The relief we felt seconds after midnight when everything still worked was amazing. I recal spending many hours that evening and morning watching all the various timezone capital cities having their own special millennium celebrations. Best one I thought was the Jean Michel Jarre concert in Egypt.
My stepfather went full prepper for y2k. Bought months worth of food at Costco, stocked up on ammunition, and got me and his son gasmasks, flashlights, and radios for Christmas '99. He thought planes were going to fall from the sky.
Working in TV that night... holy shit. We had live reporters all over the place, and our producer decided they needed to hit every single live shot rapid-fire, on manual equipment.
I wrote one of the most widely-used solutions to watchdog the RTC in PCs, and I did so many huge companies, the IRS being one of the biggest. Planes were never going to fall out of the sky tho.
I spent Y2K new years babysitting an E911 center in the Chicago suburbs to make sure the system didn't crash... nothing happened, nothing at all... it was soooo boring.
It wasn't really about personal computers, more those controlling utilities and logistical services.
It's easy to scoff at it now like some smug, all seeing oracle that everyone should have just listened to at the time, but the concerns were real. A problem or mistake is as serious as the consequences it might cause. Sometimes small things have large consequences.
My mother worked at a company recruiting tech specialists during the late 1990s and sending them all around the world to do the patching/updates necessary to prevent Y2K meltdowns. They were very well paid because they worked in hospitals and other crucial infrastructure, usually in countries where they didn't have the necessary skills within their own workforce. Governments were willing to pay to prevent catastrophes. It took years. It was a real thing.
I was running an ISP at the time. It was a big deal. My entire technical staff and I celebrated New Years at the office. When midnight hit we spent about an hour going through all our systems and lots of websites to make sure everything was functioning properly. Then we went to a local house of one of my employees and got super drunk.
We've lost the ability to repeat this. If there was a similar impending-doom scenario happening soon, we would be dragged kicking and screaming down the path of doom by fascists and the morons that enable them.
I had to go in to work to check the computer system. I was told not to talk to the press. I wasn't even in IT. Doomsday. I believe some people really wanted it to be.
No, it was just an end of the cycle. It wasnt a list of dates. That was just when the Mayan Long Count calendar would be done and you started the next cycle (baktun)
I was 9 years old on that New Year's Eve. My mother scared me so much that the world was going to end that I sat crying in the stairwell when the fireworks went off.
A friend of mine and I snuck into the breaker room of his apt complex. We flipped the switch right when the clock hit midnight. The screams of fear were well worth missing that moment. Felt like Johnny from Airplane unplugging the runway lights.
For everything but the banking and related "time critical" industries, it was waaaay overhyped. All you had to do was set your system clock back to something like 1974 (previous year where the days/dates aligned in the calendar) and everything would be fine. And if you waited for actual NYE to set your system clock to trigger, you were a fucking idiot.
Thus my comments about "time critical" applications. But as a guy who ran systems in an industrial setting.... We came in on a weekend the summer prior and reset all our clocks to 1974(?) just to see what would happen. Our products had incorrect dates of manufacture on 'em, but other than that everything ran smoothly. We could live with that glitch in the worst case. Didn't end up being needed, but it was a trivial fix with trivial consequences.
That's the current OS, macOS FKA OSX. It was released in 2001 (2000, if you count the Public Beta). On 12/31/1999, Macs were running the Classic OS, which…I don't know when it ran till, so I'll go with the 29K claim. But not the Unix date limit,
Both. The hype was in order to get people interested in fixing it before it actually happened. And it worked. But because it worked, many people nowadays think it wasn't a big deal. It's similar to what happened with the hole in the ozone layer: the hype got countries all over the world to pass legislation to help fix the issue, and it worked, but because in the end nothing happened (since people fixed it), we've got climate change deniers trying to use it to justify their delusion.
Yes I see that. But hyped usually means exaggerated which was more my point. I wonder if you can draw a line from Y2K, acid rain, and the ozone layer scares to anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers due to those problems being almost quietly solved after huge press? So on that front I can see at least a minor argument
Yet it was still _nothing_ compared to the chaos that might have been without all the "hype" and the tons upon tons of work that went into successfully averting it.
PerthAussieMike
The relief we felt seconds after midnight when everything still worked was amazing. I recal spending many hours that evening and morning watching all the various timezone capital cities having their own special millennium celebrations. Best one I thought was the Jean Michel Jarre concert in Egypt.
DukeElectra
I have yet to be y2k compliant.
WyldStallynsRule
My stepfather went full prepper for y2k. Bought months worth of food at Costco, stocked up on ammunition, and got me and his son gasmasks, flashlights, and radios for Christmas '99. He thought planes were going to fall from the sky.
eromitlab
Working in TV that night... holy shit. We had live reporters all over the place, and our producer decided they needed to hit every single live shot rapid-fire, on manual equipment.
Sh1tMovieGroup
If you thought this was bad, just wait till 19th Jan '38
SapphireXK
I was there for this. I remember none of it...
djarcas
I wrote one of the most widely-used solutions to watchdog the RTC in PCs, and I did so many huge companies, the IRS being one of the biggest. Planes were never going to fall out of the sky tho.
Smaaaash
I was playing Diablo at that precise moment. I chose to do so to show y2k sho was boss.
bippityboppitybuttsex
I spent Y2K new years babysitting an E911 center in the Chicago suburbs to make sure the system didn't crash... nothing happened, nothing at all... it was soooo boring.
allclownsareevil
It wasn't really about personal computers, more those controlling utilities and logistical services.
It's easy to scoff at it now like some smug, all seeing oracle that everyone should have just listened to at the time, but the concerns were real. A problem or mistake is as serious as the consequences it might cause. Sometimes small things have large consequences.
PacMan4Life
I was doing tech support for a company at the time and it was all hands on deck at midnight
Polymathena
Party over oops out of time
Hengabecka
My mother worked at a company recruiting tech specialists during the late 1990s and sending them all around the world to do the patching/updates necessary to prevent Y2K meltdowns. They were very well paid because they worked in hospitals and other crucial infrastructure, usually in countries where they didn't have the necessary skills within their own workforce. Governments were willing to pay to prevent catastrophes. It took years. It was a real thing.
Snooj
I was running an ISP at the time. It was a big deal. My entire technical staff and I celebrated New Years at the office. When midnight hit we spent about an hour going through all our systems and lots of websites to make sure everything was functioning properly. Then we went to a local house of one of my employees and got super drunk.
PanNonOpticon
The reason why nothing happened is how there was years of work done to prevent that something would happen.
ToonamiT0M
The reason nothing major happened is because programs like my dad worked their asses off fixing the issue.
glovelyday
I knew a women who still had cases if water stockpiled in her basement 10 years later.
naughtyrev
I was partying like it was the end of the world that night. Wild debauchery, cocaine out of ass cracks kind of stuff.
jimjong1
So just a regular monday then?
spooktree
crapybarra
Good way to go if ya had to
3Davideo
I was nine!
Sawtooth2025
That’s a bit young to do coke out of ass cracks, but I’m not judging you.
phobosorbust
We've lost the ability to repeat this.
If there was a similar impending-doom scenario happening soon, we would be dragged kicking and screaming down the path of doom by fascists and the morons that enable them.
phobosorbust
Mostly meaning the USian 'we', but we're not the only ones with an 'alternative facts' brigade occupying positions of power.
fuehrSleepVoter
I had to go in to work to check the computer system. I was told not to talk to the press. I wasn't even in IT. Doomsday. I believe some people really wanted it to be.
sometimesarobot
Looking back, might not have been the worst time
fuehrSleepVoter
You are correct.
Dolenmorgul
Next up: how the world was gonna end in 2012 because a mayan sculptor got tired of chiseling dates
Pyrocious
Feel like it was more like he ran out of room on the big wheel. Probably figured "Eh, they can carve a new one when it gets close to time"
armagetz
No, it was just an end of the cycle. It wasnt a list of dates. That was just when the Mayan Long Count calendar would be done and you started the next cycle (baktun)
schoenertaktak
I was 9 years old on that New Year's Eve. My mother scared me so much that the world was going to end that I sat crying in the stairwell when the fireworks went off.
BTWash22
A friend of mine and I snuck into the breaker room of his apt complex. We flipped the switch right when the clock hit midnight. The screams of fear were well worth missing that moment. Felt like Johnny from Airplane unplugging the runway lights.
AReallySatisfyingPoo
And we'll get to do it all again in 13 years!
fishbicyclerepairman
Stayed up all night playing network doom in the office because of Y2K
Sooner70
For everything but the banking and related "time critical" industries, it was waaaay overhyped. All you had to do was set your system clock back to something like 1974 (previous year where the days/dates aligned in the calendar) and everything would be fine. And if you waited for actual NYE to set your system clock to trigger, you were a fucking idiot.
jimicus
For domestic PCs, sure.
The whole world is not a PC and never has been.
Sooner70
Thus my comments about "time critical" applications. But as a guy who ran systems in an industrial setting.... We came in on a weekend the summer prior and reset all our clocks to 1974(?) just to see what would happen. Our products had incorrect dates of manufacture on 'em, but other than that everything ran smoothly. We could live with that glitch in the worst case. Didn't end up being needed, but it was a trivial fix with trivial consequences.
ClikeX
IIRC, most things were already patched before then.
jwhennig
FYI kids, this was not filmed with a phone.
geraltofriva
Blümchen!
SebiThePamph
FiNCH & Blümchen - Herzalarm (Prod. Dasmo & Mania Music)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF-rFx3yVzA
tumbleweeed
First think I noticed, too. Had a crush on her when I was 14 or so.
rotodisc
It’s a Mac. If memory serves, they were gonna be fine.
drhobotron
You can do really terrible, application-based date handling on *any* platform. That was more than half the battle.
GlowstickJedi
Most home systems of the time were. The big issues were with the major, yet aging, infrastructure that actually ran municipal services.
GasBandit
And from what I recall, the software patch just redefined 1968 or so as "0" so now the Y2K bug is pushed back to 2068.
CardeasIV
And it was last time they were
FiftyShadesOfCauliflower
Yeah, Apple planned ahead until the year 29,940.
VEEJNAS
People in 29,941: “Fu..!”
Sh1tMovieGroup
From memory Apple is Unix based, so they planned ahead but only to January 18th 2038...
jackpkmn
For 32bit apple systems yes, so that means everything before power pc G4 will suffer from this problem.
ThatHurts
It is Darwin, a fork of FreeBSD, under the hood since OSX (March 2001). Previous to that not so much.
PballQhead
That's the current OS, macOS FKA OSX. It was released in 2001 (2000, if you count the Public Beta). On 12/31/1999, Macs were running the Classic OS, which…I don't know when it ran till, so I'll go with the 29K claim. But not the Unix date limit,
CredibleTalent
In OS 9, the limit was 2020: https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/2020_date_limit
This was patched in April 2000.
combatwombat0
Ah yes the y29k
KellyCrazyCatLadyinTraining
O.o!
Autittuderp
Oh the hype for this was bonkers
TheobromineAddict
Nowadays Republicans would do nothing about it.
SteerpikeSteerpike
And that was in 2000 when the internet was still in diapers. WAY before the internet was swamped with social media and trash clickbait news sites.
trhopkins
it really was.
HumanCats
Was it hype or was it a serious and dire warning?
onepinksheep
Both. The hype was in order to get people interested in fixing it before it actually happened. And it worked. But because it worked, many people nowadays think it wasn't a big deal. It's similar to what happened with the hole in the ozone layer: the hype got countries all over the world to pass legislation to help fix the issue, and it worked, but because in the end nothing happened (since people fixed it), we've got climate change deniers trying to use it to justify their delusion.
HumanCats
Yes I see that. But hyped usually means exaggerated which was more my point. I wonder if you can draw a line from Y2K, acid rain, and the ozone layer scares to anti-vaxxers and Covid deniers due to those problems being almost quietly solved after huge press? So on that front I can see at least a minor argument
MightyUrto
I lost my new years because I was babysitting our systems
michiyl
So, you're one year behind everyone? Poor dude :/
the3th
shit. should we tell him or let him live in bliss for the summer? ah shit, he's gonna find out at the end of this month anyway...
michiyl
Let's tell him the lotto numbers and spoil his fun!
michaeloberg
The engineering to fix all of the things was bonkers
Hexrowe
Yet it was still _nothing_ compared to the chaos that might have been without all the "hype" and the tons upon tons of work that went into successfully averting it.
Karma1970
Exactly!
Melonfish
No, no, clearly that year we spent chasing, patching, and testing things was hype.
martineb72
Frankly, most of it was in billing. At the time very few things even knew what year it was less alone if digits flipped to zero.
naughtyrev
In retrospect, maybe we should have just let it happen.
HandoB4Javert
All air traffic control systems suddenly offline...
Electricity grids...
Water supplies....
fartingungulate
What a world where are own computers just say. "No more computer for you." Wonder what hell we would think of next.
HandoB4Javert
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
32 bit system problem coming up.