I was looking a directory I have with a couple hundred video shorts in it.
When I sorted by date, I noticed a dozen files with a date of 12/31/69.
Since I just got this laptop last year this looks suspicious. Can anyone
explain?

MajorLanGod wrote:
> I was looking a directory I have with a couple hundred video shorts in it.
> When I sorted by date, I noticed a dozen files with a date of 12/31/69.
> Since I just got this laptop last year this looks suspicious. Can anyone
> explain?

That's a date, just before the Epoch on some foreign file system.

There are a number of canonical dates used by various epoch definitions.

NTFS itself, has a huge range, because the date stamping
system there uses 64 bit numbers. And the accuracy of the
stamp is 100nsec or so.

A number like the year 1970, might be something that
uses 32 bit numbers for timestamps. And the accuracy might
be limited to 1 second or so.

Now, what if a date comes along and it needs to be
"coerced to a local representation". If a date comes in
for the year 5000 BC, then the OS may choose to use
"a date one day before the Epoch began", as a shorthand
for "this date is exactly equal to minus 1".

It's a side effect of date handling between heterogenous OSes
or File Systems.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2390463/what-happened-on-dec-31-1969-at-700-pm

"The Unix epoch is the time 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970."

"Every time in PHP when I make a variable...
and somehow row['date'] happens to be 0,
the date Dec 31 1969 at 7:00 PM is
displayed on the screen?"

Maybe if the server uses PHP code to do some serving,
a bogus date is stamped on the delivered item ?

The Julian Calendar is not the only calendar either.

I expect most people use a 24 hour day, but, you never know...

Paul

MajorLanGod <lonelydad58@gmail.com> wrote:
> I was looking a directory I have with a couple hundred video shorts in it.
> When I sorted by date, I noticed a dozen files with a date of 12/31/69.
> Since I just got this laptop last year this looks suspicious. Can anyone
> explain?

The files probably have their dates messed up and windows has had a stab at
guessing it. Normally if it gets it wrong it comes back as 01/01/1970, but
for some reason yours is offset by a day. Are you in Oz or NZ by any
chance?

On Wed, 26 May 2021 03:32:18 GMT, MajorLanGod wrote:

> I was looking a directory I have with a couple hundred video shorts in it.
> When I sorted by date, I noticed a dozen files with a date of 12/31/69.
> Since I just got this laptop last year this looks suspicious. Can anyone
> explain?

Most likely, Windows is showing you video metadata from within the file,
and not the Windows file date. When that metadata is missing, you may see
a date of 1970-01-01 00:00:00 GMT or the equivalent in other time zones,
such as 1969-12-31 19:00:00 New York time or 1969-12-31 16:00:00 California
time.

Try this [see next screen-shot]:

1. Right-click on the explorer right-side pane header
to bring up a context menu of which columns to show
2. De-select 'Date'
3. Select 'Date modified'
Screen-shot: <https://i.imgur.com/hu83C5A.png>

When the directory's properties are set to 'Optimize this folder
for videos' [see next screen-shot], Windows defaults to showing
video metadata instead of the Windows file date.

Screen-shot: <https://i.imgur.com/qkVaEre.png>

Another check: Right-click on one of the video files, choose 'Properties',
and select the 'Details' tab. Compare the dates in the 'File' section near
the bottom, with the dates in the 'Origin' section near the middle.

--
Kind regards
Ralph

On Fri, 28 May 2021 08:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Chris wrote:

> MajorLanGod <lonelydad58@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I was looking a directory I have with a couple hundred video shorts in it.
>> When I sorted by date, I noticed a dozen files with a date of 12/31/69.
>> Since I just got this laptop last year this looks suspicious. Can anyone
>> explain?
>
> The files probably have their dates messed up and windows has had a stab at
> guessing it. Normally if it gets it wrong it comes back as 01/01/1970, but
> for some reason yours is offset by a day. Are you in Oz or NZ by any
> chance?

It comes back as 01/01/1970 00:00:00 GMT, which Windows would display as
01/01/1970 11:00:00 in Sydney Australia, or as 01/01/1970 13:00:00 in
Auckland New Zealand.

It would display as 31 Deember 1969 in time zones _west_ of GMT, such as
in the Americas.

--
Kind regards
Ralph

Ralph Fox <-rf-nz-@-.invalid> wrote:
> On Fri, 28 May 2021 08:50:59 -0000 (UTC), Chris wrote:
>
>> MajorLanGod <lonelydad58@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I was looking a directory I have with a couple hundred video shorts in it.
>>> When I sorted by date, I noticed a dozen files with a date of 12/31/69.
>>> Since I just got this laptop last year this looks suspicious. Can anyone
>>> explain?
>>
>> The files probably have their dates messed up and windows has had a stab at
>> guessing it. Normally if it gets it wrong it comes back as 01/01/1970, but
>> for some reason yours is offset by a day. Are you in Oz or NZ by any
>> chance?
>
>
> It comes back as 01/01/1970 00:00:00 GMT, which Windows would display as
> 01/01/1970 11:00:00 in Sydney Australia, or as 01/01/1970 13:00:00 in
> Auckland New Zealand.
>
> It would display as 31 Deember 1969 in time zones _west_ of GMT, such as
> in the Americas.

Thanks. Time zones always confuse me.