3 ms·

I'm sure it's not how the whole Y2K process was running, it's just how the exact New Year's Eve event was planned. I was personally also on ready-to-go-to-offi

by acqq 10y ago

I'm sure it's not how the whole Y2K process was running, it's just how the exact New Year's Eve event was planned. I was personally also on ready-to-go-to-office stand-by, even not working in Microsoft, but in much, much smaller company. And my team did do a serious work in making the code we were responsible be Y2K proof, we've spent good part of 1998 with that. In short, we've worked for almost a year to make that "nothing serious happened" result possible, in our own domain of responsibility. The highest management understood the problem and the process was properly planned. That "nothing serious happened" for our code is a success story of the quality of the tests we've did and used to fix the real problems. And they did exist. I'm sure there are other HN readers who can tell the similar stories. The computer-related risks are a serious subject. I remember following the news on the New Year's Eve to see what's happening in Japan and Australia. As also "nothing serious" happened there, I was ready to bet that everything will be fine, and that enough other companies also took the subject seriously and acted early enough.

keithpeter 10y ago
I'll admit to a pause for reflection around 9pm UK time (Midnight Moscow time). After that, no worries. ADA has robust time and date libraries.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  I hadn't thought of that as a serious possibility, but a friend and I considered writing a novel on it. The basic idea was that a bunch of US weapons systems wouldn't work due to Y2K - things like ballistic missile navigation. So the US was frantically trying to get all this patched so that they would have a credible defense after Y2K. The Chinese knew this, and launched on New Years Day... ... and completely missed, because they had used borrowed Russian code for their ballistic missile navigation. The Russians had stolen US ballistic missile navigation code, which had the Y2K issue in it.
  - acqq 10y ago
    > I hadn't thought of that as a serious possibility Not serious? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes-was-00000000-for-20-years/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-u... "Launch code for US nukes was 00000000 for 20 years" http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nuke-launch-code-was-never-00000000/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nuk... So it was not actually eight zeros but apparently 6 zeroes and the "key under the doormat" (in the safe, but not really something you needed the president to access, the opposite of what was claimed then).
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      That's all very different from "launch because of a Y2K bug", though...
      - acqq 10y ago
        No technology is perfect, it's always a process. And effectively every computer-related technology has undiscovered bugs. https://around.com/ariane.html https://around.com/ariane.html ""The board wishes to point out," they added, with the magnificent blandness of many official accident reports, "that software is an expression of a highly detailed design and does not fail in the same sense as a mechanical system." (...) (...) really important software has a reliability of 99.9999999 percent. At least, until it doesn't. " The statistics is against that generous number of nines.

by acqq 10y ago

keithpeter 10y ago

I'll admit to a pause for reflection around 9pm UK time (Midnight Moscow time). After that, no worries. ADA has robust time and date libraries.

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
I hadn't thought of that as a serious possibility, but a friend and I considered writing a novel on it. The basic idea was that a bunch of US weapons systems wouldn't work due to Y2K - things like ballistic missile navigation. So the US was frantically trying to get all this patched so that they would have a credible defense after Y2K. The Chinese knew this, and launched on New Years Day... ... and completely missed, because they had used borrowed Russian code for their ballistic missile navigation. The Russians had stolen US ballistic missile navigation code, which had the Y2K issue in it.
- acqq 10y ago
  > I hadn't thought of that as a serious possibility Not serious? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_nuclear_accid... http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-us-nukes-was-00000000-for-20-years/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/12/launch-code-for-u... "Launch code for US nukes was 00000000 for 20 years" http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nuke-launch-code-was-never-00000000/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/01/21/air-force-swears-our-nuk... So it was not actually eight zeros but apparently 6 zeroes and the "key under the doormat" (in the safe, but not really something you needed the president to access, the opposite of what was claimed then).
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    That's all very different from "launch because of a Y2K bug", though...
    - acqq 10y ago
      No technology is perfect, it's always a process. And effectively every computer-related technology has undiscovered bugs. https://around.com/ariane.html https://around.com/ariane.html ""The board wishes to point out," they added, with the magnificent blandness of many official accident reports, "that software is an expression of a highly detailed design and does not fail in the same sense as a mechanical system." (...) (...) really important software has a reliability of 99.9999999 percent. At least, until it doesn't. " The statistics is against that generous number of nines.