Debian discusses how to handle 2038

Posted Feb 27, 2020 7:55 UTC (Thu) by jengelh (guest, #33263)
In reply to: Debian discusses how to handle 2038 by ras
Parent article: Debian discusses how to handle 2038

>But you end up 14 bytes to the left of the implied decimal point and 18 to the right which is downright ugly

For integer time perhaps, but there are unsexy asymmetric splits in floating point. Which raises the question whether the machine running the multiverse program is actually having a global time counter, and whether that one will be using integer time to begin with.

Maybe the only reason the universe is expanding ever quicker is because it is running with FP somewhere where each step [i.e. `nextafter` C function] means a larger value the closer you approach MAX_FLT. ;-)

Debian discusses how to handle 2038

Posted Feb 27, 2020 22:57 UTC (Thu) by ras (subscriber, #33059) [Link]

So what you are saying is God used floating point instead of integer arithmetic. He did it for the same reason everybody does it - to avoid all having to think about how to handle all those nasty fractional bits. But as always they came back to bite him arse anyway, and the expanding Universe is the result.