Y2K is one of those stories we look back on and think what a silly old load of nonsense. Truth is, if it wasn’t for the countless hours of overtime people put in to making those outdated systems support the date change, it really would have been utter carnage. You saw how crazy things got when we started to run low on toilet paper for a few weeks.
My dad was one of those working overtime, I remember he was so tired that Christmas.
Annoys me nowadays when I see people say stuff like… All that panic and no problems at all!
There were no problems because people worked really hard for no problems, Kevin!
Its the same issue with efficient epidemic policies; they might be restrictive at times, but when they succeed, then there are always some people who say all was overblown and needlesly restrictive and so on.
“If you’re doing it right, people won’t be sure if you did anything at all”
At a SQL conference, I met a bunch of engineers who were part of the Y2K fix for their companies. They spent 1998 hustling for equipment and setting it up in 1999. Almost all of them were “optimistic” that they’d be fine by September.
But during the rollover, they all said they all did pray to the computer gods.
Yup, covid taught us one thing, when stocking up, prioritize toilet paper first. ;)
And that’s how shortages happen
And all the unsung heroes who fixed it on Linux, but without the media coverage
Did any of the developers that fixed it anywhere get any media coverage?
I was doing tech work back then (still do, but I used to, too!)
It was a lot of low scale doomsday prepping. Making sure you had enough canned goods and water and stuff.
Majority of folks had no clue and did no prep at all. Tiny minority went end times level.
I made sure that I had 6 gallons of water in the fridge and groceries.
My favorite Mitch Hedburg joke. I use it all the time.
Low to mid-grade prepping got me through COVID without having to buy Lysol and TP at outrageous prices for like 8 months. :)
My parents loaded up on water and toilet paper.
We lived like fucking kings.
Mostly we partied like it was 1999.
Yup. I was at a concert in the final minutes of the century. A fuse blew just after midnight so all the lights went out which was a tense moment but life went on.
I knew a family that bought a farm, bought a few years worth of food to start their stockpile, and buried thousands of gallons of fresh water to prepare for Y2K. No one else I knew took Y2K seriously. Look who’s laughing now!
I wish I could just up and buy a farm, that sounds like the life to me.
Considering property prices I’d say they’re laughing. Real estate purchase in 1999. Damn, makes me jealous.
I worked as a cto in a publicly traded bank in the USA. In the USA, the regulation was that all banks had to have 10% of all deposits in cash. For example, If you were a billion dollar bank, you had to have 100 million in cash available at all times.
Because of Y2K, there were deep concerns they’re be a bank run, so all banks had to have 20% of deposits as cash. Enormous sums of cash.
On New Year’s Eve 1999, my wife and I were taken by federal authorities to a safe house, where we were heavily guarded. We knew in advance they were taking us, but we didn’t know where and when it happened our cell phones were taken from us. Around 4 am they said everything was ok, my wife and I opened some champagne and they drove us home.Wtf. Even the govt didn’t know what would happen!
People did most of the damage to their own systems with stupid (overdoing) testing in advance of Y2K.
Many regular/timed jobs in the system.
Set the clock forward by a few years.
Jobs running fine.
Set the clock back.
Jobs sitting in boredom, because all is done for the next few years… TADAA! :-)
Not far off from what I remember. Definitely knew people that went as far as buying land out in the mountains and stockpiled food and water there in a cabin.
So weird everyone on Lemmy has a story about someone who went a little extra and people answering on Reddit say it was just another day.
I would blame that on the age gap; where reddit users are probably on the younger side compared to lemmy users. Just a guess though.
I feel personally attacked, but only because you’re right…
My dad worked at a bank at the time. I don’t know much about his job, it’s over my head, something about daily transfers and loans of large amounts of money between banks, dealing with the federal reserve, and making sure bank reserves are stable and where they need to be (he’s the person I call whenever I hear of a coming recession or a bank collapse that hits the news, because he gives me the no bullshit or hysteria facts of whether or not I should be concerned and start buckling down or not). I was just a kid for Y2K, but I do remember it’s the only time in my life my dad ever worked overtime, he went from being an off work at 5 on the dot to not getting home until after our bedtime every day for months before New Years. I honestly have no idea what he was doing, but he was busy making sure something was good to go.
I grew up in Florida and anytime there was a hurricane coming people would flock to the stores and buy all the generators and bottled water.
It was kind of like that, but in December.
Most people I knew personally legit just ignored it. It was just another doomsday hoax like the Mayan calender scare of 2012. Everybody was talking about it, but nobody actually thought it would be an issue.
It’s not that it wasn’t an issue, the problem was it was a big problem for certain industries, and executives in those industries (most executives really) are almost completely helpless, and the only thing they understand is money. So there’s a problem that an executive can’t see. So how do you get Mr. CEO to spend a bunch of money on something he can’t see or understand?
You have to scare the hell out of him. Explain that he will lose ALL the money if he doesn’t spend this comparatively small amount.
And as a result, many people were able to come together and install updates to systems to keep them from failing. My brother was even one of them, 15 years old and was told to hit “enter” when a given prompt came up. Because of efforts from people like my father, and thousands of others, we get internet posts 23 years later saying it was no big deal.
I knew a guy who maxed out all his credit cards and said he was heading to the hills. He didn’t say much for the week he stayed at the job after the new year last.
My boss demanded that the whole IT team was at work watching and waiting. I think he bought us a dozen doughnuts.
Of course, nothing critical happened at all. Some websites showed a date of January 1, 19100. That was all.
Nothing happened because a lot of effort was put into changing vulnerable systems.
I am old enough to remember Y2K. The media definitely stirred some people up about it, in my experience most people seemed to not be too worried about it.
But we shouldn’t dismiss the hard work that a lot of people did to upgrade or redesign systems that Y2K could have affected.
As a aside, I remember that when the clock struck midnight at the NYE party I was at someone flipped the circuit breaker for the house as a joke, turning out all the lights. I remember a few people gasping and wondering what the hell was going on for a few moments until the lights came back on and the prankster revealed himself. Was pretty funny at the time 🤣
After a couple years of late nights and weekends, I took my bonus money and celebrated New Years in style on Pleasure Island, watching three headliner bands in different stages.
Yes, there was a lot of effort that turned it into a non-event
Some companies made money from some clueless managers and CEOs.
I worked at a big power and light company, some big boss at the headquarters hired a company to certify our pcs where y2k compliant (we already knew they were ok!).
A guy around 50 with suit and two younger technicians, around their twentys. I was behind them when when they sat down at every pc in our office, inserted a floppy disk, and ran a freeware software! A freeware that anyone could download from internet.
Of course the software printed on the screen that those pc where y2k compliant.
That company charged a fee for every certified pc, and we had lots of pcs.
Only certain people had the knowledge to download and install freeware to a floppy disk. Most people in 1999 had no clue about freeware or even how to find stuff like that. Even today, most people who could know just don’t care enough to do it.
I was on a school trip for New Year’s Eve that year. There had been some parents who didn’t think their kids should go because we might not be able to get back if all the airplanes fall out of the sky at midnight.
Obviously, nothing happened. I understand the big affected only older systems, and it’s not like admins just heard the news and sat around. They fixed the bug.
People? Probably not. My wife’s aunt? Yeah. She didn’t make it down the block.
There’s a great podcast called “Surviving Y2K” that explores a bunch of these stories. People did a lot of wild stuff.
