Yeah it's mostly a reference to Y2K and Y2038 [1], using representations that seem clever and work now, but will lead to bugs in the future because nobody thinks their software will be around for that long.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

> The latest time since 1 January 1970 that can be stored using a signed 32-bit integer is 03:14:07 on Tuesday, 19 January 2038

> MySQL database's built-in functions like UNIX_TIMESTAMP() will return 0 after 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038