You might have missed something in 1999, while everyone focused on the other Y2K bug, which was older GPS devices going haywire. This was because the date is stored as a 10 bit character which means that 1024 weeks after the start of the epoch, the dates on your GPS device rolls back to 0 and it is no longer able to give positional data as it depends on knowing when, as well as where you are.

On April 6th, this will happen once again and far more people are bound to notice than when this previously occurred. There are ways to ensure that devices do not suffer this bothersome 10 bit problem but with the lack of news coverage and general awareness not many have bothered. Devices which adhere to the ICD-200/IS-GPS-200 specification will have no problems whatsoever; but many devices did not originally and when was the last time you saw a firmware update for the GPS in your car?

As The Register puts it, "if your gadget goes haywire in April, it's probably because of this. If it works as normal: brilliant, it's not affected."

"Older satnavs and such devices won't be able to use America's Global Positioning System properly after April 6 unless they've been suitably updated or designed to handle a looming epoch rollover."

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