Software Engineering. Most software is basically just houses of cards, developed quickly and not maintained properly (to save money ofc). We will see some serious software collapses within our lifetime.
(Y2K, i.e. the “year 2000 problem”, affected two digit date formats. Nothing bad happened, but consensus nowadays is that that wasn’t because the issue was overblown, it’s because the issue was recognized and seriously addressed. Lots of already retired or soon retiring programmers came back to fix stuff in ancient software and made bank. In 2038, another very common date format will break. I’d say it’s much more common than 2 digit dates, but 2 digit dates may have been more common in 1985. It’s going to require a massive remediation effort and I hope AI-assisted static analysis will be viable enough to help us by then.)
My dad is a tech in the telecommunications industry. We basically didn’t see him for all of 1999. The fact that nothing happened is because of people working their assess off.
I get the joke, but for those seriously wondering:
The epoch is Jan 1, 1970. Time uses a signed integer, so you can express up to 2^31 seconds with 32 bits or 2^63 with 64 bits.
A normal year has exactly 31536000 seconds (even if it is a leap second year, as those are ignored for Unix time). 97 out of 400 years are leap years, adding an average of 0.2425 days or 20952 seconds per year, for an average of 31556952 seconds.
That gives slightly over 68 years for 32 bit time, putting us at 1970+68 = 2038. For 64 bit time, it’s 292,277,024,627 years. However, some 64 bit time formats use milliseconds, microseconds, 100 nanosecond units, or nanoseconds, giving us “only” about 292 million years, 292,277 years, 29,228 years, or 292 years. Assuming they use the same epoch, nano-time 64 bit time values will become a problem some time in 2262. Even if they use 1900, an end date in 2192 makes them a bad retirement plan for anyone currently alive.
Most importantly though, these representations are reasonably rare, so I’d expect this to be a much smaller issue, even if we haven’t managed to replace ourselves by AI by then.
If you’re going to correct people about Dune quotes, at least use one from the book! “The spice must flow” doesn’t appear in any of them, it’s a Lynch addition.
Package management is impossible. When a big enough package pushes an update the house of cards eill fall. This causes project packages with greatly outdated versions to exist in production because there is no budget to diagnose and replace packages that are no longer available when a dependency requires a change.
Examples: adminJs or admin bro… one of them. Switched the package used to render rich text fields.
React-scripts or is it create react app, I don’t recall. Back end packages no long work as is on the front end. Or something like that? On huge projects, who’s got the budget to address this to get the project up to date?
This has to be a world wide thing. There is way to many moving targets for every company to have all packages up to date.
It’s only a matter of time before an exploit of some sort is found and who knows what happens from there.
As a tech person outside Twitter, looking in: Twitter is metaphorically a huge airliner with one remaining engine, and that engine is pouring smoke.
The clown who caused the first four engines to fail has stepped out of the pilot’s seat, but still has the ability to fire the new pilot, and still has strong convictions on how to fly a plane.
That plane might land safely. But in the tech community, those of us fortunate not to be affected are watching with popcorn, because we expect a spectacular crash.
If anyone reading this is still relying on Twitter - uh, my advice is to start a Mastodon account. Or Myspace or something.
Software Engineering. Most software is basically just houses of cards, developed quickly and not maintained properly (to save money ofc). We will see some serious software collapses within our lifetime.
Y2038 is my “retirement plan”.
(Y2K, i.e. the “year 2000 problem”, affected two digit date formats. Nothing bad happened, but consensus nowadays is that that wasn’t because the issue was overblown, it’s because the issue was recognized and seriously addressed. Lots of already retired or soon retiring programmers came back to fix stuff in ancient software and made bank. In 2038, another very common date format will break. I’d say it’s much more common than 2 digit dates, but 2 digit dates may have been more common in 1985. It’s going to require a massive remediation effort and I hope AI-assisted static analysis will be viable enough to help us by then.)
My dad is a tech in the telecommunications industry. We basically didn’t see him for all of 1999. The fact that nothing happened is because of people working their assess off.
My dad had to stay in his office with a satellite phone over new years in case shit hit the fan.
My dad still believes the entire Y2K problem was a scam. How do I convince him?
Well my dad does too and he worked his ass off to prevent it. Baby boomers are just stupid as shit, there’s not really much you can do.
Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and OSX have all already switched to 64 bit time.
So they have a year 202020 bug then
I get the joke, but for those seriously wondering:
The epoch is Jan 1, 1970. Time uses a signed integer, so you can express up to 2^31 seconds with 32 bits or 2^63 with 64 bits.
A normal year has exactly 31536000 seconds (even if it is a leap second year, as those are ignored for Unix time). 97 out of 400 years are leap years, adding an average of 0.2425 days or 20952 seconds per year, for an average of 31556952 seconds.
That gives slightly over 68 years for 32 bit time, putting us at 1970+68 = 2038. For 64 bit time, it’s 292,277,024,627 years. However, some 64 bit time formats use milliseconds, microseconds, 100 nanosecond units, or nanoseconds, giving us “only” about 292 million years, 292,277 years, 29,228 years, or 292 years. Assuming they use the same epoch, nano-time 64 bit time values will become a problem some time in 2262. Even if they use 1900, an end date in 2192 makes them a bad retirement plan for anyone currently alive.
Most importantly though, these representations are reasonably rare, so I’d expect this to be a much smaller issue, even if we haven’t managed to replace ourselves by AI by then.
I can’t wait to retire when I’m 208 years old.
Omg we are in same epoch as the butlarian crusade.
Butlerian Jihad, my dude. Hate to correct you, but the spice must flow.
Im just glad you got that reference
If you’re going to correct people about Dune quotes, at least use one from the book! “The spice must flow” doesn’t appear in any of them, it’s a Lynch addition.
Yes but it’s the most accessible dune quote.
Tell that to the custom binary serialization formats that all the applications are using.
Edit: and the long-calcified protocols that embed it.
How many UNIX machines in production are still running on machines with 32-bit words, or using a 32-bit time_t?
Package management is impossible. When a big enough package pushes an update the house of cards eill fall. This causes project packages with greatly outdated versions to exist in production because there is no budget to diagnose and replace packages that are no longer available when a dependency requires a change.
Examples: adminJs or admin bro… one of them. Switched the package used to render rich text fields.
React-scripts or is it create react app, I don’t recall. Back end packages no long work as is on the front end. Or something like that? On huge projects, who’s got the budget to address this to get the project up to date?
This has to be a world wide thing. There is way to many moving targets for every company to have all packages up to date.
It’s only a matter of time before an exploit of some sort is found and who knows what happens from there.
Are there currently any that are showing signs of imminent collapse? (Twitter, maybe?).
Or what are the signs to look for those who are untrained in this field?
Regarding Twitter: yes.
As a tech person outside Twitter, looking in: Twitter is metaphorically a huge airliner with one remaining engine, and that engine is pouring smoke.
The clown who caused the first four engines to fail has stepped out of the pilot’s seat, but still has the ability to fire the new pilot, and still has strong convictions on how to fly a plane.
That plane might land safely. But in the tech community, those of us fortunate not to be affected are watching with popcorn, because we expect a spectacular crash.
If anyone reading this is still relying on Twitter - uh, my advice is to start a Mastodon account. Or Myspace or something.