Excel having a stab at dates
from bleistift2@sopuli.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz on 01 Jul 21:00
https://sopuli.xyz/post/29744228

#science_memes

threaded - newest

DomeGuy@lemmy.world on 01 Jul 21:14 next collapse

If you think that’s bad, look at what “1” means.

(And, honestly, at least windows’ “last big calendar change” and excel’s “start of the century when we wrote it” are reasonable points. The unix “let’s make it recent so we can fit an absurdly small unit as an integer!” Epoch is just… Weird.)

bleistift2@sopuli.xyz on 01 Jul 21:16 collapse

“start of the century when we wrote it”

This meme wouldn’t exist had they done that. But they chose the zeroeth, not the first, of January for Excel.

radix@lemmy.world on 01 Jul 21:23 collapse

Yep. “1” is 12:00am on 1-Jan-1900

Numbers less than zero just give a weird error. Between zero and less than one give a nonsense date-formatted non-date.

rumba@lemmy.zip on 01 Jul 21:33 next collapse

Now do 03:14:08 UTC on 19 January 2038!

davidgro@lemmy.world on 01 Jul 22:45 next collapse

Easy. Just be 64-bit. (Or unsigned, but that’s not as good.)

Stovetop@lemmy.world on 01 Jul 22:50 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/ff7bfb78-1e69-426b-a74b-26a2d6d1565a.jpeg">

HereIAm@lemmy.world on 03 Jul 23:34 collapse

“What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine…”

codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 Jul 23:07 next collapse

I’d never noticed that in this order, it’s almost π!

Off by 0.001 and some change; that coincidence is going to haunt me.

rumba@lemmy.zip on 01 Jul 23:28 collapse

the actual last 32 bit micro happens in 3:14:07 but that’s the wrong way :)

psud@aussie.zone on 02 Jul 05:46 collapse

I think we’re mostly using 64 bit machines now. Even loads of embedded stuff is running on 64 bit processors now.

There will still be a lot of old software and hardware that needs updating before the 32 bit Unix time overflow

rumba@lemmy.zip on 02 Jul 22:23 collapse

Hopefully it’s another Y2K nothing burger. (Which was largely because a lot of people prepared for it)

psud@aussie.zone on 02 Jul 23:41 collapse

Yeah, I got my first office job thanks to Y2K. An enormous amount was spent fixing it, with some of the fixes needed years before 2000-01-01, for example systems that projected into the future

Biggest problem I saw was a program that stored 1999 as 99 and displayed “19”.year

So when set to January 2000 it showed 19100. Its calculations were fine, just its display and reports were wrong

rumba@lemmy.zip on 03 Jul 00:14 collapse

Agreed, most of the actual problems seemed to be in reporting. I saw some cobol stuff that went to 1900. There were a few things where 00 wasn’t an option, But mostly it was just really heinously written stuff that wasn’t expected to be in service even in the '90s.

bleistift2@sopuli.xyz on 03 Jul 21:37 collapse

heinously written stuff that wasn’t expected to be in service even in the '90s.

Nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 01 Jul 23:04 next collapse

🧐: 0 is the origin of time, the big bang (if you believe in that kind if thing)

The problem then is figuring out when earth (and then human) time starts, but we can just add some arbitrary offsets that feel right and everyone agrees on.

felsiq@lemmy.zip on 01 Jul 23:59 collapse

Time is a pain in the ass and unfortunately not this simple, since it’s affected by energy and doesn’t pass at constant rates. The amount of time that’s passed since the Big Bang is different on earth than it is on a neutron star, for example, so one fundamental reference time isn’t possible the way it is for other units.

otacon239@lemmy.world on 02 Jul 04:58 collapse

Listen. Let’s just do it simple. Everyone sync their clocks with mine right now. It says it’s 10:57 at the moment, but we’ll just subtract that in the future going forward. Ready? 3, 2, 1, Go! Now we know where 0 is, whew. Problem solved, scientists!

Edit: wait, now it says 10:58…

homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world on 01 Jul 23:44 next collapse

Fucking Microsoft.

match@pawb.social on 02 Jul 01:16 next collapse

0 means now 🙂

Malfeasant@lemmy.world on 02 Jul 02:20 next collapse

On Linux, 0 often works out to 12/31/1969 after local time zone conversion…

Kushan@lemmy.world on 02 Jul 02:21 next collapse

I mean… They’re all kind of arbitrary in their own way, but one could argue that the excel time being invalid is actually useful because it serves as a null value - you know it’s incorrect, whereas on the other systems it could be the default date or it could be the actual date.

captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works on 02 Jul 02:40 next collapse

January zeroth, 1900. A red letter date.

driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br on 02 Jul 03:28 next collapse

I work in the accounting team of my company, doing python development, and a lot of the sources I get came from the accountants that only use excel and every once in a while the date columns came completely fucked with that integral number excel uses sometimes and is a pain in the ass to translate to datetime.

psud@aussie.zone on 02 Jul 05:41 next collapse

LibreOffice calc has

  • 0 = 1899-12-30,
  • 1= 1899-12-31,
  • 2=1900-01-01

I wonder if they were trying to one-up excel.

MazonnaCara89@lemmy.ml on 02 Jul 06:21 collapse

So, are these the so-called 0-days everybody talks about on windows and linux?

(This is a joke for everybody not getting it)