I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000

[old_it_geek@techhub.social]

@johnzajac I spent 2 years 1998-2000 remediating mainframe systems to survive Y2K. No breaks, no holidays and no days off (including weekends). Repaired 7 systems by updating and testing the cobol code then testing testing testing testing ….

[old_it_geek@techhub.social]

@__Styx__ @johnzajac Also we fixed acid rain caused by sulphuric acid from coal fired power stations.

[glent@aus.social]

@johnzajac worthwhile pointing out that many websites displayed an impossible time due to a Y2K issue in Perl. The world did not stop.

Also, the consulting companies made out like bandits. They used the concept of Y2K compliance to drive business.

Because of that I am always cautious about Y2K as an analogy.

[burnitdown@beige.party]

@glent @johnzajac websites were not the concern. it was largely financial systems using COBOL, like taxes and payroll, where not fixing the problem would have caused more serious problems. like maybe nobody gets their paycheque cause the dates are wrong.

[c0dec0dec0de@hachyderm.io]

@stanley @johnzajac maybe ten at the outside

[koakuma@uwu.social]

@johnzajac I've been saying myself that disaster avoidance is one of the things where people will shit on you whatever happens

If you succeed and it didn't happen, people will say "you're freaking out over nothing"
If you fail and it did happen, people will say "you're not putting in enough effort to prevent it"

Feels like it makes people to just wait it out until the bad thing actually happens, only then they swoop in so that they may become "heroes", but oftentimes it's too late already

Idk really

[whitequark@mastodon.social]

@__Styx__ @johnzajac what civilization ending event? with no ozone layer at all we'd have to deal with significantly more skin cancer and cataracts. an issue but not at that scale

[natty@astolfo.social]

@whitequark@mastodon.social @__Styx__@piaille.fr @johnzajac@dice.camp I think it'd destroy a large part of the biosphere

[donaldball@triangletoot.party]

@BigHeadMode @johnzajac Some of the popularly imagined risks were extremely silly, but the risk of significant, prolonged disruption to technically advanced state and commercial capabilities was not at all understated.

The worst things you can say about the prep work are that there was some waste and work done using it as an excuse, because of course there was, and that the work done by most technical businesses allowed some freeloaders to skate by without doing much.

[__styx__@piaille.fr]

@whitequark @johnzajac it negatively and in a large but difficult to estimate amount, impact the basis of land and marine food chain.
Plant grows bad or not at all
Phytoplankton diminish or die

https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/health-and-environmental-effects-ozone-layer-depletion

Would it kill all living things in 10 years ? Probably not
Will 9 billion humans stay alive and well nourished for centuries ? Probably not

[geos@toot.community]

@whitequark @__Styx__ @johnzajac
You might be glossing over the seriousness of skin cancer.

[whitequark@mastodon.social]

@geos @__Styx__ @johnzajac no, i just see civilizations as pretty resilient (especially if the countermeasures are well understood and easy to manufacture)

[whitequark@mastodon.social]

@__Styx__ @johnzajac i would be much happier if that page provided citations for the impact on even the (better-studied) terrestrial plants, but my own search turned up a range of conclusions from "the plants we studied are unaffected but we don't know if it generalizes" to "this will require certain cultivars", so i assume they can't. i do agree though that the result will be somewhere in between the two extreme cases you listed

[__styx__@piaille.fr]

@whitequark @johnzajac yeah, doesn't have a good study or climatologist on hand to have more recent + documented source in English
But the main problem of rapid global atmospheric disruption is that
1) we cannot test it in a lab or a representative setting of every land type on earth
2) Once it's set in motion, it's often an unstoppable inertia that may be too quick for nature to adapt

Your example of cultivar is a good one, but some take decade to grow(even more to cross breed, like trees)
And to me if a subset of the population can survive in underground complex on fungi without large animal life above ground
I personally classify it as post apocalyptic

[whitequark@mastodon.social]

@__Styx__ @johnzajac while not detracting from your larger point: the research I was looking at was examining _existing_ African cultivars of rice and looking at what can be done to other ones to make them more UVB-resistant. so in this particular case the adaptations were already there

[extra_special_carbon@mastodon.world]

@johnzajac For this reason, I think we should downplay the 2038 issues. It might just give the world a chance to escape US fascism.

[extra_special_carbon@mastodon.world]

@mpdg @johnzajac Ignore it. Let the stupid fascists pay for it.

[nancylwayne@mastodon.social]

@johnzajac In 1999, I hired techs to Y2K-proof my computer-dependent lab equipment. Money well spent as it likely prevented a world of hurt for my research program. My colleagues did the same.

[johnzajac@dice.camp]

@BruceMirken

The triple punch of water treatment, modern sanitation, pollution controls vaccines, and antibiotics - all either invented or implemented in the 20th century - led to a period of plague-free living that was, quite frankly, longer than at any other period in *human history*.

The world's half-assed non-addressing of the ongoing COVID pandemic betrays as much a failure of experience as it does a failure of imagination when it comes to "how bad" plagues can be.

[johnzajac@dice.camp]

@geos @whitequark @__Styx__

I literally came here to say that