Strange recurring E-mail dated from 1969

[xenonParticipant 2007]

I have a question from pretty quick geezer type to anyone more tech savvy.

I have a cell phone again for the first time in a long time. On it I get my e-mail from the same server I have been using for years. Once a week or more I get one or several e-mails that have nothing in the body where text goes but the date is always 12/31/1969. I have been getting them for a long time. As an aside here, that date has always meant something for me. I had the album by Jimi Hendrix he recorded live with The Band of Gypsies. They did the show in NYC I think if I remember right, on that date.

I don’t think Jimi is trying to reach me but that would be ever so cool.

[KeymasterKeymaster]

Fascinating.

Are you familiar with Unix Time Stamp? or “EPOCH”?
It’s “computer time”.

Epoch, also known as Unix timestamps, is the number of seconds (not milliseconds!) that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT (1970-01-01 00:00:00 GMT).

As an example, every forums post is recorded that way.
Even your last login was recorded that way. “1494895211”.

That’s how many seconds have elapsed since Jan 1 1970.
Converted to a readable English date, and it’s: GMT: Tue, 16 May 2017 00:40:11 GMT

Your email is dated 12/31/1969 — the day before Unix time began.

I have no explanation why you are receiving an email with that date referenced, but it is probably significant for this reason. I “guessed”. It just jumped out at me.

—

FYI

Programmers are aware of Unix time and calculations require it. Like if I want a script to expire or renew every day, I make it ‘time out” and renew every 86400 seconds. That’s how many seconds are in a day.

To see if a date is in the future or past, you convert it to Unix Time, and calculate the unix timestamp for “right now” and compare them. It’s also how you see how many days, weeks, seconds elapsed since another timestamp…. or how you countdown to a future date.

If I want to set an expiry for one year from now, I would find the unix timestamp for (A) “one year from now” ( which is right now + 31557600 seconds). As time moves forward, I would repeatedly calculate the current “right now” (B) and compare it to A ….. and when the difference is 0, we have reached the expiry time in seconds.

After a while, you begin to THINK in “unix time”.

Unix time conveniently marks every second in time with a unique identifier.

If you keep doing what you've always done... you're gonna keep getting what you always got.

[KeymasterKeymaster]

PS….

Sometimes digital files that have NO unix timestamp attached to them have the 12/31/1969 date automatically assigned to them. That probably explains it. It could be something “lost” in time. I have seen files with this date imprinted on them…. because the actual creation date is not known.

A computer’s clock can also revert to – and assume today is – 12/31/1969 if it doesn’t know what time it is in relation to Jan 1 1970.

If you keep doing what you've always done... you're gonna keep getting what you always got.

[NerevarParticipant 8040]

Interesting, I’ve never seen anything like that before. Keep us updated!

"One of the best things internet exposed is just how insane women are." - Freeman_K

[xenonParticipant 2007]

Thank you for that information. Damn. I want to jam with Jimi. Unix time stamp makes sense to me but why me? No identifying sender, no additional information. Maybe someone could dig deeper than I at first glance but I never see headers or anything that looks digitally encoded. Just the date. And come to think of it, they never turn up in my pc mailbox that is the “master” to my devices, in that when it deletes messages they disappear from my cell.

I like thinking in seconds elapsed for comparative dating. I really like the tiny subdivisions of seconds physicists often refer to for various reasons. Things can happen quite quickly in the sub-atomic world, especially when contrasted with our perception of times’ flow locally in earth’s gravity well.

[joetechParticipant]

Let us know if you suddenly start playing the guitar left handed. Maybe Jimmi IS trying to contact you.

"Don't follow in my footsteps...I stepped in something."

[Anonymous 7]

I’ve actually received these as well.

I got a new phone about a year ago and they have now stopped.

I had forgotten about it until I saw your post. The exact same details apply: no body of text, same date, and came randomly but constant two or so times a month.

It was for a secondary email address that was shared by the ex. Ex never received one of these emails.

I have no idea what to make of it.

[sidecarParticipant 35837]

Something somewhere is giving -1 as the time stamp, probably as an error code (bad programming practice). Something else isn’t properly checking for that error code (another bad programming practice) and considering it a valid time value. One second before midnight, January 1, 1970 is 12:59:59PM 12/31/1969.

tl;dr: Something is broken at the sender’s end. Don’t worry about it. It’s probably failed spam anyways.

Keymaster wrote:

Epoch, also known as Unix timestamps, is the number of seconds (not milliseconds!) that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT (1970-01-01 00:00:00 GMT).

Elapsed or preceding, actually. Unix time is usually a signed 32 bit integer. This is why we have a Year 2038 Problem instead of a Year 2106 Problem. Sometime before then we’ll have to change time to a signed 64 bit integer, which admittedly is kicking the can down the road, but this kicks it further than the expected lifespan of the universe, so nobody’s really concerned about that.

[Anonymous 7]

Thank you, sidecar!

I was always baffled by it, but didn’t give it much thought. I assumed it was a glitch somewhere and did not care to fix it.

The network of knowledge here is astounding. I enjoy your posts.

On a sidenote, sidecar, your handle reminds me of the Road King I was thinking about buying years ago. I was going to get the sidecar – I like traditional and versatility. I looked at pictures, built virtual ones, and went to the dealership to look over a five month period.

I bought a Streetbob instead.

[AttonParticipant]

Funny IC’s where only really invented in 1960’s

A MGTOW is a man who is not a woman's bitch!

[FunInTheSunParticipant 8283]

Perhaps someone’s trying to tell us that time travelling is real.

"I saw that there comes a point, in the defeat of any man of virtue, when his own consent is needed for evil to win-and that no manner of injury done to him by others can succeed if he chooses to withhold his consent. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was ‘No.’" (Atlas Shrugged)

[coolthingy450Participant 1223]

sidecar wrote:

Something somewhere is giving -1 as the time stamp, probably as an error code (bad programming practice). Something else isn’t properly checking for that error code (another bad programming practice) and considering it a valid time value. One second before midnight, January 1, 1970 is 12:59:59PM 12/31/1969.

tl;dr: Something is broken at the sender’s end. Don’t worry about it. It’s probably failed spam anyways.

Keymaster wrote:

Epoch, also known as Unix timestamps, is the number of seconds (not milliseconds!) that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 GMT (1970-01-01 00:00:00 GMT).

Elapsed or preceding, actually. Unix time is usually a signed 32 bit integer. This is why we have a Year 2038 Problem instead of a Year 2106 Problem. Sometime before then we’ll have to change time to a signed 64 bit integer, which admittedly is kicking the can down the road, but this kicks it further than the expected lifespan of the universe, so nobody’s really concerned about that.

I was going to being up the unix issue of 2038.

Actions have consequences and consequences have prices. Cause and effect at work.

[sidecarParticipant 35837]

Atton wrote:

Funny IC’s where only really invented in 1960’s

I believe most computers were 8-bit when they settled on a signed 32-bit integer for time. Back then it must have seemed really really big, and the extra operations to do 64 bit math on 8-bit processors was deemed unnecessary and wasteful. The same “logic” was probably in effect when they decided to use 32-bit unsigned values for internet addresses.

In the modern era of 64-bit computers, suddenly a mere 32 bits doesn’t seem all that large after all.

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