99
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] KaiReeve@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

I grew up in Florida and anytime there was a hurricane coming people would flock to the stores and buy all the generators and bottled water.

It was kind of like that, but in December.

Most people I knew personally legit just ignored it. It was just another doomsday hoax like the Mayan calender scare of 2012. Everybody was talking about it, but nobody actually thought it would be an issue.

[-] UnsafePantomime@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

It wasn't really a hoax. It was a legitimate problem. Lots of software could have broke. It didn't because developers were diligent. There was a long leadtime to New Year's with lots of people working overtime.

[-] KaiReeve@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, I understand that it was a legitimate issue for some industries, but at the social level people were saying that all of the world's nuclear weapons would launch simultaneously and we would enter a post-nuclear apocalypse. At some point a legitimate issue was inflated into a doomsday hoax.

[-] Kernal64@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I mean, in your other post you said you lived in Florida. Are you really gonna take Florida Man's opinion about what would happen at Y2K as a valid one? I'm sure I don't need to tell you that Florida Man doesn't have a great track record on... Well, anything.

[-] CADmonkey@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

It's not that it wasn't an issue, the problem was it was a big problem for certain industries, and executives in those industries (most executives really) are almost completely helpless, and the only thing they understand is money. So there's a problem that an executive can't see. So how do you get Mr. CEO to spend a bunch of money on something he can't see or understand?

You have to scare the hell out of him. Explain that he will lose ALL the money if he doesn't spend this comparatively small amount.

And as a result, many people were able to come together and install updates to systems to keep them from failing. My brother was even one of them, 15 years old and was told to hit "enter" when a given prompt came up. Because of efforts from people like my father, and thousands of others, we get internet posts 23 years later saying it was no big deal.

[-] Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Yep, my father too, the family general store's registers all needed to be updated to new software to keep the dates right, this was actually somewhat important in that rural town before digital book keeping had spread there.

It's crazy how many people had a hand in making sure computers kept working after Y2K.

this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
99 points (89.6% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35822 readers
293 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS