the Silence Channel. I do. Indeed, that's the road to Punkin Chunkin. Yeah.

And you know what follows that up, Pumpkin Chunkin at nine o'clock. Yes. So if you want to watch people throw pumpkins are really far away using advanced technology, then you're listening to the right podcast. Gosh darn it, because yes, tune in eight o'clock and nine o'clock on the Science Channel on Thanksgiving night. Yeah. All right. Well, now that we've wrapped all that up, I guess it's time for us to sign off. Remember, write us, let us know

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