Is there ever going to be another y2k?

Answer 1

Not exactly - the Y2K (Year 2000) refers to the millennium when we moved from 1999 to 2000. This was a problem with old computer programs that only stored the last 2 digits of the year - so 1963 was stored as 63. So 2000 would be stored as 00 meaning 1900.

However, there is a new problem called - not surprisingly Y2K38 - which will occur in 2038.This only effects Unix (plus derivatives Linux/Aix/Solaris etc) machines.

It will occur because Unix machines store the system time as a 32 bit integer, as the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, 1 January 1970.

So the Unix machines will "get confused" at 03:14:07 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038.

It is so far in the future, that it's unlikely to cause too much fuss, as most machines and operating systems will have been updated by then.