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 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 132 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Shit. That thing is supposedly hard to understand.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 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 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

Thank you for the link to the interview!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Dang. NTP is that, isn't it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

image magic

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 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?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

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