[hoppla]

When i first learned of the 2038 problem, i changed the date on my computer and watched it tick up to 2^32. All sorts of things crashed, most notably, the Norton antivirus software. This was on a windows XP if I recall correctly

[DoughnutHole]

Sounds like a great way to finally disable Norton if it's found a way onto your system.

[jw1224]

Interesting that Norton seems to use Unix timestamps. I’ve never developed for Windows, is it common for Windows devs to use them too? Or just some niche feature causing a more widespread problem?

[mastax]

Unix timestamps are common in windows software, though the standard timestamp used by the operating system is the number of ticks (100ns) since 1601-01-01 UTC.

I vaguely remember a few different timestamp formats in use in different places, but the 100ns-tick is very common in Microsoft APIs.

[jonny_eh]

When does the 100ns-tick overflow?

[mastax]

There are a few different time types in Win32, the one I was talking about is FILETIME: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/sysinfo/abou...

FILETIME is a nominally unsigned 64-bt value. 1601-01-01 + 2^64 * 100ns = 60056-05-28. That is, Sunday May 28, 60056.

[Cockbrand]

Chuckling at the thought of people who things around the year 60040 getting nervous... nobody knows how to deal with Windows or C any more, but much essential software has run for 58000+ years, and it's about to crash.