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If civilization continues to the year 9999, is the idea to go to year 10.000, or...?

It seems like it’d get increasingly impractical as the years go on to hundreds of thousands and millions of years to write them out that way, but then…I guess technically one may already do this with the preceding years, so future’s fair game for it?

BlameThePeacock ,

I don’t think anyone cares at this point, that’s a problem for 300ish generations from now.

Jay ,

I don’t think that’s a question any human will have to answer. Humanity will be long gone by then.

julianh ,

People already abbreviate to the last two digits when appropriate, so it’s not hard to imagine people doing the same for bigger numbers.

For keeping track of stuff electronically, we’re pretty much set too. 64 bit unix time will take us well over 100 billion years.

argh_another_username ,

I was looking at some old pictures of my family and some of them had dates like 921 for 1921 in them. I used to abbreviate 88 for 1988, but I’ve never seen people using 3 digits like that.

AA5B ,

During y2k, a third digit was one of the compromises for languages like Perl. There were so many places that only displayed a two digit year but rolling over to 00 would have made it difficult to sort or do date math, or even to convert to a four digit year. So the year rolled over from 99 to 100, so dates with two digit years could be sorted correctly. If you were only displaying two digits, it probably correctly displayed as 00. If you wanted to convert to four digit years,just add 1900

hddsx ,

Grr. Is THAT why I had to subtract 1900 off my year for a damn c library time function?

olsonexi ,
@olsonexi@lemmy.wtf avatar

I don’t see why not. 5 digits isn’t too bad, and the issue wouldn’t come up again for another 90,000 years after that. Besides, we’ll probably extinct ourselves through climate change, nuclear war, and/or AI long before then anyways.

Eufalconimorph , (edited )

Astronomers already use Julian Dates for various reasons. Right now it’s 2460261.2834606, it’ll be later by the time you read this. Julian dates/times are fractional days starting from January 1st, 4713 B.C. = 0. Just keep counting up from there.

hansl ,

So I got confused and had to read Wikipedia for this. Day 0 is Jan 1, 4713 BC. I feel this causes more confusion if it isn’t mentioned.

Eufalconimorph ,

DOH, skipped those two critical letters! Thanks for the correction.

Corkyskog ,

How are you still not confused??

So I just read through the same wiki and there is absolutely no explanation of why they start at 4713 BC. It’s just bizarrely stated as fact with no explanation.

It would be like if invented a card game called Percluey where you had to count to 44 and Yell “Percluey” to win the game. And 8s are also called perclueys and worth -3. Then when you ask why it’s 44 you just say “because that’s Percluey” and then when they ask you what the heck is a “Percluey” you just shrug and sip on your spritzer.

hansl ,

I don’t know if you read the right wiki, but in the history section the first paragraph is:

The Julian day number is based on the Julian Period proposed by Joseph Scaliger, a classical scholar, in 1583 (one year after the Gregorian calendar reform) as it is the product of three calendar cycles used with the Julian calendar:

28 (solar cycle) × 19 (lunar cycle) × 15 (indiction cycle) = 7980 years

Its epoch occurs when all three cycles (if they are continued backward far enough) were in their first year together. Years of the Julian Period are counted from this year, 4713 BC, as year 1, which was chosen to be before any historical record.[28]

It was either that, or earlier, or in the future. That’s the only year that kinda makes sense (solar = lunar = induction = 0). It looks odd but once you know you know, you know?

Narrrz ,

it's going to be hard to get to 40k if we don't keep counting through the 10s.

SnoopBob ,

In lore, in warhammer humans count XXX.MYY.

Like 005.M31 to 014.M31 for the Horus Heresy in the 31st millennium.

I vote we switch up to that system. The counting, not the heresy.

Narrrz ,

coward.

cobwoms ,

we’re going to have a y2k bug situation all over again. the y10k bug

folkrav ,

Ackchyually, the Y2K bug was pretty different. A lot of software, for various reasons, took to representing dates as a two digit number. This meant going from 1999 to 2000 would make that software try to understand dates going from 99 to potentially various of other values, like 00 or 100.

We’re gonna have a different form of that on machines with 32 bit processors relatively soon. Past some time on Jan 19th, 2038, the epoch time, a count of seconds since Jan 1st, 1970, is stored as a 32 bit signed integer. At this time, it’ll run out of positive values, will overflow, and cause the internal clocks of such machines to go back to 1901. It probably won’t happen again after that, as the maximum date represented by the largest signed integer a 64 bit machine can store is 292+ billion years

hydrashok ,

Good luck to all the engineers billions of years from now having fun moving to 128-bit time. What fools we were.

folkrav ,

Silver lining is, they should be done with the IPv6 migration by then.

Cosmicomical ,

Shouldn't it go back to 1970? Why 1901?

Skua ,

It's a signed integer, meaning it has the same amount of space for negative numbers as it does for positive ones. Late 1901 is the same amount of time away from Jan 1st 1970 as early 2038 is

blargerer ,

The integer is signed, when it overflows it doesn't go to 0, it goes from Max Positive Value to Max Minimum Value, which will be a very 'large' negative number (-2147483648 to be exact).

AA5B ,

I’m pretty sure all operating systems have long ago switched to 64 bit date times. Of course, just like y2k, it’s the apps and their shortcuts that will be a problem.

folkrav ,

There has to be millions of IoT/embedded crap that runs some long obsolete OS version or whatever. Consumer stuff indeed shifted a looong time ago.

Meho_Nohome ,
@Meho_Nohome@sh.itjust.works avatar

I’m sure we’ll switch to star dates by then.

Tixanou ,

Happy new year 2314737893516!

captainlezbian ,

There’s already a movement to call it the 10000s because that’s about how long ago we had the idea to have permanent settlements

wolfshadowheart ,
@wolfshadowheart@kbin.social avatar

It's how long archeology has said we have had permanent settlements.

In reality it's likely far earlier than that, we only just found a settlement from 11,000 BCE in Turkey, Gobekli Tepe which was likely a sanctuary/shrine, as well as other towns in the surrounding area likely having started before even then.

Big archeology pushed back to say that that's not 100% certain and that humans were still nomadic, despite all the evidence showing otherwise. It was finally just recognized officially a couple months ago.

TheInsane42 ,
@TheInsane42@lemmy.world avatar

Nah, we’ll never get there. (When we do, major Y10K crisis. 💣💥)

marcos ,

Well, no reason not to add a digit after 9999.

But yeah, at some point we ought to stop using years. It’s the second that is standardized, and the year is all off. I can’t imagine we reaching 9999, but the change has no relation to the extra digit and no reason to happen anywhere near it.

FuglyDuck ,
@FuglyDuck@lemmy.world avatar

What’s going to happen, is that I’m going to start a Humanist cult, and they’re going to name the new age after me.

They’ll call it “the year of our salvation.” They just misremember everything, and think I was some hero. The reality is I’m an asshole and should never be trusted leading a quasi-religious crusade.

PlutoniumAcid ,
@PlutoniumAcid@lemmy.world avatar

Yup, ducks are general assholes. And they rape a lot, which also tracks with the cult leaders. And they quack, too!

HowManyNimons ,

No I think time will just stop.

rufus ,

Maybe average life expectancy will be 800 years then and 10000 won’t be that big a number anyways.

Seraph ,
@Seraph@kbin.social avatar

Seeing as the current year is 12,023 I'm gonna say: Yes.

cobysev ,

A fellow Kurzgesagt enthusiast, I see.

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