alt Hacker NewsNobody forces you to use a real Unix timestamp. BTW the original Unix timestamp is 32 bits (expiring in 2038), and now everyone is switching to 64-bit time_t. What 48 bits?
All you need is a guaranteed non-decreasing 48-bit number. A clock is one way to generate it, but I don't see why a UUIDv7 would become invalid if your clock is biased, runs too fast, too slow, or whatever. I would not count on the first 48 bits being a "real" timestamp.
> Nobody forces you to use a real Unix timestamp.
Besides the UUIDv7 specification, that is? Otherwise you have some arbitrary kind of UUID.
> I would not count on the first 48 bits being a "real" timestamp.
I agree; this is the existential hazard under discussion which comes from encoding something that might or might not be data into an opaque identifier.
I personally don't agree as dogmatically with the grandparent post that extraneous data should _not_ be incorporated into primary key identifiers, but I also disagree that "just use UUIDv7 and treat UUIDs as opaque" is a completely plausible solution either.