Back in 1994, a new Internet Protocol was in the works - Internet Protocol next generation (IPng) - which eventually became IPv6. The goal was to have it up and running by 1996, with the idea that by the time IPv4 addresses ran out, everyone would already be using IPv6. Well… that didn’t quite go as planned. As of last year (2012), global adoption of IPv6 only just hit 1%.

I found above message in a kernel log and I was just wondering what is all about. I was amazed how little I knew about it.

A leap second is a second, as measured by an atomic clock, added to or subtracted from UTC to make it agree with astronomical time to within 0.9 second. It compensates for slowing in the Earth’s rotation and is added during the end of June or December. The first leap second was added to atomic clocks in 1972, with the most recent leap second being added on December 31, 2008.

On the day of my birthday, I wondered (of course - as many us do), if this is my start date, what is the to origin story of the birth date of computer time?

The Unix epoch, defined as 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970, serves as the foundational reference point for timekeeping in nearly all modern computing systems. This date, though seemingly arbitrary, emerged from a confluence of technical constraints, historical decisions, and practical considerations during Unix’s early development.