You’re right, whether or not the integers are signed has nothing to do with the issue above. Unsigned integers have the same issue.

Here is an example for signed integers.

These represent zero time but have different representations in memory:

Seconds: 2 Nanoseconds: -2,000,000,000 (fits in a 32 bit number) Time: zero seconds

Seconds: -2 Nanoseconds: 2,000,000,000 Time: zero seconds

Here is an example for unsigned: Seconds: 1 Nanoseconds: 0 Time: 1 second

Seconds: 0 Nanoseconds: 1,000,000,000 Time 1 second