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comment by user-inactivated
user-inactivated  ·  4320 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Year 2038 problem

Many systems store system time as a single number representing the number of seconds since January 1, 1970. The way this number is usually stored in memory means that it has a maximum number - 2,147,483,647 in this case, which corresponds to 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038. After this time, when a system adds extra seconds onto this timestamp, they will wrap around to the negative equivalent (and since there's no such thing as negative seconds, this will cause pretty major issues).