April 20, 2026
Cookie crumbles, comments explode
10 years ago, someone wrote a test for servo that included an expiry in 2026
10-year-old cookie date breaks Servo tests — memes, '9999 forever,' and 'fix it right!' collide
TLDR: A decade-old test in the Servo browser project used a cookie date that expired in 2026, breaking its automated checks. The crowd split between jokes and practice: some cheered the quick fix pushing dates to 2126, others demanded smarter “relative” dates so tests don’t blow up again.
A decade-old date just came back to bite the web world: a 2016 test in the experimental browser engine Servo used a cookie that expired on April 18, 2026. When the clock hit, the project’s automated checks (the robots that make sure new code is safe) fell over. Maintainer jdm posted the oops on Mastodon and filed a PR to push the dates to 2126. Internet, start your engines.
The comments turned into a party-sized bake-off over the “expired cookie.” One camp shrugged: a quick bump to the future is fine. As db48x put it, it’s “just a quick and easy fix” while a better one lands. The other camp rolled its eyes at hard-coded dates, with Alupis asking, why not use a relative date like “today + 1 year” so this never happens again? Meanwhile the jokesters flooded in: bombcar pictured a far-future computer still screaming “after the heat death of the universe: ERROR,” and another commenter bragged their tests “always expire at 9999.”
There were wholesome vibes too: one reply hoped jdm lives long enough to fix it again in a century, while another loved the idea of an intentional “time bomb” for forced code review. A flagged take added a pinch of drama. Verdict from the crowd? Funny bug, teachable moment. Push the fix, but please—no more dates that age like milk. Read jdm’s post here.
Key Points
- •A Servo unit test written ~10 years ago used a hard-coded cookie expiry of April 18, 2026.
- •When that date arrived, the test failed and broke Servo’s CI.
- •jdm opened GitHub PR #44341 to set test cookie expirations one century into the future.
- •Servo’s CI will remain broken until another maintainer merges the PR.
- •The Mastodon post announcing the issue and fix was published on April 19, 2026.