The Computer Bug That Almost Ended The World | The Y2k Debacle
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- čas přidán 30. 12. 2021
- The year 2000 was going to be very special, for a multitude of reasons. We were entering into a new millennium, a new era, a year that only existed in Science-Fiction stories. This was by no means a conventional New Year. It was finally the future, but maybe not the future everyone was anticipating. Millions of people around the world spent their last moments in the 1900s staring at the clock, but not for the reason that you think. Instead of celebrating, they were terrified, because as soon as the clock struck midnight, the world was going to end, and within the blink of an eye, the year 2000 would instead be a future now past.
Word had been going around about this upcoming event for years now. The public even coined a name for this phenomenon: Y2K, and as the late 1990s creeped up and the year 2000 approached, people crowded up stores across the world and lined up to buy food, water, weapons, and supplies to create survival kits, because on this date, according to many credible sources, computers would malfunction, prison gates would open, dams would flood, banks would lose all their money, nuclear missiles would launch by themselves. They did this because they were told the end was year, but why? What exactly caused such a strange worldwide panic like this one, to arise? If the year 2000 was so dangerous, how are we still here?
To fully understand the curious story behind Y2K and how it was able to cause such the level of panic that it did, we first need to discuss what exactly all of it means. To be clear, world ending predictions were by no means a new thing, but no this was something different. Y2K wasn’t just some Armageddon story made up by conspiracy theorists, this was actually something that might have validity to it, and many people at the time took note of this, and prepared for the worst. And that’s exactly what made Y2K such a crazy story. In fact, there were three big things going on in the 20th century, and especially the 90s, that were responsible for the Y2K scare: the exponential growth of technology, the ambiguity and mystique that was present behind the brand new personal computer, and the overwhelming access of information that the world saw at the end of the century. And these factors also tie into the origins of the Y2K story; so what exactly was the story, how did Y2K work? The answer to this question actually goes farther back than you might think. The first known mention of Y2K as a legitimate issue goes back to 1958, discovered by an IBM employee: Bob Bemer, who was also one of the most renowned computer scientists of the 20th century. He proposed his idea during a time where computers were still brand new, a lavish and costly byproduct of World War II, but with time, these machines could become incredibly sophisticated and part of our everyday lives, and he recognized this. In 1958, memory was extremely expensive, and naturally to save money while maximizing efficiency, they removed what they thought was redundant information. And that’s what Y2K was centered on, it all had to do with how numbers were presented on a clock; that’s where the term Y2K comes from, abbreviating “Year 2000.” You see, computers at the time only took the last two digits of a year into account when calculating the date, having the “1-9” at the beginning of each set of digits just used up more memory than was worth. The last two digits were more than fine. It is not like people were looking at these computers to see what year it was anyway, it was used for logging and record keeping, and the last two digits were plenty for that. There were even some computers that only used one digit to represent the year: so instead of 1978 you just had 8. I mean everyone knew it was still the 20th century…but what would happen as we approached the 21st century? Well naturally, the year 2000 would have to be represented as 00, but how would a computer that only stores the last two digits of a year react to that? Would it read as 100, or would it backtrack and read it as 0, and slowly tick back up as the year’s progress? Is the year 2001, or 1901?
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Michael Bolton? Wow! Is that your real name?
Happy new year for 2022 ig lol
Love it!
6th!!!
Happy new year
1900
I was 10 during y2k. I remember my dad telling us kids to be realistic because of course things weren't going to end, so not everyone was panicking
Now you're somewhere around 30. I wish I had that kind of memory
@@thatwardrobeguy Bro u are so good at maths
@@Redmi-wq6eb ?
@@Redmi-wq6eb I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm or not
@Android Tablet “around 30” he is 32 so this is accurate lmfao
2000: "I was the largest case of worldwide paranoia and crisis!"
2020: "Hold my beer"
The Old Times: "You Fools..... I HAVE 70 ALT CRISISES"
@@chaoscontrolmyan9374 LMAO
1863: lmfao I killed one third of Europe
2100: don't wait up for me
@@SardineSmoothie go thing most of us won't have to worry about that lmao
The people who helped fix Y2K deserve more credit. Thankfully we have people who took into account the situation early
i really agree
Yeah our computer we use at ,y school still work one of the screens jut broke so I can’t hear it well with headphones 🎧
my*
I was a 40 year old Computer
Engineer during y2k. It was VERY REAL. Had we not spent years reprogramming and correcting the y2k bugs to prevent a meltdown it could have been a true disaster. As it was, there were still a lot of unforeseen problems that we had to quickly address the first week of Jan 2000. Had I not been involved up to my eyeballs, I would have never even known about the seriousness or those left over problems after the 1st. I would have been just in the dark as the general public was. The media and most uneducated people assumed because the "world didn't come to an end" that y2k was not real. The programmers, techs, and consultants have since been mocked and kicked in the head instead of thanked for literally saving the world from all kinds of disasters.
Your welcome!
I was 11 during y2k. I remember watching people panicking on TV, Americans running out and buying guns, people hoarding food and water. We did out usual thing as a family. Ate dinner and played board games untill the countdown all while watching the world make absolute fools of themselves when the clock rolled over and the world didnt end. Keep in mind by the time we hit midnight, several other time zones had already rolled over. If something really was going to happen, we would have already known about it hours before our "midnight". Y2K was funny.
I have a genuine question. Why the hell were people buying guns?
@@RealJackBolt Im guessing because they felt that they needed one to protect their families etc since they actually thought all modern tech was going to fail sending us back to the dark ages.
@@RealJackBoltfor protection people where apparently scars of looters, riots I was born in 2002 but I heard a lot of details from my mom who told me about it so in short people didn’t know what was gonna happen
@@randomnesstv7442 ah alright, that makes sense, I guess.
Another example of the US citizens thinking that the US is the only country on earth😂 I had never even thought about the time zone thing before, but it makes total sense. I’m surprised that more people didn’t realize it. I live 10 hours ahead of the pacific time, and my country is only UTC+2. Apparently UTC+14 is the highest time zone, so technically Y2K would have happened way before people thought
I was born in 1999 so I never seen the whole thing unfold, but it's always fascinating hearing about this. Reminds a bit of the 2012 panic in a way.
Maybe you did, and best of all you were born in the beginning future.
Woah
DAMN YOU’RE 22??
@@samlong4568 Yes they are, also why are you shocked?
23
The reason Y2K never "happened" is because countless people worked very hard behind the scenes reprogramming various systems, etc. This was a serious problem that would have resulted in many important computer systems shutting down.
Even my then 6 year old Casio digital watch didn't miss a beat. It was highly overblown. We were listening to Auld Lang Syne on my parent's Pentium I and it changed date no problem at all. We had a plan in case the power went out but hardly any programs were affected in reality. Media oversold the threat.
And Indian IT took off.. Thanks to be bug
my dad was working in IT at the time, and I honestly think it really sucks how people frame it as a hoax or it was fine, because like in one way it was, a lot of people's concerns were absolutely not going to happen, and a lot of people took advantage, but if everyone did nothing, I think we would've had a major disaster. I don't think nuclear bombs would go off or planes would fall out of the sky, not that I know much about those industries, my dad was working for an accounting firm. But the potential particularly with financial and health records would be really concerning. Probably not dissimilar to the disruptions caused by randsomewear attacks we've seen recently, and sure, we'd work through it but to act like it was completely ridiculous to consider it a risk at all is something I've seen a lot because "nothing happened" when really nothing happened because there was effort to ensure nothing happened.
Actually, a lot of the "very hard work" was mostly unnecessary. Though there were some issues here and there, most of the time you'll find that many systems had either been updated/replaced by that time or had an unintentional ability to rollover and understand 00 as 100 instead of 000. A great example of where this happens outside of the date counters of the 90s is the scoreboards of most arcade video games of the 80s and 90s. When you reach what would normally be the theoretical max score of a game, game would continue adding on to it while visually rolling over to 0. Sometimes you could see this because the higher score would cause graphical glitches and pallet swaps, maybe even changing the tileset used for the score count as is the case with Tetris for NES, but other times it would manifest as a change in behavioral code for the game as it is now reading from the wrong addresses in ROM or RAM. There are times when it would not display any graphical or behavioral change whatsoever, but you would be given the high score position on the leaderboard even though visually your score looks like it's lower than others.
@@trudycolborne2371 the person you are replying to said they fixed it though
I was a QA Tester and Systems Analyst for Y2K in the 90s in Canada.
The reason why it didn't happen is yes, many many people were fixing it far beforehand. Banks and Airlines were the first, then other businesses and point of sale devices. The only things that showed up at Y2K, in my area, were a few mom-n-pop shops that did not update their cash registers and other hardware and software. Many of the issues were hard-coded in the chips and those had to be replaced. For others, it was software and that just needed to be updated.
By the time Y2K rolled around, it was all 'fixed' and done. Crisis Averted.
I am proud to have been part of that era.
Yep, I was involved in fixing that mess as well. The worst part of y2k is that we did such a good job no one even felt a thing, so they thought we were nuts!
My question to you, not to mock your honorable efforts you put into remedying the problem, did charlatans and con-men benefitted from Y2K. I believed they did and the whole debacle was bombastically exaggerated by the corporately owned media. I've visited pulp and paper mills that had old SCADA systems 1980s generation that were still operating as nothing happened. Even if it did, the mill's back-up plan was to operate the paper machine with an old console.
exactly! i too was programming and doing software breakfix at the time for a company that was contracted to do a lot of Y2K updates for offices. someone in the comments is talking about how he and other programmrs saved eveyone from ultimate doom . wtf. most businesse were still using basic registers and landlines then. i literally had a usb drive ( new at the time) with an updater on it that i had to go from terminal to terminal at different businesses to update the date code. took 20 seconds . and even the ones that never got updated typically kept running normally regardless. it was a money grab , and doomsday false flag. but hey.. we saved the world lol
My family has thrown New Year’s Eve parties for many, many years- my grandparents started throwing them and eventually my parents took over. I was 15 in 1999, and I remember the panic so many people were falling victim to quite vividly. Well, my parents didn’t think much of the whole situation and went about setting everything up for the party as per usual. So, we ended up with a house full of people dancing to whatever music my father was blaring from the speakers that hung from the ceiling in nearly every room in our house and drinking whatever kind of beer, cocktail, or shot was handed to them. Basically we had a huge crowd of drunk people who were just a bit more susceptible to believing certain things than they would’ve had they been sober. Once it was close to midnight, my father put on a CD that was loud and had a beat that would get people dancing. Then he, two of my uncles, a cousin of mine, and I went into the walk-in closet in my bedroom. There in the wall of my closet was the breaker box…and in that box was the breaker which would turn off the power to the entire house. The little door to the breaker box was opened and we stood there staring at that large breaker listening to the music. We listened and we waited for the music to pause and for the group of people to start counting down the seconds to midnight. After what felt like an eternity, the drunken throng began enthusiastically chanting, “10! 9! 8! 7!…” All of us standing in the closet in my room had various degrees of devious grins on our faces. One of my uncle’s remarked, “You better hope that no one freaks out too badly.” All of us laughed as the crowd then thundered, “ZERO! HAP-“ Then my father threw the switch. The whole house fell into complete darkness and total silence…but only for a moment. The silence lasted for only a second or two at most. There were shrieks and fearful screams from some of the guests. We again laughed. Then, coming from the living room, was my mother’s voice, “GODDAMN IT, BRYAN! If you don’t the electricity back on, I’ll-“ My father flipped the switch on faster than he had turned it off only moments ago. My uncles, cousin, and I laughed hysterically at that moment. It was clear that things in the new millennium weren’t going to be any different than they were before.
Ah, the Y2K scare. I remember my parents buying a whole bunch of things “just in case” and my uncle flipping his shit up ‘cause my cousin and I wanted to play games on their computer and he thought we would end killing the hard drive
I swear, your pfp looks like the picture that is from the fatherless meme a friend sended me on discord..
this shit 💀: czcams.com/video/xlW3mTndCf8/video.html
@@user-rd2on3yg7w ok
@@user-rd2on3yg7w ok
@@user-rd2on3yg7w ok nftbro
As someone who never witnessed Y2K i kinda feel bad for the people afterwards like the turn of a millennium is a pretty big event and not celebrating it because of fear is kinda sad
yeah
A verified person copied your comment with no effort whatsoever.
@@dxl___ Lemme guess,a spam bot?i saw some NSFW bots who do the same things
The people was scared too of the "Y1K" (1000) because people thought it was the date of the final judgement
@@ILikeMakeBelieveUnironically “verified.” As in the people that buy verified accounts that were abandoned.
When I was growing up, my grandma always told me "when emotions are high, the intelligence is low no matter how smart a person is", even tho it wasn't related to Y2K it applies to it and pretty much everything. Many people today (especially the ones born after that or have been babies in the late 90s) have no idea how scary it was for many people back then and probably think how stupid people were. I was just 9 years old in 1999 and even tho it didn't affected me because I just had no idea about financing, savings, banks etc. I remember how big of a deal was for a lot of grown ups at the time. They didn't think the world will end or something like that but a lot of them were saying to everyone to get all their money from the banks before January 1st 2000 because their money could disappear and there was this huge surge of people in the banks to withdrawal their savings and was genuinely terrifying for most people to lose all their money because of a computer.
I was talking to my mum about her experience with y2k, and she explained to me that she went out clubbing with her friends that night and there were only about 6 people there actually celebrating New Years and that everyone else was at home thinking the world would end.
Your mom is lying to you. Bars were jam packed for the millennial new year. People had been waiting to party like it's 1999 ever since Prince sang it.
@@FUGP72Touch grass, bud. Just because a lot of clubs were packed doesn't mean her mom's was too. You have no idea where she lived or what club she went to. "6 people" could also be an exaggeration for effect. Stfu about "your mom is lying to you" like you have any fucking clue what you're talking about.
@@FUGP72 I wasnt alive during y2k but its obvious this didnt happen everywhere. Yes the bars were probably packed in various places but not everywhere
@@KingOfMadnesss Bars are packed or NORMAL New Years. Yes..the bars were pace everywhere with people wanting to "Party like it's 1999!"
Look, little worhtless Gen Z child...don't try to comment to things that you admit you know noting about. The word began before you were born, and will continue after you die (which, for a lot of Gen Z'ers, is often by suicide). New Years is by far the biggest day of the year for ALL bars everywhere. And a New Years referenced by a famous Prince song was certainly not going to be an exception.
@@KingOfMadnesss IF you weren't alive then, then why would you think that you would have any idea what you are talking about? ALL BARS are packed for EVERY New Years. If a bar is not packed on New Years, it is not going to survive the rest of the year since that is BY FAR the biggest day of the year. And for the Millennial New Years, which, again, people had been waiting for since Prince sang his song, bars were looking to make more money in ONE NIGHT than they would in the upcoming year combined. Places with no cover charges normally were charging $50 just to get in. (And getting it.) Places that normally had cover charges were charging as much as $250, and getting it.
It is VERY clear that the OP is either lying, or is gullible and believed their mom's lies. Clubs were even MORE crowded than regular bars. Clubs in 1999 were crowded on a fucking TUESDAY in the middle of September.
And again, I know worthless Gen Z'ers have NO concept of the world before they were born Just one of the many reasons why you are so unprepared for ANY semblance of adulthood...but no. NOBODY was actually afraid of Y2K. The OP's mom was basically testing how stupid their child was, and they found out that they were REALLY stupid.
Good ol' Y2K. I was a homeless punk kid during that whole mess. I fully admit to getting drunk with a couple of my friends and sitting next to an ATM until after midnight just in case it was all true and the thing would spit out a bunch of cash.
Lmao imagine it did though, even if the bug happened I wouldn't think that could happen, likely it could of just shut down along with it's security which can make it easy to steal
dude
lol
Ha, that's hilarious.
lmao
I still have a vivid memory of going to best buy to upgrade our family computer shortly before y2k. It was a pretty serious conversation had with a sales agent to "make sure you turn your pc off" before the clock turned over. Funny enough I ended up working for best buy from about 2016-2019 and while working with the project team to renovate our store we found some of the y2k stickers they used to place on computers under a base deck. Me and a couple others grabbed a few and I still have them. Great video!
Great to see you here friend!! Love to see that you like the channel! More content to come! :)
@@nationsquid hi im your fan
@@nationsquid love your vids man so interesting makes you want to click
@@nationsquid you you you nationsquid you are the nation
@@nationsquid as a new viewer to you ill say im very happy you work real hard on stuff.
Man I remember being 6 years old, my grandpa flew us all to his country because "if we die, we die together". The joy on his face when the countdown hit 0 and nothing else happened besides fireworks...
I am 27. I was born in 1996 and still remembering when I was 4, late at night, we were camping, and suddenly my mom saw the news on her phone and rushed me to the supermarket, and to the home again. I think it was like already 10:50 when my mom started leaving the camping site but she made it in time, before 12 AM. As I witnessed, I kept asking my mother: "Mama, what's wrong?" but she never answered, in fact she responded with: "Be quiet." I was terrified. But I knew something was very wrong, but I didn't knew it until like a week later my mom told me: "Sorry for ignoring you. I was preparing for a massive destruction. It didn't happen." I remember having a nightmare getting eaten by a monster that same night, haha.
Lmao the last part
one of my favorite parts about the whole y2k scare is that there were news reports listing some of the concerns that would come with it, and one of them was "dog packs". incredibly curious how the destruction of the internet would result in feral dog packs attacking?
the radio waves frequencies being thrown around would be transmitted into the brains of dogs making them go crazy
@@nan2339 lol
@@nan2339 and make the frogs gay
@@RunehearthCL it'll turn the friggin frogs gay!!!
Ah yes, classic American fear mongering wack job conspiracy
I can only imagine how akward it was when absolutely nothing happened and they've been preparing for months
Trust me, people like that have had that happen to them several times. They just keep pushing doomsday back indefinitely, cause it's DEFINITELY THIS TIME YOU'LL SEE
Some people were preparing for years
I saw another documentary on Y2K and one of the preppers was still eating the food he saved for the event
@Allen Avadonia Honestly I wish he would hurry up.
Because us techies patched a lot of system clocks so they wouldn't reset to 1970.
That was all that was going to happen. lol
One of the few good things of getting old is living through historical events. I was eleven at the time and I remember my father telling me “ remember this moment and the fear around. You will find it hilarious in the future “ he was right 😂
I’m thankful though for all the programmers that fixed so many lines of codes so that actually nothing bad would happen
0:54 actually scared me lol
Y2K is so fascinating! I wonder if this debacle will repeat itself in 2038 when the Unix timestamp overflows...
hi there
I wonder if Y3k will happen in the year 3000
I think people would be smarter (at least I hope so)
what? explains 🙁
@@TheGodofPizza ‘what if’.
You’d think that the lesson to “think more critically about what you read online” would still be in the minds of people a mere 22 years after, but NOOOOOOOOO. Apparently humans forget things so easily that we don’t even remember the lessons learned from a near apocalyptic scale scare for not even half a quarter of an average lifespan 🤦
people are animals who always work the same way collectively
i'm an animal
@@Cyanide_Infused I am also a furry
People can't even remember the unfulfilled promises of the politician they voted for
@@Cyanide_Infused I’m a animal rawr :3c
I found your channel a little over a year ago and keep coming back to watch your videos on the early days of the internet. I sincerely hope you’ll make more!
I was in my last year of high school when going into the year 2000. I remember not worrying about it too much probably because I was a teenager going to school who didn't pay much mind to world events. However, I do remember my mom stocking up on food supplies and getting a tank of water that was kept in the garage just in case. We also didn't go anywhere on New Years because we didn't know what would happen. We lived in Orlando, Florida at the time and I recall really wanting to go to a Disney or Universal park to ring in the new millennium but my mom was afraid that in case something did happen due to the y2k bug that, for example, we might be stranded at the park if there was a power outage or something and might not be able to leave and drive home somehow. Of course, at the stroke of midnight when the new millennium began nothing happened.
I just remember seeing my parents computer screen flipping upside down when 2000 came on. It may have been just a trick my dad did on the monitor but it freaked me out a bit.
Was your parents computer running DOS or a Windows program? If Windows your dad did it.
@@trudycolborne2371 yea I believe it was Windows 98-99 at the time lol
@@angeldelarosa7975 We were running Windows 95 on a Pentium I. No problem. Computer kept playing Auld Lang Syne mp3 file as we rang in the new year. Reminds me of the old days when we'd change each other's start up screens and stuff for giggles.
@@angeldelarosa7975 there was no windows 99
I think it used to be an easy keyboard shortcut like ctrl+shift+arrow keys that rotated your screen, I did it by accident once, and it was a pretty common prank. I think they've made it so you have to go into the settings these days.
A big reason my family immigrated to the states was because of this. My dad used to be a computer programmer and the US was recruiting people all over the world to help debug computers to prevent what you describe from happening. It’s pretty amazing that my upbringing and life path was heavily reliant on this bug. Great video!
awesome
That's so interesting!
Woah
That's really neat!
This I totally believe. I know computer programmers were working hard at the highest levels. If you can, thank him for us! He probably had a lot of sleepless nights.
I was only a year old when this happened, so it's weird to think all of this was going on while I was a baby. It's still very cool to learn about it and how it affected the world. I can see why people were terrified.
I remember seeing a local news story around Y2K where a nearby bank's date on the computers said December 34, 1999. What a strange time to be alive.
My dad was born in the 70s, he told me about everyone being terrified of 2000.
My dad works in the IT industry since 1999 so he told me too
Same
bro your dad survived 2 millenniums
@@cryptic7312 3 now
@@Polarly 4 now
My manager remembered that on his previous job, they were offered 5 times their daily salary just to render overtime the whole night of December 31, 1999 until the morning of January 1, 2000. Along with that salary increase, my manager said that his previous employer also gave "survival kits" to those who rendered overtime, like the company gonna be turned into a "survival shelter" just in case "Y2K becomes armaggedon".
ratio
@@ipoopedonmymomsseatbelt3210 L ratio + counter
@@ipoopedonmymomsseatbelt3210 cringe
@@monodragon tfw im just a joke acc lol
@@ecl1pse-idky731 oof, you win.
13:06 an explosion of information, surrounded by a mega explosion of so much bullshit that no one was prepared lol.
Fascinating video, thank you, please keep creating content!
My house was actually purchased as a result of Y2k. The false preachers told the people that lived here before us to sell all of their property (and valuables and such too I think) because the apocalypse was underway. And thus, we got the house roughly around 70 grand cheaper probably. Was great for us but was unfortunately sad for them because they were deceived though. Hope they didn't get too financially and emotionally damaged because of that. :/
i hear they commit suicides when it did not happen, and they rape one of black chicks
$70,000 cheaper.... Yeah that definitely did damage
Did they want their house back?
@@dandruff3414 So far as I'm aware, none of them have contacted us since lol so no I guess.
@@dandruff3414 nah bozo
I remember a couple of times when my parents would gloss over this story, they usually say something like “everyone thought that the computers were going to blow up” and left it at that. I never knew there was a reason to why they thought that, and how many people took it very seriously. This video was awesome and I really enjoyed it.
Same!!! This was a great explanation
The millennium happened after I turned 2 years old, so I had no idea the Y2K bug caused so much panic. It is interesting to see what computers did during the early 2000s, though.
wow! Extra was such a help for me! Thank you! you just earned a sub 😌
I remember my grandmother telling me about how this was bound to happen, then it never did, and she lived to see another day.
Lucky grandma
@@Geppaku heh! xD
@@Geppaku waterlemon
@@Geppaku waterlemon
@@Geppaku watermelon 🍉
I was born in 2000. I never watched the world unfold until now. I just had a normal childhood. My mom was a nurse back then, so I wonder how bad it was when this happened.
Would you mind asking her what that was like if there were any cases involving the Y2K event?
Same dude. There's a Simpsons episode from the classic 90s era, where they all go to another planet, and bart and homer go on the rocket that sends them to the sun.
I was also born In 2000.
*Aviation
Wow, ur somewhere around 20.
i would love to see a video on the great depression! good stuff as always
I thought y2k was just cute outfits 💀
Same
Keeping in mind all these upgrades companies were making at the time, it's worth noting that our own nuclear missile silos were still operated by vintage computers using 8 inch floppy disks up until a few years ago.
Yes...but it's a lot more difficult to hack into that kind of system.
@@irishjet2687 That is true. It's the juxtaposition of it all that just makes me laugh.
I remember Y2K as a child. My dad spent most of his time laughing about it. Having worked on computers during his time with the army he wasn't worried. When New Year's came around my whole family was up late for the countdown and he jokingly said to all of us: "Ready for the world to end?"
I told him I was ready to sleep. It was difficult staying up that late.
90's kids Y2K
10's kids 2012
20's kids Covid-19
And it goes on and on and on.
My dad had to spend the new year of 2000 at the radio station he worked at to update computer softwares and make sure the world didn’t end. He said people were overreacting
Speaking ad someone who was there for the whole Y2K thing, I must say that this is very well covered here! Most sane people had faith in the world's programmers that they would update everything in time, but still had enough cash/food/supplies on hand to last until everyone could be brought back online if there'd been a glitch, bug, or they just ran out of time before everything was nice and patched.
Also, the internet during this time was Gen X's playground, and we're a bunch of trolls! This , no doubt, contributed to the propagation of the fake news. People making shit up, making it look legit as possible, and fooling even seasoned journalists. This was then put out to the general public, panic ensues, and the trolls laugh, not believing people actually bought it. Very little fact-checking was done back then, and everything was anonymous. There were no consequences for what you did on the information superhighway. It was the wild west, and the boomers weren't prepared for it. 😕
I almost kind of miss this version of the internet.
-"The world is going to end in 2000!!!"
-"OK Xoomer"
@@CrystalRose1111 Instead of harmless, funny trolls, we have...
What ever the fuck is going on with those harassments, diss tracks, threats, scammings and much more
22 years old on NYE 1999. I confirm.
speaking _ad_ someone
I vaguely remember people talking about the world ending in 2000 but I was too young to be on the internet to really read about it from there and I live in small country where it wasn't a common fear.
Being a programmer now, the fear of having huge computer errors was absolutely valid and programmers worked hard to stop it. Worldwide chaos like missileheads exploding and the armageddon, no. But the banks being fearful of critical errors was completely valid.
What I do remember is watching the new year's celebrations from all over the world on tv and it was amazing.
hey,i wanna be a programmer when i grow up,how is it being one?
@@ILikeMakeBelieveUnironically it took me 2 years to learn programming and idk what u mean by that it's just clicking a bunch of keys you wouldn't normally use in a conversation to cause the computer to do something
@@modables k then,so i just need to understand what all of this crap means and write it at the right time?
@@ILikeMakeBelieveUnironically well other than some text that might different it's just telling the computer do a thing and the computer doing the thing you told it to do.
so yes it's mostly understanding what lots of functions do and how to use them
@@aceae4210 Ok then,thanks 👍
This video is pretty good! I was like 13 when there was the 1999-2000 thing... I remember to have heard the PC's were going to go nuts when the New Year would start but in the TV they would not explain what exactly was the problem... we didn't have a computer at home so we didn't need to update it. My mum didn't believe it so we didn't do any prepping, we just had a good time.
In my country a band made a song that said something like :"I don't believe that the heavens will open and a dragon will emerge, let's be confident that times will be better" (in Spanish) and the song was talking about all the panic the media and the preachers were creating ... the panic was real. I didn't know though that there were some software errors, so that's interesting... thanks to all the programmers that helped avoid this chaos!
I remember seeing photos of a huge room full of survival equipment and food that my parents had stocked up during the Y2K scare. Funny how after 22 years later my dad just remade the survival room with one of our old guest rooms. Even last night he brought out an old box full of battery chargers and long lasting candles dating back to 1999.
When you realize how easily this could have been avoided back in the 50’s
my favourite year in the 50s, 1999
@@arizonagreenbee lmfao you payed no attention to the video, it was proposed Y2K could be an issue in the 50s.
@@360Turn it's a fucking joke dufe
@@arizonagreenbee I’m aware but you still didn’t understand the video lmfao. The joke was not made with understanding of that he’s talking about.
@@360Turn you sayin you don't like 19950?
what a great video. didn't know about Y2k until now.
I was a teen when y2k happened. I remember my dad said not to worry. If things got bad, he would teach me how to hunt and fish. Never happened and I didn't learn those things.
Y2K in 1999: A name for the end of the world.
Y2K in 2021: an aesthetic based on the 90s-2000s
Wow we’ve come a long way
Edit: Omg so many likes 👀 Tyyy!
HELP
why should I help@@gore_lover
HELP ME OM DYUNG I CAN T BREATH
@@kviys
I've never heard of that aesthetic. X.x
2146: Something in a history book
As an Italian I can assure you that not one cent was spent. We still have extremely outdated systems today, at least in public workplaces.
I computer pubblici li stanno cambiando solo adesso durante la pandemia che per lo smart working serve roba decente. Per il resto si, l'Italia è sempre stata tecnologicamente arretrata.
Ticktock brought me here but you kept my interest! Great information that I didn’t know before
Wow I’m learning so much! Thank you nation squid! ❤❤❤
This is being talked like it's ancient history and it makes me feel so very old.
Because it is.
I will tell you something that will scare you: We are closer to 2040 than to 1990
@@sw1ft573 2050 too
@@sw1ft573 😳
@@sw1ft573 2040: 18 years
1990: 32 years
😰
This just tells us how a single computer error can end the whole world.
That's false...
@@monokuma7746 well, not really
@@TasqueManager478 the error didn't cause all this, it's a lack of fixing something that caused it, humans lazyness caused the issue, they saw it and it took ages for them to actually do something to prevent it from happening.
Also it wasn't close to ending the world, if it did happen if might have effected the next 10 years then it would probably be back to normal
No it cant
@FBI no they wouldn’t
Cool that you added a clip from Finland! ( 9:09 )
Imagine putting your life savings into stockpiling supplies and reinforcing your home, putting your family through so much fear & terror, only for nothing to happen..damn
I was 8 years old when this was happening and never knew about it until much later in life. It amazes me how I never even heard about it at the time.
Same I remember everyone partying hard and celebrating
@@Yukanhayt-Mhenow Rightfully. Fuck Planet Earth, amirite?
5:52 Most computers back then used BCD for dates, so 4 bits represent a number of 0-9, and one byte could thus represent 0-99. Thus a full date without century would be three bytes. In theory, cutting off the decade from the year, and realizing that a BCD digit actually can represent 0-15, you could fit the whole date in only two bytes (nibbles: DD MY). Although you lose some of the convenience that BCD has. Weird what people back then thought would be a good idea.
Oh man, the memories. I was gonna graduate high school in 2000 (which I still think is a cool year to graduate). I vividly remember staying up to see the clock on our old Mac tick to midnight. A part of me was anxiously anticipating something to happen. The only thing my mom was concerned about was looters. She made sure everything was locked in our house, just in case people wanted to break in to steal supplies. She's always been like that. She thought that would happen during the pandemic, too, which honestly holds more credence.
Being alive and old enough to remember Y2K is still a trip to me. I'm glad I was around to see the turn of the millenia. I still miss the 90s, though. 🤘
Back in the mid-2000s, I was in the thrill of downloading various RJLSoftware's prank software, one of them being the dubbed "Y2K Virus".
Years later, now I understand why Y2K was a huge fear.
Happy New Years guys! Hope everyone’s 2022 is great :)
You too, let’s see if we had a good year. Reply in 2023
@@noahscool4534 Ima message myself 45 years later to remind me of the SNAIL 🐌
Yay
u too :)
Reply to me in 2023
This is going to be a good one. Also, Happy New Year everyone!
Same, happy new year!
Happy new year! :)
Happy new year
happy new year
Ratio
It's almost the new year and I'm rewatching this again.
Being born in early 2001, I missed the turn to the new millennium by a bit, so I'd asked my parents the other night on New Year's Eve what it'd been like when the year rolled over to 2000, and what had happened with Y2K. They both described that it'd been pretty underwhelming, due to how blown up it'd been as the end of the world, when in actuality New Year's on 2000 ended up being just another day.
It's really fascinating to hear and read about Y2K. All of that fear, and then, though a few things had happened, as you described in the video, there was ultimately nothing catastrophic.
Great video, very informative! 👍
Also, being a holiday, had there been an issue with a company they would have had at least a day to fix it. And most companies that had issues never let the public know.
Same but I’m born in 2003
2000: Being the most scariest year ever
1939-1945: You sure about that?
Lol
2020 hold my 🍺
2000: “I was the largest paranoia and crisis case!”
2012: “Hold my drink kiddo”
0:54 Ow, thank you for breaking my eardrums.
I was 12 when this happened, and it was kind of a controlled chaos where I live. People were nervous, but nobody yelled about it. It was always whispers and the general wish of everything going well. I've never lived through another New Year as intense as this one.
How not to get the Y2K virus.
Step 1: Shut down your computer
Step 2: Wait until October 25, 2001
Step 3: Use Windows XP
Profit
@@epicmanpog7846 *profit.*
What if.... you aren't on a Microsoft
Yes :)
@@epicmanpog7846 what the hell…
My mum never was really scared of Y2K, but she was slightly worried.
I was born in 1992 and it was never a thing that was really talked about much to me. We had one teacher who told us that computers would stop working in 2000 because the clocks couldn't count that high, but none of us knew why that would be a bad thing cause we were just kids. I recall my mom saying that people were panicking over nothing, and when New Years was rolling around, we sat at the table solving a jigsaw puzzle with the TV on. We actually saw the clip at 15:15 live on air. It kinda brings back some nostalgia seeing it again.
Just mentioned Y2K to my father and he laughed and said “oh i remember the first internet craze”
I was not around for Y2K but I was told my dad was making my mom and sister panic and he was calm. And look where we are now
1:32 (subtitles) _… because they were told the end was year._
its very year
14:39 "But because computer glitches are often so unpredictable and can yield different results depending on the setup" This exact sentence reminded me of the Therac-25 incident.
This is gonna be good. My favorite videos from this creator are his malware/mystery videos.
Sadly, it isn’t about malware :(
@@KittyCatYT still semi mystery?
My grandparents actually took up canning because of Y2K. On New Years Day my mom called them and asked "How's the end of the world going?"
Finally I found someone talk about the y2k problem as an actual problem. I’m so ticking tired of these uneducated shitheads saying that y2k was never a problem and it’s crazy how so many Americans spent so much time worrying about this crap. My friend literally said,and I quote “yeah the y2k thing scared so many people and the crazy thing is that when year 2000 hit nothing happened and everyone was freaking out for nothing. Like the whole thing just fixed itself and it’s crazy to thing that so many humans fell for this conspiracy theory and this was recent too”
We had one computer in the shop that quit working for Y2K. Reset it to 1996 and problem solved.
The amount of time my mom told me a similar story.
She always keeps bringing up the topic every time a new year passes that people in 1999 were actually excited how the the year is gonna turn from 1999 to 2000. Computers back then weren't as advanced as nowadays so this was something unimaginable for them.
I wasn't alive during y2k but wow, saying they overreacted is a understatement.
i was too young to remember it but my dad says our neighbors built a bunker under their house and like didn't come out until a two days after. My parents were thankfully rational and just assumed everything would be fine lmao
Did you even watch the video? He goes over how at the time we didn’t know much about computers (the general public)
I WAS alive at the time, and as far as I was aware the majority of people did not panic to anything like the degree described in the video, although I don't doubt there was a very small percentage who went to extremes. As far as I can recall the petrol crisis later in the 00s (I don't know if that was just here in the UK, or worldwide?) caused a far larger panic than Y2K ever did, as of course did Covid much later. I do remember the moment we moved into 2000, as where I live fireworks went off in all directions continuously for over an hour, and I hadn't seen anything like it before at previous new years, or for that matter at any other time, so I honestly believe the majority of people back then were viewing the impending arrival of 2000 as an upcoming party like no other party, rather than being increasingly terrified of a possible apocolypse.
it would be cool if you did a video on other potential time formatting bugs (such as y2k38) and speculate or even demonstrate some of the issues that might occur
I have actually known this for years as my dad works in systems Analysis for our provincial health services. He spent a lot of his time updating or fixing OS on hospital computers for the 2000 switch in the mid to late 90s. Like a lot of computer and software engineers he was doing that so our provincial healthcare system didn't collapse. Even on new years eve 1999, Myself and my Mom were celebrating New Years Eve watching him update software on different computers or systems. As far as I know, it went pretty smooth.
I hope 2022 is a better year for us all!
Ok
I can't believe this is the 3rd year we've had covid 19...
Y2k22 😳
@@dechenbloom9639 lmao it was the 2nd year
@@bberriow covid started in 2019
There was a similar bug in 2022 where the number storing the date exceeded the 32 bit integer limit for the first time. No one saw it coming, no one panicked and almost nothing happened because of it.
um excuse me, you be talking like 2022 was the past
@@EmbeddedWithin it will be. Just wait. It’ll be like 2023 would be only so much hours away soon.
@@solarichan meme,kw
@@solarichan true :(
The title gives me vibes that say "Happy New Year! You have 5 seconds to enjoy it."
i was one those who drank so much that I passed out 30 mins before midnight.
Waking up in and seeing so many people passed out it was a bit trippy.
It's so interesting to watch stuff about Y2K, fully knowing we never learned anything from this are on the edge of an even bigger Y2K problem, one that actually CAN'T be updated... (I'm talking about the IPv4 problem, we're running out of them and the industry doesn't want to switch to IPv6)...
They'll switch when it gets bad enough, they always do. If people care they can always protest, though I don't know how that would go.
Also the 19 Jan 2038 problem when Unix time hits the 32 bit signed Integer limit
@CatRyBou Afaik it would only be a problem on Windows, as even in 64-bit windows the long datatype is 32-bit
@@FreyrDev i hope Windows stops being used by then. That's a really long time, so it's possible
@@maggiethegamer1271 "i HoPe WinDowS sToPs BeINg UsEd By ThEN" 99% of computer programs run on windows. nobody except the hardcore soy windows haters actually gives a shit about linux
Very cool video! Especially the part at 15:40 , where it's clear some had no remorse. This seems very dangerous to me. Like, the wrong lessons being learned here.
So i saw "Don't look Up" recently and thought of many similarities here. Maybe someone could make a script and saterical movie about the Y2K bug and fake news?
I was a kid during this and I remember when we had a New Years Eve party, my dad was flicking the lights on and off at midnight to scare us. XD
Thanks For The Video:)
8:35 Yes please make a new video about the stock market crash
In retrospect it seems silly, but I can attest to how scary it was in the moment. I was 14 when the 1st of 2000 hit, but it was such a big deal even elementary school children at least knew something was up. I remember sitting quietly, alone, waiting to see if something would happen. The power going out was my "sign" to worry. It's not like I could do anything proactive, though. I was a kid and my family was way too broke to horde food and supplies. It was tense, but it was over so quickly the relief was jarring.
It's still amazing how removing 2 digits from the year can destroy the world.
I remembered this. At 12AM me and my brother walked around the house checking stuff and when we met back up in the living room, we celebrated like we survived a war or something.
I was born in 1988 and was 11 right before 2000. I vividly remember people legit concerned about it. My Dad didn't think it was a big deal though. Crazy to think people born after that are already in their 20's now.