You’ve heard of the Unix 2038 Problem. I bet you haven’t heard of the GPS 2038 problem. Every GPS navigation device in existence experiences an integer overflow every 19.6 years. Last time, it wiped out iPhones, NOAA weather buoys, and a number of flights in China:
Part of the issue is GPS isn’t *just* used for positioning, it’s also used for accurate time. The week counter is stored with just 10 binary digits, aka 0-1023. This causes…odd knock on effects. In the 2019 rollover, telemetry broke on 12,000+ traffic lights in NYC.
The worst parts is *unlike* the UNIX 2038 problem, the GPS rollover bug doesn’t hit devices all at the same time. It’s quite common for GPS units to only rebuild the week number on a cold boot. Many scientific devices didn’t get hit until months (or even years!) later.
In any case, 2038 is going to be a tricky year for time. One of the better writeups about the 2019 GPS event is a paper from Antarctic site PG2. Many of their instruments are completely inaccessible during the polar night season. It took over a *year* to fix some of the
@lauriewired Anything we can do in the next 13 years to mitigate the problem?