back to article Set your alarms for 2.40am UTC – so you can watch Unix time hit 1,500,000,000

At 0240 GMT* precisely on Friday, July 14, an epoch-defining moment will happen. And only real nerds – along with Reg readers – will know what that moment is. The Unix epoch will pass its 1.5 billionth second in the small hours. A quick check with everyone's favourite scripting language, Perl, confirms this: $ perl - …

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  1. Paul

    UTC is not the same as GMT, although for humans telling the time they're similar enough.

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Headmaster

      Damn right. GMT and UTC can be up to 500ms different.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        GMT is clearly and self-evidently the best system.

        1. Swiss Anton

          "GMT is clearly and self-evidently the best system."

          UTC will of course be banned in Blighty after Brexit

        2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          GMT is clearly and self-evidently the best system.

          Indeed. And we should resist all attempts to get rid of it and move us permanently to BST.

          We invented it dammit! Least we can do is use our own invention..

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. Joseph Haig

        Damn right. GMT and UTC can be up to 500ms different.

        I need that extra time in bed in the morning!

    2. Adam 1

      Also, seconds! Really? I thought this was a tech site. Shirley we should be measuring time in beard metres.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Bard metres (preferably sung since the Late Bronze Age Collapse), shurely?

        That would be epic. And hellenistic.

    3. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Damn right their not!

      For those of us old enough to remember programming with Java1.4, the confusion of GMT and UTC meant that Java programs running in the UK had no DST support. The only +00:00 time zone at the time was GMT, and that (being international) had no summer time.

      In the UK, you had to create a new time zone object that had the UK BST rules in it.

      For. Every. Bloody. Program.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Damn right their not!

        Code reuse. There is a reason for it.

    4. Oh Homer
      Trollface

      Eternal Epoch

      We should base a new epoch on copyright date for Mickey Mouse.

      That's pretty much guaranteed to never expire.

  2. Dave Pickles
    Mushroom

    Already??

    It seems like only yesterday that we had the 'billennium', where Unix timestamps went from 9 decimal digits to 10 and broke some locally-developed stuff.

    1. Wensleydale Cheese

      Re: Already??

      "It seems like only yesterday that we had the 'billennium', where Unix timestamps went from 9 decimal digits to 10 and broke some locally-developed stuff."

      More than 20 years ago. May 1997.

      Even VMS, which doesn't use Unix timestamps itself, needed patches to stuff which had its origins on Unix, like X11.

      1. Alister

        Re: Already??

        More than 20 years ago. May 1997.

        I suddenly feel very old...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Already??

          I suddenly feel very old...

          Try this one if you want to feel extremely old. The period of time between the start of the First World War and your birth, compared with your age.

          My age is greater than that. By over 20 years.

          (Of course, that works for anyone over the age of 52)

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Already??

            "Try this one if you want to feel extremely old."

            I prefer to feel overwhelmingly pointless since its impossible for me tontruly be old in a universal sense.

            For example, consider how many possible planets there are out there and how many might have life, how many had life, and how many existed and continue to exist despite life and whether life was necessary in the process of being a planet.

            You at the back there. Put the phone down.

            Nothing matters. We're all going to die and ultimately everything we do amounts to nothing.

            1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

              Re: Already??

              Nothing matters. We're all going to die and ultimately everything we do amounts to nothing.

              On a more positive note - at least that means that all politicians, everywhere, are even more useless than we already thought.

              And I'll leave you with the final comforting thought from Del Amitri:

              #Nothing ever happens, nothing happens at all

              #The needle returns to the start of the song

              #And we all sing along like before

              #And we'll all be lonely tonight and lonely tomorrow

          2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

            Re: Already??

            Try this one if you want to feel extremely old. The period of time between the start of the First World War and your birth, compared with your age.

            My age is greater than that. By over 20 years.

            (Of course, that works for anyone over the age of 52)

            Well - that means I'm safe (until next Feb)..

          3. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Already??

            I know what you mean. I still think of the First World War as "living memory", not yet really "history". And I remember when they cancelled the annual get-together of Boer War veterans because there weren't enough of them left to make it worthwhile...

            1. DropBear

              Re: Already??

              "Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn...?"

              1. werdsmith Silver badge

                Re: Already??

                Thinking back to 38 years ago puts you in 1981.

                In 1981 people thinking back 38 years were thinking of 1943. The allied invasion of Italy, the Soviet fightback on the Eastern front and the American Island hopping advance in the Pacific.

                1. jake Silver badge

                  Re: Already??

                  Do you realize that your post was made 74238802 ticks after the event mentioned in TFA?

      2. Thommy M.

        Re: Already??

        $ perl -MDateTime -lE'say DateTime->from_epoch( epoch => 1_000_000_000 )'

        2001-09-09T01:46:40

        $ date -u -d @1000000000

        Sun Sep 9 01:46:40 UTC 2001

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Ugh. Timeghost...

          @Thommy M.; No idea who modded you down; I was sitting looking at the 1997 date and thinking "hang on, twenty years back has to be way more than a third of the way to 1970"...

          @Anonymous coward; Fun fact for baby boomers- Cliff Richard's debut single "Move It" came out in 1958, closer to the final years of the Victorian era and the end of the 1800s than to the present day.

          Obligatory XKCD! Plus this.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Ugh. Timeghost...

            (Same AC as one who posted Timeghost comment, my editing time ran out...)

            @Anonymous coward; Also, at around 61.5 years old, you're still quite a bit younger than my Dad. :-O

            Also, Sgt. Pepper came out closer to the end of the First World War than to the present day...

            Also also also... for those who (like me) remember "You Spin Me Round" by "Dead or Alive" in the charts as kids, it hit number 1 in the UK 32 years and 4 months ago, closer to the release of the first widely successful rock n' roll record than to the present day.

            (Bear in mind that when I was a kid, twenty-year-old black and white footage of (e.g.) The Beatles seemed ancient, and rock n' roll was before that- and to be fair, 30 years *is* a long time, you just forget that "You Spin Me Round" is now that old too... ouch.)

            1. This post has been deleted by its author

            2. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

              Re: Ugh. Timeghost...

              for those who (like me) remember "You Spin Me Round" by "Dead or Alive" in the charts as kids, it hit number 1 in the UK 32 years and 4 months ago

              I never got the hang of new-fangled music like that..

              (I jest - currently listening to Transatlantic live in Tilburg. Fine, modern prog[1] music)

              [1] If that's not an oxymoron..

            3. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Millenials

              One of my Granddaughters friends asked who Jimmy Hendrix was.

              My GD sniggered. She's had a proper music education as she's going to study it at Uni.

              The friend thought that 1970 was in the stone age. At least then the musicians actually played their instruments and you knew it if they missed a note (no effing auto-tune then).

              The friend was amazed at:-

              1) That Hyde Park concerts existed then

              2) How little a gig cost to go to and that you didn't have to book a year in advance or pay a booking fee.

              My how times were much simpler then. And the music was better.

              Time for me to get my zimmer frame then.

              1. Loud Speaker

                Re: Millenials

                The friend thought that 1970 was in the stone age.

                NO!

                The 1950's were the stone age - anyone who has ever watched the Flintstones should know that. Check out the fashions!

          2. Colin Wilson 2

            Jesus!

            ... and to think that Jesus was alive less than 40 of my lifetimes ago

            And my Grandad was born in 1888 - he was 11 when Johann Strauss II died- makes me feel practically Victorian myself.

            Strange stuff, time!

            1. HelpfulJohn

              Re: Jesus!

              Both of my parents were young children, just pre-teens, when the last soldier to fight in the USAlien Civil War died.

              That was in 1938. Just before the Second World War really got its skates on and began to involve the "important" countries.

              There was only one long human lifetime between the American Civil War and WWII.

            2. HelpfulJohn

              Re: Jesus!

              "... and to think that Jesus was alive less than 40 of my lifetimes ago"

              Which makes him the ancestor of just about everybody.

              One of them.

              Assuming he had descendants.

              Which, given his age and culture isn't such a stretch of the imagination.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Already??

      Must be logarithmic yesterday.

  3. sequester

    It can go on

    Vernor Vinge has an interstellar trade empire without FTL capability run on those timestamps in A Deepness in the Sky.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It can go on

      That sounds amazing.

      I've toyed with the idea of non-ftl space flight sci-fi and wrote a short story. I skipped commenting on the specifics of space travel, other than the fact it takes 30-60 years for the closest next point of interest (assuming constant 1g acceleration and deceleration to a 1-3ly away star).

      If I ever continue the story, there will be little to no external contact for the life off the colony. With the exception of materials/fuel trade (though in reality any system would hold more than enough of either and never need materials/energy trade).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It can go on

        If you have the ability for constant 1g acceleration you can go anywhere in the universe in your lifetime. Of course if you return, you will find things have changed quite a bit during the billions of years since you left.

        1. MyffyW Silver badge

          Re: It can go on

          Constant 1g acceleration would require a power source that can continually increase it's output, given energy is proportional to the square of velocity. If you've mastered that sort of power plant the universe is, indeed, yours.

          1. Aladdin Sane

            Re: If you've mastered that sort of power plant the universe is, indeed, yours.

            EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE.

            1. HelpfulJohn

              Re: If you've mastered that sort of power plant the universe is, indeed, yours.

              Some political committee is going to authorise at least one, probably with a submarine probe, probably one not totally sterilised. Then our chance of ever knowing if Europan life existed will be gone forever.

              "Europan", not "European". We already know that Brexit has killed the latter.

          2. h4rm0ny

            Re: It can go on

            And then you could begin on the next great technological break though - stopping!

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Up

          Re: It can go on

          Yep. That's why I assume 1g, and why the colonies even exist... for fuel. The only thing limiting space travel is fuel... though while "within your lifetime" is true, 30-60 years does not always leave much left for the rest of it. :P

        3. HelpfulJohn

          Re: It can go on

          Strangely, reaching 1C, (a hair short of) the speed of light takes almost exactly one year at one g.

          It's nice when the universe makes the numbers easy.

          She doesn't do it very often.

          It's also a little spooky that Earth's gravity, Earth's orbital period and the ultimate speed limit are coincidentally related.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It can go on

        With the exception of materials/fuel trade (though in reality any system would hold more than enough of either and never need materials/energy trade).

        Who is to say what the distribution of elements and materials might be across different systems until we start to explore them. Carbon is abundant on earth, but only a small proportion is present as diamond. Helium-3 is mooted as a handy fusion fuel, but in a system comprised only of rocky earth-sized planets would be scarce.

        Good luck with the story telling - there's plenty of scope for fiction out there :-)

        1. DJO Silver badge

          Re: It can go on

          Constant Acceleration at 1G is impossible for more than a few months.

          From stationary in 353 days 19 hours 45 minutes 23.004 seconds at a constant 1G you'd attain c which is not allowed.

          If you had an engine capable of producing a constant 1G which would also provide the illusion of gravity which would be nice for the crew, the trick would be to keep turning the ship around so you oscillate between (say) 0.75c and 0.9c so you'd still be prety fast but the time dilation would not be excessive and you'd have gravity (except when turning the ship) for the entire journey so no bone or muscle wasting.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            @DJO

            Einstein says you're wrong.

        2. HelpfulJohn

          Re: It can go on

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night's_Dawn_Trilogy

          Good story. Has loads of economics theory but he manages to make it relevant and interesting.

          The ending is a little weak.

      3. Brangdon

        Re: subluminal space flight

        You might also be interested in Karl Schroede's Lockstep, Their spacecraft crew spend the journeys asleep, and the colonists adapt the same technology so they sleep during the period of no external contact. (While they sleep, robots mine the resources needed to sustain them when awake, thus allowing them to survive on marginal outer solar bodies.)

  4. PushF12
    Windows

    Perl? Yuck

    $ date -d @1500000000

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Year 2106

    I use uint32 for my timestamps, making it totally someone else’s problem.

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