"Freaky Friday" (1976) (Photo : Twitter)
A UNIX-based Facebook glitch resulted in a New Year's surprise for the social network's users "celebrating" mysterious 46-year friendships. People with very old Facebook accounts received odd messages about commemorating nearly half-century companionships with people on their Friends list. Facebook has announced it is fixing the problem, while tech experts have guessed the source of the problems is the UNIX operating system that most data centers use.
There are a few key red flags involving the OS bug. They include several users who saw the message being less than 46 years old, and the social network itself becoming 12 years old in February of this year, according to The Hindu.
Facebook told Bloomberg it is fixing the bug, according to Engadget. This will help users of the world's largest social network feel younger as they start the first day of 2016.
Microsoft Developer Mark Davis explained that UNIX has a random starting point called an "epoch," which has an internal value of zero. It counts seconds from midnight on Jan. 1, 1970 (Greenwich Mean Time), or 46 years ago.
Davis explained that the "Friends with since" was added after he became Facebook Friends with certain people. This caused UNIX to store the start of the friendship on the arbitrary date or "0" instead of the date the two people became online friends.
The UNIX glitch could have been fixed by adding one line of code. It would have prevented the value of zero being assigned to the "Friends with since" starting date.
Experts point out that the UNIX glitch is very common. For example, it can cause the clocks and calendars of gadgets to switch to the date Dec. 31, 1969.
