[vladde]

> The algorithm provides accurate results over a period of ±1.89 Trillion years

i'm placing my bets that in a few thousand years we'll have changed calendar system entirely haha

but, really interesting to see the insane methods used to achieve this

[layer8]

Maybe not in a few thousand years, but given the deceleration of the Earth’s rotation around its axis, mostly due to tidal friction with the moon, in a couple hundred thousand years our leap-day count will stop making sense. In roughly a million years, day length will have increased such that the year length will be close to 365.0 days.

I therefore agree that a trillion years of accuracy for broken-down date calculation has little practical relevance. The question is if the calculation could be made even more efficient by reducing to 32 bits, or maybe even just 16 bits.

[aidenn0]

> The question is if the calculation could be made even more efficient by reducing to 32 bits, or maybe even just 16 bits.

This is somewhat moot considering that 64-bits is the native width of most modern computers and Unix time will exceed 32-bits in just 12 years.

[PaulHoule]

Shorter term the Gregorian calendar has the ratio for leap years just a tiny bit wrong which will be a day off by 3000 years or so.

[hugmynutus]

> i'm placing my bets that in a few thousand years we'll have changed calendar system entirely haha

Given the chronostrife will occur in around 40_000 years (give or take 2_000) I somewhat doubt that </humor>

[____tom____]

The calendar system already changed. So this won't get correct dates, meaning the dates actually used, past that date. Well, those dates, as different countries changed at different times.

[fnordsensei]

Wouldn’t it be accurate for that as well? Unless we change to base 10 time units or something. Then we all have a lot of work to do.

But if it’s just about starting over from 0 being the AI apocalypse or something, I’m sure it’ll be more manageable, and the fix could hopefully be done on a cave wall using a flint spear tip.

[jandrese]

Or set 0 to be the Big Bang and make the type unsigned. Do it the same time we convert all temperature readings to Kelvin.