LGR Tech Tales - Y2K: The Year 2000 Problem
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- Опубликовано: 16 янв 2020
- Was Y2K real? Was it a hoax? On January 1st, 2000, a computer glitch dubbed The Millennium Bug was supposed to occur at midnight on New Year's and affect our technology in a major way. 20 years later we know nothing much happened, but why? Join me and find out on LGR Tech Tales!
● LGR links:
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
● Voice credits in order of appearance:
Gaming Historian | / mcfrosticles
Pixelmusement | / pixelmusement
Retro Man Cave | / retromancave
The 8-Bit Guy | / adric22
PushingUpRoses | / pushinguproses
Brutalmoose | / brutalmoose
Modern Vintage Gamer | / jimako123
Nostalgia Nerd | / nostalgianerdvideos
● Jazzy background music courtesy of:
www.epidemicsound.com
● Information sources and credits:
www.newspapers.com/
americanradioworks.publicradio...
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5...
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_po...
news.mit.edu/2002/terror-1120
www.computersincrisis.com/
www.informationweek.com/deskto...
abcnews.go.com/Archives/video...
abcnews.go.com/Archives/video...
bmet.fandom.com/wiki/The_Mill...
books.google.com/books?id=_zs...
books.google.com/books?id=97W...
books.google.com/books?id=gNG...
books.google.com/books?id=h1I...
books.google.com/books?id=iXS...
books.google.com/books?id=wx0...
lowendmac.com/1999/112k-just-...
slate.com/technology/2009/11/...
timeline.com/lessons-y2k-pani...
www.911memorial.org/connect/b...
www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-...
www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-...
www.bbc.com/news/magazine-305...
www.cbsnews.com/news/flashbac...
www.chicagotribune.com/news/c...
www.c-span.org/video/?154289-...
www.c-span.org/video/?154408-...
www.deseret.com/1999/12/30/19...
www.hpcwire.com/1999/03/19/co...
www.irishtimes.com/business/y...
www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/op...
www.popularmechanics.com/tech...
www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articl...
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...
www.wired.com/2000/05/y2k-wor...
www.wsj.com/articles/SB946859...
• 2000 NYRE Ball Drop
• Video
• CNN: Millennium 2000
• Y2k Family Survival Gu...
• Y2K: The Movie (NBC TV...
• Video
• The Millennium Bug, BB...
• Y2K: Tensions in the L...
• The Computer Chronicle...
• USA: Y2K NUCLEAR WEAPO...
• Once Upon A Punch Card...
• Y2K: Bug or Bust? - Ja...
• IBM System 390 Compute...
products.kitsapsun.com/archiv...
products.kitsapsun.com/archiv...
www.zdnet.com/article/the-y2k...
bit.ly/38guCEX
bit.ly/2RiTxkg
bit.ly/3aiCmYO
bit.ly/2QZKnug
bit.ly/2Rvf8Gv
bit.ly/2RqKg9T
#LGR #TechTales #Y2K 
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Special thanks to my friends and colleagues who brought to life those 20-year-old Y2K comments! In order of appearance:
Gaming Historian | ruclips.net/user/mcfrosticles
Pixelmusement | ruclips.net/user/Pixelmusement
Retro Man Cave | ruclips.net/user/RetroManCave
The 8-Bit Guy | ruclips.net/user/adric22
PushingUpRoses | ruclips.net/user/pushinguproses
Brutalmoose | ruclips.net/user/brutalmoose
Modern Vintage Gamer | ruclips.net/user/jimako123
Nostalgia Nerd | ruclips.net/user/nostalgianerdvideos
The voiceovers really enhanced the experience, thanks!
This is the best RUclips crossover of all time.
I recognize those voices!
That's like a who's who of RUclips tech glitterati. Nice!
Excellent job Clint. I had the goofiest smile on my face when I saw the title of the video.
My favorite joke of 1999: "The Millennium Computer Bug is now abbreviated to Y2K. Isn't that the sort of thing that caused the problem in the first place?"
IKR?, LOL!
That's great! 😂
But Y2K saves a lot of bytes on the youtube servers.
bet it was a bunch of dorks at mit that came up with this then set it on the public
I used to have a Y2K bug calendar and the highpoint was one image where someone puts a frozen chicken in the microwave and when the door opens it's turned into a live chicken...
12 am that night the manager of my apartment complex turned off the power for 5 minutes as a practical joke.
lmao good one
@@ricklee2114 I thought so as well, the old people living there didn't even notice and he came clean about it the next day.
Hahaha! My dad did the same thing at our house, as a prank to us kids and my mom... Needless to say my heart dropped for a second, until I looked out the window and saw the neighbors' Christmas lights just a gleaming.
Gottem!
That sounds illegal. Some people depend on electricity for medical needs, such as oxygen compressors. While patients with these devices are advised to have backup tanks in the event of power loss, I think there is a very big difference between a loss of power for uncontrollable circumstances (such as inclement weather) and someone intentionally turning it off as a prank.
I was having explosive diarrhea the exact moment Y2K was supposed to happen. I remember thinking, even if the lights go out, I've got bigger problems to deal with right now.
Lol I'm sorry for your pain 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Imagine the toilet paper stopped working at Y2k
Missed opportunity. I’ve got more shit to worry about.
Starting the new millennium with a blast.
heh
I was a kid when the ball dropped on the year 2000.
Coincidentally our power went out a little bot later and my Grandfather lost his SHIT for like an hour until it came back on.
My dad horded a lot of food for the impending y2k disaster. We finished all of the rice in 2014.
14 years worth of rice, only that must have cost a fortune.
That's a lot of fiber tho 👌
To be fair, we didn't eat rice every day or use it every time we had rice. But I distinctly remember having dinner with the fam one day and my mum saying "And that's the last of dads Y2K rice!" Lol
That lasted longer than Windows XP
That's fantastic.
"If you can't get power, you can't get water!" That guy knows his SimCity lol.
At least the ROADS were safe
That just isn't true tho. Almost(not all but most) cities have gravity fed water systems that can supply normal water pressure for at least a couple days. That's what those giant water tanks on hills or on a tower are for.
@@Demonslayer20111 /------->WHOOOOSH
@@eddiehimself not even. I play city skylines. In real life though, that's just not how it works
@@Demonslayer20111 Not my city. We do have gravity-feed tanks buried in bunkers on hilltops (not in towers becasue the water needs to be insulated against the cold in winter) but they are only designed to act as a buffer. Their main usage scenario is in case a main water pressure pump should go offline; so that there will still be pressure in the lines while the reserve pump(s) switch over and get up to full capacity. While the switchover should only take a few seconds the buffers are there to ensure the transition is smooth and no drop in pressure in the main lines occurs. This is particularly important for the fire fighting service. Contrary to common belief, maintaining water utility capacity isn't as simple as just flipping a switch.
Ok, I think we're going to need an Oddware episode on the Y2K BIOS card.
First world problems
I still remember this and laugh.
I was already a computer tech, and I had a lot of people ask me if they should have a Y2K survival kit. And I always shocked them with a simple "Yes".
They would then of course ask if I thought there would be chaos, and I of coirse said no. But we lived in LA, and a Y2K kit was the same as an earthquake kit, and everybody should have one of those.
Yeah, people need to understand that having a Y2K stash isn’t bad, because you should always have a stash like that.
*course
Sound advice 👍🏼 Personally, I didn't pay any attention to the panic. I remember the entire neighborhood gathering at our house to ring in the year 2000. Built a huge bonfire. Was so much fun (back when neighbors actually looked at and talked to another). One of our neighbors pulled the main disconnect to the house right as the timer hit zero to try and scare us. Unfortunately he forgot there was a street lamp right by the house so his plan kinna back fired lol
I went through that nightmare as a defense contractor. I don’t know what was worse: the late nights hunting down and fixing the problems, or all the paperwork required to show we actually fixed it.
Ummm did you try just writing that you "Did a hacker man thing to reverse the techosphere?" I mean no one probably read those reports, right?
@Drakilicious Nothing Alex Jones has ever done has helped anyone, anywhere.
@Drakilicious Alex Jones was relevant back then? I thought his existence relies on unchecked social media
TPS reports?
I want LGR themed “Y2K Compliant” stickers to put on everything
Cory E. It would be better to start slapping Y2K38 stickers on stuff now (;
LGR Compliant?
Seconded.
My old coffee machine in the office still has that "Designed for Windows XP" sticker on it.
Put one on my gameboy! lol.. I just replaced some pokemon save batteries. :3
I remember when Y2K hysteria was gain traction my Dad (who had been working at HP since the 70s) said they (government /companies) are just creating panic to cover up procrastinating for 30 years and it's going to cost a lot more money to be done in time.
Which he was technically correct about, if you think about it.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 Nah, businesses and governments were pretty content with fixing it behind the scenes and away from the public eye.
As usual, the media and charlatans were the ones who spun it from an inconvenient issue into an existential crisis that would wipe every single human other than the tribals in New Guinea and the Amazon.
FINALLY.
I’ve seen so many youtube “history” channels stating, “lmao everyone freaked out about y2k but nothing happened” and it pisses me off. Y2K DIDN’T HAPPEN BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE MY DAD WORKED THEIR ASSES OFF FIXING IT BEFORE IT HAPPENED.
Shoggo
The flood didn’t reach the town at all, that levy was a waste of time!
That's like saying antivirus software is a waste of a download because your PC didn't have a virus in the first place.
@Shoggo, not every thing was affected by Y2K. Most things would just revert back to 1/1/70 without a big problem. I worked in IT during that time frame and people were freaking out about it, and I told most people that the worst that was likely to happen is your AV might expire because the date changed to some weird date, or something similar, but the world was NOT going to end.
Props to your dad!
“The vaccines are useless, because they were created as the diseases are on their way out”
Yeah, because there were vaccines you idiot.
"Y2K-Mart" is possibly the most dated name for a website I can think of that's not Geocities.
You haven't seen 21Store . com (yes, that site existed. it went down from the dot-com crash, though, so you can't access it now.)
Hey man easy on geocities
my high school used to have an email adress @libertysurf.com, I think that's pretty dated
1983s America Online, Symbolics.com, 1985. WorldWideWeb 1990. Then theres acme.com which predated geocities by almost a year in 1994. And a couple others ye can look up ^~^.
@@screwthenet most of these don't sound that dated
When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.
Monorail in Springfield comes to mind
@@oz_jones "but you didn't do anything!?"
"oh, didn't I?"
One of my favorite Futurama quotes
I remember my friends on Neopets saying we all had to turn our computers off at midnight, being kids- we thought it was literally a computer virus, we were arguing about wither just unplugging the internet would work.
I tried including the Y2K scare in a timeline of historical events that happened after I was born, as assigned by my U.S. History class, but my high school teacher wouldn't accept it by his account that "It was just a scare. Nothing actually happened!"
I worked on the Y2K project as a programmer for two different companies. It was nice being apart of something so important and global. I remember sleeping on the floor at my desk at work when my boss woke me up after midnight and said that everything worked and we could go home. They were very big projects with long hours and a great success. It was definitely a real problem, but the media did blow it out of proportion.
there was no problem you are just a sheep
It's funny how this is a case of it being a big problem, but so misunderstood it was seen as magnitudes worse, that the end successful result diminishes the original problem.
You're a victim of your success, or a minor hero if people like @superwinfieldgold hadn't so invested in your failure.
I was a contract programmer working on bank system updates for Y2K back in the late 90s. There were most definitely going to be big trouble if it were not for a small army of people worldwide tackling the issue. I got to meet a lot of the same people over and over while doing this work. I had learned several older languages very young, and it payed off. Word got out somewhat locally, then that expanded widely. I wound up working all over America meeting many people that were the original software writers. Sadly many of them have probably passed by now. I was still in my late teens and always felt a little out of place alongside of these older seasoned programmers. It's always nice to talk to someone that shared the experience even if I didn't personally ever meet them. Thanks so much to all who helped prevent any real problems.
I remember at work we had a bunch of little green stickers that said "Y2K Hardware (BIOS) Compliant" that we put on all the tech equipment after we verified they were good to go for Y2K. I ended up putting them on all sorts of things at home: dishwasher, fridge, micro, doorbell, paper shredder, the cat, etc.
You're the first person that I've ever seen use "micro" as a nickname for microwave. I really hope you stop doing it. Five seconds of my life was wasted figuring that out just now. Please spare everybody else the trouble.
@@djhenyo And how much of your life did you waste typing this response? In your honor, I shall now always refer to microwave ovens as micros. (Not really).
@@djhenyo how can you be sure it wasn't "microcomputer"; an archaic name for that lump of metal and glass sitting on your desk?
@@BrendonGreenNZL In a pre-smart home appliance world, none of the things mentioned had any necessary relationship to a desktop or mobile computing device. Would you like me to figure out anything else for you?
@@djhenyo Haha, good one. That is what makes it so juicily ironic. Perhaps he had a microfiche in his study? 🤔
"And while it's being fixed, we might even enjoy some family time."
Truer words were never spoken, but applied to 20 years later.
Family time? What the hell is that? Is that some kinda app I can download? Is it a new social network?
Yupp it's called looking up putting device down and moving the muscles in your mouth
@@fordshojoe8080 Stupid tech nerd, always don’t know the real life as a OS.
Lol imagine your game having 2020 in the title and it breaks when it's actually 2020.
Computer programmers in the 1960s - this won't be in use in 40 years don't worry about it.
Also computer programmer in the year 2000 - this won't be in use in the year 2020 don't worry about it.
And coming up next: The 2038 bug, when we reach the end of 32-bit binary dates.
@@haraberu The conclusion to the epic trilogy
@Johnny5clowna You're forgetting lots of embedded systems.
@Johnny5clowna 32-bit time, not 32- bit OSes.
Unix uses 32-bit time and hence where the issue comes from
@@haraberu I would hope everyone has 64 bit machines by now. I think 64 bit dates back 17 years and mainstream for 14. Then again..........sigh.....
Being a twelve year old kid at the time, and having been raised with computers, I remember deliberately changing the date to see what would happen. Nothing happened to Windows 98 and nothing happened to Mac OS 8.6. I was disappointed.
Did the same thing. And wondered why no one at these places did these tests on a small scale.
Same, I was 14 around Y2K. As a kid, I was wondering what the heck the acronym meant :D
10:45 I remember those stickers, too, in my country :) Oh, those were the days of innocence.
*disappointed*
"Aw man, I wanted dad's tax machine to stop working :("
Had a word processor which broke when we tried that the pc did fine though
likely because the relevant patches had been applied by the time you got around to testing it
I remember in Y2K my Windows 95 computer just reset its clock back to 1980.
"Electricity may be broken" god i love this line
Beware of self-aware electrons that will go insane due to a calendar change.
"And you what? Actually we can enjoy some family time"
@@analcommando1124 Hey, how do you think we got Dr. Proton, Mister Smartypants?
14:24 Hey! That's my dad! My family owned Super Video in NY which was one of the few businesses actually impacted by the Y2K bug. My dad had paid someone to proof the computer system but it still got hit and rang up those outrageous late fees. I don't remember the system or the make of the computers (I'm sure my dad would remember, I can ask) but I remember all the terminals had that green glowing text with the command line and everything. We've got a scrapbook of newspaper clippings from around the world and a bunch of VHS news recordings of all the coverage our store got. Weird times. Fun to see it here!
you should have given him a card for free movies. even better have expired date 12/31/2019 of the card.
That is awesome! Your family's video store became one of the famous and funniest anecdotes of the Y2K bug. I think I probably heard the story from about 8 different people. I think because it was the one story that most closely matched people's understanding of the issue and it was humorous of course.
I would have loved to see your dad's face when he pulled up the customers info and then sees the "$91,250" late fee 🤣😂
"Hi, I'm here to return this movie."
You're a century late, that'll be $91,250
Say hi to my pops while you’re at it!
I remember finding emergency y2k compliant water in discount bins in 2001.
I found a VHS tape about Y2K in a bargain bin in 2004!
Gotta stay hydrated
Wait... really? Lol..
*w a t e r*
@ShaunDoesMusic GMO is genuine issue though
I love the nod to the 2038 Unix time overflow problem at the end there!
I’ve been waiting ages for a new tech tales! This is such quality content!
I know right? Good thing that there is an extra zero...
Good thing people have this example to learn from. I feel great knowing that we'll never have a major issue ignored and underfunded by institutions for years, followed by the problem happening after all, followed by a cycle of media hysteria about the looming problem, followed by a large reactionary response by people and governments, followed by the response actually mitigating the problem, followed by people claiming that the whole problem was a hoax because we never went to doomsday.
You're kidding... right?
@@grimrot What do you think?
Yep, definitely never to be reapeated. Certainly never in the computer space specifically; we definitely don't have a problem with, say, time being stored as "seconds that have passed since X date" and that time being a 32-bit integer that will run out of space in, say, 2038.
We will repeat that in another 20 years with COVID-20 and SARS 3!
yeah
that will never happen again
Life goal: guest voice for LGR.
Me Too! Heard about 3 in there I knew!
Alternative life goal: Be centrally involved in a topic LGR talks about.
Maybe unless it's a cautionary tale I guess.
I like how some Tech Tales have this dark, gloomy, intro... but then when it's the world ending Y2K bug. It's just a jolly jazz filled romp. Ah, this one is actually a pretty nostalgic trip down memory lane. My parents didn't believe in Y2k, but we still spent New Year's Eve watching the ball drop from our basement and joking (maybe a bit nervously) about how it might end the world. Then when midnight came and went after the ball drop, we all went back up stairs and went to bed and slept peacefully, knowing the world didn't end. It really wasn't such a big deal after all.
Edit: Perhaps I should clarify that this was just my sense at the time, blissfully unaware that programmers had invested an enormous number of hours into fixing programs to prevent Y2K from coming to fruition.
Something I've noticed about the series in general is that it tends toward the "failure" end of the "...inspiration, failure and everything in between" tagline. I'm sure this is dictated by the material, since the history of technology is volatile and thus full of meteoric rises followed by catastrophic blunders or gradual fading from relevance. Viewed in this light, the usual gloomy mood of the intro seems all the more appropriate.
Still, I agree. It's nice to switch the mood up a bit, especially when juxtaposed against something widely billed as an impending disaster at the time.
It WAS a big deal. But the IT community knew what to do, got down to business and got it done in time. A problem averted is NOT a problem that never existed in the first place.
@@Squonk06 as he said it would been a disaster but we thought ahead for ones(albit we cut a bit close).
and made sure to deal whit the problem before and not after it happen.
its like changing the oil in the car before the car breaks down because oil is bad/gone.
sadly there was a lot that did there best to sort of hype it like nukes flying it would not. at worst the nuke would not fire even if they tried. or correction the Targeting Computer would map everything back 100 years meaning they might be off target by a bit (its nukes so even then its probably not a concern) at worse.
Sadly the Stockpiling just stopped when they found out nothing happend. we should had keep the stockpile prep trend going as it would help the country in other emergencies.
like Unexpected snowstorm looking people in there home for a extensive amount of time.... Hope you got food for a few days until the Firefighter digs you out.
that 32 bit -unsigned- signed unix time stamp foreshadowing is absolute gold.
To cause the "year 2038 problem" the timestamp must be treated as a 32 bit *signed* integer…
0x7FFFFFFF = Jan 19 2038 03:14:07
0x80000000 = Dec 13 1901 20:45:52
If it is treated as a 32 bit *unsigned* integer the overflow would occur in the year 2106…
0xFFFFFFFF = Feb 07 2106 06:28:15
0x00000000 = Jan 01 1970 00:00:00
you probably meant signed. but yes, gold
i was scoffing at tony parker, thinking what an idiot he was, at 15:58 before realizing that you had people voice these forum posts! just another example of when something is done right, its hard to its easy to overlook the work that went into it. great production haha
My dad and I were watching this over dinner, and he told me some stories about his time trying to prepare his computers at work for the Y2K bug. The thing is, he never got any recognition from it. The only people that got recognition from it were just people trying to scam you. So, my thanks goes out to everyone that actually worked on trying to prepare computers for the Y2K bug, and thank you dad. And thank you Clint for making this video, because my dad and I got to bond over something from his past and I got to here what it was like for him. :)
Adam Da Miner
From Futurama: ruclips.net/video/edCqF_NtpOQ/видео.html
Thats cool! As a guy who was on the scene back then as well, he's right. Only management and their hired consultants got pats on the back for 'saving the company from the Y2K bugs'.
There is a parallel in cyber-security consulting firms now days. Where only in the case of complete stupidity and negligence on the IT staff's part, can they provide any service to your company. But it still looks good on paper bringing them in and 'securing' the company's systems.
@@emprsnm9903 Wonderful how the system works isn't it? When something goes right the underlings are ignored and "management" gets the credit. When things go wrong the underlings get canned. When things REALLY go wrong, management MIGHT get canned but with a golden parachute.
Thats the case with every job. Nobody cares if you do something good and saving the company or more. But everyone will blame you on one mistake, even if it is very minor. lol
One of the earliest know Y2K related was in 1992 when the first Credit Card was issued with 01/00 as the expiry date. They were being rejected by the electronic approval devices at of the time. They had to be manually for almost a year.
I worked for an Application as Service Provider at the time and because I was 3rd level tech support I had to work on New Years Eve 12/31/1999 just in case even though we tested and rested several times. The first time we tested in 1996 we had 495 of 500 servers crash. By the time 1990 rolled around we tested and had only one server that showed any sign of the issue which was an IBM OS2 server. The issue wasn't going away because IBM did not issue an Y2K update for OS/2 so the BIOS recognized the year 2000 the OS didn't. We couldn't test our fixes so it did fail originally however nothing really happened. Since the OS/2 program and source code was licensed to us we were able to put a fix into the code a later. The OS showed the incorrect date however the fix made the program see the right date.
The funnest Y2K story was in my favorite restaurant. Their cash registers for the year 2000 displayed 19000 as the first 2 digits of the date was hard-coded as 19. They kept the registers for 4 years after Y2K. So when the year was 2000 the registers printed 19000 on the receipt. When the year was 2001 the date that was printed 20001. If the register was still in today, the year would be 19020.
Rev George
Reminds me of that one shovelware game Gemini of Pixelmusement covered that showed the date as '19119' in the high score table, lolz
@jshowa o thank you. It sometimes makes me feel angry even 20 years after the fact that a lot of people thinks that the Y2K Bug was hoax when there were 1000s of IT professionals that put in lots of hours debugging code to prevent it from happening. I blame the media for ths.
Rev George
Thanks for sharing!
I never thought that the bug was already a problem in 1992. I was just a kid and it went completely unnoticed by me. Thanks for sharing this information.
@@georgeworley6927 I think the 'hoax' mindset comes from the media's fear mongering as well. Lots of people collectively pooled uncountable hours into adjusting the code over the years prior to Y2K. But then, all of a sudden, it was almost armageddon.
Bah, due diligence was done before the media even considered it a story. It was a thing, it had to be dealt with, and it was. Yet the media had people in a panic, unfoundedly. And hucksters were cashing in on it big time. In the end alot of people were embarrassed, some were rich, and the ones who did the hard work only made salary, in addition to maybe having received a pep talk from their managers once or twice.
I remember seeing a big bin of Y2K books in my local book store at the start of 2000. Not many takers.
I think at the local library I remember seeing some books on HOw to prepare for Y2K. They might want to consider just throwing those away.
I worked in a semiconductor manufacturing plant, where in 1998 we scrapped our PDP/11 which was acting as a kind of server for old semiconductor testers. The (unsupported) software was not Y2K compliant. It's not like we didn't know if it was compliant, or that it might have all be OK on the day, or a reboot after 2000 would probably fix it. No, it was just plain not going to work. So it was that many of the problems were resolved in advance, by buying new equipment. You'll be glad to know that I carefully dismantled the PDP/11 and had it sent to a collector, I hope it's still running now.
I need a Y2K gun, that sounds like a Dreamcast peripheral
In the late 90s my then-girlfriend's father was one of the Cobol programmers brought out of retirement for Y2K. He had to fix a bank computer system he'd worked on in the 60s.
My parents worked on Cobol too and were hard at work fixing things, but the details are fuzzy because I was 11
Man, this was a fun time to be alive.
Yeah, I was in high school back in the end of the 90's, and I remember we were having this discussion in the IT class labs. We were using PC's with Windows 95 & 98 back then!
P.S.: They say that the next problem will be on year 2038, because 32bit systems will run out of... memory bits, while counting the seconds...
Y2K stories always remind me that the localtime() function in Perl was updated to return the number of years since 1900 rather than a 2-digit year. The year value was often appended to "19" rather than added to 1900, so the Yahoo! homepage (which used Perl) briefly showed the date January 1, 19100.
Gotta love Perl.
In the grim, dark future of the 20th millennium, there is only Perl
Nerd that I am, I was watching the U.S. Naval Observatory master time clock webpage on that new year and upon refreshing the page at midnight was surprised to see exactly what you describe. Not sure how long before it was fixed but I have to laugh after viewing this vid seeing how much the gov spent and on top of that of all places for it to happen - the "master clock" . Wonder if any other "time keeping" facilities had the same issue.
I remember quite a few things that showed the year as 19100, and even using some programs that did until 19101
I remember back in the day that the original version of Windows 3.1 File Manager would show the year 2000 as “19:0”, which is technically a variation of this type of bug (trying to display the number 100 in two digits, with the tens digit of the year overflowing from “9” to the ASCII character that happened to be one higher, “:”). Around that time, Microsoft had an update to File Manager available on its site to correct the problem and display years above 1999 correctly.
I think this bug was important to inform the public how much they actually depended on computers.
Now with IoT and other stuff, where EVERYTHING is just interconnected, it has become so relevant. Now it is an nonissue. Most coding langs encountered no longer store years as YY, but as YYYY.
Thank you for the video LGR!! Ah, memories. I remember my uncle being really worried about it. So much so that he bought Y2K ISA cards for his computers (despite my insistence they weren't necessary). My uncle's fear wasn't unwarranted as he came from the world of 2-digit year mainframes and punch-cards and didn't see an easy way for those systems to be upgraded. I was working as an independent IT contractor in '99 and everyone I knew kept asking me if there would be issues. I told everyone there was 0% chance of catastrophic failure, but there might be some minor issues (like CC transactions, the video rental fee issue you mentioned in the video) and other oddities related. In my mind I knew this, but there was still a small lingering doubt. Thankfully, it all worked out.
I vividly remember Y2K. I was playing Age of Empires 2 all night and I missed the new year countdown.
for whatever stupid reason I watched the local news for the countdown that year instead of the usual new york delayed feed, I'm in ca... I watched two old fogies blow those party whistle things instead of the big ny event that I watched every year after and before... smh... anyway, nowadays I don't watch any of that crap, I go out of my way to avoid it, I pride myself on going to bed early those nights and sleeping through the new year 😏
for whatever stupid reason I watched the local news for the countdown that year instead of the usual new york delayed feed, I'm in ca... I watched two old fogies blow those party whistle things instead of the big ny event that I watched every year after and before... smh... anyway, nowadays I don't watch any of that crap, I go out of my way to avoid it, I pride myself on going to bed early those nights and sleeping through the new year 😏
Man, I remember Y2K. The local hardware store was selling Y2K-compliant flashlights, for 3x the price of course. And they were selling like hotcakes. No joke. Goes to show how the public can get whipped into a frenzy about things, and how the unscrupulous are always there to take advantage of it.
@Rocket League Excellent comparison. I will have to use that one in the future!
@Rocket League Tell that to Australia. The whole country is literally hell on earth.
@@blacbraun What a way to start the decade, huh!?
Also, I don't think flash-lights ever had micro-processors; What sense do Y2K-compliant ones make?
Religion is kinda the only proof you need to see how easily people are swayed to believe something completely false.
Also why people think cancer isn't curable.
I just wonder if when we're able to start a new civilization on another planet people will still be braindead sheep or we'll finally ascend to using the other half of our brains.
Life would be easier if we were all a hivemind!
I was 14 when Y2K happened and I remember the insanity, people losing their damn minds. My parents did buy a generator, and we stocked up a bit of canned food and water just in case. I distinctly remember thinking "Oh, I guess it wasn't a problem afterall" when nothing happened. I think it's criminal that the media didn't turn around and applaud the programmers that fixed everything as heroes, instead of pretending it was all a big sham. I didn't even know it had actually been a problem and there were tons of people working furiously on it until I saw a comment from one of the programmers on a forum last year. Honestly the media is such a trainwreck most of the time, it's ridiculous.
Thanks for this video!! It was very interesting! :)
Being negative always seems to get better views than being positive. If they can spin a story either way, they'll choose negativity every time. Really wish it weren't so.
@@ParappatheRapper People like getting mad, or rather, people like feeling that they're admonishing the wicked. The media loves to play into that.
I particularly liked (read as disliked) how the media also turned around the next day and said, "Well, nothing went wrong today, but the ACTUAL threat is going to occur over the next 2 weeks as computers previously shutdown are turned back on. We are not out of danger yet." I can remember rolling my eyes and turning off the TV.
Journalists are, in general, dishonest parasites with no integrity. The world will be better off when public trust on the press drops closer to 0%.
I was the same age in 1999, too. I always figured it was a non-issue and there was either no problem to begin with, or the problem was blown out of proportion. It wasn't until some time between 2010 and 2015 that I learned of the countless people who worked their asses off around the clock to make sure nothing happened. Truly unsung heroes.
"Never underestimate the power of public panic", hearing that during the coronavirus situation hits extra hard
Good point
John Titor fixed everything when he came back for the IBM 5100 and talked with his Grandpa..... heh
El Psy Kongroo.
I haven’t heard that name in a while
Man that takes me back.
EL PSY KONGROO
I just watched Justin Whang's video on that. Wow
I still have my Y2K cyber pal. It’s a plushy and his name is crash. He came with a little blurb that said. If this Y2K Snaafoo has got you in a bugaboo, you can drop me on my bottom just for laughs. He makes a crash sound.
Cody Plant That’s probably worth something.
Oh yes, those silly little noise stuffies are quite fun, lolz (and sooo 90's)
I had one too!! I think he got lost over the years but I distinctly remember the crashing noise it made!
There's probably someone out there still in a Y2K shelter to this day.
Their 20 year stash of food as about to run out. They'll emerge from their 20 year prison and realize that the world didn't actually end. What a horrible day for them. 🤣
this is funny to think about 😂
Wasn't there a movie like this? It may have been about the cold war though.
A couple went into their bunker and the wife went into labor as soon as the hatch closed. On his 20th birthday he gets to be the first one on the surface only to find nothing happened.
@@CompComp "Blast from the Past" is the title of the movie
@@CompComp Sounds like you're thinking of the movie 'Blast From the Past' with Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, and Christopher Walken.
I was rather young when Y2K happened, with a computer that I had since the mid-90s. I recall my friends telling me about how it wasn't going to work anymore, and that I needed a special chip to keep it working.
Fantastic use of voice talent, I recognized most of them.
I worked through Y2k in IT working in Hong Kong for a bank. It was ridiculous but there were other things at play. It led directly to a huge depression in tech stocks and tech business in the years following.
Aha! So _that's_ where the conspiracy really was!
the first one was norman, the gaming historian, who's not british at all
Being one of those worker that worked on fixing COBOL systems for y2k, I appreciate the light you are shining on this
I'm too young to remember Y2K but a couple years ago I got a neat Y2K snowglobe depicting a 90s PC exploding and featuring 1s and 0s as the snow. It now sits on my retro PC game shelf next to my retro PC setup.
That is so awesome. It was even better than I envisioned when I searched for an image. Thank you for sharing buranflakes!
Oh man. I wish I had one of those.
The black and white one or the coloured one?
It was pretty uneventful, though I only started caring about noon on Jan. 1/00, as 21 year old me was quite hung over from the previous night's partying... In any event, I searched for that snow globe, and now I'm jealous 😆
@@darknesskingsized8996 It has a beige PC with a rainbow screen showing the date on it
In my small Canadian home town there was a harmless but drawn out tremor/earthquake right at midnight, everyone thought the world was basically ending. My mother literally got up in a panic to get my siblings and I and began to pray, it was wild! It is one thing to be scared but when your parents are basically panicking it is a whole new level lol
Me 20 years ago: "The Y2k bug is probably fake"
My iMac G3: "You mean the Y1.9k bug, right?"
No, they Y19.1K bug.
Y2020k
@@mr.bottle4079 Year 2020000?
@@wta1518 year 2020
@@mr.bottle4079 So Y2020. K means 1000
I was employed as a enterprise software programmer at the time and we spend months updating client’s databases and software to fix this, including stuff like billing systems of large utility companies.
The bug was very real but most software was fixed in time.
whoever decided to store dates in an abbreviated format in their DB should have a stern talking to
@@ruhtraeel that would be very very typical prior to the early 90s. Memory was not infinite and if you could save a few bytes on a date field, you absolutely would do so.
@@ruhtraeel Your really gonna love this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
@@lmaoroflcopter You're over-exaggerating it. According to this link, the average hard drive of a computer in 1995 is 1GB: www.relativelyinteresting.com/comparing-todays-computers-to-1995s/
A "Datetime" field in Oracle SQL is 7 bytes (it even includes seconds). You could store 142 million dates in a single hard drive. A mainframe server probably has thousands of these hard drives.
So there would be little to no benefit in abbreviating it on the DB level.
If you were loading it into memory as part of your backend business logic (which according to that link, had an average CONSUMER PC having 8 megabytes of RAM), you could load over 1 million dates into memory (but you would NEVER need to load so many dates into memory; you would page it like a logical person)
So unless you're constrained by using possibly pre-1950s hardware, a software company in the 1990s shouldn't have any excuse in abbreviating dates outside of their frontend.
@@darkstar949 I'm not sure what "you still had to read the files that were written by the older software" means. If you're reading files as inputs into your backend business logic, that's no longer using a database (in which case, OP's comment would be inaccurate when he says "updating clients' databases"). Basically, if they were using a database at all, it was most likely using one of these standards SQL-86, SQL-89, SQL-92, SQL:1999, etc.
So I work for a financial software company, and the stuff you see in Office Space actually happened. Anyone with a hint of technical knowledge spent a good portion of the 18 months before the crash going through code print outs line by line searching for any dates, then going into the code and fixing it. Everything line of code had to be reviewed twice, and even the fixes (which were still on terminals) had to be approved before they were submitted.
And honestly, it's not too surprising that the code lasted that long. You'd be amazed at how much of the world is still coded in COBOL or a close descendant. Security and information transfer protocols have developed quite a bit (obviously), but a lot of the raw information is in a reliable old COBOL format.
Just remember not having to just fix the code, but also having to write data file conversion routines to accommodate the extra 2 bytes
Sounds like the panic over COPPA: "It's the END OF RUclips!"
Its still kind of a pain but its so far only affected clips of shows(which is fine youtube could never get that kind of shit right since viacom incident and maybe a couple small channels
Basically: "It's not our problem, let the future idiots deal with the problem we are ignoring"
Humanity's motto may as well be: "We'll deal with it until it bite us in the ass"
Sounds about right.
You didn't even watch the video did you son?
"Nothing is bad until it hurts me" is humanity's motto.
Sounds like our politicians when people sounded warnings about a pandemic coming in the future. They did nothing to come up with a plain and it bit us in the butt. So here are some other things our politicians have been warned about... New madrid fault having a earthquake in the future. All midwestern states along the mississippi have been warned about this, have been told by geologist that buildings need to be remodeled to withstand earthquakes. Another one was texas getting nailed by a winter storm and was warned to get their power grid ready for it... Yeah bit the texans in the ass didn't it.
Sounds like the US and their pension crisis
10:28 Love how that MS year 2000 resource cd has "April 1st" printed in bold black print on the bottom! I can't help but think that they did that on purpose!
HMM.
You gave Ian the perfect comment for him: A man who ate his entire food reserves before Zero Hour
Tech Tales is an absolutely fantastic series that I so bad want more of. I often rewatch old episodes to enjoy them again.
"It's HIS fault: One person 'invented' Y2K, and he's David Eddy"
Damn, that's brutal. Printed in The Boston Globe for everyone to see
How dare he!
Heah, the media is literally comprised of wolves and barbarians. They don't give a crap who they hurt in the process, as long their story gets publicity. They're like the troubled kid in class; even bad attention is attention they didn't initially have.
It sounds more like the boston globe's fault, ironically. The writer's just creating a scapegoat.
Isn't that defamation? I mean, I'm prettu sure that a newspaper cannot just say this kind of things and wash their hands
I was working for a large insurance company back then and we put in a lot of hours testing and patching systems in late 1999, so it's nice that this video will help rid the notion that it was a hoax. Thank you.
I vividly remember the Y2K panic. I was eight years old and we still had our first family PC with Windows 3.11 on it. I was a nervous child and widespread panics always freaked me out...except Y2K. I thought everyone was stupid, and my parents sided with me since I was the only one in the house that could computer.
I remember when 9/9/99 was called the mini Y2K
My father worked on y2k mitigation for ems systems in the late 90s for the Southeastern US, and the threat of things going bad was indeed a threat. But was fixed before it got too bad
Whilst I earned a nice stash as contractor leading up to Y2K, 99% of the work I did was completely necessary to avert massive systems failures in some fairly critical IT systems.
Thanks. You did good.
I appreciate the amount of work that has to go into one of these Tech Tales episodes. They are my favorite thing on this channel.
I have to compliment and thank you for how you speak in this video. I had to turn another one off because the speaker was so obnoxiously trying to stretch out his runtime with awkward, stilted, repetitive narration. Your narration on the other hand was smoth and easy on the ears, as well as entertaining. No saliva sloshing around on the microphone either, which means a lot to those of us with sensory issues.
Nicely done. You present various sides of the y2k issue. As an Xer, I was an IT director during that time and somewhere is a document with my signature in the bowels of state bureaucracy on it certifying that our systems were y2k-compliant. We tested various systems with a gamut of results. Some systems were fine, some had minor glitches, and others failed completely. Had we not done the work, mission critical systems would have failed, because before the fixes, they did fail. There was definitely a lot of fear and intimidation being thrown around for sure, though.
I was living in San Diego when I first heard about this, and I remember reading a Computer Resource magazine that was like 'consider this- the world doesn't end but data will be shifted just slightly and we'll wind up with tiny errors that compound over decades- in the far off year of 2020, this fictional company will realize the entire market is bankrupt and has been for years.
That was such a fun time, just thinking about stuff like that even if I never bought into it, it was a fun (and mildly unsettling) concept.
I remember all the work I had to do to fix that issue at work. Tons of programs either patched or rewritten, computer upgrades, test after test. It was a nightmare that luckily was avoided. Yeah, I had to be on call New Years Eve just in case. I know people that stocked up on everything expecting a collapse, it didn't help that we had a bad winter storm hit locally at the same time and temporarily knockout power.
I stocked up on water, snacks, beer, and canned soup and partied after the brief power outage.
Love TechTales and have always wanted one on Y2K! My new second favorite right behind America Online
I was playing NFL Blitz on the N64 with a few of my friends when the clock struck midnight and the year 2000 rolled in. We looked at each other and said "welp nothing blew up, nice" then went back to playing. The next day we went to the movies and saw Toy Story 2
Ugh, this channel never fails to remind me how old I am. I remember being a preteen and getting preached about Y2K by my cousin. He used my grandfather’s Windows 3.1x to demonstrate.
And those windows 3.x machines seem to be clicking along just fine
you think this makes you feel old, i was a COBOL programmer working on Y2K issues for BUPA and Norwich Union
@@jamescrow4915 I remember installing the patch in 1992
@@idova dont worry plenty of COBOL programmers were mutually shitting bricks while racing time and wondering what new programming language to learn from here after the fixes were in place
@@TedSeeber naturally after all the 3.x series was supported and even distributed thru till 2001 they had to find a fix
Thank you so much for releasing this video. I’m working on a “project” based on Y2K, and this is gonna help SO much.
Appreciate the captions for the Deaf that are actual captions, not automatic with errors. Found your channel via comment on David's channel The 8 bit guy
That 'clock error' thing happens all the time every 10 years. At the start of this year, I went to a bar to celebrate with the drunks,, and the 'I.D.' clock said you had to be born before 1918 to drink.
Um AFTER?!?!?!
@@wta1518 Yes and while that can potentially be any year, when those types of clocks show up it specifies the exact date that someone would be 21.
Well, I mean, it's *technically* true.
TheHylianJuggalo no, of you were born AFTER a 1999 (if it was 2020) you would be UNDER 21.
@@wta1518 Yes and my point was that it was it read 1918, not 1998
The problem really started when you got people completely outside the tech industry getting involved in this whole thing and making wild claims.
Phenomenal video! Loved all of the guest speakers reading blurbs. All my favorite RUclips channels referenced in a single video about a silly era I lived through. Wonderful :)
I miss these Tech Tales brah bring em baaaack
I remember my friend and I on New Years eve 1999. We went to the basement and waited for the countdown and then I hit the main breaker for the house. The screaming and panic that went on was great!!
Then someone looked outside and seen the street lights on LOL Good times :D
Damn that sounded like fun...
The message from Modern Vintage Gamer should have been: "Mistakes were made: how two digit year numbers affected computer systems" :P
"Also, try out my new favorite mobile game Raid: Shadow Legends."
@@mayshack Yep.
glad to see another tech tales! these are my favorite thing you do!
Love LGR Tech Tales, and especially the awesome group of voiceover compatriots. Keep up the good work!
15:58 I'd recognize 8 Bit Guy's voice anywhere.
I noticed. I was waiting for techmoan
Same here!
I was seven years old and Y2K freaked me, now its one of many "apocalypses" I've now lived through. I built a shelter in the woods behind my house and I still walk down there when a supposed apocalypse is due to reminded me the world keeps turning.
Love these segments you do (Love all your content). Thorough , complete information delivered in a way that feels like its from a education channel.
Wonderful video as always, LGR. Tech Tales is my favourite series of yours.
The weirdest comment going to BrutalMoose was perfect.
He has the sort of delivery where it seems plausible.
I took a COBOL class as "insurance" at college, and wound up getting hired as a student programmer and patching thousands of programs.
I've heard it's a great investment as someone will need to replace the programmers that retire, and changing banking systems is still a huge hassle. I had COBOL in my programming course but my object-oriented brain didn't enjoy it.
@@carlab994 you just need object oriented COBOL. It's called "add 1 to COBOL giving COBOL".
Explanation for those who are fortunate enough to not know or have forgotten COBOL: that's valid syntax for incrementing a variable named COBOL, like incrementing C via C++.
@@carlab994 it was a handy investment for me. I dropped out of grad school, and immediately had a job, while I figured out what I wanted to do. Only did it for a year, before getting a "real" job as a software engineer, but having reasonable pay/benefits during that year was wonderful.
@@JamesPotts The best jokes are the ones you have to explain!
@@JamesPotts I've heard COBOL was self explanatory to some degree (that might not be the exact programming term).
But I used to work at a place that had an inventory database program written in COBOL.
One of the janky "features" it had were data tables containing two or more different types of data. The COBOL system filtered the records automatically, but the Pervasive SQL bridge (for exporting and interfacing with modern accounting/office programs) did not.
I recall having to read those tables into an Access database, and knock off weird characters or leading spaces, because those extra characters meant a record was for tracking a different piece of data. That was not fun. I asked the IT repair guy about that, and he just said "yeah, it's just something you see in COBOL data tables."
Thank you for this! I was far too young to remember the ordeal when it was in full swing and only heard about it in the context of a hoax or overreaction... Even when someone suggested it was serious I didn't understand the problem, so having someone tell it like this was quite enlightening. Your videos are so well researched and explained, as well as funny. Thanks for making content, LGR! I really appreciate all the work you do.
Great video being IT professional who started his career fixing the Y2K bug, its nice to see someone admit it was real issue, but we must remember this example humans proving they can fix things and make world better when working together
A similar, but much smaller, media bubble had also happened in the lead up to 1992 due to the Michelangelo boot sector virus becoming well-known in 1991, meaning its payload would next trigger the next time that the birthday of the Renaissance painter would roll around in 1992. Because the date of the payload triggering was made so public and measures were taken to mitigate the potential damage (mostly by either removing the virus or ensuring that machines suspected to be affected would not be powered on during that date), almost nothing came of it, which dented the public image of one of the loudest voices warning about the problem, John McAfee.
He’s done a lot worse to dent his public image!
I remember that, people ended up changing the date to the day after...lol
"Don't laugh about the Y2K. It could still happen."
Oscar Leroy (2004)
The Year 2038 problem actually scares me.
@@bb010g I'm quite curious if that too will have as much public fear mongering though. The 1999→1900 rollover probably is easier for people to imagine and understand than 2038→1901. The start of a new millennium (even though one can argue the new millennium really didn't start till 2001) also likely added to the scare.
Making older systems y2k38-compliant will probably be trickier than y2k-compliancy, and I fear windowing or the use unsigned rather than signed integers will be used as a quick-fix far too often.
@@FiXato Programmers know about it and tbh they are the only ones who really do need to know...
Jackass
Yeah, the 2038 problem is much scarier, given that the majority of those old military systems will run some ancient flavour of UNIX, will run databases and software inspired by the UNIX gettime() function, or both.
Man i miss Tech Tales so much
Fantastic video Clint! This really brought back memories.