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Royce Williams

@robertatcara As someone who personally discovered and fixed Y2K bugs that would have had significant real world impact, it is disturbing to hear someone propagate this myth [that it was a "big fuss about nothing"]. And it is a myth.

This is what really happened:
time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-histo

The testing methodology insured that these impacts were not hypothetical. At my company, the testing was performed by actually rolling the clock forward to test systems to see what would happen. For example, I discovered that every ATM in the state of Alaska operated by my company would have locked up until a PROM chip was swapped. Someone had to fly all over the state to proactively swap the chip beforehand, to avoid significant customer impact.

And that was just one story. I personally oversaw investigation and fixes for other hardware and software at that company that would have failed.

And that was just my company. I spoke with others in IT at that time with similar stories. And that was just the people I knew.

So no, it wasn't "a big fuss about nothing" - and saying so is both dangerously revisionist, and disrespectful of the work it took to prevent real impacts.

#Y2K

30 Dec 2023 at 16:05 | Open on infosec.exchange
255 comments
Billy O'Neal

@tychotithonus @robertatcara I think this is an example of overhype backlash. It’s reasonable to think it was nothing when at the time media were reporting that the world was going to freaking end, powerplants and traffic lights would break, etc. Then for most folks the observed impact was… nothing.

That doesn’t mean there were no problems or even no serious problems, but it does mean there was a lot of out of proportion reporting.

2 January at 15:35 | Open on infosec.exchange
Maarten Stolte 🍋

@tychotithonus @robertatcara @thomholwerda this is a common IT issue; you spend a lot of money to prevent things and then people may get the impression it’s not needed if you are succeful in preventing the things…

2 January at 16:16 | Open on mastodon.workingweb.nl
Log 🪵

@tychotithonus @robertatcara That mandatory investment into computing infrastructure then transitioned into a computing business boom that lasted almost 2 whole years before the Dotcom Bust that got quite a lot of us fired. Those jobs did not return quickly in all cities that had significant presence in the sector beforehand. San Francisco/Silicon Valley bounced back faster. A lot of people had to move or take lower pay.

2 January at 16:47 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Ville Takanen

@tychotithonus @robertatcara this. So much this.

Yours: a young coder in the late 1990’s who stopped multiple train collisions by fixing an y2k bug.

2 January at 18:32 | Open on mementomori.social
blackcoat

@tychotithonus @robertatcara It's like the ozone layer thing. "They made a fuss and it turned out to be nothing!" "No, we made a fuss and spent a bunch of time and energy and FIXED THE PROBLEM"

2 January at 18:49 | Open on kind.social
Bernd

@tychotithonus @robertatcara it' a bit like arguing traffic signs are not needed since there are so few accidents.

2 January at 18:50 | Open on ruhr.social
Earthshine

@tychotithonus @robertatcara everything is "a big fuss about nothing" if you actually take it seriously and fix it. It's only when you choose not to (because "it's a big fuss about nothing") that it matures into an unmitigated disaster.

The most important jobs are often the ones that have zero visibility to the public when they are performed correctly.

2 January at 18:56 | Open on hackers.town
Weird Ugly Sweaters

@robertatcara
Thank you for seeding the thread.
This was the last big project my dad had at HP. The preparation effort was quite something judging by his days coming back late.
And for the lead up to and day of, he was in a 24-hour operations center. He said they still ended up with a few fires but they were small.
It was a great time to be a programmer who still knew COBOL.

2 January at 22:36 | Open on social.seattle.wa.us
Al

@tychotithonus @robertatcara
you got that right. almost everyone felt almost nothing because a few of us took it seriously and work to make sure everyone else didn't have a problem.
That is why it ended up being nothing but a marketing bonanza; the engineers did their jobs!

2 January at 19:03 | Open on mastodon.sdf.org
Mike Mathews

Yes, this myth needs to die, thanks for the work you and others did. In 1985, I took a job at a defense-related company where the y2k subject was discussed at the first team meeting I attended. The failure scenarios were drastic.

Two job-hops later, in 1996, I started at a different company where a similar meeting took place around the networking infrastructure products and services of the company. In both cases, failure would have caused global distribution.

@tychotithonus @robertatcara

2 January at 19:30 | Open on twit.social
Tom Rini

@tychotithonus @robertatcara I just want to say that I too am upset at this myth because it's something my father worked on as well, at a company involved in power plants.

2 January at 19:37 | Open on tenforward.social
E_Nonymouse

@tychotithonus @robertatcara
It's easy to think of it that way, even if you were alive at the time as some generations were not. The Y2k issue stems from systems made prior to the early 90's iirc.

From the server side of things, particularly for the machines running critical functions like the stock exchange, the FAA sites, airline booking & sales etc.. This was likely a very critical bug, but objectively from the user side this felt like an awful lot of nonsense.

2 January at 19:42 | Open on mastodon.social
E_Nonymouse

@tychotithonus @robertatcara
I found some amusement in the fact that the bios clocks would allow you to set the system date and time to a value that not only predated that machine but also pre-dates computers in general.

That by itself should have triggered a glitch.

2 January at 19:53 | Open on mastodon.social
kali yuga fornication
@tychotithonus @robertatcara my answer to OP would be: the chucklefucks in charge would take the same lesson OP appears to have taken

and we would be beating each other to death with flails made of e-waste and trying to extract potable water from raw sewage using nothing but poorly-made T-shirts with AI-generated designs on them sometime around April

and then somehow through all that chaos by May only 5 people will own all of the planet's wealth except for a $5 bill that the remaining population of 3 billion have to pass to one another incurring a $6 processing fee payable to the 5 people every single time
@tychotithonus @robertatcara my answer to OP would be: the chucklefucks in charge would take the same lesson OP appears to have taken

and we would be beating each other to death with flails made of e-waste and trying to extract potable water from raw sewage using nothing but poorly-made T-shirts with AI-generated designs on them sometime around April
2 January at 21:31 | Open on akko.disqordia.space
Xenofact :jrbd:
Anthropy :verified_dragon:

@tychotithonus @robertatcara also if anyone wonders "what we would do today" just look around at how much prep has been done for the 2038 problem, and that's still over a decade away.

Very much wonder what that's gonna look like though, I bet a lot of embedded systems will still have issues even by that time. Or perhaps databases and filesystems that never get updated. Lots of potential for weirdness.

2 January at 23:33 | Open on mastodon.derg.nz
Kuba Suder • @mackuba.eu on 🦋

@tychotithonus @robertatcara Kinda like with the ozone layer hole which "disappeared"…

3 January at 0:08 | Open on martianbase.net
Joby (chaotic good)

@tychotithonus @robertatcara [whatever] seems like a joke -- because those behind the scenes took it seriously.

The story of human civilization.

3 January at 0:56 | Open on hachyderm.io
leecarroll
GreenDotGuy

@tychotithonus @robertatcara I wasn't 'oversseing' anything back then, but I had tables of test equipment laid out in a warehouse, replicating almost everything we supported at the bank my company contracted for. We definitely identified things that would have gone really bad unless we applied Y2K patches. Also, there weren't many automated patching systems in use back then, we were trying to make it 'one visit per desk', often on the overnight shift.

3 January at 4:31 | Open on infosec.exchange
sverx🗨️

@tychotithonus @robertatcara

I am bewildered at how many companies had spent so much to make sure their software was Y2K compliant and at the same time NOT fix the Y2K leap year 'bug'.

So the 29th of February 2000 where I worked back then, some systems were displaying March 1 instead🤦

3 January at 9:35 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
sverx🗨️

@tychotithonus @robertatcara

I mean, I totally expected it.

Even back in 1999, most of the people I spoke with were sure the 2000 wasn't going to be a leap year (!!!) and the few that instead knew it was going to be a leap year, they thought it was going to be so because of their wrong reasoning (they only knew the 'every 4 years' part, so they thought the 1900 was a leap year too).

3 January at 9:59 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
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