Why Did Everyone Care About Y2K?

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  • Опубликовано: 13 июн 2024
  • Get the “big picture” with Ground News. Go to ground.news/weirdhistory and subscribe for 40% off their unlimited access Vantage plan this month only.
    While the world collectively held their breath through December 31, 1999, the Y2K hysteria predated the new millennium by decades. Prince was singing about “two thousand, zero zero, party over, oops, out of time” as early as 1982, and preparations for the great unknown of the 2000s intensified throughout the 1990s.
    In hindsight, it was a new year like any other. Why were people scared of Y2K? To put it simply, it was the sobering realization that we had permanently crossed the threshold into a computerized world, and the possibility of even a brief widespread technological issue could signal the end times.
    To Read more about the Y2K Hysteria, go here:
    www.ranker.com/list/y2k-hyste...
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    #y2k #y2kbug #weirdhistory
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Комментарии • 544

  • @WeirdHistory
    @WeirdHistory  Месяц назад +9

    Get the “big picture” with Ground News. Go to ground.news/weirdhistory and subscribe for 40% off their unlimited access Vantage plan this month only.

    • @kellychuang8373
      @kellychuang8373 Месяц назад

      Good video here sadly 2020 wasn't like this though everyone wished it was.

    • @misterhat5823
      @misterhat5823 Месяц назад +4

      That's a no. And thumbs down for sticking the salespitch in the middle.

    • @clonecommando-cn6bo
      @clonecommando-cn6bo Месяц назад +1

      Why did everyone empty 90% of stores of toilet paper In 2020?

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      @@clonecommando-cn6bo Because most people are full of it and needed to stock up?

    • @cloudk5954
      @cloudk5954 Месяц назад

      no to the ad trash downvote for putting that garbage in and unsubscribe for that trash

  • @itsjustme7487
    @itsjustme7487 Месяц назад +147

    I worked for a bank and loans couldn't be made past 1999 until the programing was fixed.

    • @No_Budget.Builds
      @No_Budget.Builds Месяц назад +10

      ​@@cfcinilopeso you're telling me I should have been taking that bank loan and getting a house instead of being a baby? I knew it

    • @edwardharris9035
      @edwardharris9035 Месяц назад +1

      @@No_Budget.Buildsthat’s ridiculous

    • @paddyjoe1884
      @paddyjoe1884 Месяц назад +4

      I was the junior employee in an office. Which made me the IT expert. I tested our computers. All passed save sm old kid we were planning 2 get rid of, plus the machine running the print server, which also had 2 b replaced. So the impact was minimal because we prepared 4 it.

    • @paddyjoe1884
      @paddyjoe1884 Месяц назад +2

      Sorry meant old kit

    • @grant9214
      @grant9214 Месяц назад

      What about mortgages?

  • @Nanno00
    @Nanno00 Месяц назад +84

    I was an IT manager for a large state for y2k. It definitely was a catastrophe averted by a lot of hard work and a lot of overtime before the date change.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      No it wasn't. All it took was to buy a motherboard that was Y2k compliant. Why make up lies? You weren't an IT manager, or you would know that. If changing a motherboard is hard work for you... lol

    • @brigidspencer5123
      @brigidspencer5123 Месяц назад

      @@Me4-gc8qsTroll!

    • @tokkiestan6901
      @tokkiestan6901 Месяц назад +8

      @@Me4-gc8qs And if you replace the motherboard, does the software also change miraculously?

    • @ridureyu
      @ridureyu Месяц назад +7

      When you avoid a disaster, people assume there never was any danger. See also Covid

    • @OldSoulNewWorld
      @OldSoulNewWorld 19 дней назад

      It manager for a whole state? 😂😂😂

  • @marianparoo1544
    @marianparoo1544 Месяц назад +50

    We had a minor disaster at the library---- books came up as 100 years overdue!!!! No fines were calculated, though.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      hahah they would have been only 99 years overdue. If you're going to lie, at least be accurate with your lies.

  • @robertosorio7919
    @robertosorio7919 Месяц назад +125

    People do not a appreciate what massive effort this was, and how badly things could have gone wrong. Bonus points: Y2K mitigations likely prevented the total collapse of our banking systems, during 9-11 when the towers fell, destroying or cutting off most of the banking data centers. Backup data centers and redundancy implemented for Y2K meant that nearly every bank smoothly switched over to backup data centers, and banking and commerce continued mostly unaffected.

    • @ZOOMPZ00mp
      @ZOOMPZ00mp Месяц назад +1

      never knew that

    • @comettamer
      @comettamer Месяц назад +1

      Huh, thats interesting

    • @kellychuang8373
      @kellychuang8373 Месяц назад +1

      That is something to really think about and sadly COVID-19 or to be less offended 2020 really dwarfs this and unlike this it really went to a disaster.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      @@kellychuang8373 No it's not, he's fishing for likes by from people who know nothing about computers.

    • @TheRealPotoroo
      @TheRealPotoroo Месяц назад +3

      @@Me4-gc8qs Anyone claiming to all and sundry that the only required fix for the Y2K problem was a motherboard change isn't in a position to lecture anybody about their supposed lack of knowledge about computers.

  • @blackenedwritings
    @blackenedwritings Месяц назад +64

    Y2K on Weird History? Wasn't that just ... oh ...

    • @NSHorseheadSD70
      @NSHorseheadSD70 Месяц назад +18

      That was the end of the 90s like 10 years ago, right? Right?!

    • @comettamer
      @comettamer Месяц назад +4

      Wild, ain't it?

    • @varga4488
      @varga4488 Месяц назад

      Ur a fossil

    • @Ottophil
      @Ottophil Месяц назад

      History is being made everyday.

    • @laseximexi
      @laseximexi Месяц назад +1

      🙉🙉🙉 LaLaLaLa i can’t here you

  • @daveschmarder-1950
    @daveschmarder-1950 Месяц назад +43

    In 1999 I worked for an industrial electronic parts store. In late 1999 a lady walked in bringing in an old mantle clock. She was worried that Y2K would do something to it. I explained why she had no problem and she could rest assured that her clock would still work.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      But she still didn't believe you?

    • @daveschmarder-1950
      @daveschmarder-1950 Месяц назад

      @@Me4-gc8qs I think I was able to convince her. But it did take a while.

    • @thehangmansdaughter1120
      @thehangmansdaughter1120 Месяц назад +1

      I got calls asking about microwaves, toasters and ovens. "Mam, this is you internet service provider. We don't do toasters."

    • @daveschmarder-1950
      @daveschmarder-1950 Месяц назад

      @@thehangmansdaughter1120 Wow! You must have been more public facing than I was. There were a couple other visitors and calls, but I don't recall the details.

    • @thehangmansdaughter1120
      @thehangmansdaughter1120 Месяц назад

      @@daveschmarder-1950 Back then I was tech support for satellite connections.

  • @MrSunDevil23
    @MrSunDevil23 Месяц назад +22

    I have been an IT professional for over 30 years and I remember Y2K very well. The consulting company I worked for at the time made more money in 1999 preparing clients for Y2K than they had in the entire 8 years they were in business. While it was a distinct and definite issue, I for one am glad that preparations and workarounds were in place so the “global computing apocalypse” did not happen.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      Yes, and those companies like the one you worked for, would replace the motherboard fix the problem then claim all the hard work programming the pc is the thing that saved them. Please anyone who really worked in IT between 1997 and 1999 knew all you had to was upgrade the motherboard and problem solved. Why lie? Want to look like an IT hero on the internet with people who have been in the IT industry for over 50 years lol.

  • @qwertyuiopgarth
    @qwertyuiopgarth Месяц назад +27

    That is the problem with good preventative efforts - if they have been well done the result is that 'nothing happens' and everything 'runs smoothly', and then some idiot starts claiming that because 'nothing happened' the preventative efforts were a waste of money.

    • @Thediydog
      @Thediydog Месяц назад +4

      IT in a nutshell:
      “The system works, what are we paying you for?”
      “The system is down, what are we paying you for?”

    • @TheRealPotoroo
      @TheRealPotoroo Месяц назад +2

      Indeed. Like the one in here claiming nobody needed to do anything more than change their motherboard. SMH

  • @Skummeh2
    @Skummeh2 Месяц назад +34

    I worked at a data center during this time period and the only thing that broke was our electronic door system. The date rolled back to 1900 so all of our door access codes were created "in the future" and weren't accepted. Fortunately we had physical key backups. We put all the codes back in fresh and went about our business. None of the servers or applications we used had any issues after applying any fixes that the vendors provided. This limited impact was thanks to the massive effort put in by many to ensure continued operation of systems worldwide.

    • @STho205
      @STho205 Месяц назад

      Your doors were controlled via 1960s or 70s COBOL or FortG1 locally produces code....like from The Forbin Project or InfoTec in Mannix.
      Almost every gadget and process control system by the 80s was managed on later languages using UNIX or VMS date (double precision numeric of time +/- 1970-01-01) or microcomputers 1980-01-01.
      I worked in a large data center too at the time and we didn't write our own SW to control the door locks...but I can see that getting overlooked as a forgotten legacy.
      We did find programmers that had used old Grace Hopper era text date or 6 digit integer pic clauses in some code. Even newer COBOL had moved on from that in the 80s but still supported the legacy style.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      All you had to do was. Wind your cmos back to date when the 1st of January 2000 was the same day of the week. The only issue was the leap day. So funny that none of you experts know this. All of you lie. None of you are IT workers or you would know the same as I do. I had a Pentium mmx chip and motherboard that wasn't Y2K compliant. Wound it back to a year when the 1st of January was the same day and still kept using that pc up until 2004 the next leap year. Why do you all lie?

  • @triadmad
    @triadmad Месяц назад +47

    I was the "computer guy" at the survey/engineering company I worked for, because I was the first guy in the office to replace a hard drive or add memory to a computer several years before. Microsoft put out a Y2k patch that I installed on all the computers that could have been affected.

    • @aldousd666
      @aldousd666 Месяц назад +3

      That was just for the operating system. All of the software that ran on it still needed to be patched independently. Including IBM mainframe code that was all over the place.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      That patch never worked. It was cmos and bios that caused Y2K. if your bios and cmos didn't go past 1999 on the calendar the patch didn't fix it. But if your computer did go past that date the patch did nothing. It was a placebo patch to make fools happy.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      @@aldousd666 No patch could fix your motherboard if it didn't go past 31 December 1999. All the patches in the world couldn't fix it. If a patch "fixed it" that meant the pc was already Y2K compliant. I can't believe so many fell for this.

    • @aldousd666
      @aldousd666 Месяц назад

      @@Me4-gc8qs we ran Bios updates on all the hosts but that wasn't enough.

  • @pennilesswriter1556
    @pennilesswriter1556 Месяц назад +14

    About 8 years ago, my coworkers and I were discussing past events. Y2K and 9/11 came up. A 14 year old who was hanging around because of his dad (summer break) was totally confused. We had to explain why and what the fear was about and why there was so much panic linked between the two (ie, why people who lived through both mentioned both). It really felt like the world was trying to end with one thing after another. He at least knew about 9/11, but didn't live through it. Never had I felt so old than in that moment.

    • @thehangmansdaughter1120
      @thehangmansdaughter1120 Месяц назад +1

      I felt old when I explained to my kids that man landed on the moon just 6 years before I was born.

  • @sarahcoleman5269
    @sarahcoleman5269 Месяц назад +30

    My father was working (what is now called IT) in a major international corporation in 1999. I remember him telling me that the problem wasn't going to be the end of the world, but it was important to update a lot of computers. He was extremely stressed out and working overtime to get all the computers changed, but his team actually got everything done about a week before New Years, so, thankfully, the world still has baby powder.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      Ok if this is true tell me what It was called back then? All it took was a motherboard change. Any person working in IT at a major corporation would know that. Lol. You can lie about a lot things in this world but you can't lie about Y2K. Not to those of who were in IT before 1999.

  • @EricGranata
    @EricGranata Месяц назад +39

    On New Year’s Eve 1999, as family and extended family were watching the ball drop on TV, champagne in hand, I was in the garage at the breaker box waiting for the countdown to end. The reaction was pretty funny.

    • @nooneanymoore9971
      @nooneanymoore9971 Месяц назад +1

      Bwa, HAHAHAHA!

    • @angesvlogs6628
      @angesvlogs6628 Месяц назад +1

      😂😂😂

    • @comettamer
      @comettamer Месяц назад +1

      Thats hilarious

    • @ArnieMcStranglehold
      @ArnieMcStranglehold Месяц назад +5

      Listen, an opportunity like that would only ever happen once in history, and I am glad to have seen the comment from probably one of the only 0.001% of people to ever pull this prank.

    • @spacecowboy5995
      @spacecowboy5995 Месяц назад

      Lmao!!! 😂

  • @Nozferatu46
    @Nozferatu46 Месяц назад +26

    I work in IT with databases, and I still deal with weird Band-Aid fixes for Y2K in some legacy systems.

    • @WhatIsayIsStupid
      @WhatIsayIsStupid Месяц назад +2

      Yes I took over my dads computer systems coordinating company , funny if you google what a computer systems coordinator does you get about 10 different Jon titles , me n you n our kind did the job of about 7 ppl do In today's time. Gen low T/E was failed by us n that's a hard pill to swallow

    • @user-bx3tm7ft7h
      @user-bx3tm7ft7h Месяц назад +2

      I'm a nerd, how so??, you have my attention

    • @Nozferatu46
      @Nozferatu46 Месяц назад

      @@user-bx3tm7ft7h There's numerous variations. Some went to a 3 digit date (i.e. 2001 was year 101). Some dates stayed 2 digits, and used special characters to represent the year (Today could be represented as @40426). Some systems, today is shown in the data as 20571.

    • @STho205
      @STho205 Месяц назад +1

      The worst fix was a simple IF statement added that simply created a new deadline....like:
      If DOB_YY < 20 then...

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      How? It was a motherboard fix. You had to use some shitty ass software if changing the motherboard which holds the date information. Didn't fix it.

  • @MikeHarris1984
    @MikeHarris1984 Месяц назад +5

    Prison doors in Canada failed? Did the inmates just shut the door themselves and say "Surry!"

  • @JABoyle3875
    @JABoyle3875 Месяц назад +25

    I worked at Best Buy in 1999. September 9th - 9/9/99 - was viewed as a dress rehearsal for Y2K.
    It was also the day that the Sega Dreamcast was released.
    People were losing their shit when our check verification systems went down and we had to call each one in. Oh boy people thought we’d be screwed.

    • @ArnieMcStranglehold
      @ArnieMcStranglehold Месяц назад

      It's good to know that, knowing now that 9/9/99 would crash some systems, that Sega has never been good at "launching" anything. PSO2 used to fill up your drive with garbage files if your internet dared to hiccup...

  • @Makoto03
    @Makoto03 Месяц назад +35

    I remember Y2k. I was alittle over 10 when the hysteria around that happening when the clock struck midnight at 2000. What made it slightly scary was i remember legit news stations covering it like it might actually happen.
    I wasn't so scared as much as confused. Also happy my parents didn't buy into it and wasted money on survival kit nonsense or something. lol

    • @WhatIsayIsStupid
      @WhatIsayIsStupid Месяц назад +2

      Wat about wen ppl were setting off fireworks n a bunch of ppl were shook ,I was 21 yrs old when it happened

    • @comettamer
      @comettamer Месяц назад +2

      Same. I was not quite 9 years old when the Y2K panic set in and i dont recall being scared so much as confused. Thankfully my mom and stepdad are fairly intelligent folks and didnt buy into it, so we just went about life as pretty much normal.

    • @kellychuang8373
      @kellychuang8373 Месяц назад

      Yeah really scary time not unlike 2020 which is a real disaster and is way different than Y2K.

    • @aldousd666
      @aldousd666 Месяц назад +4

      It was real. It's just that we all spent billions of dollars and countless hours patching it ahead of time. There was no disaster because we spent years doing a lot of fixing.

    • @MariaMartinez-researcher
      @MariaMartinez-researcher Месяц назад +1

      Please read other people's comments. Many have family members or were personally involved in all the fixing the computers required to *not* cause all manner of problems - some report problems that did happen.
      This was not an empty threat, but an actual danger that was averted with the effort of thousands of engineers and technicians.

  • @kath121
    @kath121 Месяц назад +9

    My hubby made a killing doing "Y2K Compliance" service on computers. He was freelance at the time, so it was a boom for us. We went out for new years, but made sure to be home by midnight, just in case of any weirdness. 😊

  • @kirbymarchbarcena
    @kirbymarchbarcena Месяц назад +14

    I was wondering why no one activated their Vault-Tec subscriptions at that time

  • @NewMessage
    @NewMessage Месяц назад +24

    * LaBamba voice *
    "🎶In the year two thousand.... In the year two thousaaaaaand...🎶"

    • @WhatIsayIsStupid
      @WhatIsayIsStupid Месяц назад +3

      There already is a song with that n without the labamba voice or "the bomb" funny how ppl were calling a song " this is the bomb" n it took about 40 yrs later for ppl to pick up that idiom for English

    • @horrido666
      @horrido666 Месяц назад +3

      Gonna party like it's 1999.

    • @handleyourowntool
      @handleyourowntool Месяц назад +1

      Do we have to wait 501 years before you quote Evens and Zagger? Or is it Zagger and Evens?🤔

    • @handleyourowntool
      @handleyourowntool Месяц назад +4

      ​@@WhatIsayIsStupidI was thinking Conan O'Brian. Also, first thought was Zagger and Evens

    • @jenniferlonnes7420
      @jenniferlonnes7420 Месяц назад

      ​And Andy Richter.​@@handleyourowntool

  • @crazedvole
    @crazedvole Месяц назад +6

    My cousin (R.I.P) said that he was not worried about Y2K because there was no way in the world big corporations and banks would lose all the money they stood to lose if they did not do something about it.

  • @lost4eva081980
    @lost4eva081980 Месяц назад +9

    In brief it would have been a problem if it hadn't been fixed way in advance, which it thankfully was.

  • @BillThomasGuitars
    @BillThomasGuitars Месяц назад +4

    I was an IT engineer at the time working for a large electric company. We had updated everything to y2k compliance years before y2k. It took a lot of updates but there was no panic on our part.

  • @kaledmasterme
    @kaledmasterme Месяц назад +8

    Hey Weird History, are we gonna get more Timeline?

  • @Mystery_Man84
    @Mystery_Man84 Месяц назад +5

    Imagine there was widespread social media back then? Could’ve been a lot worse.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      The term social media didn't come about until about 4-5 years after Y2K.

    • @thehangmansdaughter1120
      @thehangmansdaughter1120 Месяц назад

      Bloody hell, you're right. People were freaking out enough without the echo chamber of stupidity whispering in their ears.

    • @PunkersPlays
      @PunkersPlays Месяц назад +1

      @@thehangmansdaughter1120 as if anything has really changed. Now there's just more echos in the chamber.

  • @robertjones1502
    @robertjones1502 Месяц назад +8

    I remember the Y2K scare all too.Well I was a teenager in florida where conspiracy theories are born and lived as true

  • @brittanylooney7623
    @brittanylooney7623 Месяц назад +19

    I remember it vividly 😂. I was 13 at the time and we were at my aunts house for a family party. My goofy ass uncle went downstairs and when we rang in the new year he turned the circuit breaker off lmao we all screamed then the power came back on. My mom was like where’s Joe (her brother) then we saw him coming back upstairs and we all died laughing 🤣

    • @ArnieMcStranglehold
      @ArnieMcStranglehold Месяц назад +1

      hey i think i saw his comment, too 🤣a joke like that only comes around once, EVER, not even once in a lifetime.

  • @tremorsfan
    @tremorsfan Месяц назад +8

    One man got 100 years worth of late fees after renting a movie from Blockbuster on Dec 31.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      nice joke but be careful idiots like you might believe it.

  • @yourhuckleberry6757
    @yourhuckleberry6757 Месяц назад +3

    Power line went down in my town we thought it was real.
    Rip Doug, Stacey, Bob, and Bob's dog Lil sciddles.

  • @jessegaspard
    @jessegaspard Месяц назад +17

    I was 10 when Y2K happened, and all my friends' parents were stockpiling and buying generators. My dad (a Vietnam vet, born in 1944) was questioned by some how he was preparing and he just said, "I've got several gallons of water in my pickup, and I've got shotguns for hunting, and poles for fishing. We'll be just fine. " 😂 I miss that man, he was awesome.

  • @timthegem
    @timthegem Месяц назад +3

    I worked in a hotel back then and New Year's Eve was always the wildest night, where there were would be a few guests who would try to cause trouble and pathetic parents who would let their kids go wherever they wanted on their own to face whatever fate. 12/31/1999 was the only time in my life I ever vomited from anxiety. Amazingly, it ended up being the smoothest NYE that I worked there. No trouble at all even though the hotel was sold out.

  • @navret1707
    @navret1707 Месяц назад +5

    I was a contractor with a large government agency for Y2K. There were definitely issues that would have caused major problems.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      Only if the mother board on the pc's were built before 1996. In 199 any company with a computer that old would have had problems regardless of Y2K.

    • @trevinbeattie4888
      @trevinbeattie4888 Месяц назад

      ​@@Me4-gc8qsIn 199 anybody with a pre-1996 computer would have been fed to the lions as a heretic.

  • @samhuntley344
    @samhuntley344 Месяц назад +3

    I had to show up to work for my office job on Jan 1, 2000. They ordered bagels and I ended up stacking old print out reports to be sent for off site storage.

  • @Traptar11
    @Traptar11 Месяц назад +6

    My man, there he is.

  • @wirelessdirk
    @wirelessdirk Месяц назад +9

    ah the narrator is back

  • @meganh4011
    @meganh4011 Месяц назад +5

    Everyone was worried and I was drunk! It was a great party🎉

    • @whatjake7898
      @whatjake7898 Месяц назад +1

      I was getting drunk for the first time at 12 years old. World was ending FTW!!!!

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад +1

      I was waiting to collect the money from all the bets I had saying Y2K was a hoax. And not one person honored the $1000 bet I had with them. I would have made $32000 that day if people were honest.

    • @meganh4011
      @meganh4011 Месяц назад

      @@Me4-gc8qs I think my ex-husband had some of those bets going on too, and nobody paid him up either.

  • @user-sn1wh9zu2o
    @user-sn1wh9zu2o Месяц назад +2

    I remember going through a lot of code at work for the Y2K problem and finding some that would, in fact, not handle the rollover correctly. We fixed it. What was irritating is afterward people saying it wasn't a big deal and that it was needless panic, but it's because people put so much effort into fixing codebases that things were relatively glitch-free. IT has become a utility, not unlike your power or phone, so the amount of effort to keep it going is largely behind the scenes. If you don't see overt issues, then we're doing our jobs!

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      All software relies on your bios for dates. If your Bios was y2K compliant the software would adjust to it... It was a problem known since the 50's any software after 1970 was written to accommodate for it. If the software didn't you bought cheap and nasty software.

  • @emmgeevideo
    @emmgeevideo Месяц назад +3

    Not mentioned here was that a considerable amount of Y2K compliance was performed in India. Much of the changes were pure drudgery. That plus the fact that the costs of India programmers was so low compared to US programmers made it desirable to "offshore" the work. Because these changes were updates and not new functionality, the time difference wasn't a big deal. Teams in India could do most of the work during their daylight hours.
    US companies discovered that Indian software professionals were really good. So post Jan 1 2000 more and more work was off-shored. Around this time, massive investment was made in undersea fiber-optic communications links, which made interactions between the US and India much more efficient. The rest, as they say, was weird history. US employment patterns changed significantly after Y2K for these reasons.

  • @twillison8824
    @twillison8824 Месяц назад +10

    Attended a New years eve party in 99, at midnight, someone stepped outside, fired a shotgun into the air, and the entire town went black. He had unknowingly shot one of the main power lines into town in half. Everyone thought Y2K had indeed happened 😂😂😂

    • @thehangmansdaughter1120
      @thehangmansdaughter1120 Месяц назад

      🤣🤣 The power in our small town was once cut off because of a dead possum at the substation.

    • @jjboozer64
      @jjboozer64 Месяц назад

      Cave city AR.??? Lol

    • @thehangmansdaughter1120
      @thehangmansdaughter1120 Месяц назад +1

      @@jjboozer64 Me or OP? If it's me, Masterton, New Zealand.

    • @jjboozer64
      @jjboozer64 Месяц назад

      @thehangmansdaughter1120 There was a guy who blew up a substation at midnight in that area. Had the same effect of legitimizing Y2K that year. Was crazy. Lol

  • @lissachocolate
    @lissachocolate Месяц назад +1

    Our dept worked for at least two years testing our insurance policy issuance program for our company, there were many people at companies doing the same thing. Be thankful that all this work resulted in the “ho hum, big deal over nothing” that resulted. I did get double time on New Years for doing final testing. And we got to go home after a couple hours because it all worked correctly :)

  • @theretrowizard8448
    @theretrowizard8448 Месяц назад +2

    I was in Hight school in the 1990's I was taking BASIC programming. That was the first Time I head about the y2K Bug. Our teachers was saying that Older programming language will be important in the up coming years to reprogram system for the year 2000, This was around 1993 1994 I heard this. Burning New Years Eve on 2000. I was working at a water plant. We had people calling all day asking is the water was safe or not.

  • @SkyBlue-qn8me
    @SkyBlue-qn8me Месяц назад +40

    Clearly this episode was written for people under 30 who do not remember Y2k, LOL

    • @xMetalhead2000
      @xMetalhead2000 Месяц назад +4

      That’s the point of history to preserve it for those who weren’t there

    • @sunny_froyo
      @sunny_froyo Месяц назад +2

      This makes no sense at all.

  • @btetschner
    @btetschner Месяц назад +2

    A+ video!
    LOVE IT! What a crazy phenomena!

  • @33Wek
    @33Wek Месяц назад +8

    In 1999 my dad had credit card debt he was hoping the computers would crash so he didn't have to pay it off 😊

  • @typograf62
    @typograf62 Месяц назад +1

    I am a programmer and remember it well. Someone in Swedish military warned that they could not guarantee that planes would not fall from the sky and tanks drive around in circles. Well - quite an expectation. I'm a Dane. We worked hard, tested and retested. Eventually I was at ease with the it-systems I worked on - various it for hospitals. We had one error a few weeks after newyear - very small. And one before - a very embarrassing one (of my making). An old lady got a computed age above 100 years. When she denied she was met with something like: But the computer says that ... I asked the staff to apologize to the "senile" lady on my behalf.
    I think this is the first story/video that I've seen, that tells things correctly. Thanks a lot!

  • @ronm6585
    @ronm6585 Месяц назад +1

    I remember. I worked in IT and we did a ton of Y2K remediation. Thanks for sharing.

  • @brj_han
    @brj_han Месяц назад +21

    Y2K was the milestone of how gullible the public could be.
    All of my machines and software was Y2K compliant. (Many programs I wrote used a base of 1980 to do date calculations, so will fail in 2081. They can complain all they want when it happens, lol.

    • @nooneanymoore9971
      @nooneanymoore9971 Месяц назад +1

      I love it! Trolling from the great beyond! 😂

    • @kellychuang8373
      @kellychuang8373 Месяц назад

      Yes sadly not all disasters turned out this way like 2020 and also the inflation and rampant theft and shortages we're dealing with now.

  • @DoYouWantTaBeFree
    @DoYouWantTaBeFree Месяц назад

    I was on probation from 1996-2000. My probation was due to discharge on February 14, 2000. So the last time I reported and paid fines was in January 2000. When I made my last payment, my receipt read that owed all the money from the last 4 years. The lady at the counter told me it was due to the Y2K problem and not to worry about it.

  • @y_fam_goeglyd
    @y_fam_goeglyd Месяц назад +2

    Thank you for taking this seriously. Even though I was no longer working that year, I had worked with computers in the previous couple of decades and knew how fragile some systems were (no "could be" about it!)
    Thanks to the _extremely_ hard work of all the world's nerds (😉), nothing bad happened. The press was unbearable at the time and even though I'd not been working with tech for some years, I knew what they were saying was bunkum. Hoarding, etc., was just something Hubby (who also had worked in tech - in avonics - earlier in the decade) and I kept laughing at.
    Thank you IT peeps, you were awesome!

  • @keithc.bevins926
    @keithc.bevins926 Месяц назад +2

    My ex worked on this issue for two years before the deadline. He is a software engineer.

  • @michaelhowell2326
    @michaelhowell2326 Месяц назад +1

    I was 13, and I remember staying up and watching the news and the Ball dropping just waiting on everything to fall apart. I don't think I thought it would happen.

  • @andromeda331
    @andromeda331 Месяц назад

    I remember it. It was crazy. I worked at a grocery store at the time and people were buying everything off the shelf. We made a lot of money from all the overtime. People were renting dozens of movies. Of course the next day people were trying to return all the extra food and water they bought. I remember more the best fireworks for New Years ever and partying and singing like it was 1999.

  • @e815usa
    @e815usa Месяц назад +2

    I remember at my prior company, a major financial company, we had to work around the clock on 12/31 and 1/1 at their corporate HQ. They actually catered it and treated it like a party! Luckily there were no issues, and we all had a great time!

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      And all they had to was update the motherboards which contained the problem to begin with. I call BS on your story.

  • @tubaterry
    @tubaterry Месяц назад +2

    Even on the modern cloud systems I work on, when you’re talking in the scale of millions of users, it can take a lot of maintenance work to keep up to date. With the combined salary of the team doing the work, it absolutely adds up quick. Wall Street would absolutely spend millions, without a second thought, on getting away from Y2K!
    (Plz slow down the release cycle Kubernetes people I’m so tired lol)

  • @mikenixon2401
    @mikenixon2401 Месяц назад +10

    Seems silly now. I knew people who had "end times" level food storage and defense arsenals. I took a wait and see approach. Sure glad I didn't panic.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      So did I and bet all those nutjobs a $1000 that nothing would happen. Not one of those know it all's have paid me yet. I want my $32000! yes, I had that many bets going at once!

  • @GraphicJ
    @GraphicJ Месяц назад +1

    I remember as a young kid going through that. It was a mini Covid event with people going semi crazy buying stuff at the Store. Toilet paper rampage.

  • @BradHouser
    @BradHouser Месяц назад

    I was site manager for the Y2K Factory Automation Systems at Intel's D2 fab in Santa Clara, CA. Despite extensive testing and code changes, Intel identified the first Y2K issue at the wafer fab in Israel. It didn't stop production, but it did cause an error in a report. A quick fix by the software vendor, and the rest of the factories were able to install the fix with zero impact. All the other systems either didn't need fixing, or the fixes were a non-event.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      Y2K was a hardware issue not a software issue. lol Why make this up?

  • @btetschner
    @btetschner Месяц назад +1

    6:54 One of my friends and apartmentmates had a computer exactly like that, we would share it to look up things on the computer (I did not have a computer at the time).

  • @sheilaschumacher3946
    @sheilaschumacher3946 Месяц назад +1

    I was online, on AOL dial-up. I thought if something happened I would know immediately.

  • @alankeith7866
    @alankeith7866 Месяц назад

    I remember being up in the hills at a friend's house. We all counted down, 3, 2, 1... We all looked up at the lights, and when they stayed on we wildly cheered!!! Good times!!

  • @cschmitz
    @cschmitz Месяц назад

    I love seeing a code example in a video that isn't HTML or CSS :P good job :)

  • @cb4n409
    @cb4n409 Месяц назад +1

    Uhh, as someone who lived through Y2K and remembers it well, I'm pretty sure the solution actually had something to do with Chris Jericho coming to the WWF to fight The Rock. If I remember right, it involved replacing the Y2K problem with the KY Jelly Plan. A rare miss for weird history.

  • @rickkaylor8554
    @rickkaylor8554 8 дней назад

    I managed the support department for a library software company at the time and a huge amount of concern and effort was put into fixing the Y2K issue before 2000. We were very afraid that when 2000 came we were going to have a major catastrophe. Fortunately all the concern and effort made to fix the software made the year change a non-event.

  • @btetschner
    @btetschner Месяц назад +1

    8:35 Medical Stockpiling, especially for pills, is a common phenomena experienced by nurses.

  • @karenh.
    @karenh. Месяц назад +1

    I was in my early forties when Y2K happened. Lots of people panicked but I just had a New Year's Eve party like usual. 😁

  • @brettgerber795
    @brettgerber795 Месяц назад +1

    I remember everyone in our area in the Midwest that everyone was going out buying generators.

  • @jjwallnutts4341
    @jjwallnutts4341 Месяц назад +1

    Bummed to see the mid-video ads now

  • @JustBrowsing830
    @JustBrowsing830 Месяц назад +1

    I remember the only thing that happened was my dome light came on all by itself in my car parked in my driveway. 🥴

  • @nicolettaseverene2460
    @nicolettaseverene2460 Месяц назад

    I was 21 and lived in Canada, both things seeming to insulate me from the worst of the panic. I had no money to lose or power to go off.

  • @xXxmajikmanxXx
    @xXxmajikmanxXx Месяц назад +1

    the only thing that i saw with y2k, was i had bought a cheap calling card, for long distance and pay phones when that was a thing, right before the new year and it would subtract minutes when using it until you ran out and had to buy another one, but when i used it after the new year, it started adding minutes instead of subtracting, so i was calling everyone i knew that was long distance and after a year or so they caught on and it got turned off

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      wow that was actually true? I heard about it but didn't believe it. thanks for clearing that up.

  • @ValenceFlux
    @ValenceFlux Месяц назад +1

    I remember being online on Quake 3 servers. Many of us thought it was the pinacle of internet gaming and y2k was going to reset all the progress that was made. The excitement over the internet still working was rediculous. We are still here! The process continues! We had fun with it but it was the next year with what happened in New York that would mess up the internet for some. I couldn't get a stable connection for months after that event. I just about gave up online gaming. Looks like esports will never take off I thought. Suppose I will just go get a second job and make more money. Maybe join another band to play guitar in.

  • @DJDoubleCee
    @DJDoubleCee Месяц назад +3

    I was 11 when the year 2000 rolled around. I remember thinking Y2K meant the end of the world. LOL

  • @geophizz
    @geophizz Месяц назад +1

    I worked on a team that spent 8 months completely rewriting an insurance cash reserve system that projected costs and reserves 18 months into the future. It was scheduled to fail in mid 1998 because the projection for that time were out to January 2000. Tests showed that mayhem would ensue for each day we were late. We made it with only a few hours to spare and mayhem was averted. We took the old system offline but kept it running, and spent the next few days watching it crash and burn just for fun.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      A single $99 motherboard would have fixed all that. Nice story though. It will fool those with no knowledge of pc's before 2000, but those of us who worked with pc's knew all it took was a new motherboard. Oh, wait that's not a 100 percent true. My bad. If your processor was a 486 or older built before 1995 it would be a problem but it you had a Pentium all it took was a new mother board. Average of $99(Australian) to fix. How come none of you IT experts know this? All of you lying?
      oops correction. I just found out that first Y2k compliant cpu's came out in 1994.

    • @geophizz
      @geophizz Месяц назад

      @@Me4-gc8qs No, a $99 motherboard wouldn't work on a 1968 IBM mainframe. We had to reverse engineer reams of COBOL source code so it would run on PC-based client-server architecture.

  • @llort42
    @llort42 Месяц назад

    The 9/9/99 anecdote hits home as I turned 19 that day and my great grandfather turned 99 on the same.

  • @Oddman1980
    @Oddman1980 Месяц назад

    Great. An event I lived through, and in a small part acted to prevent, is now being shown on a history-focused RUclips channel.

  • @btetschner
    @btetschner Месяц назад +1

    They should make a sequel to A Bug's Life about the Y2K Bug.

  • @Sk8Bettty
    @Sk8Bettty Месяц назад

    Glad you’re getting over that sinus infection, my man. You sounded terrible the other day. ❤

  • @vguy488
    @vguy488 Месяц назад

    I still remember the Y2K craze.
    All that happened in my town was that the lights flickered a little, then stabilized when the new year rolled around. Then, we danced the night away.

  • @mroggie8334
    @mroggie8334 Месяц назад +1

    I was a computer programmer and mainframe operator for the government of British Columbia in the 1990s and to make sure the money kept flowing (both in and out) we were prepared for the Y2K date issue years in advance - didn't want people to think they didn't have to pay their car insurance bill in January 2000 because of some computer bug :) :) :)

  • @btetschner
    @btetschner Месяц назад +1

    3:57 In reference to the Federal Aviation Adminstration...International Civil Aviation Day is on December 7th.

  • @lp-xl9ld
    @lp-xl9ld Месяц назад +1

    I figured that if anything would happen, it would be at 7 PM Eastern time, which is midnight GMT, and most systems were synched to that. I was in a movie theater watching GALAXY QUEST (great movie, BTW) and nothing happened. When I spoke to my father a couple days later, I said "But I don't know if the problem was there and was fixed or there never was a problem to begin with."

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      Depending on your motherboard or CPU no it wasn't a problem.

  • @12centcomicsandcards
    @12centcomicsandcards Месяц назад +2

    Best channel on RUclips

  • @SoundSpeeds
    @SoundSpeeds Месяц назад

    Crazy to think that all of that chaos started by people wanting to save two digits on a punchcard.

  • @leepfrog7405
    @leepfrog7405 Месяц назад

    Totally remember this. You can call the hyteria around this chaos.
    Now, everytime I see a zipper pull with Y2K on it , it brings back this memory 😝

  • @mikitz
    @mikitz Месяц назад +1

    If you can remember all of this, you just know you're getting old (me too).

  • @Wytchandwyvern
    @Wytchandwyvern Месяц назад +1

    We had a new years eve party at my uncle's house that year, and he was known for his pranks. At midnight he cut the power to the whole house.
    8 year old me thought it was hilarious, my computer engineer auntie did not.

  • @NorthWestPvPlolrektnoob
    @NorthWestPvPlolrektnoob Месяц назад

    I literally just watched wall street today and you put a still from the movie in this video lol

  • @gordonhaire9206
    @gordonhaire9206 Месяц назад +1

    I survived Y2K and the Killer Bee invasion (I was in south Texas; the epicenter of the feared Killer Bees invasion)

  • @NASCARFAN93100
    @NASCARFAN93100 Месяц назад +1

    Please do Timeline 2000s!

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      Why? Who wants to be reminded of that?

    • @NASCARFAN93100
      @NASCARFAN93100 Месяц назад

      @@Me4-gc8qs Why do you care?

  • @yuantheblue
    @yuantheblue Месяц назад

    I never quite understood the panic around this, so when I woke up the morning of the first day of the new year, it was business as usual. The worst that happened was that my parents updated their emergency food supply!

  • @klrl93
    @klrl93 Месяц назад

    I only remember Y2K in one sense. I was 6 years old, I didn’t know about anything happening in the world, so I was mostly unaware of the panic. What I do remember though was my mom and I filling up gallon jugs with water and storing them under our trailer. I asked why we were doing it, and my mom responded with, “Y2K is going to make computers not work so we won’t have water.”
    Anyway, as we all know, no big catastrophes happened, and those jugs of water lived under our trailer until we moved into a house. It’s possible they’re still there today, since someone bought our trailer from us and it hasn’t moved since it was put there in 1998.

  • @kja427
    @kja427 Месяц назад

    You should do a timeline video on the year 2000. That would really be helpful!

  • @ariesearthdragon
    @ariesearthdragon 29 дней назад

    At the time, I wasn't really thinking the Y2K issue was as bad as people were thinking it was (I also didn't realize how freaked out people were), but I was also only 11-years-old when the millennium changed. I didn't know, or even think about, how much stuff ties in with computer codes.
    It's interesting to learn this situation helped prevent other events from having worse/additional catastrophes.

  • @terriehumphries6028
    @terriehumphries6028 Месяц назад +1

    I was 30 and pregnant. My son was due in March of 2000, bit was born in January. He received some baby shoes from a shoe store. My husband paniced a bit and we had can corn and green beans for monts. 😂

  • @supergg07
    @supergg07 Месяц назад

    New Year’s Eve I got drunk. Lol.

  • @tomsenior7405
    @tomsenior7405 Месяц назад +1

    It still tickles me that the whole world celebrated the Millennium a year early. In recognition of this oversight, by Law everyone must now celebrate their 21st birthday when they turn 20.

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      Really? 2001 is not the start of the 2000's Moron!

  • @BradThePitts
    @BradThePitts Месяц назад

    In 1998 I had a credit card with expiry date of 02/00. One time it would not swipe, so the cashier manually put in the numbers... the register would not take the 00 date. Therefore, I was one of those people that thought that we were entirely doomed regarding Y2K.

  • @lucidmoses
    @lucidmoses Месяц назад +1

    Here we couldn't get any traction on fixing it. It Took a federal law making the CEOs of companies personally responsible for Y2K errors that affect customers. Then suddenly it was priority to fix it. So the public panic over this was very required.

  • @FXGreggan.
    @FXGreggan. Месяц назад +2

    Oh I remember the chaos at work ahead of Y2K, turned out the only computers affected was two windows 3.1 computers (out of a few hundred computers) so it was quite hyped :)

    • @Me4-gc8qs
      @Me4-gc8qs Месяц назад

      Windows had nothing to do with it. win 3.1 on a motherboard that was Y2K compliant worked just fine. It was a motherboard issue. You can tell all the people in these comments lie. Software was way ahead of hardware. Not software patch could fix the motherboard. Only a bios update could. If you know what that is. Yes, the motherboard patch came as a programme but nobody seems to realize that patch updated the bios on computers that could do it and not the software.

    • @FXGreggan.
      @FXGreggan. Месяц назад

      @@Me4-gc8qs Yes ofc it was the bios, had to set the calendar back a few decades till dates matched again (iirc that's what we did, computers themself ran fine.. what I meant was that out of hundreds of computers at that factory the only problem we had was with there two older windows 3.1's.... I was never worried the computers wouldn't work - I was more worried with some older manufacturing equipments where you couldn't just replace it but it was a non-issue all along.. and people were so afraid even clock radios, microwaves, and cars would stop working :)