The Year 2038 Problem (Y2K38) occurs because many older or 32-bit systems store Unix time in a 32-bit signed integer. Unix time is the count of seconds since January 1, 1970 (UTC).
At 2147483647, on January 19, 2038, 03:14:07 UTC, the clock overflows — resetting to 1901 or causing errors. Modern systems use 64-bit time, which extends far beyond 2038.
Start at one second before the 32-bit max (0x7FFFFFFE), then click Next second or Previous second to watch bits flip and see how Unix time is interpreted.
Unpatched or legacy code relying on 32-bit time will overflow.