Y2K Bug: Much Ado About Nothing? | Retro Report | The New York Times
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- čas přidán 29. 05. 2013
- The Y2K bug threatened to wipe out computers and disrupt modern society at the end of the 20th century. We all remember the doomsday hype, but what really happened?
Read the story here: nyti.ms/13m0Kj8
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Y2K Bug: Much Ado About Nothing? | Retro Report | The New York Times
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My aunt worked for a large warehouse, a huge place, in the 90s where she maintained the computers they had. They were certain that their computer systems would fail. Somehow they thought with my aunt there she'd be able to save the computers from meltdown. So they paid her a very, very large sum of money to watch the computers on New Years. She got there at 10:30pm. 12 o'clock rolled by. 2000 came along. Nothing happened. She walked out 2am considerably richer woman. She still says it was the best New Years she ever had.
How much was the bonus?
Steven Williams Time and a half.
Cormy SyStem
Omg I have a uncle who works for the government and the same thing happened to him I think that’s so hilarious good for your aunt👍🏼
She can always say her presence alone was enough to stop the worst from happening....😂😂
I worked for a company that usually had the best New Years parties in town. That year they were so freaked out and scared of Y2K that instead of throwing their usual New Years party with band and open bar they would forgo the party and decided that a manager from each department would stay in the office to watch the year roll in and make sure that the computers turned on and the data was safe. Of course at midnight nothing of any significance happened. The computers were fine. The data was safe. So instead of a great New Years party, the company threw a self congratulatory lunch for the department managers on a successful Y2K.
The rest of us were pretty annoyed. Imagine working at a place known for having the best holiday party in town and they skip the year you work there, which also happens to be the year 2000?
"You never get credit for the disaster you avert." Teams in goverment and the private sector applied fixes and work-arounds that made Y2K a big nothing. Glad there was such success.
Problem: (exists)
Public: WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!
Experts: (Spend two years solving the problem)
Public: So I guess it was never a problem at all?
Yeah some people updated the dates from 2 digits to 4 digits. Wow they really saved the world 🙄
@@edgarallenpwned3538 Did you watch the video? 100 Billion dollars is nothing? We could build a moon base, twice, with a 100 billion, thats a huge sum of money
@@edgarallenpwned3538 If you ever work in a large corporation, you'll realize how much of a miracle a change like that can be. Beaurucracy is the bug, not the computer code.q
They didn't spend two years solving a problem, as there wasn't one.
They've known about it since the sixties ?talk about procrastination man wow.....
Billy Savedra In the sixties they didn't want to waste memory with those 2 extra digits because they were really short on memory and they didn't think their software would still be in use in 40 years anyway
Also, a programmer writing software in 1960 couldn't possibly imagine that somebody would still be using that exact same software 40 years later. They didn't think it would ever be an issue cause they assumed newer software would be in use by that time
Just wait until you hear about the 2038 computer problem. 32 bit integers will overflow back to 1969. It will be worse than Y2k.
Skill Graal I doubt it'll be worse, if anything it will be a little bit easier to deal with cause we've already dealt with it.
For most systems you just upgrade to 64 bit machines and boom problem solved. For systems you can't upgrade, they could either change the date the unix timestamp refers to to like 12:00 AM Jan 1st 2000, or start using two integers instead of one to count it
lol
I was 11 in 1999. I remember the Y2K scare. That year, before we went on winter break for the holidays, my class made "Y2K bug" ornaments out of pipe cleaners and googly eyes to bring home to our families.
That's the funny thing about zero. It's nothing, but we make it into something. I was an impressionable 9-year-old at the time and boy was I relieved when I woke up on 1/1/2000 and there were no airplanes falling out of the sky. And then 9/11 happened.
John Dee I think everyone forgot about Y2K. It was basically just a runaway social worry that no one remembers after 9/11
I was 7 at the time and totally resonate with your comment !
+Inan Xu yup
That’s tough, man.
Both were used as money making schemes to push power and control upstream - the dark (satanic) side of economics
I remember as a child my mother was a computer programmer. I barely got to see her because she was always busy working till late. It wasn't until November 1999 that she came home in time for family night out. I think that makes my mom a superhero who averted the end of the world. (And then she was promptly fired after 2000 when there wasn't as much work around)
Do it yourself you whiny crybaby.
You make the mess, you clean the mess.
Geez, I wouldn't be surprised if you still wear fkn diapers.
@@PriusRaj ^ facts.
Well I think you might just be right. They certainly had enough warning to get it fixed. So maybe that's just what your mom and others did. They fixed it.
Too bad she was then screwed over.
Jay Furler AK what, don’t you know how to do it yourself?:( how meta :(((
This comment isn't very coherent.
I was 37 years old and fixing computers for a living, I still am to this day. I made a few grand checking PC's for Y2K compliance for $20 cash a PC. Just ran a little program I bought for not much money. I had a coffee can full of 20's that New Years Eve. I was quite pleased! I called it the First National Bank of Choc full o' Nuts. I still have the can, sadly it's empty.
I was 8 years old in 1999 and the Y2K Bug was something the adults feared. Me and my friends didn't think too much about it. We were too busy with elementary school and Pokemon cards.
I actually worked on quite a bit of legacy code for a large military contractor, that would have failed had we not changed the 2 digit years to 4.
Jus sayin... Many things DIDN'T happen precisely because folks fixed them before the deadline.
People just think it was a big to do about nothing I was 12 in 2000 my uncle through marriage was a computer programmer 4 a financial company and he always says there was a crisis that was averted especially in government and big business
No they didn't happen because they WEREN'T going to happen. Americans desperately trying to justify spending 100 billion on a relative non-issue.
In the company I worked for the Y2K bug was real, and we had lots of software that was not going to function correctly any longer if nothing was done about it. So the company put in a team that fixed the bug, well in time.
@Henri de Feraudy
:
When was that, 1990? :|
it's beem 16 years and this John is aging backwards. He either has great genes and eats healthy, or has a great surgan.
@coc0s that's his surgeon's name
😂
I think "surgan" is Jasmine's code word for a certain part of John's anatomy.
supergangsterish1 high quality comment
Stem cells
My family didn't do any thing and I as an eight year old just thought what's the problem if the computer thinks it's 1900 for a little while?
as a ten year old in fall 1999, I remember being very confused. no one around me seemed to have this level of fear, but given that we lived in a relatively rural area, I don't think that there were that many computers that could fail. I went to sleep on December 31st 1999 and woke up on January 1 2000. I still have a girl scout patch celebrating the year 2000. The following year was when the true fear hit us. A few weeks before my birthday, September 2001...
it never even got a mention in the uk the olympics was more important to our media i guess
@@pokekitty1 Because it wasn't an issue.
I have never laughed this hard....
We have a machine in our lab that is from the 80th. When Y2K came along it was too old for the manufacturer to fix it, but too new to be replaced.
For the last 18 years that machine stubbornly claims that it is the year '99 (for some reason you can manually change the month but not the year).
I was nine in the winter of 1999 and my mother, who is mentally ill AND a religious fanatic, had prepared my brother and I for death. For her, Y2K was the apacolypse, God coming to claim his children. I spent a year preparing for the inevitability of my own demise and that of the entire world. That New Year's Eve my mother hid in he bathtub and my brother and I ran into the front yard screaming, banging on pots and pans, waiting for airplanes to crash and nukes to rain down upon us. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the yard the next morning, completely alive. Ahhh, childhood.
I'm sorry that you went through all of that in your childhood. Absolutely nuts. I studied programming in college and high school, and I know that Y2K did have a potential to be catastrophic. But not to the degree that the media made it out to be back then. I hope that this experience with your mom didn't sour your view of God.
Breakfast that morning must have been awkward.
CyborgNinja7 If you notice my CZcams name, I think it's safe to say that it did indeed sour my view on God, although that's not the only reason.
I can see why you're an athiest haha
I had an old VCR that got hit by the Y2K bug. After January 1st, 2000, you could no longer set it to record automatically by the day of the week. Since it thought the year was 1900, the days were all messed-up. I kept using it for another year or so before replacing it with a DVD player. I just had to set it to record based on time rather than the day. It was the only thing I ever saw that had a Y2K effect.
That's exactly what would have happened on a grand scale IF they didn't simply fix it before that date
This was the dumbest scare of all time.Computers could easily process the date 2000
I remember Y2K destroyed Earth and we were all transported here to Earth II and stupid people were brain washed to forget the whole thing.
I was only 11 years old when this was happening, and I can remember so well how they tried so hard to fear the public! They were saying you would probably need to replace all of your electronics, and I remember when they mentioned the electrical outages too! I remember I went home from school one day and I started playing with my VCR’s date, and right after #99 it would go to #01. I remember that day I waited for my parents to come home and I said, so just because our VCR doesn’t display 00, then that means the date change is going to ruin all of our stuff? My parents didn’t know WTF to say or how to answer it! Bahahaha!! What a crock of bs!! Just like when they said the world would end in 2012, then another year, then another year. I asked my parents that too one day, and even them and my grandmother had said they had always heard rumors like that for years and years!
Wasn't even born to experience this but seriously looking back and asking my dad who was a programmer at the time, he and his fellow programmers knew full well nothing would happen. Every programmer was fixing the problem to ensure the apocalypse wouldn't happen. People freaking out over nothing. Bet those people selling those y2k survival kits made a pretty penny though.
I was working in security on New Year's Eve '99, looking after a mall during the night shift. It was a quiet night, fortunately.
My dad was in IT at the time of the millennium, he had his company ready, and I am so grateful for all those people who got the code ready, in my house it was never a hoax.
Lol my parents started hording canned food, candles and water, so we were set for the end of the world. ;)
Sorry to hear man.
I knew a guy back then who worked with computers, and he seems relatively chill about it, so I didn't worry. All this time I thought it was a simple fix, but this sounds way more complicated.
As a programmer this was a super fascinating video! I never knew it was a serious bug that cost the US government 100B to fix, or that it lead to a boom in outsourcing to India, or that it led to the financial market having a comprehensive test suite (I would love to know more about that!). Since the Unix timestamp won't have a problem with this until 2038, I really thought that this was mostly not a problem. It's kind of funny to be storing the year as two separate digits, anyway; in a decimal system, that's like 3 1/2 bits each, which is a waste of space. I didn't realize until fairly recently that many critical systems (flight control, banks, etc.) run on extremely old computers with software that almost nobody can maintain anymore. I could imagine having a 1900 thrown in there could lead to huge negative numbers (how many seconds have gone by? -8,640,000), and if the system adjusts itself based on how much time has gone by since the last measurement... it would be crazy. Of course, all actual important records that require dates (birth, social security, tax filings, hospital visits) would also just be completely wrong.
As a kid them, i remember the only electronics we had was a tv and a vcr..., tv had no date timer, vcr was out of date, we didn't really care and it was expensive to update
"once you start scaring people, it's hard to get them off the ledge"
Mm yep
2000: People panic and blow off their money.
2020: People panic and blow off their money on toilet paper.
20xx: People will still blow off their money.
Interesting piece, thanks.
When I first heard about this problem around 1994 I was a little concerned, but as it drew nearer, not sure why but I just wasn't worried about it. That night (Dec, 31, 1999) I had just started working at Dairy Queen, and I worked the night shift that night. I remember one girl was getting off around 10:00 pm and was going to a bomb shelter once she left. I thought that was rather silly, but there was talk that the computers that controlled the nukes would set them off. At another job some at the break table did have conversations about it, and some where pretty scared about it all.
" I remember one girl was getting off around 10:00 pm and was going to a bomb shelter once she left. "
Um... maybe that was a signal that she wanted you to join her for an end of the millenium party??? Alright, you were younger then.
I was 20 years old and just moved to New York City during Y2K. We all thought we were gonna die LOL so five hours before the new year I jumped on the train from the Bronx and went to time square. I decided if the world ends today at least I’m with a quarter million people partying 🎊 🎉🤦🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️😂😂
“We didn’t run into any problems, so there were no problems”. Survivor bias 101 right there.
I remember feeling disappointed that I had to go to school the day following. I wonder what the folks who bought all those survival kits feel like now.
You had to go to school on New Year’s Day?
This video was extremely informative and nostalgic
Milton from office space saved us all with all those overtime hours in the basement.
My mom filled a bathtub full of water, thank god nothing happened lmao
My dad was the OIC of a national guard headquarters in Iowa during that time. I remember spending the night there with my mom and dad, we were the only ones. I assume we were there to watch the computers or pick up the phone in case total chaos ensued. When midnight came along, or 10pm or something, we realized nothing was going to happen. Lol. Good times in history, good times. I was 12.
Good watch this whole time i thought is was just a hoax.
I lived through it. I don't agree with this documentary. I think it was mostly, if not almost entirely a hoax.
Spoonwood It was both.
Yes it was a legit thing
It was also ridiculously overblown.
+BandomBeviews - It wasn't overblown at all. People like me spent the entire year fixing problems so that people like you didn't lose all of your money. You're like the people who now think vaccination is bad because they never got to see what the world was like when kids died of smallpox or were disabled for life by Polio. You have NO IDEA how long and hard people like me worked so that the problem ended up looking overblown to people like you...
Yurek Hunt What was your story on the Y2K bug? Cause it seems you sound like a programmer who was stressed on this.
Programmers life:
If it doesn't work: Why am I paying you, it doesn't work.
If it does work: Why am I paying you, everything works without you.
People really love a good "End of the World" :) There are always great parties around them :)
It is just nice to see this world finally destroyed one day.
Everyone hates their lives so why not celebrate that a miserable world is coming to an end.
7:36 looking back from 2018. Nothing has really change..
y2k
I remember we use to date our notebooks with y2k
like 05/06/y2k... I wondered why we added y... but I put it there.
5:54
*clicks shotgun* thats the sound that will get your attention real quick
Everybody saw in the y2k tea leaves what they wanted to see lol hilarious
I remember I was 10 and had to go shopping the night before with my mom to get batteries and flashlights. Everyone was so confused.
My dad bought my family like arctic below zero thermal sleeping bags just in case all of the electricity went out for extended periods of time lmao. I laugh now but tbh what’s happening right now (corona) shows that these things aren’t actually all that ridiculous to plan for...
Before Y2K my dad bought a generator and had it wired into the house. After Y2K he couldn’t sell his generator and he never used it
I remember people were freaking out.
The life of a programmer/developer: if you fix bugs well nobody will ever know you did it.
So wait did they fix the problem or were the computers mostly fine reading the year as 00?
xLexC7x combination of both. Some systems carried on happily thinking it was 1900, some systems were patched to support the year 2000, and some systems crashed. The important ones were all patched though so there was no catastrophic global disaster
And of course in Britain we made a PIF about this!
I remember those days. In Arizona we were freaked out.
I was a 90s kid I was born in 81 but a teen in the 90s so I graduated high school in 2000 and I Still remember teachers, principals, businesses Everything freaking out bc they thought for Sure computers would crash and the end of the world was coming but I was so calm about just rode it out lol
I was born on 1/1/2000 at around 2 am and my mom was a banker and she’s told me about how they had to learn all new systems and how to do everything by hand in case the computers malfunctioned. she worked on the 31st until closing time and then had me the next morning.
seajayvee
Except... the Y2K software wasn't Microsoft specific. It existed from the beginning, all the way back to computers in the 60s. It's also not a Mircosoft only software issue. It was software that was sourced in DOS as well.
How could you be an IT Manager and not understand that there were multiple layers to how Y2K was capable of being a major issue?
There are still freezers in my university lab labeled as being Y2K compliant, showing that they don't need a software fix in preparation for the millenium. They were taking stuff seriously, even labeling FREEZERS, that have no computer components at all!
I remember when this happened I changed my computers date to the year 2000 and nothing happened lol my pc went up to 2999. I'll try it again in year 2999
Not the VCRs!!!
nothing about the y2k bug makes sense when you really think about it. it shouldn’t exist from a fundamental level. it shouldn’t matter if it’s the year 1000 or 2000. other than accounting for leap years?
You won't want to be in an elevator either?! Really?! 🤣🤣
I reset the date on my then non y2k compliant home computer to 2000 and nothing happened. All my applications and windows still worked fine. It was at that point I realized most the y2k nonsense was a bunch of hysteria.
I remember my mom not letting me go out of the house that New Years , then midnight came and went and the world didn't end. VERY DISAPPOINTING😂😂 Oh also my mom filled the bathtub up with water like that was going to save us😂
Nikki mealey lmao my mom did the same,
Y10K... time to get ready people.
the year 2038 problem is much more significant than this.
*_"Technologies are always been created for one reason, but end up being used for an application that the creator could never imagine"_* Could've probably imagined the year 2000, though.
It’s hard to believe this was less than 20 years ago. It really does seem silly to think about now.
Crazy bandaid solution: change the year of systems that can't be fixed by 1/1/2000 to a fixed year, say 1/1/1990. Ensure EVERYONE knows the exact year being changed to and also double check it won't cause a problem for systems (possibly choose a year where the days of the week are the same days of the month as 2000).
Still surviving 18 years later.
Man look at all that obsolete technology
Al Capone's Vault has some Company
This shows how weak minded and cowardly people out today people feel that I'm known people fear what they don't know when 1999 was here just like 2012 to set the Mayas this Myers. The Meijer ad regular tribe of humans the Savages like anyone else
Here's to Y3K.
This was hilarious.
Nobody set the clock forward to see if it actually dose anything? Lol
lol at least it was a good time to be in the bottled water and canned food business
Just set the computer's clock to switch to Y2K before to test it?
the next eotwawki wave happen.. im planting trees outside my house. ...bombshelter. ha
Wish I could've remembered all of this silly madness. Unfortunately I was only a fetus and a baby for the duration of Y2K.
I'm with you. I mean I was conceived on the edge of 1999 and was born on 09/2000. Too bad I wasn't alive through all those madness.
so in the year 10,000 we will have this issue again?
I guess it is happening. That’s why we have cyber crashes and software update and security alerts especially on iPhones.
I know this video is about Y2K but does it really need to be in 480p in 2013?
Beeee afraid.....beeeee afraid....
*sudden urge to listen to "Waiting for Tonight" by J.Lo*
MY MATH TEACHER TOLD ME THIS STORY TODAY
All they had to do was set the date back ten years 🤷
No wonder I get so many stuff during dec. 31, 1999.
ok, but don't put your greasy fingers on my CRT monitor please.
So when it turned to 00, it didn't matter?
5:47 and I feel fine.
What a stupid problem to have
My grandpa bought a crossbow and a bunch of rice in preparation lmao.
Is a computer to know what time it is maybe it’s slow at a happen later in the future like now
only adding two more digits? sucks for ppl in yr 9999
what about the y10k bug?
our software wont be in use in 982 years - no way
Now we need to be preparing for the 2038 problem. Hopefully by then all of our systems will be 64 bit
I want to know the name of the background music starting from 7:53. This melody was also used in the program about the history of religious reform, in the scene of Jean Calvin's activity. czcams.com/video/AkBKsbEYg-8/video.htmlm16s
I think this is happening now
They needed advanced search
People fear the unknown we live in a weak weak society today...