Y2K was not the world-ending catastrophe that the media, governments, and tech gurus had predicted. But it still led to some weird, expensive, and sometimes hilarious glitches.

was anyone else disappointed that planes were not literally falling out of the sky on Y2K?

anyway, here are some real world examples of actual problems that did occur

I did like the Leonard Nimoy video with experts attempting to rate how bad things were going to be :)

and of course the Y2K survival kit commercial was unintentionally hilarious with the shattered glass and sirens going off in the background

did anyone here have to deal with issues caused by Y2K, or spend time preparing systems beforehand?

  • @XTL@sopuli.xyz
    -3•1 year ago

    It was pretty obvious that the only things that were going to break are paper forms with “19__” printed on them.

    • @CanadaPlus
      4•1 year ago

      There’s actual counterexamples in the article, including the fact over 300 billion USD was spent to (mostly) prevent it.

    • @jadero
      4•1 year ago

      I think that the test systems I helped set up for my clients made it pretty obvious that they would have run into a variety of problems had we not done something. Most issues would not have been business ending, but there were a couple that would have made life quite interesting for a few months.

      Preventative action is always tough to justify, because it always looks unnecessary when it works.