Y2K/millennium bug: memories and lessons wanted please!
today is actually the first time I've seen that stuff was done on the hardware level about Y2K!!
so if you worked on it, know a lot about it, were old enough to be incredibly worried or knowingly nonchalant, or simply have opinions on what we learned (or didn't!) from it I'd love to hear!
Might end up as a video; my video skills are rusty AND embryonic but feels like a fun project :)
a few older engineers have been posting about their experiences working on it over on mastodon, eg:
https://infosec.exchange/@tychotithonus/111670219441506220
i don't personally know or follow any of them but their assessments of the situation (that it was a real problem and wasn't a disaster only because those behind the scenes took it seriously) seem sound.
I knew basically nothing about the tech side of it, but I was an extremely online young adult at the time and I remember "knowingly nonchalant" filtering down to me through proximity to people who knew what was going on. Or at least, people who pretended they were super in the know; I wasn't savvy enough to tell the difference. :V
What strikes me now is that I often hear it described as, "Everyone thought it was all going to break and then when it didn't they decided it had never been a problem." My impression of it (which might still be the result of the people I observed at the time) was that it was more like the Large Hadron Collider—everyone kind in on the mass "Ha ha, it's going to end the world!" joke while taking for granted that it wouldn't (but it might! We might be living in a blockbuster disaster movie after all!). And in the same vein, a ton of the jokes/commentary I saw were basically a response to hearing about it in the news nonstop.
Also I remember a photoshoot with some comedian (I think) where he was wearing a shirt that just said "WHY TO KAY?" and it became one of those brain worms that haunt me indefinitely. I would probably buy that shirt immediately if I found it.
