Time, Timezones, Metric Time, Losing and Saving

Oxide and Friends · 29 Mar 2022 · 1h 05m · Episode 10

What this episode covers

Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal of Oxide Computer Company host a discussion on the complexities of timekeeping, covering Daylight Saving Time, Y2K, the 2038 problem, and leap seconds. They share specific engineering war stories, including a Y2K bug in the 'at' command that caused $100,000 in destroyed CDs, a DST-related OAuth token expiration bug, and a GPS week number rollover issue. The conversation highlights how historical calendar decisions and hardware limitations continue to cause software failures in modern systems like Oracle, Spanner, and Elm.

Mentioned

Companies
Oxide Computer Company, Oracle
Chips
LPC55S69
Also
Elm, GPS, Spanner, Cory Doctorow, Mark Shuttleworth

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