WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: Why Y2K Didn't End the World 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.480 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.800 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:20.360 and I love all things tech. And you know what, 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:25.880 um twenty one years ago? Man, that blows my mind. 0:00:26.560 --> 0:00:30.240 But twenty one years ago, the world was very concerned 0:00:30.920 --> 0:00:38.159 that a clock, a a a digit changing from to 0:00:38.400 --> 0:00:44.160 zero zero was going to completely turn our technological world 0:00:44.280 --> 0:00:48.839 upside down. I'm talking about the Y two K problem. 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:51.480 And some of you out there might be too young 0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:54.160 to even know what that is, or maybe you were 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:57.760 born after two thousand, you have no clue. But for 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:00.920 those of us who were working in the nineties, this 0:01:01.000 --> 0:01:02.880 was a big deal. It was something that a lot 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:05.520 of people were worried about, and it all had to 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:09.200 do with those two little digits at the end of 0:01:09.240 --> 0:01:12.360 the year. And we're gonna learn about why why two 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.760 K didn't in the world, because, I mean, spoiler alert, 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.280 it didn't. So let's listen back to this episode, which 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:24.400 originally published on January two thousand and fourteen. Like someone 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:29.200 cut and now things aren't working, also building up to 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:33.600 something terrifying. Yeah, it's gonna build up to a NonStop 0:01:33.680 --> 0:01:38.840 replay of Prince over and over again, which it starts 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:40.880 out awesome, but as it goes on, let me tell 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:43.480 you that gets old. Okay, we're talking about the Y 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:46.039 two K Bug obviously, people, Yes, yes, that is what 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:48.040 our episode is about today. All of our fans who 0:01:48.080 --> 0:01:51.640 hate it. Whenever I do cheesy humor, I apologize, don't 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.920 really apologize. It is who I am. So the reason 0:01:54.960 --> 0:01:57.960 why we're talking about why two K Bug years after 0:01:58.160 --> 0:02:02.360 the whole issue happened, is because, you know, we ask you, 0:02:02.400 --> 0:02:04.720 guys what you want to hear, and in this case, 0:02:04.840 --> 0:02:07.279 a listener named James sent us a message on Twitter 0:02:07.360 --> 0:02:09.960 and said, hey, guys, you should do an episode on 0:02:10.000 --> 0:02:13.280 the Y two K Bug. Heart heart James. Well, James, 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:16.160 we heart heart you two. Now we're going to do 0:02:16.200 --> 0:02:18.160 our episode on the Y two K Bug. It's a 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:21.639 pretty interesting story because it's one of those things where, 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:26.080 you know, it really illustrates a few basic things about 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.360 computing and human nature in general. One of those things 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:33.200 is that when something new is created, no one who 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:35.960 is around has any idea of how long it's gonna last, 0:02:36.720 --> 0:02:39.560 and they don't have any any appreciation of things that 0:02:39.600 --> 0:02:43.600 they do then lasting into well into the future, right, well, 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:47.200 especially things like computer programming. I mean, no one in 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:50.079 say the nineteen sixties or seventies was expecting any of 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:54.560 the programs they were writing to last for forty years. Yeah, 0:02:54.720 --> 0:02:59.400 computers were developing very quickly, and the general thought was that, 0:02:59.760 --> 0:03:02.359 you know, this is changing so fast that programming is 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:04.840 going to change in at a crazy speed too. But 0:03:04.880 --> 0:03:08.280 as it turns out, while the hardware changed, the practices 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:11.360 that were established early on remained pretty much standard. And 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:15.639 also a lot of this old programming would find its 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:20.560 way into subsequent generations of software. So even if it 0:03:20.639 --> 0:03:24.440 wasn't something that people were continuing to do later on, uh, 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:27.680 there'd still be these old fragments of code incorporated into 0:03:27.720 --> 0:03:30.000 stuff that did have it. Now we're kind of dancing 0:03:30.040 --> 0:03:33.760 around what that old thing was. Oh, oh, the the 0:03:33.800 --> 0:03:36.800 old thing, of course being I just got really excited 0:03:36.800 --> 0:03:41.880 that I knew the answer to this um being the 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:45.600 digits in the year. Yeah. So here was the issue 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:48.560 back in the fifties and sixties when programmers were having 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:50.720 to put a code in for the year, which is 0:03:50.760 --> 0:03:53.920 important for certain types of calculations, right, anything that's time 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:56.200 based Obviously you need to have a way of recording 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.120 the time so that you can compare times from different 0:03:59.160 --> 0:04:03.160 points and draw your calculations based on that different you know, 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:06.160 for for for example, when people have been depositing paychecks 0:04:06.400 --> 0:04:09.560 or right. So if you if you have a bank 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:12.680 account that has interest, for example, time is obviously a 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:14.880 factor there. It's not just the amount of money that 0:04:14.920 --> 0:04:17.479 you've been continuously putting into or taking out of that 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:19.960 bank account. It's also the amount of times since you 0:04:20.080 --> 0:04:23.839 established that bank account. And there's some complicated calculations that 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:26.440 are very time sensitive, so you have to have that 0:04:26.480 --> 0:04:29.640 kind of stuff built into your algorithm, right right, or 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:32.400 in other cases, you know, records of dates of birth 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:36.520 or dates of medical surgery or all kinds of things. Yeah, 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:39.920 so many different applications, to the point where there were 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.120 even technologies that you wouldn't imagine would ever need to 0:04:43.200 --> 0:04:45.840 know what year it is that had the stuff built 0:04:45.880 --> 0:04:48.320 into it. And here's the problem when you have two 0:04:48.400 --> 0:04:53.440 digits for your year. See the computer programming getting started 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.160 in the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, they figured, hey, 0:04:56.200 --> 0:04:58.800 we've got practically half a century before we have to 0:04:58.839 --> 0:05:02.360 worry about two digits, it's turning into zero zero. Clearly, 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.640 we're gonna totally fix this later. And computer memory right 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:09.279 now is incredibly expensive, so let's let's let's be really 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:11.760 conservative and just use two digits for the year, and 0:05:11.760 --> 0:05:14.680 we'll be fine until these other problems work themselves out. 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:17.400 Oh and and I mean computer memory was so precious 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.400 and saving, especially across the course of for example, an 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:24.520 entire spreadsheet full of interest calculations. Saving two digits per 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:29.839 year was big. So so just by doing a month, month, day, day, year, year, 0:05:29.880 --> 0:05:32.200 you know, just just the two digits each, you could 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.000 save a huge time and hassle for yourself at the 0:05:35.360 --> 0:05:37.640 at that current moment, right right, because I mean, you know, 0:05:38.400 --> 0:05:40.920 think about just a few years ago how expensive it 0:05:41.000 --> 0:05:43.760 was to buy, say a terrabyte for a hard drive, 0:05:43.839 --> 0:05:47.919 compared to today, now it's much more affordable. Well, you know, 0:05:47.960 --> 0:05:49.560 as opposed to when I was a kid, when a 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:53.680 terabyte was a completely unimaginable amount of information. Yeah, when 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.039 I was a kid, I couldn't imagine ever filling up 0:05:56.040 --> 0:05:59.800 a megabyte of space. So you know, as time has 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:02.320 gone on, memory has become less and less of a 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:04.360 problem in the sense that we were able to make 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:08.520 more of it more affordably. Back then very expensive and 0:06:08.560 --> 0:06:11.000 precious stuff that you only had so much to work with, 0:06:11.160 --> 0:06:15.200 and it was expensive to use. So cutting it down 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:17.160 to two digits made sense at the time. But the 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.880 problem was that when you roll over from nine to 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:23.960 two thousand in the computer terms, that goes from ninety 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.200 nine to zero zero, which meant that people weren't really 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:29.960 sure what was going to happen. Right, would the computer 0:06:30.040 --> 0:06:32.880 think that it was all of a sudden Would that 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:37.520 completely bark all of your calculations for for example, interest rates, yeah, 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:40.800 or the the age of a person. So your example, 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:43.719 if it's figuring out the age by subtracting the current 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:45.719 date from your date of birth or the date of 0:06:45.760 --> 0:06:48.200 birth from the current data, should say, so, let's say 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.680 it's ninety nine and you were born in ninety, then 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:54.159 that's pretty easy. It's years old. Okay, got it. But 0:06:54.200 --> 0:06:56.480 then let's say it goes zero zero and you were 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.600 born in ninety. So at zero zero minus ninety suddenly 0:06:59.760 --> 0:07:03.520 like oh um am I getting negative numbers because now 0:07:03.560 --> 0:07:05.839 a negative age that doesn't make sense. And so you 0:07:05.839 --> 0:07:08.680 can have all sorts of computer problems ranging from the 0:07:08.720 --> 0:07:13.160 financial industry to health to all pretty much everything that 0:07:13.280 --> 0:07:16.480 had any sort of code in it that included the year, 0:07:17.040 --> 0:07:22.800 which extends to things like like elevators that had microchips. Yes, yeah, elevators. 0:07:22.920 --> 0:07:25.440 I mean that's pretty that that was a real concern. 0:07:25.480 --> 0:07:26.760 People are like, I do not want to be in 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:31.240 an elevator on New Year's Eve because you don't know 0:07:31.280 --> 0:07:32.800 if that thing is going to make it to the floor. 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:35.840 You want by right, And I mean, and of course, 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:38.760 you know, they weren't afraid that the elevator was going 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.840 to slow down to a rate, to a negative motion 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:43.800 rate or anything like that, but they were afraid that 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:47.160 the code and the microchip crashing would I don't know, 0:07:47.280 --> 0:07:50.360 cause a fire and make the elevator drop or just 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.440 or just stop or just stop entirely and refused to open. 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:57.200 People had a lot of just uncertainty about exactly what 0:07:57.240 --> 0:07:59.240 was going to happen to code and whether or not 0:07:59.280 --> 0:08:01.920 it was going to cry as an entire system when 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:06.360 this this year changed, over right, And so this this 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.240 fear started to kind of rear its head in the 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.960 ninety nineties. Uh, it really reached a fever pitch in nine. 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:16.200 That was when I think the general public became really 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:19.760 aware of it before that due to media complete over saturation. 0:08:19.960 --> 0:08:22.680 Yeah yeah, I got a little, a little crazy, be 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:24.960 a lot crazy, depending about where you lived. In the 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:29.320 United States, it's certainly became crazy. So you had you 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.360 had computer scientists who were and programmers who were saying 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.360 earlier than this, like, hey, guys, maybe we should fix 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.920 this is you know, this is a problem and instead 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:43.440 of perpetuating it across multiple industries at infinitum, maybe we 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:46.360 should address it and that way, just establish a new 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:49.439 rule going forward. Now, computer memory not such a big deal. Now, 0:08:49.440 --> 0:08:50.719 why don't we Why don't we fix it before we 0:08:50.760 --> 0:08:53.520 get Hello? So any what is this thing on? Hello? 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:55.560 And the problem was that a lot of people didn't 0:08:55.559 --> 0:08:57.720 listen until it started getting closer to two thousand and 0:08:57.800 --> 0:09:01.120 people began to really worry about the possibility that this 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.680 could bring about, if not some sort of technological armageddon, 0:09:05.000 --> 0:09:08.000 at least a lot of glitches and problems that could 0:09:08.040 --> 0:09:12.360 have been avoided. So then they had to say, well, 0:09:12.360 --> 0:09:14.560 what are we going to do about it? The obvious 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:18.439 solution was also the most time consuming and expensive one, 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:22.559 which was the manually go through and start updating code 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:25.200 and changing it so that it's a four digit year 0:09:25.280 --> 0:09:28.160 instead of a two digit year and uh and then 0:09:28.360 --> 0:09:33.680 thus increasing the usefulness till at least nine thou right, Yeah, 0:09:33.760 --> 0:09:35.559 I mean, I mean, you know, the alternate there's to 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.880 recode just so that programs would recognize that zero zero 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:42.560 probably meant two thousands instead of nineteen hundred. But that's 0:09:42.679 --> 0:09:45.080 a less effective solution. And b I mean, you just 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:47.079 need to change it over at the next turn of 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:49.760 the century, not that probably those same programs were going 0:09:49.800 --> 0:09:52.080 to be in use, but you never know, right. The 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:54.600 thing is that, you know, you have these legacy systems 0:09:55.000 --> 0:09:59.160 that certain companies rely on that were originally programmed, you know, 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.640 thirty forty years ago, and you know they continue to 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.000 rely on them because they do exactly what the company 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:07.960 needs them to do, right And Okay, so so either way, 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:11.360 these changes might have to be entered by hand thousands 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:13.840 of times or hundreds of thousands of times in a 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:17.200 single program um and each change then has to be 0:10:17.240 --> 0:10:21.280 tested against errors. Of course, eventually code was developed to 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:24.320 help automate the process, but you know, I mean it 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:27.240 was just a big undertaking. Yeah. You might remember if 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:32.200 you watch the documentary Office Space that the characters at 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:36.200 in a tech the company and office space were they 0:10:36.240 --> 0:10:38.760 that was their job. They went into other companies and 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:42.640 helped update their code to meet the Y two K issue, 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.520 which kind of raises another question, which is what was 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:47.959 this company going to do after the year two thousand? 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.160 But at any rate, that was actually a very real concern. 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:53.640 I mean, spaces is a great parody of all of that, 0:10:53.720 --> 0:10:57.360 kind of sure, but but there was a concern that, 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.320 you know, with with all of these extra per gramming 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:02.720 jobs that were going to be created, that that businesses 0:11:02.760 --> 0:11:05.040 would crash and burn. And some of them did. I mean, 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:06.840 most of them just moved on to other things and 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.640 found freedom and not having to do this incredibly tedious 0:11:09.640 --> 0:11:12.000 work anymore. Right, And then there was a lot of 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:14.920 other crashing and burning in the tech industry for unrelated reasons. 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.400 That was the whole dot com bubble burst. But it 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:21.199 didn't have anything to do with Y two K directly. So, uh, 0:11:21.360 --> 0:11:23.520 here's the other problem is that a lot of these 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:26.719 programs didn't recognize even if even if two thousand was 0:11:26.760 --> 0:11:28.559 going to be fine, even if they could recognize the 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:30.240 five that was two thousand was a four digit year, 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:32.880 they didn't necessarily recognize that two thousand was going to 0:11:32.920 --> 0:11:35.840 be a leap year. And here's the reason why. So 0:11:36.920 --> 0:11:40.400 leap years actually follow an algorithm, a set of rules, obviously, 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.840 So the the basic rule is that for every four years, 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:46.120 you added an extra day, a leap day, at the 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.880 end of February to balance out the calendar year with 0:11:48.920 --> 0:11:51.480 the solar year. Because the solar year is close to 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:54.680 three sixty five point to five days, not quite point 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:57.920 to five, almost point to five, which is important. Yeah, 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:01.920 So if you stretch out over an incredibly long time 0:12:01.960 --> 0:12:05.800 for us humans, let's say a few centuries, your calendars 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.480 will start to become misaligned because it's not quite three 0:12:08.880 --> 0:12:11.080 sixty five point to five days in the solar year. 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:14.719 So that means that occasionally you have to ignore the 0:12:14.800 --> 0:12:17.360 leap year. And the way the rule goes is that 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:19.760 if the let's see if I can get this right, 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:25.120 if the century is divisible by one hundred but not 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.480 by four hundred, it would not be a leap year. 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:30.959 So if it's divisible by both one hundred and four hundred, 0:12:31.000 --> 0:12:33.760 it's a leap here. So in other words, seventeen hundred, 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:38.199 eighteen hundred, and nineteen hundred were not leap years. Was 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:42.160 because sixteen hundred is divisible by four hundred. Two thousand 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:44.520 also divisible by four hundred, so it should be a 0:12:44.600 --> 0:12:48.480 leap here. However, because you got just have zero zero 0:12:48.679 --> 0:12:52.240 as the digits. If the computer thinks it's nineteen hundred, 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:55.400 the computers also knows the rule that nineteen hundred is 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:58.640 not a leap year, so it says, hey, this, this 0:12:58.720 --> 0:13:01.880 big zero kind of number is totally not a leap year, right, 0:13:01.920 --> 0:13:04.679 So it's only three d sixty five days, not three 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:07.120 hundred three, And we we don't have a f every 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:08.920 twenty nine this year, is what I would say. But 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.600 there was totally a fevery twenty nine here, which meant 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.480 that other calculations would get thrown off because it wouldn't 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.400 take that leap day into account. So all these calendar 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.079 applications weren't also had to be corrected. So suddenly people 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:23.839 were like, oh boy, this is a big old mess here. 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.760 We've got to fix this and uh and so so 0:13:26.840 --> 0:13:30.120 a lot of time and effort and attention was directed 0:13:30.160 --> 0:13:32.080 to this. And there was a third problem as well. 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.480 Wasn't there having to do with all of the nines. 0:13:34.760 --> 0:13:37.400 Oh yeah, Oh, I totally forgot about that. I'm glad 0:13:37.400 --> 0:13:39.840 you brought that up. Yes, So, okay, in the old days, 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:43.880 children gather around this, gather around the digital fireplace. You know, 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:47.600 if Netflix still has that digital fireplace. Stared started up 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.680 back in the old days. Children. Sometimes programmers, in order 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:55.400 to designate the end of a program, would just type 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:57.720 out a string of nines. It was essentially just the 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.280 code to say, this is where stuff ends, y'all. Uh 0:14:01.360 --> 0:14:05.920 so had a date in Exeptember nine that if you 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:08.440 were to write it, I would be like nine. You know, 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:11.680 a lot of nines. And the worry was that certain 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:15.480 programs which would see that as meaning this is where 0:14:15.480 --> 0:14:19.680 stuff stops and would stop working. So you had a 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:22.840 lot of digit problems here. So some of this you 0:14:22.840 --> 0:14:26.520 could count on, you know, just a a kind of 0:14:27.200 --> 0:14:29.720 a jerry rigged system of this is how I'm going 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:32.200 to designate this is the end of a program, And 0:14:32.240 --> 0:14:36.120 it was just kind of arbitrarily chosen that would be stuff. 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:38.480 Some of it was more of a practical consideration, the 0:14:38.560 --> 0:14:40.880 idea of we need to save time and money, so 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:44.640 therefore we're shortening this year to two digits. In either case, 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:47.240 it ended up meaning lots and lots of work for 0:14:47.280 --> 0:14:51.600 people in the late nineteen nineties, and you got a 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:54.720 lot of attention. I mean, there were there were things 0:14:54.800 --> 0:14:58.600 like industries that were already taking advantage of the time 0:14:58.640 --> 0:15:00.960 in the nineties to address this. The software industry was 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:02.840 way ahead of the game. Oh yeah, yeah, I mean 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.880 back by you know, I think few people were on 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:11.000 top of it. Certainly by a lot of people had 0:15:11.040 --> 0:15:13.800 already kind of corrected the problem, right, So the software 0:15:13.840 --> 0:15:16.840 that was being produced from that point going forward had 0:15:16.840 --> 0:15:19.480 already addressed it. Now, granted, there was still software that 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:22.800 was out previously that had this old code in it, 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:26.320 but the new code coming out of the software industry 0:15:26.360 --> 0:15:29.800 had had adjusted for this kind of problem. But there 0:15:29.800 --> 0:15:32.640 were other industries that were lagging behind. And in fact, 0:15:32.720 --> 0:15:37.600 according to one study, uh the cap Gemini America consulting 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:40.960 firm did a study. They found that the state and 0:15:41.000 --> 0:15:45.000 federal government systems were the furthest behind. And when you 0:15:45.040 --> 0:15:47.880 think of all the information that state governments and federal 0:15:47.920 --> 0:15:51.400 government here in the United States requires to operate, things 0:15:51.480 --> 0:15:56.880 like taxes that are dependent upon or infrastructure. Infrastructure, yeah, 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.680 your water systems, all sorts of stuff that rely on 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:04.160 can puter systems that are run by spy satellites, all 0:16:04.640 --> 0:16:08.840 of the stuff, communications, everything. I mean, there's entire industries 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:12.200 that are dependent either completely or in part on state 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:15.840 and federal systems. All of those were at risk because 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:18.880 they were the first behind. They had the least amount 0:16:18.880 --> 0:16:21.800 of progress on addressing the Y two K problem. Uh, 0:16:22.040 --> 0:16:25.200 such a huge deal that the president at the time 0:16:25.320 --> 0:16:28.720 it was Bill Clinton, assigned the two thousand Information and 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.840 Readiness Disclosure Act into law, and that was designed to 0:16:33.120 --> 0:16:37.440 create a collaborative environment among multiple industries. So that is 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.400 one industry developed the best practices and tools to address 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:44.080 the Y two K problem, it would be there was 0:16:44.120 --> 0:16:47.200 an incentive to share the information across other industries so 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:49.960 that we didn't. It's not a competition, it's it's hey, 0:16:50.040 --> 0:16:52.520 let's all get this done together. Kind of like I 0:16:52.560 --> 0:16:55.200 would like my stuff to continue not being on fire. 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:58.200 How about I give this information to you guys, and 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:00.400 maybe that will decrease the chance that my stuff will 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:04.080 be on fire. In two thousand and that was that 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.920 was a big motivator. As it turns out, helped a lot. 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:09.919 There were other areas of the world that we're also 0:17:10.200 --> 0:17:13.200 being very responsive to this European Commission issued a report 0:17:13.240 --> 0:17:16.240 about Y two K to the European Union member countries 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:18.160 that all kind of got them. On the same page, 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.439 the British government announced that the British military would be 0:17:21.520 --> 0:17:24.480 on hand to assist local police forces in the event 0:17:24.560 --> 0:17:27.480 of emergency services breaking down as a result of the 0:17:27.560 --> 0:17:30.359 Y two K problem. And there there was so much hype. 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.440 I mean, I mean, yeah, well, we'll talk more about 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:36.240 hype in a second. The United Nations held a conference 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:39.720 on it. They were trying to facilitate more sharing of information, 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.760 particularly but you know, that's that's cool, that's that's not hype, 0:17:43.800 --> 0:17:46.719 that's preparedness, right. Well, they were particularly worried about a 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:49.080 lot of regions in Asia that were there were at 0:17:49.160 --> 0:17:52.080 least thought of to be behind the curve on this 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:55.320 on addressing the HIT two K problem. So they wanted 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:57.280 to make sure that everyone in the world had an 0:17:57.640 --> 0:18:01.240 equal chance of catching up, so that they could minimize 0:18:01.280 --> 0:18:03.280 any effects that the Y two K problem. They have 0:18:03.280 --> 0:18:05.200 not keep in mind, this is still at a time 0:18:05.240 --> 0:18:07.440 where no one was really sure what was going to happen, 0:18:07.480 --> 0:18:09.560 at least not on a global scale. There were some 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:11.920 people were saying like, well, you know, this system over 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:15.080 here is probably gonna be okay, because it's not really critical, 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.600 and even even if it were, you know, it would 0:18:17.640 --> 0:18:20.040 just be something that we could adjust by writing a 0:18:20.040 --> 0:18:22.640 couple of extra lines of code to correct that problem 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:24.960 other systems. People were like, I don't know if that 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:27.080 airplane will stay in the air. I mean, that wasn't 0:18:27.160 --> 0:18:31.240 legitimate fear some people. I don't know, Okay, maybe fear 0:18:32.080 --> 0:18:35.679 that people absolutely and and you know, on a on 0:18:35.720 --> 0:18:38.639 a person to person basis, the amount of panic varied 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:41.600 um and problem they were depending on how much media 0:18:41.680 --> 0:18:45.040 they had consumed about it, and excitable they were to 0:18:45.119 --> 0:18:46.679 begin with. I want to say, towards the end of 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:51.199 a lot of the media coverage lent leaned more towards 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:55.920 the satirical and the the kind of jokey world's gonna 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:58.639 end next month kind of stuff, less less of the 0:18:58.680 --> 0:19:02.720 actual fearmonger ring style, and more of the no one's 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.280 really sure, but you know, the worst case scenario could 0:19:05.280 --> 0:19:07.720 be that kind of thing. So it wasn't at least 0:19:07.680 --> 0:19:10.840 as as bad as you know, next month, everything you 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:13.960 know will be different because nothing's going to work, and 0:19:14.040 --> 0:19:17.240 you know, start building your bomb shelter now, Um, you know, 0:19:17.280 --> 0:19:19.359 there weren't a whole lot of serious reports that were 0:19:19.400 --> 0:19:21.040 coming out like that, and I'm sure the Onion had 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.840 a lot of fun with it. We'll hear more about 0:19:23.920 --> 0:19:26.520 the Y two K problem and why it wasn't as 0:19:27.080 --> 0:19:30.800 big a calamity as we were originally expecting, but first, 0:19:30.880 --> 0:19:42.240 let's take a quick break. All right, So we're back now. 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.760 The clock is ticking down. I know you've been waiting, 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.560 waiting all episode to learn what would happen about to 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:52.080 turn to two thousand? What half? Okay, so technically we're 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:53.960 all still here, so I guess we can draw some 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.000 conclusions right off the bat. And and and I mean, 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.200 this event is in our relatively recent path, and it 0:19:58.240 --> 0:20:00.360 was really only years ago. And most of you guys 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:02.600 are probably remembering this, some of you, and some of 0:20:02.680 --> 0:20:04.480 some of you folks who are in maybe middle school 0:20:04.600 --> 0:20:06.600 or whatever. Maybe this is all new to you, in 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:10.480 which case, hey, welcome to the ridiculous panics that the 0:20:10.480 --> 0:20:12.359 rest of the world went through before you were born. 0:20:12.480 --> 0:20:16.320 Your parents were silly. Yeah, So, as it turns out, 0:20:16.800 --> 0:20:18.960 a lot of the work that was being done leading 0:20:19.040 --> 0:20:23.840 up to two thousand was successful, I mean, and there 0:20:23.880 --> 0:20:27.600 was a lot of work. It was uh. One estimate 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:32.840 said that globally the world spent about three hundred billion 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:36.680 dollars that's billion with a B to address the Y 0:20:36.760 --> 0:20:39.880 two K problem, and about just a little less than 0:20:39.960 --> 0:20:42.320 half of that was spent in the United States alone 0:20:43.000 --> 0:20:46.360 to address this issue. And that ranged from everything from 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.159 wide computer networks to like we were saying, microprocessors that 0:20:50.520 --> 0:20:54.400 control things like microwaves, and you know, really in that case, 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:56.679 it was more of testing it to see, you know, 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:00.240 if you were to digitally alter the clock of the sheen, 0:21:00.280 --> 0:21:03.240 would it continue to operate properly that kind of stuff, right, 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:06.520 And and in the most most cases things things were 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:09.840 absolutely fine. And and people people kind of knew that, 0:21:09.880 --> 0:21:11.399 I mean that there was a little bit of this 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:15.399 media frenzy, but um but a p Poles indicated that 0:21:16.400 --> 0:21:20.639 Americans expected minor problems at worst, um but that some 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:24.360 thirty percent had planned stockpiles just in case. Yeah, yeah, 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:26.520 that the food money, that kind of that was. Yeah, 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:29.679 they weren't necessarily creating an armed militia, although there was 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.120 some of that going on too at the time. But 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:33.840