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   Brian Marick (marick@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Feb-2025 08:15:48 JST Brian Marick

   In computers, dates are commonly represented as integer offsets from some fixed date. Nowadays, that "epoch" date is usually January 1, 1970. In Cobol, it was 1875. (Both are semi-arbitrary choices, made for historical reasons.)

   A problem is that there's no way to represent "unknown." But the field has to contain *something*. So Cobol programmers used the epoch, knowing that everyone would know to interpret 1875 as "unknown". (1/6)

   • Steve's Place repeated this.
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     Brian Marick (marick@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Feb-2025 11:21:40 JST Brian Marick

     in reply to

     One such dumbass sees a report with some dates of birth showing as 1875. A non-dumbass might think, "That date appears oddly often" and ask for an explanation. Our dumbass, though, has a brain thoroughly pickled by social media conspiracy theories. And is tasked with finding fraud. (3/6)

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     Brian Marick (marick@mstdn.social)'s status on Saturday, 15-Feb-2025 11:21:41 JST Brian Marick

     in reply to

     Fast forward some decades. "Everyone" now includes self-confident twitter trolls who think tagging themselves "bigballs" on social media projects an attractive swagger. Dumbasses, in other words, working for the biggest dumbass of all. (2/6)

     Steve's Place repeated this.