When you’re dealing with a bunch of systems that communicate with each other, especially database clusters, having the time synchronized is essential. Without his work the sort of massive clusters of systems we use - deliberately or second-hand - would not be possible. He’s as much a contributor to the modern web as Tim Berners-Lee.
RIP Time Lord
This is an actual OMG moment.
The next Y2K style problem will happen on this date, January 19, at pi o’clock in 2038. I was really hoping he’d get to see that.
He was ironically taken too soon.
It’ll only affect 32bit systems with ancient operating systems storing dates in epoch time.
Not a small number. But nowhere remotely near what Y2K could have been.
Hopefully by the time we need to account for a 64bit rollover, I’ll be comfortably retired. But by that time, proton decay may be a more worrisome problem.
