While not a problem for desktops and servers, which have already made the switch to using 64-bit counts for the time, it's possible that embedded systems will continue to be 32-bit even 24 years from now.Īs for YouTube, upgrading to a 64-bit signed number means that Gangnam Style is safe until it reaches 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 views. Two billion seconds is about 68 years on January 19, 2038, at 03:14:07 in the morning, 32-bit Unix clocks will roll over. Apparently, Korean pop star Psys 'Gangnam Style' is the horrendously catchy music video that just keeps on giving.
32-bit systems use a signed 32-bit integer for this, so they will wrap around 2,147,483,647 seconds after that date. Unix systems record time values as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970. A spoof documentary by videographer Simon Gosselin was posted on YouTube and had promoted 2012 doomsday rumors across social media services such as Facebook and Twitter that linked 'Gangnam Style' to a fake Nostradamus prophecy. YouTube isn't the only software that this number is a problem for. 'Gangnam Style' reached the unprecedented milestone of one billion YouTube views on December 21, 2012. Once INT_MAX is reached, attempting to record another view will normally roll over to -2,147,483,648. The maximum value of this number type, 2,147,483,647, is well known to C programmers as INT_MAX. When YouTube was first developed, nobody ever imagined that a video would be watched more than 2 billion times, so the view count was stored using a signed 32-bit integer.
The irritatingly catchy tune has racked up so many views that Google has been forced to upgrade YouTube's infrastructure to cope. Here's why Redditors are flooding the YouTube video for 'Gangnam Style' with meme stock comments When Reddit went down, r/WallStreetBets had a backup plan.
Although it's no longer 2012, apparently people are still watching the YouTube video for Korean pop star Psy's smash hit song Gangnam Style.