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
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@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.
@burnitdown @glent @johnzajac very few websites were mission critical at that time.
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@burnitdown @glent @johnzajac very few websites were mission critical at that time.
@Colman @glent @johnzajac they were also not going to cause time sensitive things to get really fucked up. you still get paid if Yahoo thinks it's 1975. you might not get paid if your boss' payroll system thinks it's 1975.
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac
I've been telling people that for 26 years. Then they pivot to all the money the consultants made. -
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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac Ah, well, I never had any hope for that after our team getting lectured by a boss about wasting all those company resources on year 2000 research, compliance and issue fixing because it was obvious that nothing had happened.
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac @cstross I was there. We IT guys should be called heroes and her monuments dedicated to us.
By the way, most people doesn’t know the problem wasn’t ‘fixed’. It was patched. We (a bank) still have plenty of data with two digit years. We used a moving window to tackle the problem. And once ‘fixed’, nothing more has been done to finally get rid of it.
Fortunately new developments don’t have ‘the problem’ but I’m not sure about the UNIX timestamp roll out thing in 2038…
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
It seems like people aren't going to understand what civilization does for them until they lose everything.
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac It’s very hard to overcome the allure of “look at all those so-called experts acting like morons, I’m so much smarter than they are because I have Common Sense
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac So true - also applies to the ozone hole where we believed the science and enacted a fix with the Montreal protocol.
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac and vaxxine denial
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@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
TBH "never let a good catastrophe go to waste" is a good rule of thumb, here: use an existing catastrophe to slip in disaster prevention.
Were I more cynical, I would say that political strategists should *plan* disasters to "allow", in order to *use* those disasters to pre-fix much worse disasters by slipping them into the response to the ongoing one.
Like, "Marie, we've identified that all Go Carts will stop working; if we let it happen,can we use that to update our grid infra?"
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@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.
Pointing out that there was one thing that wasn't fixed that didn't destroy the world and that's an argument for not fixing the things that *would* have be catastrophic is...kind of making my point for me?
Also, "there was opportunism" is not really an argument against doing something proactive to prevent disasters, it's an argument against *capitalism*.
A trenchant one, imho.
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@johnzajac and the fucking ozone layer with the Freon and fluor based home and industry gases that had a swift global ban and recycle ! !
This is world civilization ending event that we tackled "well" , and because it doesn't have a 10 episodes docu series in Netflix, it never happened or either is a hoax by big "science"
@__Styx__ @johnzajac Over the last 20 years I've seen the rise of "if I can't google it then it didn't happen" especially when it comes to old tech.
More so as google unhooked more stuff from its search results (usenet, death of geocities, etc.) so all the esoteric nerd shit we thrived on back then goes to dev/null
Then again I'd be in favour of someone broadcasting the BBS documentary on the regular.
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac Next time there's a Y2K problem, you fix it and deploy the fix only after everything fails.
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@johnzajac Next time there's a Y2K problem, you fix it and deploy the fix only after everything fails.
I think the issue with this is that the cascading problems that come from fixing it *after* it hits hard can't be undone nearly as easily as fixing it ahead of time.
Like the long-tail effects of COVID minimizing at a population level, climate change, vaccine denialism, pollution controls, etc.
While I sympathize with accelerationist ethos at times, disasters that would legitimately kill millions that you can prevent are not appropriate disasters to flirt with for clout.
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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.
And the last people who remember WWII are dying, too. Not sanguine about this.
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac I spent so many nights in server racks and under desks
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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
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac well, we were a few 100000 fixing it and at the time, what, 5 Billion people hearing about it.
Our experience that it was real wasn't their experience. The world always is simpler if you're not an expert -
@johnzajac well, we were a few 100000 fixing it and at the time, what, 5 Billion people hearing about it.
Our experience that it was real wasn't their experience. The world always is simpler if you're not an expertWhich, of course, is why I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people about it rather than just letting them make assumptions and be manipulated by cynics.
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I think the issue with this is that the cascading problems that come from fixing it *after* it hits hard can't be undone nearly as easily as fixing it ahead of time.
Like the long-tail effects of COVID minimizing at a population level, climate change, vaccine denialism, pollution controls, etc.
While I sympathize with accelerationist ethos at times, disasters that would legitimately kill millions that you can prevent are not appropriate disasters to flirt with for clout.
@johnzajac Most of the Y2K bugs were banking software. Backup all data, let the Y2K bugs lose people really lots of virtual money, restore the data from backup, run the fixed programs.
Having the option to back up data is not available for things like vaccines. People really die.
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Which, of course, is why I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people about it rather than just letting them make assumptions and be manipulated by cynics.
@johnzajac I know, and sorry for stating the obvious.
I share the frustration.
I just don't think you can teach people compleyity (which is what it is, at the end: predicting the likely behaviour of a complex system and modifying it, if necessary)
For the majority, it will continue to be a black box and an event that didn't happen.
