“Automatic Date & Time” in Ubuntu 18.10 on XPS 9570 laptop

I meant to note that I tested it from a 18.04 Live USB and the feature worked fine.

If you set the time manually to a little in the past, then use the application is it OK?

I set it to yesterday and then enabled auto update and it changed the time to Nov 29 2039 7:44am. This is the same time as in my last test so it isn't random at all (I've also seen year 2058, I think, several times, but not sure of the date/time).

Is the BIOS time and date OK?

I just rebooted and popped into the bios and the time was correct (after adjusting for time zone). Also, in addition to auto update working from 18.04 Live, it also works if I boot into Windows and test turning Internet update on and off.

What output do you receive for the commands

cat /etc/timezone
cat /etc/ntp.conf
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
dpkg -l | grep ntp
ntpq --numeric --peers

If it is a dual boot with Windows, have you set the BIOS clock to UTC or local time?

==> cat /etc/timezone
America/New_York

==> cat /etc/ntp.conf
cat: /etc/ntp.conf: No such file or directory

==> sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
[sudo] password for jibbers42:

Current default time zone: 'America/New_York'
Local time is now: Tue Dec 11 12:09:24 EST 2018.
Universal Time is now: Tue Dec 11 17:09:24 UTC 2018.

(note: this had me select my location between entering my password and outputting the above text)

==> dpkg -l | grep ntp
(note: there was no output)

==> ntpq --numeric --peers

Command 'ntpq' not found, but can be installed with:

sudo apt install ntp
sudo apt install ntpsec

"If it is a dual boot with Windows, have you set the BIOS clock to UTC or local time?"
I'm not clear what you're asking. I don't see a setting to configure time zone in the BIOS. If you mean OS level, I haven't made any changes to Ubuntu or Windows to affect how it reads BIOS time. The BIOS time matches UTC when I rebooted from Ubuntu and I'm assuming if I had been in Windows then it would show local time.

I believe I've noticed in the past that time sync works without ntp by default, but I'm not sure what packages/configs that uses.

Apparently my question with respect to the BIOS clock was not clear enough.
If you reboot your computer, enter BIOS setup and look at the clock there, does it show local time (Windows style) or UTC (Linux style)?
see also https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuTime#Multiple_Boot_Systems_Time_Conflicts

(I know that this most probably is not causing your problem.)

The BIOS time matched UTC when I checked.

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