Recent weird dates cropping up all over the internet

Not so long back someone posted a thread wondering why everyones reg date on ATS was something like 17/1/11, mine wasn't like that, as wasn't most others.

But I have noticed recently crazy dates on various websites, example:

www.sidereel.com...

Interview with Robert Picardo about upcoming Atlantis movie by simpsons80822 | 19:00 EST, 31 Dec, 1969 Full Interview Here;

Note how it says the article was created on 31st Dec 1969?

I have noticed this happening all over the place recently, different dates, and it's not just me, or my computer, others have noticed it, and I have seen it on other systems.

Obviously it's just a technical issue somewhere, rather than some major conspiracy, but can anyone shed some light on the matter? I am a computer engineer, and other than the y2k issue (or a flat CMOS battery), I have never before noticed this happen before.

Anyone else notice it anywhere?

Wow that really is strange. You'd assume this was some sort of glitch with a time function or that maybe some coder left a field unprotected and someone thought it would be funny to mess with the date to see if anyone would notice, but you never know.

No, I haven't noticed this at all, but I sure will keep an eye out for it now. (There was that time I got a text message from the future on my cell and posted about it here, but this is a whole different kind of thing.)

Unix works out its time stamp by counting the number of seconds that have passed since the start of the "unix epoch" which started on the very first second of 1970.

If the time stamp gets set to an invalid number it will default back to its start point which is the very last second of dec 31st 1969

Unix epoch

Edit to add the current unix time is 1297170504

Originally posted by davespanners
Unix works out its time stamp by counting the number of seconds that have passed since the start of the "unix epoch" which started on the very first second of 1970.

If the time stamp gets set to an invalid number it will default back to its start point which is the very last second of dec 31st 1969

Unix epoch

Edit to add the current unix time is 1297170504

edit on 8-2-2011 by davespanners because: (no reason given)

edit on 8-2-2011 by davespanners because: spelling

Thank you for that info. ..My brain is smoking.lol.
I had no idea of the epoch. I guess this is why I am not a computer programmer..

reply to post by davespanners


Cheers for that Dave, that example I posted is probably down to that, although the time isn't the last second of 1969, it's a good explanation, however it's not just 1969, it's other random dates, mostly in the 20th century.

As I said, it's gonna be a technical issue, but what could be causing it to happen so much recently?

To the poster above who said about recieving a text message "from the future", that could also count in this discussion as it is an example of computers recently putting out wrong dates.

Hardware issue, or software? hmmm

Maybe even the recent flood of cyber attacks by anon affecting more than their intended targets?

EDIT: My girlfriend has just reminded me about an issue myself and several others had a couple of months back where for a whole week our PC clocks were losing time, and syncing incorrectly with the Internet time servers, related perhaps?

Software is not perfect. Especially php-scripts that could have been modified by different individuals without any documentation to the changes. The same thing can be said about .Net tech.

If I was a bit paranoid I would think:
If you take the numbers from that date you end up with 1969 12/13 19:00
Transform those into coordinates and there are too many minutes, so 69 has to be degrees. So you end up with lat 69 19 12 long 13 19 00. The military applications for those kinds of coordinates would be Russians intercept coordinates picked up by NATO radars and intercepted by Norwegian F16 fighters. When you have operatives that needs satellite-headings without blowing cover they might interface to mundane web-pages experiencing mundane timing-errors from their seed server. Why would somebody transfer this information in such a non-traceable way. These flights are a cat and mouse game, so does somebody have a leak? If you have the flight-path from the Russians, it could be the point of a radar-lock occurring?

Well, guess we'll never know.

17/01/11 is DD/MM/YY whereas Americans are used to seeing it as MM/DD/YY 01/17/11

Point out that 19:00 EST is GMT -5 or actually "24:00" GMT so the unix epoch is a possibility.
Note the offending time stamp is for an upload - most likely the clock malfunction occurred only at the upload server and was a glitch, or an intentional obfuscation. Other system software clock mechanisms keep time counters from either 1900 or 1960 in my experience, although the GMT +/- offset scheme in date-time stamps has been prevaent . There was a time we had to idle the mainframes for an hour during the shift from daylight savings time because the underlying software wouldn't function with overlapping time stamps. Sometimes I find files with very strange dates like 1/1/1980 - usually old dos files or compatibility configurations. Bottom line, not a thing to worry about, might actually be helpful in anonymizing file uploads.

ganjoa

s at the t

Zoster is right. This isn't some technical glitch or conspiracy its a matter of a culture's customary way of noting the month, date, and year. American's tend to say "its December 25th, 2010" whereas europeans (for example) say its 25th of December 2010.

Our Military also uses the day month year format. You can visit this link to see the Army Regulation manual.

reply to post by woogleuk


This kind of creeped me out.Yesterday, I was at my computer and I looked at the time....it said 4:13 .....then I glanced up at the clock on the wall and it said 5:13.....so I got up and checked all the clocks and they all had 5:13......I went back to my computer and it now had 5:13! Thought I was going nuts! It's never done that before, and I have never adjusted the clock on my computer.....just sayin....

reply to post by Dilligaf28


Ah yeah, I know that, the poster in question was saying that everybodys reg date on ATS was showing as 17/1/11 or 1/17/11, I probably didn't explain that right.

Thanks for pointing out the Unix Epoch thing (17 years I have been into computer hardware, and Linux is my preferred OS, can't believe I didn't know that)

There is still some weird time issues going on that only seem to have cropped up since 2010, as I said, if I was the only one noticing it I wouldn't have started a thread to get to the bottom of it, I was just hoping more ATS'ers had similar experiences, it's curiosity more than anything on my part, I've googled all over the place with no success, although I have found others who have noticed the problem.

For the record I put this in the Grey area, and it was moved here, I don't think there is a conspiracy, just some underlying tech issue, and as a tech guy I'm trying to find answers, lol.