37: Unix Year 2038 problem and the art of underestimating

Jim walks through the classic 2038 problem — Unix's 32-bit signed timestamp (seconds since Jan 1, 1970) overflows on January 19, 2038, flipping negative and breaking anything that depends on file/time comparisons (e.g., Make). He compares it to Y2K, tracing the two-digit-year decision back to real storage constraints of the era — punch cards (80 characters each), early hard disks with fixed-size sectors — and argues those were reasonable trade-offs for their time, not simply negligence. That leads into a side discussion (Wolf) about engineering decisions made from measurement versus decisions made from feeling — and why the former holds up better over decades. Also cov...