KDE Social
  • Communities
  • Create Post
  • heart
    Support Lemmy
  • search
    Search
  • Login
  • Sign Up
Blxter to Technology@lemmy.worldEnglish •
edit-2
1 year ago

Inventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85

arstechnica.com

external-link
message-square
56
fedilink
  • cross-posted to:
  • technology@beehaw.org
1K
external-link

Inventor of NTP protocol that keeps time on billions of devices dies at age 85

arstechnica.com

Blxter to Technology@lemmy.worldEnglish •
edit-2
1 year ago
message-square
56
fedilink
  • cross-posted to:
  • technology@beehaw.org
Dave Mills created NTP, the protocol that holds the temporal Internet together, in 1985.
  • Björn Tantau
    link
    fedilink
    English
    132•1 year ago

    Shit. That thing is supposedly hard to understand.

    • noughtnaut
      link
      fedilink
      English
      49•
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      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@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        18•1 year 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.

      • @Retiring@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        13•1 year ago

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

      • @Dragster39@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        2•1 year ago

        Thank you for the link to the interview!

    • @owenfromcanada@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      19•1 year ago

      Dang. NTP is that, isn’t it

      • @orrk@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        10•1 year ago

        image magic

        • @PlexSheep@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          14•1 year ago

          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?

          • Ann Archy
            link
            fedilink
            English
            11•1 year ago

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

          • TimeSquirrel
            link
            fedilink
            1•
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            deleted by creator

    • Max-P
      link
      fedilink
      English
      5•1 year ago

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

Technology@lemmy.world

!technology@lemmy.world

Subscribe from Remote Instance

Create a post
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


  • @L4s@lemmy.world
  • @autotldr@lemmings.world
  • @PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks
  • @wikibot@lemmy.world
  • 2.84K users / day
  • 9.51K users / week
  • 18K users / month
  • 37.6K users / 6 months
  • 69.9K subscribers
  • 15.5K Posts
  • 660K Comments
  • Modlog
  • mods:
  • @L3s@lemmy.world
  • enu
  • Technopagan
  • L4sBot
  • L3s
  • @L4s@hackingne.ws
  • BE: 0.19.3
  • Modlog
  • Instances
  • Docs
  • Code
  • join-lemmy.org