Y2K was not the world-ending catastrophe that the media, governments, and tech gurus had predicted. But it still led to some weird, expensive, and sometimes hilarious glitches.

was anyone else disappointed that planes were not literally falling out of the sky on Y2K?

anyway, here are some real world examples of actual problems that did occur

I did like the Leonard Nimoy video with experts attempting to rate how bad things were going to be :)

and of course the Y2K survival kit commercial was unintentionally hilarious with the shattered glass and sirens going off in the background

did anyone here have to deal with issues caused by Y2K, or spend time preparing systems beforehand?

  • mikestew@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    I worked at Microsoft at the time, and much ass was busted to implement fixes and test our product (with other teams doing the same, I assume) before the rollover occurred. On call as the clock ticked over to midnight in our time zone, and…I ended up playing Age of Empires for eight hours because nothing happened.

    But don’t be fooled: nothing happened because of the tremendous amount of work done beforehand to make sure nothing happened.

    • funchords@lemmy.sdf.org
      0·
      1 year ago

      I worked at Intel Corp and there were many assessments and mitigations made, including some fixes. It was certainly a non-zero effort!

      • lackthought@lemmy.sdf.orgOPM
        1·
        1 year ago

        I was only a teenager at the time, but even then I thought that surely smart people had been looking at this issue and coming up with solutions before Y2K was going to happen

        I never understood the media hysteria, but now that I’m older I see the general media is clueless when it comes to tech so that’s probably why the ‘panic’ (and of course they can always find some ‘expert’ to claim that doomsday is coming!)

        • vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org
          1·
          1 year ago

          but now that I’m older I see the general media is clueless

          Only it seems they are becoming more clueless every year. Probably because they believe that the opposite should be true because of poking touchscreens with their fingers so much every day.

  • plumbercraic@lemmy.sdf.org
    1·
    1 year ago

    I was on a train, and as it struck midnight this girl started shrieking about how “the millennium bug had got her phone”. My friend taps her on the shoulder and says: “we’re in a tunnel”. Good times.

  • XTL@sopuli.xyz
    02·
    1 year ago

    It was pretty obvious that the only things that were going to break are paper forms with “19__” printed on them.

    • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      1 year ago

      There’s actual counterexamples in the article, including the fact over 300 billion USD was spent to (mostly) prevent it.