Post #2991982
2024-07-27 22:26 UTC
Replies (2)
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@aperture@snug.moe 2024-07-28 00:19
@sleepybisexual@fearness.org @skaverat@skaverat.net assuming you meant why, its primarily just. because thats the time that was chosen unix engineers in the early 70s kinda just wanted an easy point to measure time from, so they set the time of their OS (unix) to start incrementing from 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC probably cause it was a close enough round time and so made it easier to use at the time turns out that *nix systems still get used today by everything from mainframes to phones, so unix time remains, though most modern *nix systems use a 64 bit version of unix time which will last until the heat death of the universe, as opposed to the older 32 bit version of unix time which will reach its cap around 2038 which is why you might see "y2k38" or something like that around on the internet [though if theres any weird bits of software that use unsigned 32 bit unix time then 2106 will be the year to fear] afaik windows is actually the only mainstream OS that doesnt use unix time but i could be wrong! thats probably more than you wanted to know but this stuff interests us skdbjgdjskgsdg
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@sodiboo@gaysex.cloud 2024-07-28 01:26
@sleepybisexual@fearness.org @skaverat@skaverat.net assuming you meant "why" and not "who", it basically boils down to "that's when they started counting". they started on new years to make it a little easier, but it's at 1970 because there just needs to be an arbitrary reference frame (an "epoch") and it was chosen in the early 70's. 1970-01-01Z00:00:00 was chosen arbitrarily because it was "easy to work with" a lot of computer systems use a different epoch for similar arbitrary reasons, for example the Network Time Protocol places zero at 1900-01-01 the concept of an epoch isn't exclusive to computers either. humans have tons of different calendars, typically with religious origin. the gregorian calendar has its epoch (which we write as year 1; an arbitrary choice) around the time Jesus Christ was born