Bugs. They’re creepy, crawly and crunchy. Some are even deadly. But there’s one that
could do more damage than a whole blimp full of killer bees. And it’s not that type of
bug, but this type.
Computer bugs have become more and more common and my hypothesis is that it has something
to do with an increase in these bad boys. There was the one where PayPal accidentally
made some random guy the richest person in the world by BRIEFLY giving him 94 quadrillion
dollars by mistake. Or when NASA, who I’ve heard are meant to be pretty smart and good
at computers and stuff, lost their $154 million dollar Mariner 1 spacecraft because it incorrectly
transcribed a command.
One of the most infamous computer bugs in history is Y2K. Like all good things and WWE
this was half real and half (trump saying fake news). The fear was that at the turn
of the century computers wouldn’t understand how to encode the year 2000 and therefore
everything would break. The issue was mainly caused by damn computer nerds who, in an attempt
to make their code more concise only used the last two digits of the year in code. Meaning
that when the year 2000 rolled around it would be indistinguishable from the year 1900. There
were plenty of fixes for the bug and most systems worked fine. The world may not have
ended but there were some issues. Ranging from the small - In Australia, bus ticket
validation machines in two states failed to operate to the pretty serious - 154 expectant
mothers in the UK were sent incorrect risk assessments for down syndrome because the
hospital computers miscalculated the mothers age.
Like all good new stories, fake or not. There were people out there peddling it their own
ulterior motives. Much like current figures who employee this tactic, they whipped up
hype and fear just to try and sell some poorly made merch. Even religious leaders were in
on it. The far right Christian Reverend Jerry Falwell, who also once tried to out TinkyWinky
as gay, started selling tapes called “A Christian's Guide to the Millennium Bug,"
for $28, which is the equivalent to more than $40 in today’s money.
However, for all the hype and scaremongering most people were completely unaffected. So
it seems all those people were either just ignorant to the truth or trying to whip up
hype and hysteria. On an unrelated note. Did you know that on the 19th of January 2038
we’re all going to die?
That’s right it’s happening again. There’s another time encoding bug that could (in theory)
destroy civilisation as we know it. Planes will fall out of the sky, siri will throw
a fit and most importantly those weird talking toilets will stop working.
The cause of this bug is a little bit more complicated than it was back in 2000. Firstly,
we need to understand what 32 bit Unix time is.
So, basically, some computers encode their time using 32 bit Unix time, this counts the
seconds since the 1st of January 1970. The way this is stored is in binary code, with
32 digits, either 1s or 0s. But due to the very finite nature of the number 32, there’s
only a certain amount of permutations of 1s and 0s that can exist, and therefore this
system can only count to around two billion a hundred and forty seven million seconds.
This means at roughly 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038 the system will roll around and start
encoding negatively outputting the date as the 13th of December 1901, at which point
everyone will be like, omg tgi Friday. The reason it would go all the way back to 1901
not to 1970 is because 32 bit is a signed integer meaning it can store the number in
positive or negative. This is useful for computer systems trying to recall dates before 1970.
Now, I have a confession to make. I don’t actually know a whole lot about those weird
talking toilets and if I’m honest I don’t really want to know any more than I already
do. So, I don’t know that they definitely use 32 bit unix time and would therefore stop
working in 2038. However, there are some things that we know run on this system and unfortunately
a lot of these are integrated systems that are meant to last the lifetime of the machine
meaning that they were never meant to be updated. So, although planes might not literally fall
out of the sky like stones some important features, like GPS receivers and other navigational
systems, could stop working.
This isn’t the first time that 32 bit encoding has caused an issue. Once again those smart
people over at NASA were outsmarted. They lost contact with the deep impact spacecraft
some time between August the 11th and 14th 2013, luckily by this time the probe had completed
its primary objective and was now being used to observe comets as well as other things.
Ironically, the spacecrafts fault protection software measured time in tenths of seconds
and 38 minutes and 49 seconds past midnight on August 11th was the maximum number of tenths
of a second the computer could count to. This lead to endless reboots and the spacecraft
was lost.
YouTube also used to use the same format to encode the view counter under their videos.
All was peaceful until a unknown kpop star released his unsuspecting hit. Gangnam Style
took the world by storm and quickly amassed a crazy amount of views. Eventually, the guys
at YouTube realised that they had a problem. If Gangnam Style hit that magic number the
next person to view the video would take the view count into the negatives. YouTube quickly
updated their view counter to 64 bit encoding and the looming crisis was averted.
There are a few solutions to the 2038 problem. One is basically to just copy YouTube (ahem),
and upgrade to 64 bit unix time which would give more time then we’ll realistically
need. 64 bit unix time would overflow roughly 292 billion years from now. Which is about
20 times greater than the estimated age of the universe. So, just do what previous generations
have and say ‘eh, future generations will fix it somehow’. The issue would be the
logistics of updating all of these systems as well as the compatibility with devices
that didn’t upgrade. Another solution would be to change to an unsigned system which would
give us a little bit more time to work stuff out. We’d have until 2106 but any systems
wanting to get pre 1970 data would be out of luck.
So, the world is most likely safe because although the solutions aren’t perfect something
can be done to prevent doom. One thing that no one would see coming would be if this video
broke YouTube. Now, I know it sounds pretty crazy but hear me out, all we have to do it
get to the maximum value of a 64 bit integer. Which is about (taps on calculator). Umm,
just a touch over 9 quintillion. And by a touch I mean 223 quadrillion over 9 quintillion.
Ummm, so be sure to like this video and subscribe to my channel and if it’s not too much hassle
could you go ahead and try to get everyone on the planet to watch this video a little
over a billion times each. No biggy right?