Post

Nah, it’s still a garbage article that downplays a lot of the work that went into it with weak anecdotes and a trite “but all the hard work payed off” denouement.

I truly had no idea. Thank you for your service

That’s exactly what the headline says?

I was part of that.

I also remember converting all the year data fields from 2 to 4 digits so date arithmetic would work. I agree, there wasn't a lot of failures, because all the hype alerted everyone ahead of time to take care of it!

I was a mainframe operator for a large company. It was all hands on deck for 36 hours. Nobody got time off.

What are you so mad about? Read the rest of the sentence. 🙄

Thank you for your service!

So how about a headline that says “Y2K seems like a joke now, but only due to the invisible, heroic efforts to prevent disaster”

You're both right and it can be read both ways. For clarity it should have been written as "Thankfully, Y2K didn't live up to the hype thanks to years and billions of dollars were spent on painstaking preparation."

You're both making valid points. It should've been worded differently for better tonality AND the article does make the very point the OP is complaining about it ignoring.

He his exactly saying that the context is different from the one painted in the article. Without the so-called "hype", he would have probably passed way more quality time with his family during the holidays (or whatever).. Only for a lot of "woopsies" come up on January 1st.

“…after years and billions of dollars were spent on painstaking preparation.” It’s fine, learn to read at least a full tweet

Clearly you weren't one of those doing the work.

What do think "the tech industry" was in the 90s, and who do you think they were charging? It actually was a lot of work. Making sure that software wouldn't treat the year 2000 as 1900, 19100, or a memory overrun and making sure you didn't break anything else in the process wasn't easy.

It's extremely common for people to use y2k as an example of people panicking about a thing that ended up being nothing and when someone says it didn't live up to the hype the implictaion is that the money and work spent on it was a waste. It's wasn't hype. It was a real problem.

This was a completely different context. We spent all of 1998 and 1999 wondering if the lights were going to come on in January 1, 2000. Nothing at all similar to a terrorist attack, and a very weak comparison. I'd suggest you listen to a little more NPR to sharpen your critical thinking skills.

Headlines have an outsized influence on readers. Many don’t read the article or if they do they might go in with a bias due to the headline. It’s very important to present it ethically even in the headline itself.

NPR still thinks the presents come from Santa.

Exactly. "It didn't live up to the hype" because people like you did your job.

I spent many very boring hours at my former company testing all the new coding needed to update our systems for Y2K. It was "nothing" because companies invested the resources to make it "nothing." Had nothing been done, it would have been "something."

Can you read? “Thankfully, Y2K didn't live up to the hype after years and billions of dollars were spent on painstaking preparation.”

I was hired by IBM in 1987 to introduce virtualization to banks in the UK and some in France and Germany so they could start building Y2K testing systems and put the clocks forward on giant mainframe systems. Everyday was 1999 for 12 years.

This isn’t a lack of media literacy, it’s just a lack of literacy in general.

I headed up the US it group at a major corporation and worked with my counterparts at other divisions around the world. We worked for 2 years to make sure there was no disruption. You’re right - that’s why it seemed like no big deal!

I was explaining this to my wife. Part of the problem was created by stupid executives forcing workers with nothing to do with IT to work through that night “in case”. She was hr and they insisted she work all night

Sure sounds like the second half of the sentence is acknowledging that: “…and billions of dollars were spent on painstaking preparation.”

I spent one year leading a team of engineers working the issue. In addition to debugging all the y2k problems, we also spent time testing everything. It was the most satisfying project I did as a SW Engineer.

Changing all the years to 4 digits so we wouldn’t go back in time to 1900. Pretty easy money.

I knew a couple guys who fixed Y2K issues for months as contractors. Made good money, too.

NPR is famous for glib. The kind of glib you intone meditatively, with careful pacing. But glib anyway.

Right? The entire film is about people doing advance Y2K fixes and the bad management they worked for

Thanks to all of you for doing this work!

Those were some good times 😂

That's what the headline reads. I heard the report on the radio. The interviewer was very grateful to the folks who made Y2K a non-issue. -E

Sigh. Here we go again. Banks tested their systems and they went tits up. They did not spend 10s of millions of dollars for something that would not have caused any harm what so ever. But? You can choose to believe otherwise.

I worked for the accounting firm assigned to one of these massive clients. It was definitely work.

unsung heroes

yeah media corpos are fucking useless

They also, in response to the Die Hard film in which hackers took control of several public utilities, for a tech from the Best Buy geek squad to explain whether or not it was plausible, and it was very obvious that the guy didn't even know what infosec was.

Yeah. That's... that's what the article is about.

This one was better IMO NPR here and now y2k de Jager

Italy spent almost nothing on proofing computers against the Y2K bug, and yet avoided consequences just as easily as countries like the UK, which spent hundreds of millions. Sadly, the Y2K story is one of media over-reaction, leading to an utter waste of time and money.

Right? Causality issue here. Years and billions were spent THEREFORE Y2K didn't live up to the hype. Sounds like they're almost disappointed

GOD PRESERVED MY "HARD DRIVE"

This. Exactly. Might as well say that vaccines are a joke because no one gets the mumps or measles. Oh, wait...

The implication of “didn’t live up to the hype” isn’t that it was a successfully averted disaster, but that it wasn’t even a big deal, which is unfortunately now the popular conception

Bingo! I worked hard enough and knew plenty of other professionals who worked hard enough to make sure nothing did happen. Y2K was real but professionals did their job to make sure the worst case never happened.

The telecommunications industry started installing software changes in 1995 to handle the date changes. It was all major media hype designed to panic the public, without any understanding of what software companies were doing.

Absolutely. The industry took the issue seriously and put a lot of time/money/work in to addressing the problem. Still, hyperbole was stark. Some doomsaying was likely overblown. Yet that hyperbole was part of motivating companies to fix the problem and avoid cascading failures. A success story.

The whole y2k thing was just a big money grabbing con... unfortunately most people and the news organizations bought into it . Big business made a bundle of money.

The sentence only reads that way if you’re looking for something to be outraged about.

Especially when working on COBOL code. But I had recently graduated, made 50/hr, and got the experience needed for other jobs

As a single mom with no childcare over the holidays, I had to quit my job at the bank because they would fire anyone who took time off from Christmas to New Year’s

Did you perhaps not read the second half of the npr post? Or the article? Maybe go back and do that first!

Well played 🤣😂😆 I enjoyed that joke!

The article says exactly that. “Besides a few minor setbacks like an internet slowdown and reports of malfunctioning clocks, the aggressive planning and recalibration paid off.”

Once again, you are assuming people actually heard the news article or read the transcript before leaping in to respond with outrage. You really should know better by now....

My first project as a PM was Y2K. Upgrading all our servers in our Dara centre and onsite at our clients. It was a huge undertaking by all IT staff across all companies. Still don’t know if it made a difference or not but maybe that’s why we didn’t find out.

Rt?!? I worked a year remediating Y2K stuff, running scripts through systems that connected to the Federal Reserve Bank. How easily folks forget.

I lead a team that went through 500+ databases at a major company and we worked our asses off

Y2K was largely a non-event BECAUSE we all were terrified and decided to do something about it.

Saw the Y2K movie this week. Now, that would have been an interesting outcome!

And you can't read the article you just posted? Incredible self own.

People are staggeringly stupid. This is right up there with people’s who think polio is no big deal because the vaccine worked or no one talks about the ozone layer anymore because we fixed that too. Y2K was a very big deal. We fixed it.

I remember getting regular updates at work about the efforts the IT staff of our government agency to prevent any serious problems from Y2K. I’m still impressed they (and all the rest of you) pulled it off.

"after" implies it that preparation didn't matter

At AOL, we spent TWO YEARS fixing and testing shit. We had devs, QA, and admins who were brought in SOLELY to work on it. This is like saying "the hurricane wasn't a big deal" because the city was encased in a hermetically-sealed unbreakable dome.

I spent that night at work with a dozen or so other of my IT/Operations brethren, just so we could watch everything we fixed work without any problems.

I had someone on FB absolutely tear me a new asshole because I didn't know this fact. I was also not yet an adult that particular year. Maybe some people don't know some things. I'm sorry the news keeps inaccurately reporting this and perpetuating this misconception, though.

no way is the writer of that article old enough to have been cognizant of the work professional IT people were doing at the time hell *I'm* not old enough, I just paid attention as an adult lmao

I was able to work a short term freelance gig for a couple local companies updating their software because I had learned COBOL the year before. Lots of people worked to make sure things went smoothly. They absolutely hated that a highschool kid had to do it for them 😂

I worked for a major IT firm, and we busted our butts too. And then, just to be certain, we were all locked in for New Year's Eve that year. 24 hours straight in the office "just in case" we missed something. We didn't, of course, because we knew what we were doing.

bsky.app/profile/tayl...

Doesn't matter to me either way I'm just not for NPR anymore, they played a part in sane washing trump as well too much soft pedaling for my taste.

Listened to that broadcast and got pretty miffed on y'alls behalf (young then). They downplayed the hard work & planning that went into making sure it wasn't a total catastrophe. Kinda reminds me of the "what do we need vax for, nobody gets polio any more" crowd. Not IT exactly, but I get why ur mad

it was a hoax/scaremongering. She also said that I shouldn't be correcting her on bsky. Really pisses me off when leftist people do what they complain right wingers are doing.

Has nobody here read the second half of the post where NPR specifically describes how much money and effort went into fixing it?

but doesn't the headline...agree with you? why "dammit"?

It was 18 months of serious preparation, and when the clock struck midnight on 1/1/2000 it wasn’t so much a sigh of relief as it was a victory celebration. Yes, it was 25 years ago, but a lot of us (that were sentient) are still here!

Am I missing something? The post points out that "years and billions of dollars were spent on painstaking preparation" and the linked story details many examples of all the work that was done to make it a mostly painless transition. It seems like a pretty decent framing?

This! 👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆

Similar to articles wondering why we don’t mention the ozone layer anymore.

It's like if we see a problem coming, we can marshal our resources and address it directly, thus averting potential disaster. Or something.

What’s the dumb take? That the y2k crisis was averted because of the incredibly hard work of thousands and also millions of dollars spent? Maybe go back and read the headline and if you’re feeling spicy the whole article too!

"In the end, the worst fears lay in anticipation. Besides a few minor setbacks like an internet slowdown and reports of malfunctioning clocks, the aggressive planning and recalibration paid off." Imagine talking about polio this way.

I was responding to OP’s comment, saying that prevention is hard to see, due to its nature. People notice actions and consequences, not inaction or lack of consequences. e.g. insider trading = sell when you know a stock will tank. Not insider trading = hold when you know a stock will go up.

I was surprised by elevators needing reflashing or replacing control boards, apparently many of them used generic clock chips which by default ran a calendar. If your alarm clock crashes, you curse and turn it on and off again, if your lift controller crashes 20 stories up it's a different story,

My VCR broke over the 2000 new year. I think I'm literally the only person in the world who was affected.