Does anyone on here remember the Y2K panic in 1999?

[Wingnut 6,732]

I remember it pretty well. Among other things, they said they ran a simulation of Wall Street computers with the existing configuration...and it CRASHED!  It was expected to impact so many systems.  A ton of money was invested in computer networks  around the world to ensure it wouldn’t cause problems.  And there were even stickers on home computers reminding owners to turn them off before New Years to be on the safe side.  

[Savygriffs 5,022]

I was only 1 year old when it happened so no I don't remember anything, but I do know what it was. Pretty insane stuff.

[Trot Shuffle 3,595]

I wasn't even born when it happened but it's so interesting to me, the reaction that it received. Everything branded as "Y2K Ready!" is SUPER FUNNY TO ME, there's just something about a little sticker saying that!

Of course this issue gets pushed back further as time goes on. I think 2038 is the next year that this kind of issue will happen again, so there's already been initiative to prepare and mitigate any problems that would happen.

[Samurai Equine 45,916]

I remember the Y2K panic. For some reason, the fear didn't spread super strong where I lived. There was uneasiness, but no one panicking or trying to prepare for a huge crisis. And then the new year came... And just about all computers had no problem registering the year as 2000.  Very anticlimactic. If there were ANY computers or machines adversely affected, they were in the extremely small minority. In fact, there were plenty of news reports from computer experts saying that this wasn't going to be as big as people were making it out to be, and what do you know. They were right.

[Iforgotmybrain 3,513]

I was a whole 6 months old when it happened. I remember it like it was yesterday.

[Antiyonder 321]

17 going on 18, and yep I knew about it for a while, but for whatever reason, I don't recall dreading it.

[Winter Storm 207]

Yeah I can remember, I was too young to really care much or think it was going to happen, and I don't think my parents thought it was going to happen either. For some reason they went to some Y2K party some friends of theirs who I cannot remember were hosting and took me and my sister with them.

[Dreambiscuit 8,024]

I remember it well. Everyone was talking about it being the end of the world but I knew it would get sorted out. Necessity is the mother of invention; it’s amazing how quickly people can find a solution when they really want to. The year 2000 came without incident but leading up to it the news whipped up enough false hysteria to sell their papers and newscasts, so they cashed in as usual. The whole thing was just a non-issue.

[Gun Metal Zebra 1,818]

I was a young teenager at the time, and I remember the Y2K scare. No one in my family worried about it, though, as we saw all kinds of computers that were marketed as "Y2K compliant" in stores in 1999. That in itself proved that there was a way to stop the "Y2K bug". Needless to say, things kept going when I stayed up and watched January 1, 2000 arrive at midnight. I believe my family had an old Windows 3.11 computer whose date reset to 1980, but it still worked just fine.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Gun Metal Zebra

[Denim&Venöm 16,517]

I remember it well. Mostly through the pop culture parodies of it that were on at the time. 

I hardly used computers at the time. My family weren't really fussed. I think my dad was a server admin at the time and he wasn't worried.

[Shiny Silvermoon 2,994]

Can somepony explain to me? 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Shiny Silvermoon

[Pentium100 2,057]

5 hours ago, Shiny Silvermoon said:

Can somepony explain to me? 

What? Y2K? OK.

In the past, computers had very little memory, so people used to optimize everything to save memory. One such optimization was dropping the first two digits of the year. I mean if you write "57" everyone knows it means 1957, not 1857 (and if you wanted to have historical records, those could have the full year or be specially marked), so, by dropping the "19" you save two bytes of memory. That seems funny now, but 1) it adds up over many records and 2) at the time, a 5MB hard drive required a forklift to lift it and cost $50k (or about $500k adjusted for inflation), so of course you wanted to save as much memory as possible. 

This practice continued, also old systems continued to be used, maybe not the hardware, but the software (if it works, don't fix it). As the year 2000 approached, people realized there's going to be a problem. If you drop the first two digits of 2000, you get 00, which the old systems would interpret as 1900. Some systems would use that value, some would reset to some random year (year of manufacture or whatever), some would see the year as 19100 (since 99+1=100 and you add 19 in front of it). Systems would crash or misbehave possibly including the systems that run power plants, airplanes and such.

There was a panic, but most of those systems were fixed, so that pretty much nothing crashed when Y2K came. 

 

I remember it, I also remember my dad getting a floppy disk from somebody, there was some software that would check if your PC was Y2K compliant (mine was, as it was relatively new at the time). It was a nothingburger, but only because everybody was prepared for it and fixed the systems in time. 

[Sunset Rose 251]

I remember there being way more buzz about it in the media than around me. I was just out of high school at the time, and there was a pretty thick air of skeptical apathy from myself and my friends about the whole thing. The first of January came, nothing happened, then it passed pretty quickly.

[Shiny Silvermoon 2,994]

On 2023-11-22 at 3:32 AM, Pentium100 said:

What? Y2K? OK.

In the past, computers had very little memory, so people used to optimize everything to save memory. One such optimization was dropping the first two digits of the year. I mean if you write "57" everyone knows it means 1957, not 1857 (and if you wanted to have historical records, those could have the full year or be specially marked), so, by dropping the "19" you save two bytes of memory. That seems funny now, but 1) it adds up over many records and 2) at the time, a 5MB hard drive required a forklift to lift it and cost $50k (or about $500k adjusted for inflation), so of course you wanted to save as much memory as possible. 

This practice continued, also old systems continued to be used, maybe not the hardware, but the software (if it works, don't fix it). As the year 2000 approached, people realized there's going to be a problem. If you drop the first two digits of 2000, you get 00, which the old systems would interpret as 1900. Some systems would use that value, some would reset to some random year (year of manufacture or whatever), some would see the year as 19100 (since 99+1=100 and you add 19 in front of it). Systems would crash or misbehave possibly including the systems that run power plants, airplanes and such.

There was a panic, but most of those systems were fixed, so that pretty much nothing crashed when Y2K came. 

 

I remember it, I also remember my dad getting a floppy disk from somebody, there was some software that would check if your PC was Y2K compliant (mine was, as it was relatively new at the time). It was a nothingburger, but only because everybody was prepared for it and fixed the systems in time. 

It's quite a story that you told me! Thanks for the knowledge you shared with me, great elder! 

[Reiki Knight 13 1,459]

Party like it's 1900 tonight everypony.

Y2K joke.

[DubWolf 16,620]

I was old enough to remember, but I really don’t recall this ever being discussed in school or with family.

[Twitchy-Tremor 281]

Oh yeah we stocked up on can goods and water jugs but we didn't go to crazy over it. 

[Spark Thunderbass 1,398]

I would’ve been 1 or 2 years old at the time when the craze was around, so I would’ve been too young to have any memory of it, not to mention was it any bigger in Australia as well?