this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Inventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85 (arstechnica.com)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/technology
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[–] [email protected] 132 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Shit. That thing is supposedly hard to understand.

[–] noughtnaut 49 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Very. And he was going blind, too. I read a marvellous interview with him not too long ago, I'll see if I can find it.

Ah, here it is: https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-thorny-problem-of-keeping-the-internets-time

[–] Aevironis 18 points 10 months ago

Wow! What an interesting read about someone I've never heard of, but whose work has impacted daily life in so many ways. Its amazing how many systems rely on accurately telling time and the intricate solution that NTP is.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

https://archive.is/2fw9A With no paywall. Thanks, what an interesting read!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Thank you for the link to the interview!

[–] owenfromcanada 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Dang. NTP is that, isn't it

[–] orrk 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

image magic

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The Internet would not collapse without images. Usability would be bad in many cases, but it would still work. Now imagine your clients don't know the time and cannot verify if a certificate is still valid?

[–] anarchy79 11 points 10 months ago

I don't know the time right now and I barely function.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Hard to understand but at least there's multiple implementations other than ntpd, like Chrony and systemd-timesyncd.