Y2K

[00:00:01] Astonishing Legends Network.

[00:00:04] Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here.

[00:00:10] But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

[00:00:15] Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Collari.

[00:00:18] And I'm Ed Ficola.

[00:00:19] And this week, we're getting ready to celebrate the new year by looking back, way back to the year 2000.

[00:00:25] Some of you listening may not have been born yet, which, fuck you babies.

[00:00:29] No way, we love it you're here.

[00:00:30] No, we love that you're here.

[00:00:31] You're going to learn about a time in which we were wee lads.

[00:00:37] I was but a wee scared lad of 15 years old when January 1st, 2000 rolled around.

[00:00:43] And while I was plenty worried about a lot of things at that age, girls, bullies, the hair growing weirdly on my upper lip,

[00:00:51] there was one thing I was worried about above all else.

[00:00:54] That a comet was going to hit Jupiter and knock it off course and send it crashing into our planet melancholia style.

[00:01:00] But that's because I was very confused by something dumb I saw on the sci-fi channel that I thought was real, but in hindsight was probably just meant to be a joke.

[00:01:08] The comet actually hit Jupiter in 1994.

[00:01:10] And as far as I can tell, Jupiter stayed in exactly the same spot.

[00:01:13] The real trouble as we approached the new year was brewing in the ones and zeros of the computers that had recently taken over our society.

[00:01:21] Just as we had finished automating our banking systems, hospitals, governments, airlines, trains, boats, supply chains, and every other essential aspect of our daily lives,

[00:01:30] it became clear that the programming that supported that automation was not going to survive the night of December 31st, 1999.

[00:01:37] Which meant the world was going to be in for a very bad time.

[00:01:41] In contrast to every other New Year's panic and doomsday prediction that had gripped society throughout the ages, this one was no joke.

[00:01:48] So pour your champagne, turn back the clocks, and count down from 10, we're about to have a very scary new year.

[00:01:55] What are we?

[00:01:56] Scared.

[00:01:57] When are we?

[00:01:58] All the time.

[00:01:59] Join us.

[00:02:00] Join us.

[00:02:01] Join us.

[00:02:02] Now it is time for...

[00:02:03] Time for...

[00:02:05] Scared all the time.

[00:02:07] Hey everybody, welcome back to Scared All the Time.

[00:02:11] It is nearly Christmas.

[00:02:13] We have had an incredible month.

[00:02:16] We've both written shows, recorded shows, and been named one of Esquire's top podcasts of 2024.

[00:02:24] So Ed, if you would please insert the sound of us tooting our own horn.

[00:02:29] Boop, boop, boop, boop, boop.

[00:02:30] I don't know.

[00:02:30] That's more work for me.

[00:02:32] I'll probably just try and find the sound of someone fanning through a magazine.

[00:02:37] I guess that works too.

[00:02:40] But yeah, we're pretty excited.

[00:02:42] It's very cool.

[00:02:43] Thank you to Esquire for doing that.

[00:02:45] It's an excellent way to start season five, which is happening today.

[00:02:50] You're listening to this.

[00:02:52] This is the beginning of season five.

[00:02:53] A little bit of a wonky schedule because, as you may know, next week is Christmas.

[00:02:58] So we will be taking Christmas off.

[00:03:01] We're back just to hop out again, baby.

[00:03:03] We're jumping between pool and jacuzzi.

[00:03:04] Yeah, we're doing a little polar bear plunge.

[00:03:07] We're jumping in.

[00:03:08] We're getting out.

[00:03:08] But the 26th next week, the day after Christmas, will be our Patreon live show.

[00:03:14] So if you haven't signed up for Patreon, go over there.

[00:03:19] Sign up for one of the tiers that includes the live show.

[00:03:21] And we will be able to see you on the 26th.

[00:03:24] There's a chat.

[00:03:24] People show up.

[00:03:25] It's awesome.

[00:03:26] And I think we're talking about...

[00:03:28] We're going to do it earlier this time.

[00:03:30] Usually we do it at 6 p.m. West Coast time, which is 9 p.m. East Coast time.

[00:03:35] And since it's the day after Christmas and nobody's got anything to do,

[00:03:38] we're going to try rolling one at 3 p.m. West Coast time and 6 p.m. East Coast time.

[00:03:44] Yeah, so nothing to do for Christmas pre...

[00:03:48] Well, I don't know what time you light your candles for Hanukkah,

[00:03:50] but maybe you'll be able to hang out.

[00:03:52] Yeah.

[00:03:52] I think it'll be night two for Hanukkah.

[00:03:53] Yeah.

[00:03:54] Maybe.

[00:03:54] Something like that.

[00:03:55] It comes late this year, I think.

[00:03:56] I think it starts on Christmas this year.

[00:03:58] It's crazy.

[00:03:58] Yeah.

[00:03:59] So, yeah, we're very excited about that.

[00:04:01] We're very excited that you guys are still listening.

[00:04:04] And we are very excited to scare the pants off you in Season 5.

[00:04:08] And if we scare the pants off you, well, the store can't help you out with that.

[00:04:11] But if we scare the shirt off of you, the merch store is open.

[00:04:14] Go replace that shirt with a scared all-time shirt.

[00:04:17] Or there's all sorts of shit people are liking.

[00:04:19] Yeah.

[00:04:20] The store is fucking open.

[00:04:20] Let's get that sound of us tooting our own horn in here again,

[00:04:24] because Ed finished the store.

[00:04:26] As you guys all know, at least at this point, until we can't handle it on our own,

[00:04:32] Ed is designing the merch, fulfilling the merch, printing the merch, doing it all by hand to guarantee that you guys get the best quality product for the cheapest possible price.

[00:04:43] Which is why we don't have cups yet or glassware.

[00:04:46] We're trying to not rely on drop shippers for the time being.

[00:04:50] And we haven't found, you know, glassware that we like, that we feel like we can get for a good price and all that.

[00:04:56] So if you're looking for a pint glass or a coffee mug, so am I.

[00:05:00] But hang tight.

[00:05:01] It's just, it's not there yet.

[00:05:03] But eventually we'll figure it out.

[00:05:05] In the meantime, we've got shirts.

[00:05:06] We've got bags.

[00:05:07] We've got stickers.

[00:05:08] We've got buttons.

[00:05:08] We've got pins.

[00:05:09] I think there's some like test shirts that might add.

[00:05:12] Are those still up there?

[00:05:13] Some smarty pants.

[00:05:14] Yeah.

[00:05:14] I have a section called discounts and rarities.

[00:05:17] And some smarty pants have already been jumping on that.

[00:05:20] But basically, if I make something and I fuck it up or we decide to not go with that design, I've just been putting those up on the site at cost.

[00:05:27] So whatever it costs us to make is what you get it for.

[00:05:30] And so people have been jumping on that.

[00:05:32] They're pretty smart.

[00:05:32] And there may or may not be some glassware that we, you know, did some tests on that'll show up there too.

[00:05:39] Yeah.

[00:05:39] But they're one of one.

[00:05:40] They're one of one.

[00:05:41] Like once that person buys it, they're gone.

[00:05:43] Shirts, if you want to smell Ed and you want him to wear the shirt before he sends it to you, he can do that.

[00:05:49] No, I'm not going to do that.

[00:05:51] But because they're all different sizes.

[00:05:52] What if someone orders like an extra small?

[00:05:54] I can't.

[00:05:54] I can't wear that first.

[00:05:55] That's true.

[00:05:57] That's funny you mentioned that.

[00:05:58] I do have my original prototype shirt that maybe we'll auction off or something.

[00:06:02] Yeah.

[00:06:02] The one that I wore for like six months when I was talking about getting the store done.

[00:06:06] Yes.

[00:06:06] So lots of exciting stuff right before Christmas.

[00:06:09] We hope you guys are having a great holiday season.

[00:06:12] Holiday season.

[00:06:13] Beginning of break wherever you're at in your life when you hear this.

[00:06:17] But before we dive into the show, we thought we would kick off season five with a little bit of five star review corner.

[00:06:24] Which if you've been listening to this show for a while, you already know.

[00:06:27] You leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts or on our website and we might read it.

[00:06:33] So we've got a couple five star reviews lined up.

[00:06:36] Let's read some of these.

[00:06:37] And you know, it's actually we're getting a lot of five star reviews, which we love.

[00:06:40] But we also got I don't know if we mentioned this in our horn tooting section that may or may not by the time you hear this have a sound effect.

[00:06:46] Um, Jesus.

[00:06:49] Also past 500,000 listeners, I think while we were off.

[00:06:52] So yeah, a lot to be thankful for before the year closes out here and a lot to anticipate and get excited for in in season.

[00:07:00] Well, I don't know in the new year in 2025.

[00:07:02] But let's go on to the five star corner.

[00:07:04] Sorry, everybody.

[00:07:05] It's all.

[00:07:05] So here we go.

[00:07:06] We've got a five star review from T Rath underscore five stars title can confirm.

[00:07:13] The review says as someone who has been infected with flesh eating bacteria and the subsequent panic from a brown recluse bite years later survived a plane crash and had anesthetic wear off during a reconstructive surgery.

[00:07:26] I'm sorry.

[00:07:27] What?

[00:07:27] All of this is this person.

[00:07:28] I assume that reconstructive surgery was putting them back together after being in the plane crash.

[00:07:33] Maybe.

[00:07:34] Um, I can confirm that those are all every bit as scary as you say.

[00:07:39] Still waiting on the lottery, hoping to find out soon.

[00:07:42] Any of those episodes would earn you your five stars.

[00:07:44] But then you said the words Project Bloop Book.

[00:07:47] Oh, yeah.

[00:07:47] Perfect.

[00:07:48] Six stars.

[00:07:49] No notes.

[00:07:50] Wow.

[00:07:50] So that is our first six star review from T Rath, the indestructible man or woman.

[00:07:54] Who definitely, yeah.

[00:07:56] Who's living out our show in a way that I'm hoping is not like a checklist they've designed around our show.

[00:08:02] Yeah.

[00:08:03] That's the beginning of a schlock movie, I feel like.

[00:08:05] Yeah.

[00:08:05] Jeez.

[00:08:06] Like some some greasy companies.

[00:08:08] Like if you can do basically we're just describing Fear Factor.

[00:08:11] That was a show for many years.

[00:08:12] Yeah.

[00:08:12] But nobody, nobody.

[00:08:13] They didn't crash anyone in a plane in Fear Factor.

[00:08:16] This T Rath is is living on the edge.

[00:08:18] T Rath for Christmas.

[00:08:19] I hope or whatever holiday you celebrate.

[00:08:22] I hope you don't leave the house.

[00:08:23] I hope you don't light a fire in for Santa.

[00:08:28] Just don't do anything.

[00:08:29] Just sit on the couch.

[00:08:30] Watch some TV.

[00:08:31] Enjoy whatever relaxation you can get.

[00:08:34] You have earned it.

[00:08:35] Let the lottery come to you.

[00:08:37] Yes.

[00:08:37] Ed, what would you like to hit?

[00:08:39] All right.

[00:08:39] Yeah.

[00:08:39] Let's see here.

[00:08:40] The next one we got.

[00:08:41] Here's one from Ghost Petal.

[00:08:44] It's five stars and it's the subject is very brave.

[00:08:48] This is written kind of wonky.

[00:08:49] We'll see if there's a reason for that.

[00:08:51] Wow.

[00:08:51] These guys are so brave.

[00:08:52] Not scared of anything at all.

[00:08:53] Not here.

[00:08:54] Nope.

[00:08:54] Just some very brave friends talking about scary things and sleeping very well at night.

[00:08:59] If you listen, then you too can be not scared of anything ever.

[00:09:03] Just don't think about the big one or human sacrifice or flesh eating bacteria and you will

[00:09:06] be fine.

[00:09:08] So what you guys don't see behind the scenes is that I can barely read.

[00:09:12] So this took me 25 times to get through.

[00:09:15] It's written in a bunch of weird lowercase and uppercase.

[00:09:18] Chris, do you want to tell me why that is?

[00:09:20] Yeah.

[00:09:20] Well, it kind of looks like a ransom letter.

[00:09:24] But if you add up all the capitalized letters, they spell scared all the time.

[00:09:31] There it is.

[00:09:31] We love to see it.

[00:09:32] I mean, I hate to try and read it, but we love to see it.

[00:09:34] We do love to see it.

[00:09:34] It's a cool secret message hidden away in the praise.

[00:09:39] Let's see here.

[00:09:41] Oh, we're going to go way, way into the past.

[00:09:44] Just like this episode.

[00:09:45] This is way back in August.

[00:09:47] So, hey, if we don't read your review when you leave it, we still go back and dig up old

[00:09:51] ones.

[00:09:51] So don't get discouraged if we don't read it.

[00:09:54] It doesn't mean it wasn't good.

[00:09:54] We just have a lot of them.

[00:09:56] So five stars.

[00:09:57] Love these guys.

[00:09:58] I love listening to this podcast.

[00:10:00] They make the time of vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen pass by quickly.

[00:10:04] I thoroughly enjoyed the poison episode while I smoked a cigar and sipped on a little

[00:10:08] poison myself.

[00:10:08] Elijah Craig, small batch bourbon.

[00:10:11] Delicious.

[00:10:13] After a fun, long, hard day of teaching fourth grade, it's wonderful to unwind to new episodes

[00:10:19] of scared all the time.

[00:10:20] Heart eyes emoji whiskey glass.

[00:10:23] So whatever little fourth grade brats are driving this person to drink, they're a wonderful

[00:10:28] teacher.

[00:10:29] Cut them a break.

[00:10:30] Obviously have great taste in shows too.

[00:10:33] Obviously.

[00:10:33] All right.

[00:10:34] Well, we've been talking to people long enough.

[00:10:36] So let's just get into it.

[00:10:38] Without further ado, why 2K?

[00:10:40] So big question, Ed.

[00:10:42] Where were you on New Year's Eve 1999?

[00:10:44] I don't know.

[00:10:46] You don't remember?

[00:10:47] I'm with my parents.

[00:10:48] I was 16.

[00:10:50] Do you remember if people were nervous?

[00:10:52] Was there attention in the air?

[00:10:53] Not in my house.

[00:10:54] I remember the news.

[00:10:56] I remember the local news going to an ATM.

[00:11:02] Right.

[00:11:03] And it was like, hey, I'm John Johnson.

[00:11:05] And I'm at the SATM to see if it spits money out at midnight.

[00:11:09] And it was like, I'm here with these five other people who are here for the free money

[00:11:13] spitting show.

[00:11:15] And I remember that being, I remember vividly that being a thing.

[00:11:18] Okay.

[00:11:19] That like local news went to ATMs to see.

[00:11:22] But there was nobody in my family who was like, this is an issue.

[00:11:26] Yeah.

[00:11:27] I have to admit, I shouldn't give you a hard time because I actually don't have a particularly

[00:11:31] strong memory of New Year's Eve 1999 either.

[00:11:34] I know my mom kept the newspaper.

[00:11:36] Yeah.

[00:11:36] To this day, my mom still has like January 1st, 2000.

[00:11:40] Yeah.

[00:11:40] Like newspaper.

[00:11:41] Yeah.

[00:11:42] My family kept the newspapers too.

[00:11:44] But I was surprised when I was going back to the memory bank, trying to remember where

[00:11:49] I was and what I was doing that I think it was pretty boring all things considered.

[00:11:53] I also-

[00:11:54] I think we were all just so bummed about episode one being a disappointment.

[00:11:57] We were still just grieving what Star Wars had become.

[00:12:01] Yeah.

[00:12:02] And like I said, I do remember being scared of this comet thing, which I think I'd somehow

[00:12:06] conflated with Y2K.

[00:12:07] And I was deep into an X-Files phase at this point.

[00:12:10] So I think I was probably looking at everything through the lens of alien invasion, end of the

[00:12:15] world, conspiracy, Armageddon.

[00:12:17] But I don't know if my family even had a desktop computer in 1999.

[00:12:21] Oh, we did.

[00:12:22] So I mean, we had one soon after, but I think in 1999, my dad had one at his office and my

[00:12:29] uncle was a big Macintosh guy.

[00:12:32] So they had a Mac at their house.

[00:12:33] But computers weren't really part of my life yet.

[00:12:37] Computers were part of my life, but they were in a computer room.

[00:12:40] Right.

[00:12:40] Or at school.

[00:12:41] I guess they had computers at school.

[00:12:43] Well, absolutely they had them at school.

[00:12:43] We were playing Word Muncher even before that.

[00:12:45] Yeah.

[00:12:46] I just meant like the personal computer in your home was the computer in your home is what

[00:12:52] I'm getting at.

[00:12:53] Right, right.

[00:12:53] That we had to go to the computer room.

[00:12:55] Me and Comic Book Steve would play like games on his computer.

[00:13:00] Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?

[00:13:01] Yeah.

[00:13:02] Shit like that.

[00:13:03] Or like Sim City or the X-Files had an amazing like multi-disc game around that time or a

[00:13:08] little after.

[00:13:09] Yes.

[00:13:10] That we would like go to the computer room and fuck up, you know, the phone for a

[00:13:15] while.

[00:13:15] Right.

[00:13:16] Online.

[00:13:16] But that game wasn't online.

[00:13:18] But yeah, I mean, I guess neither of us, I guess we're old enough to be thinking of

[00:13:21] the way that computers were impacting society as a whole.

[00:13:25] It was something we were maybe.

[00:13:26] Computers, people who were fucking sitting at the ATM also weren't thinking about that.

[00:13:29] Right.

[00:13:30] They just heard that the banking system used two numbers instead of four for the year.

[00:13:36] Yeah.

[00:13:36] And it's going to fuck up society, which is weird to say.

[00:13:40] And I'm going to let us continue into the episode, but this might come up later.

[00:13:44] But I do this all the time.

[00:13:45] So who cares?

[00:13:46] Which is that crowd strike thing that happened like a month or two ago, two months ago, where

[00:13:52] like that Windows update just derailed society.

[00:13:56] Yeah.

[00:13:57] Was worse than anything that happened to Y2K.

[00:13:59] But I think companies were actively trying to get ready for Y2K.

[00:14:04] Yes.

[00:14:04] We're going to we're going to get into.

[00:14:05] Yeah.

[00:14:05] But I think in terms of your home, if your dad's a plumber, your mom's a police dispatcher,

[00:14:10] I just don't think that they thought of anything about Y2K.

[00:14:13] And I can ask them, but I think it was more just a novelty that the news made into a novelty.

[00:14:18] Yeah.

[00:14:19] I do know my grandparents who were adventurers to the core planned a trip.

[00:14:23] I think it was to Japan on a flight that left the night of December 31st because the tickets

[00:14:29] were super cheap because people were afraid to fly.

[00:14:31] You said they were adventurous.

[00:14:32] Sounds like they're just cheap.

[00:14:33] Well, no, they weren't afraid of, you know, they were like, hey, cheap tickets.

[00:14:38] They weren't afraid that the plane was going to go down.

[00:14:40] They thought it would be exciting.

[00:14:41] Was that a thing that people thought planes would go down?

[00:14:43] Yeah.

[00:14:43] Oh, wow.

[00:14:44] I mean, my grandparents didn't, but the news was the idea that all these systems were going

[00:14:49] to go down was definitely out there.

[00:14:50] My grandfather was a flight navigator in the Korean War.

[00:14:53] So facing a potentially dangerous situation while on a plane wasn't really something that

[00:14:58] he was unexposed to.

[00:15:00] Fair.

[00:15:00] I like to imagine his plan was that if everything went to shit, he was going to help land the

[00:15:04] plane manually, like without a transponder.

[00:15:07] You know what they say, the navigator is the one who wants to take the wheel.

[00:15:09] He probably shouldn't be the guy.

[00:15:11] What I actually remember most from that night is the sense of relief after the ball dropped.

[00:15:16] The power stayed on in New York City.

[00:15:18] No air raid sirens went off.

[00:15:19] And I mean, at that point, the world pretty much must have known things were good because

[00:15:23] half the planet had already rolled over into the new millennium without a hitch.

[00:15:26] That's true by the time New York dropped.

[00:15:27] So the sigh of relief was really just coming from me, I guess.

[00:15:30] And the news.

[00:15:31] And the news.

[00:15:32] For any of our listeners who don't know what we're talking about, we should probably

[00:15:35] lay out what the Y2K bug was and why it had so many people concerned.

[00:15:40] So here's the basic issue.

[00:15:43] Back in the early days of computing, memory was incredibly expensive, like ridiculously expensive.

[00:15:49] In 1966, and I'm basing these numbers off a chart that I found on the internet that I

[00:15:55] believe is accurate from where I sourced it.

[00:15:58] It's in the show notes.

[00:15:59] In 1966, one terabyte of storage would have cost about $8.3 billion.

[00:16:05] Not that anyone could conceive of.

[00:16:08] I mean, maybe they could conceive of a terabyte, but no one had any idea what you'd use a terabyte

[00:16:13] for.

[00:16:13] Storage, not memory.

[00:16:14] Storage, not memory.

[00:16:15] Gotcha.

[00:16:15] They were happy with the idea of a megabyte or two of storage.

[00:16:20] Yeah.

[00:16:20] What was a hard disk?

[00:16:21] Like, was that like 1.4 megabytes?

[00:16:23] I remember downloading like naked ladies and being like, I can put three naked ladies on

[00:16:29] this floppy disk or whatever.

[00:16:30] I don't, that's a good question.

[00:16:32] I do.

[00:16:32] I want to say floppies were something like 1.5 or 2.5 megabytes.

[00:16:36] Well, floppy is like the floppy disks that you ran Word Muncher off of.

[00:16:40] Right.

[00:16:40] But like hard, what was it?

[00:16:41] Hard disks?

[00:16:42] The ones that were like the three point, whatever.

[00:16:44] Yeah, yeah.

[00:16:44] 3.5 inch.

[00:16:45] Yeah.

[00:16:46] Those were the ones that were more prevalent in our lives.

[00:16:48] I think those were like one point something megabytes.

[00:16:50] Right, right.

[00:16:50] But in 1966, computer scientists were happy with a megabyte or two, which is one, one

[00:16:56] millionth of a terabyte.

[00:16:58] So if you do that math, a megabyte would have cost about $8,300.

[00:17:03] For comparison today, you can get a one terabyte hard drive, that inconceivably large amount

[00:17:08] of storage space for like 50 bucks or a hundred bucks.

[00:17:11] No, you're crazy.

[00:17:12] It's definitely 200.

[00:17:13] Wait, one terabyte?

[00:17:14] Yeah.

[00:17:15] Oh yes.

[00:17:16] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:17:16] I'm thinking of like four terabytes would be like 120 or something.

[00:17:19] But still, you know.

[00:17:20] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:17:21] It's that Moore's law of it all.

[00:17:23] Yeah.

[00:17:23] The numbers don't really matter.

[00:17:25] The specific numbers don't really matter.

[00:17:26] So the next hour we'll be doing numbers, guys.

[00:17:28] The point is that because of how expensive storage was, programmers had to save space in

[00:17:34] their code everywhere they could.

[00:17:35] When computers were still programmed with punch cards, which is how basically every computer

[00:17:41] was programmed until the 1970s.

[00:17:43] Yeah, I've seen nine to five.

[00:17:44] You had 80 characters or columns per card that you could fill in.

[00:17:48] So basically, imagine a Scantron, like a Scantron test from school.

[00:17:52] I don't know if kids even have those anymore.

[00:17:54] We have them the lottery out here.

[00:17:55] Yeah, the lottery tickets.

[00:17:57] It's, you know, you've got a bunch of bubbles in rows.

[00:17:59] And I don't know exactly how the technical aspects of it worked, but you were basically

[00:18:04] writing binary code by hand, filling in one bubble per row.

[00:18:08] Oh shit.

[00:18:09] Is that kind of what was happening?

[00:18:11] Yes, you were writing code by hand, one bubble at a time.

[00:18:15] And your program would ultimately consist of a stack of hundreds of these cards that would

[00:18:19] be compiled and fed into the machine.

[00:18:22] It's been my experience that every possible sequence you can do was a fail.

[00:18:27] I don't know why that was, but it seemed like everything I put in was a C plus or lower.

[00:18:33] Well, maybe, maybe, uh, did you study?

[00:18:37] No, man, I don't got to study to speak robot, dude.

[00:18:40] Beep, boop, bop.

[00:18:40] I was saying beep, boop, bop, putting in C, D, B, A, C, B.

[00:18:45] So basically with that little room to encode your information, anytime that a programmer

[00:18:51] wanted to use a date, it only made sense to leave the first two digits, the one nine off

[00:18:58] of the date.

[00:18:59] So 1965 would be stored in your program as just 65.

[00:19:05] Yeah.

[00:19:06] But also the way that we traditionally at the time wrote dates, when you're filling out

[00:19:10] your check, you're like one 21 77, you're not writing 19.

[00:19:16] Right.

[00:19:16] So this worked fine until we started approaching the year 2000.

[00:19:20] And the fear was that when 99 rolled over to zero zero for 2000, computers wouldn't know

[00:19:27] if that meant 2000 or 1900.

[00:19:30] And this wasn't just about your desktop computer getting confused.

[00:19:33] This was about every computer system that used dates, which is every computer system,

[00:19:37] banking, power, air traffic, nuclear power plants, all the critical infrastructure in

[00:19:42] the world.

[00:19:42] And by confused, I don't mean that the concern was that computers were going to be like confused

[00:19:48] the way they were going to go.

[00:19:48] Hey, it's 1900.

[00:19:49] I shouldn't exist yet.

[00:19:51] You know, like it wasn't that kind of confusing.

[00:19:53] It was confused broadly in the sense that computers are programmed to follow linear time.

[00:19:59] So if one instant it's 1999 and the next instant, it's unclear if time has moved forward

[00:20:04] or backwards, the computer doesn't know what to do next.

[00:20:07] Time and dates are baked way, way, way deep into computer code.

[00:20:12] It's why sometimes if your laptop or desktop gets confused about what time zone you're in,

[00:20:16] you'll get a warning that says some programs or apps might stop working.

[00:20:20] It's because everything relies on knowing where the computer is in time.

[00:20:26] It's also when you like build a computer, your motherboard has like a watch battery,

[00:20:31] one of the flat batteries that its only job is to keep the clock going.

[00:20:35] So every computer I've ever built, that's there.

[00:20:39] And so even if your computer has been off for 12 years, it's got this like lithium battery

[00:20:44] just keeping the clock going.

[00:20:46] Oh, I never knew that.

[00:20:47] I mean, it makes a lot of sense because if you change those numbers, it would be like

[00:20:52] if you suddenly change the value of pi.

[00:20:54] The computer isn't like a fan of circles, but it needs pi to be constant for math to make sense.

[00:21:02] This is sort of unrelated, but I put the video in the show notes.

[00:21:05] It's this video I love on YouTube where a programmer changes the value of pi in the game Doom

[00:21:10] and gets the game to generate levels with non-Euclidean geometry.

[00:21:15] And it's crazy.

[00:21:16] It's mind-blowing.

[00:21:17] The amount of stuff that like they use Doom as a test for is unbelievable to me.

[00:21:22] A lot of people, I think, consider it kind of like the perfect code.

[00:21:25] It can be run very simply.

[00:21:26] It's apparently...

[00:21:27] I mean, that guy made plenty of money.

[00:21:28] I mean, yeah, Carmack's a genius.

[00:21:30] I actually...

[00:21:30] John Carmack is a guy who I love listening to him speak on topics that I don't understand

[00:21:37] what he's talking about because there's something about the tenor and tone of his voice that is

[00:21:42] soothingly nerdy and confident and just full of curiosity.

[00:21:46] And sometimes when I'm going to sleep, I'll just put on a John Carmack lecture about how

[00:21:50] to work with, you know, some weird form of algebra when you're building a game level and

[00:21:57] just like listen to him.

[00:21:58] The way he talks I find compelling.

[00:22:01] Did you see him like he was hired by Meta for their like Metaverse stuff?

[00:22:05] Yes.

[00:22:06] And like very publicly was like, this is a bad idea.

[00:22:09] Yeah.

[00:22:09] And still cashing the checks.

[00:22:11] Yeah.

[00:22:11] Yes.

[00:22:12] He's awesome.

[00:22:15] Hey guys, Chris here.

[00:22:17] And I just wanted to take a quick second to shout out HelloFresh.

[00:22:19] You've heard us talk about them before, but this holiday season, they have become a lifesaver

[00:22:24] for me.

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[00:23:03] It's a little gift to yourself.

[00:23:04] And HelloFresh makes that gift possible.

[00:23:07] Ed and I, as you guys probably know, have been trying to bank episodes before my kid gets

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[00:23:45] All one word.

[00:23:45] Didn't think I'd show up in this ad, did you?

[00:23:47] Well, I'm here and I would love for you to use that code.

[00:23:52] My first big question when looking at this whole Y2K problem is how the hell did this

[00:23:59] situation get so bad?

[00:24:01] Like I know people in the early days of computer programming didn't necessarily realize how

[00:24:05] much computers are going to change the world, but we're not talking about a super long

[00:24:10] timeframe.

[00:24:10] It seems really short-sighted to assume no one would be using computers in like 50 years,

[00:24:16] you know, which maybe isn't an entirely fair criticism on my part, because I think many

[00:24:21] programmers did assume computers would be used in the future, but they also assumed coding

[00:24:26] languages would change.

[00:24:27] The old ways would be thrown out.

[00:24:29] So who really cares what the code looks like now?

[00:24:31] Yeah.

[00:24:31] Like I'm working on a punch card, but in my mind, it's like one day we're going to have

[00:24:35] floating cubes that we point a laser pointer at.

[00:24:37] And then that will tell us, you know, what to do for the next year.

[00:24:41] I think the constantly changing nature of computers and programming, especially in those early

[00:24:47] days led to a sense of like, you know, we're building as we go and we're fixing problems

[00:24:53] as we go.

[00:24:53] Oh, that's still the Silicon Valley bullshit, like move fast and break things.

[00:24:57] Yeah.

[00:24:57] Pretty just destroyed America.

[00:24:58] Even people who were thinking ahead.

[00:25:00] Not America, but the world.

[00:25:02] Even people who were thinking ahead were caught off guard by the speed of computing progress.

[00:25:06] According to how to geek dot com hardware capabilities improved.

[00:25:11] There were faster processors, more RAM and computer terminals replaced punch cards and tapes.

[00:25:16] Magnetic media, such as tapes and hard drives were used to store data and programs.

[00:25:20] However, by this time, there was a large body of existing data.

[00:25:24] So even when software was renewed or replaced, the data format remained unchanged.

[00:25:30] Software continued to use and expect two digit years.

[00:25:34] As more data accumulated, the problem compounded.

[00:25:37] The body of data was huge in some cases.

[00:25:40] And so all new software had to pander to the data, which was never converted to four digit

[00:25:46] years.

[00:25:47] Sure.

[00:25:47] That makes sense to me.

[00:25:48] They're essentially building this giant mountain of software in the bottom load stone is wrong

[00:25:54] and no one has the ability to really go back and fix it because it's not pressing enough.

[00:25:59] Well, it's just also that's the infrastructure that we are being told to build all software around.

[00:26:04] Yeah.

[00:26:05] So it was an issue of compounding its speed.

[00:26:06] The code written in the early days was built upon and built upon in such frenetic pace.

[00:26:10] There was never any time to look back and fix a problem that large.

[00:26:13] I am one of the culprits who created this problem.

[00:26:16] A former economic consultant testified to Congress in 1998.

[00:26:20] I used to write those programs back in the 60s and 70s and was so proud of the fact that

[00:26:24] I was able to squeeze a few elements of space by not having to put one nine before the year.

[00:26:29] That ex-consultant was Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve.

[00:26:34] Wild scene, dude.

[00:26:35] There was a secondary issue at play too.

[00:26:37] One that I never knew about until I started researching this episode.

[00:26:40] The year 2000 was a leap year and many computers, even leap year savvy systems,

[00:26:45] didn't take this into account.

[00:26:48] If a year is divisible by four, it's a leap year.

[00:26:51] If it's divisible by 100, it isn't.

[00:26:54] But according to another not so widely known rule, if a year is divisible by 400, it is also a leap year.

[00:27:01] Much of the software that had been written to this point hadn't applied that 400 rule.

[00:27:06] And therefore, it wouldn't recognize the year 2000 as a leap year.

[00:27:10] So as a result, how software would perform on February 29th, 2000 was also unpredictable.

[00:27:17] So there was a double whammy in the coding problem there.

[00:27:20] Of course, some people noticed that the industry was driving full speed at a brick wall and tried to sound the alarm as early as the 1970s.

[00:27:26] One guy, a programmer named Peter DeJager, joined IBM in 1977 and quickly realized there was a problem with the digital calendars.

[00:27:35] DeJager said,

[00:27:36] In 1977, I started as an operator with IBM.

[00:27:39] First day on the job, I noticed that our systems were using two-digit years.

[00:27:42] When I brought it up to management, management said,

[00:27:45] Don't worry about it.

[00:27:46] It isn't going to happen for another 23 years.

[00:27:48] So relax.

[00:27:49] I did.

[00:27:50] So thanks for fucking nothing, Peter.

[00:27:53] Yeah, for real, dude.

[00:27:54] That's a real fucking future us problem.

[00:27:56] To Peter's credit, he didn't completely forget about it.

[00:27:59] In 1993, he wrote a paper called Doomsday 2000 that was published in the September 6th, 1993 edition of Computer World magazine and became one of the growing numbers of people trying to sound the alarm about this.

[00:28:11] He also would be accused of trying to make a quick buck because he became so well known, gave so many paid speeches and seminars that the American Stock Exchange even launched an index of the stocks of Y2K related businesses.

[00:28:24] That it called the DeJager Year 2000 index.

[00:28:28] So this guy was potentially receiving some kickbacks.

[00:28:31] He was getting paid for speeches.

[00:28:32] It was in his favor to push this as a big problem.

[00:28:37] But it was.

[00:28:38] It was a big problem.

[00:28:38] Yeah, but it is also interesting.

[00:28:40] I can see how you get in this.

[00:28:41] There's a thing called deadlines.

[00:28:44] And so everybody's got a deadline.

[00:28:45] You're making a fucking video game.

[00:28:47] You're making an app, you know, Microsoft Bob for any of my Microsoft Bob heads out there.

[00:28:52] Do you know what Microsoft Bob is?

[00:28:54] Microsoft Bob.

[00:28:55] Okay, well, hit us up in the comments or reach out to me.

[00:28:58] I'd love to hear about fellow Microsoft Bob heads out there.

[00:29:02] But I'm saying no matter what you're making, you have these deadlines to deliver.

[00:29:06] Yeah.

[00:29:07] And you are building it all on the infrastructure that, you know, at its keystone base level is using those two digits or whatever the issues that they would need to resolve are in the year 2000.

[00:29:19] You're not going to be like, hey, here at Activision, here at Microsoft, here at whatever.

[00:29:24] We're going to slow down the 20,000 units we owe to completely, you know, in this fiscal quarter, rewrite the fucking wheel or whatever.

[00:29:35] And so I can see how you can have as many guys saying in 1993, this is going to be a problem.

[00:29:41] Well, we have stockholders and we're not going to do anything about it.

[00:29:44] Well, and I think that's something, you know, one of the scary things about Y2K is that, yes, disaster.

[00:29:50] The climate change precursor.

[00:29:51] Yeah, well, I think climate change is going to be might.

[00:29:54] I think it's there's a very good shot.

[00:29:56] Climate change will be the thing that gets humanity in the end because it is a overwhelmingly large problem on a long time scale that requires so much cooperation over such long periods of time that require immediate desires to not be met.

[00:30:12] That I think the way that we have structured our world is truly incapable of solving for it.

[00:30:19] It is capable of ameliorating the worst of the problem when it arrives.

[00:30:23] But the problem with something like climate change is it's not like Y2K where you just change a couple digits and it's expensive and you push through it.

[00:30:31] And it's not like Y2K in the sense that there's three companies that lead the entire world in making that change.

[00:30:38] It's you're asking every country in the world to do.

[00:30:40] And once the big problems arrive, the domino effect has already started.

[00:30:44] So there are certain elements of, you know, you can pump less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

[00:30:50] You can curb certain pollutants.

[00:30:52] But at the end of the day, as that temperature starts rising, it's causing problems in the oceans.

[00:30:57] It's causing problems in the food chains.

[00:30:59] It's causing problems in the climate.

[00:31:01] And it's really hard to pull the brakes on those systems once they start spinning out of control.

[00:31:06] But that's another episode.

[00:31:08] And we're not a couple of Greta Thunbergs over here.

[00:31:11] But it does seem like kind of an obvious or apt comparison to be made between, you know, that and in this situation.

[00:31:19] Yeah.

[00:31:19] Like if you just spend five minutes to be like, yeah, what's that thing that's...

[00:31:22] I'll say this.

[00:31:23] That like a lot of people can say we got 23 more years on.

[00:31:25] I'll say this.

[00:31:26] If you're a person who feels that, yes, climate change is real, because I think pretty much everyone agrees climate change is real.

[00:31:33] The argument is, is it human caused or not?

[00:31:35] I think you should be concerned that we've all agreed that it's real and that the consequences are dire.

[00:31:43] Since the 70s.

[00:31:44] Yeah.

[00:31:44] And that even if we aren't causing it, you would still think that it would be good to start pulling the brakes on anything we are doing to contribute to it.

[00:31:55] Because it's a thing that we need.

[00:31:57] It's it would be like saying if you're speeding down the highway and your friends driving the car and the car moves into an oncoming lane and a truck's coming at you being like, well, it's not my fucking problem.

[00:32:08] He's driving.

[00:32:08] You know, it's like, yeah, sure.

[00:32:11] Maybe you're not causing this problem directly, but it would behoove you to pull the wheel the other way.

[00:32:17] Yeah.

[00:32:17] And the fact that we aren't doing that, I think really should concern everybody, even if you don't think climate change is a human caused problem.

[00:32:26] I mean, I don't know what you're getting on about.

[00:32:27] This is golden in their hills, man.

[00:32:29] Yeah.

[00:32:29] Yeah.

[00:32:31] DeJager was one of the most prominent and media friendly Y2K alarmists, but he was far from the only one.

[00:32:36] He'd actually been beaten to the punch by almost a decade.

[00:32:39] In 1984, authors Jerome and Marilyn Murray published Computers in Crisis, which was the first authoritative guide to the millennium bug coding problem.

[00:32:48] They would follow this up in 1996 with.

[00:32:51] We told you so.

[00:32:52] They would follow this up in 1996 with the year 2000 computing crisis, a millennium date conversion plan, which, according to the jacket description, quote, provides a concrete plan for IS developers and consultants scrambling to beat the clock before their systems collapse.

[00:33:07] Not as good of a title as Doomsday 2000, but I'd buy it.

[00:33:11] It sounds pretty helpful.

[00:33:12] Collapsing the world for dummies.

[00:33:15] That was already taken.

[00:33:17] According to Forbes, by the end of the 1980s, people in the Social Security Administration were beginning to find that they, too, couldn't calculate figures for after the year 2000.

[00:33:26] In 1994, Social Security started going through its millions of lines of relevant computer code to try to fix the problem.

[00:33:34] The Defense Department ran into similar difficulties and began a similar project.

[00:33:38] A senior defense official said at one point, quote, if we built houses the way we build software, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

[00:33:46] Oh, my God.

[00:33:48] Which is a great line.

[00:33:50] Yeah.

[00:33:50] That is a great line.

[00:33:51] I wish that senior defense official had not chosen to remain anonymous because he or she is a poet.

[00:33:57] Yeah, that's great.

[00:33:58] The world was going to potentially get thrust into the dark ages.

[00:34:02] Millions could die and something had to be done.

[00:34:04] But nobody seemed to really be taking this all that seriously until.

[00:34:08] Because at this time, it's like, what's the internet?

[00:34:11] Pets.com.

[00:34:11] Yeah.

[00:34:12] Yeah.

[00:34:12] Nobody's thinking about the computers that keep the trains running on time.

[00:34:17] At that time, the computer and computer code, you're just thinking about eBay, pets.com.

[00:34:23] Right, right.

[00:34:23] Bubble, like tech bubble stuff.

[00:34:25] What really helped get people focused on this is...

[00:34:29] Porn.

[00:34:29] Is the term...

[00:34:30] Porn always helps.

[00:34:32] Well...

[00:34:32] With technology, at least.

[00:34:33] I'm sure the porn coders used four-digit years.

[00:34:37] 6969.

[00:34:38] That's all they had.

[00:34:39] The term Y2K or Y2K bug actually became a bit of a meme in and of itself.

[00:34:46] And that helped awareness of the problem catch on.

[00:34:50] According to an article in Slate, I found this really interesting.

[00:34:53] So they tracked down the etymology of the term Y2K.

[00:34:56] Okay.

[00:34:57] And they tracked it back to precisely Monday, June 12th, 1995 at 1131 p.m.

[00:35:03] Oh my God, what?

[00:35:04] At the middle of the night?

[00:35:06] Because...

[00:35:06] What time zone?

[00:35:07] The term was delivered in the middle of what they say is an otherwise unintelligible email.

[00:35:12] And I couldn't find what they meant by that.

[00:35:14] I've sent a lot of emails at 1131 p.m. that were unintelligible for sure.

[00:35:18] It was delivered in the middle of an otherwise unintelligible email.

[00:35:21] A contribution to an internet discussion group of computer geeks exploring the millennium bug

[00:35:25] long before most people were surfing the World Wide Web.

[00:35:29] The efficiency of the term is undeniable.

[00:35:32] Y for year, the number 2, and K for thousand from the Greek kilo.

[00:35:37] And it eventually caught on.

[00:35:38] But its creator remained unidentified until someone performed the equivalent of a computer

[00:35:42] paternity test by searching the discussion group's archives for the term's first use.

[00:35:47] That's so crazy to give a paternity test to a virgin.

[00:35:51] Ed.

[00:35:54] Great.

[00:35:55] Great.

[00:35:58] The father of the phrase is a 52-year-old virgin.

[00:36:03] A 52-year-old Massachusetts programmer named David Eddy, who's now...

[00:36:07] This is quoted from the article, who's now the president of a Y2K consulting business.

[00:36:12] Eddy says, people were calling it year 2000, CDC, which stood for century date change, FADL

[00:36:20] for faulty date logic, and other contenders, but Y2K just came off my fingertips.

[00:36:26] Slate also asked a linguist, a woman named S.B.

[00:36:29] Master, herself, great name, to examine the term to explain its popularity.

[00:36:34] And she came up with six reasons the term Y2K caught on.

[00:36:38] For starters, she said Y2K is efficient since it uses just three characters.

[00:36:43] And someone's like, you know what else is efficient?

[00:36:44] Using two characters for the year.

[00:36:46] And that turned out to be a big fucking problem, S.B.

[00:36:48] Yeah, that's how we got here, you dumb idiot.

[00:36:51] Similarly structured acronyms such as IBM, NBC, and GTE are a staple these days.

[00:36:57] Second, it's gratifyingly symmetrical, with the two consonants hugging that number in the

[00:37:01] middle.

[00:37:01] Third, the whole tradition of combining letters and numbers is a venerated techie convention.

[00:37:06] Think R2D2 and C3PO.

[00:37:08] The date glitch issue has obvious technical associations.

[00:37:11] Thus, there is a strong connection between the term's appearance and its meaning.

[00:37:15] And then we go even deeper.

[00:37:17] And I find this fascinating.

[00:37:19] She also points out that when Y2K is analyzed as poetry, one sees a satisfying alternation

[00:37:25] of long and short syllables.

[00:37:27] A diphthong, Y, followed by a monothong, 2, and a final concluding diphthong, K.

[00:37:34] By contrast, an alternative like Y2M, which would replace the K for kilo with the more ubiquitous

[00:37:41] Latin M for mile, ends with a redundant monothong.

[00:37:45] Oh, boy God.

[00:37:46] You can't have that.

[00:37:47] No.

[00:37:47] Master praised Y2K for its superior sound production, noting that the term features an elegant plosive

[00:37:54] progression, moving from soft Y to hard 2 to hardest K.

[00:38:02] Y2M retreats lamely with a soft M.

[00:38:05] Finally, Master lauded the term for the way its articulation produces a satisfying movement

[00:38:10] to the inside of the mouth.

[00:38:12] The term begins with a labial sound, the Y being formed with the lips.

[00:38:16] The 2 is alveolar.

[00:38:19] It is produced at the middle of the mouth when the tongue touches the roof.

[00:38:23] And finally, the K is velar, forming in the back of the mouth.

[00:38:26] God, this is unbelievable.

[00:38:27] I mean, this is someone who, if I met them at a party and they explain this to me, and

[00:38:32] depending on the night I was having already, either the least pleasant person I've ever

[00:38:36] met or I'm marrying them the next morning.

[00:38:38] I know.

[00:38:39] Like, it's so crazy.

[00:38:40] There's a lot in there that's very activating for me.

[00:38:43] So, ultimately, though, what SB Master is saying here, I think, is that we can thank

[00:38:48] Y2K's smooth mouthfeel for saving the world.

[00:38:51] Yeah, the fucking, the sound of Y2K has riz.

[00:38:55] The sound of Y2K has world-saving riz.

[00:38:58] Yeah.

[00:38:59] And it's crazy that David Eddy, like, look, I think the Y2K bug probably would have been

[00:39:05] addressed even without Y2K catching on culturally.

[00:39:08] But it is really fascinating that if not for Y2K catching on, like, who knows?

[00:39:15] Who knows if people would have taken it seriously?

[00:39:17] But it was so easy to put on the news, put on books, throw everywhere.

[00:39:20] I mean, I'm a fucking optics guy through and through.

[00:39:24] Like, it's all about optics.

[00:39:25] It's all about the audio version of optics.

[00:39:28] I am definitely, yeah, whatever the least path of resistance for a visual or audio to

[00:39:34] get to the masses I'm into.

[00:39:37] This is really making me think of, do you remember, like, Katie Couric?

[00:39:39] There's, like, a clip of, like, Katie Couric and some other fucking news idiots talking

[00:39:44] about, like, email and they don't know what to call the at symbol?

[00:39:48] Yes.

[00:39:49] The A, the curvy A with the tail.

[00:39:51] The curvy A with the tail.

[00:39:52] Yeah.

[00:39:52] The squiggles.

[00:39:53] It's like, yeah, you eventually had to land on at for that and they'd landed on Y2K for

[00:39:59] the same reason.

[00:40:00] Yeah.

[00:40:01] So, because this phrase caught on, it's flams, flams.

[00:40:05] Flim flams.

[00:40:06] Because this phrase caught on and it's flames were fanned to a large degree.

[00:40:10] The flames received a law degree?

[00:40:12] I cannot say flames fanned.

[00:40:15] The phrase caught on and was pushed heavily by a media hungry for a good millennial end

[00:40:22] of the world story.

[00:40:24] Yeah, they needed it.

[00:40:24] And it could not, for whatever reason, be more than three letters.

[00:40:27] Well, it helped.

[00:40:29] It helped.

[00:40:29] On ABC News, correspondent Forrest Sawyer introduced a Y2K segment this way.

[00:40:34] Notice it's not ABCN.

[00:40:36] They only went with three letter acronym and then onto news.

[00:40:40] Surf through the internet these days and you keep coming across a strange word.

[00:40:44] Pedophile.

[00:40:45] No, I don't think that took off until a little bit later on the internet.

[00:40:48] We had age.

[00:40:49] We had age sex location.

[00:40:50] We had ASL.

[00:40:51] That's true.

[00:40:51] T.O.

[00:40:52] Toewaki.

[00:40:53] It stands for the end of the world as we know it.

[00:40:55] I'm sorry.

[00:40:56] What's the T.O.

[00:40:57] Toewaki?

[00:40:58] T-E-O-T-W-A-W-K-I.

[00:41:01] T.O.

[00:41:02] Toewaki.

[00:41:02] And that came up all the time?

[00:41:04] Well, I think this may have been.

[00:41:09] The World, REM.

[00:41:11] That's my main go-to for end of the world.

[00:41:14] It really just shows that three letters is better than.

[00:41:17] They, REM probably had a great 1999, huh?

[00:41:19] Oh, shit.

[00:41:20] Maybe.

[00:41:20] That song probably, they pulled in some residuals on that.

[00:41:23] I bet you they're still getting checks from that shit.

[00:41:26] Yeah.

[00:41:26] T.O.

[00:41:27] Toewaki stands for the end of the world as we know it, and it refers to the effects of

[00:41:30] a tiny, seemingly innocuous computer glitch.

[00:41:32] A tiny glitch, a lot of people say, could literally blow the lights out on civilization.

[00:41:37] These kinds of reports, in turn, stimulated the publishing industry, which started churning

[00:41:42] out thousands of books with Y2K in the title.

[00:41:44] These are some of my favorites.

[00:41:46] Lie Y2K.

[00:41:48] Why the alleged end of the world year 2000 computer crisis is really just a hoax.

[00:41:52] Oh, wow.

[00:41:53] That would do well today.

[00:41:55] Y2 Kitchen, the joy of cooking in crisis.

[00:41:58] And Millennium Bug, gateway to a cashless society.

[00:42:01] I mean, all of those have basically come true.

[00:42:04] The, like, lie 2K is your, you know, pick your conspiracy, CDC, climate change, whatever.

[00:42:09] The, like, whatever to a cashless society is your Bitcoin story.

[00:42:13] Yeah.

[00:42:13] And then the kitchen one is, I don't know, like, doomsday meal prep stuff, which we

[00:42:17] see a lot of now.

[00:42:18] Sounds like how I was cooking when I lived in my less than studio apartment with my hot

[00:42:23] plate that I cooked all my food on.

[00:42:25] You're a fucking animal.

[00:42:26] There's a whole section of religious texts, too, including Y2K Trojan Horse.

[00:42:31] The Bible says volumes about the United States of America.

[00:42:35] The Y2K Millennium Bug, a balanced Christian response.

[00:42:40] Y2K equals 666.

[00:42:42] And spiritual survival during the Y2K crisis.

[00:42:45] Everybody's out here doing their Wernke shit.

[00:42:47] They're all just trying to make a bug.

[00:42:49] Yeah.

[00:42:50] Forbes also notes that amid all this, the fact that the year 2000 marked the second millennium

[00:42:54] since the birth of Christ and that the book of Revelation could be read to suggest

[00:42:58] that a millennium meant the beginning of the global end times.

[00:43:00] That fact hardly went unnoticed.

[00:43:03] Wait, what do you mean?

[00:43:03] Jesus was born on 110?

[00:43:07] That's so crazy that they just so definitively were like, it marks the second millennium since

[00:43:12] the birth of Christ.

[00:43:13] Well, the, what is it?

[00:43:15] The Roman calendar that planted the flag on when Christ was born and that became CE.

[00:43:20] I don't know who did that.

[00:43:21] Some fucking dude who was like, I'm sick and tired of counting down.

[00:43:24] Oh, hey, do you think there was a Y2K moment then where it was like, bro, we got Jesus on

[00:43:29] the way and we didn't fill out any of our forms for like the common era for like after, like

[00:43:35] after he was born, dude, like we're, we're fucking still filling our checks with BC.

[00:43:39] We're going to, we're fucked.

[00:43:41] Possibly.

[00:43:41] I mean, it's very funny to imagine.

[00:43:43] I do think broadly that yes, I mean like end of the world panics happened even before

[00:43:48] Christ.

[00:43:49] So a hundred percent, but the idea that it's with the birth of this kid in a manger where

[00:43:54] it was like, we only have 16 months.

[00:43:57] I talked to this wise man or whatever.

[00:44:00] And he said, I'm like, what are you getting all that fucking golden mer for?

[00:44:03] He's like, oh, I got this kid I got to meet.

[00:44:05] And it was like, what about you?

[00:44:07] Have you changed any of your invoices?

[00:44:09] And it's like, no, I haven't done shit, man.

[00:44:12] That's why I couldn't get a room in the end.

[00:44:13] Cause the end was, they were fucking, they had no stationary.

[00:44:16] Yeah.

[00:44:17] They couldn't, they couldn't book a room.

[00:44:18] They couldn't use their old digits.

[00:44:20] The internet was done.

[00:44:25] This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

[00:44:27] I don't know if you know this, but the holidays are for getting cozy.

[00:44:30] Whether you're gathering with a thousand family members or just curling up next to the fire

[00:44:34] with yourself and a cup of cocoa, which to my ears sounds way better.

[00:44:38] It's time to take a breather and reset for the coming year.

[00:44:40] I always set aside at least a couple hours over the month of December to put on some

[00:44:44] Christmas music, pull up a good Yule log video.

[00:44:47] Like this one I found on YouTube.

[00:44:48] It's great.

[00:44:49] It's kind of like animated Disney 1950s themed.

[00:44:53] There's not a lot of animation going on.

[00:44:54] There's two animated cats sleeping on the couch and the Christmas lights are twinkling and

[00:44:59] the Christmas music sounds like it's coming from the other room.

[00:45:02] It's great.

[00:45:03] I love it.

[00:45:03] But point is I put on some Christmas music and write Christmas cards to friends and family.

[00:45:07] Maybe do a little online shopping.

[00:45:08] It helps me slow down and really think about the people I love.

[00:45:11] It's a better way to celebrate than just rushing from one thing to the next, especially

[00:45:15] when most of your family lives as far away as mine.

[00:45:17] So I'm not sure how you like to stay cozy during the holidays, but one way to bring yourself

[00:45:22] comfort that won't change with the seasons is to give yourself the gift of therapy.

[00:45:26] This show definitely wouldn't exist without the work I've put in around my fear of rejection,

[00:45:31] my fear of putting myself out there and whether or not I'm good enough.

[00:45:34] So if you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

[00:45:37] It's entirely online designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule.

[00:45:42] All you got to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and

[00:45:45] you can switch therapists anytime for no additional charge.

[00:45:48] So find some comfort this December with BetterHelp.

[00:45:50] Visit betterhelp.com slash s-a-t-t today to get 10% off your first month.

[00:45:57] That's betterhelp.com slash s-a-t-t.

[00:46:05] This is why I think the Left Behind series also became so popular in the late 90s.

[00:46:10] These books, if you aren't familiar with them.

[00:46:12] I remember when they were like a hit.

[00:46:13] These, they were everywhere.

[00:46:15] They were like goosebumps or anamorphs for like Christian parents.

[00:46:19] They were in our house.

[00:46:19] They were, they were.

[00:46:20] And what's crazy is they were explicitly evangelical, but they were so popular that I remember seeing

[00:46:25] them.

[00:46:26] Kirk Cameron.

[00:46:26] I remember seeing them on the shelves.

[00:46:28] There was a Catholic bookstore in Hershey that we would go to and they sold Left Behind books,

[00:46:32] even though it was, you know, they're not.

[00:46:35] The idea of the rapture isn't a Catholic thing.

[00:46:38] It's an evangelical Christian thing.

[00:46:40] Yeah, but it bleeds.

[00:46:42] It bleeds into everything.

[00:46:43] If you aren't familiar with these books, they weren't explicitly about Y2K, but the

[00:46:47] vibes were basically the same.

[00:46:49] They're mostly about vampires.

[00:46:50] They're not about vampires at all.

[00:46:51] But if they don't know, you just said if they're not familiar, we can tell them whatever

[00:46:54] we want.

[00:46:54] Well, I was going to tell them that instead of the year changing and sending the world into

[00:46:58] chaos, a bunch of the world gets raptured and plunges the world into chaos.

[00:47:02] Which, by the way, if anyone's into something like that, but not the same at all, my favorite

[00:47:05] TV series of the last fucking two decades is The Leftovers.

[00:47:09] Yeah, Leftovers.

[00:47:10] Leftovers is basically left behind for grownups.

[00:47:13] Yeah, go watch it.

[00:47:15] It's amazing.

[00:47:16] I actually started watching it with my dad and we didn't have time to get past like episode

[00:47:19] three.

[00:47:19] So I'm sure he's confused about where that show is going.

[00:47:23] But it's phenomenal.

[00:47:24] But so it paints a biblical picture of a societal collapse after all these people are raptured.

[00:47:30] And there are a lot of things in it.

[00:47:32] Planes falling out of the sky, hospitals shutting down, trains crashing.

[00:47:36] This is the Left Behind.

[00:47:37] Right.

[00:47:38] Left Behind.

[00:47:38] And so it's a very similar picture to what Y2K was painting, just a different cause.

[00:47:43] And of course, your friend and mine, televangelist Jerry Falwell, had to get on the action.

[00:47:48] He asked, could this be God's way to bring revival to America?

[00:47:52] Could this be a way to make more money?

[00:47:53] In a video called A Christian's Guide to the Millennium Bug.

[00:47:58] Quote, stop and think about it.

[00:47:59] When water, food, electricity, gas, oil, money, none of them are available and nowhere to get

[00:48:04] them, the people who have those things will be in mortal danger of attack from those who

[00:48:07] don't.

[00:48:08] Oh, whoa.

[00:48:08] That's weird.

[00:48:09] Shouldn't it be the people who have those things should be giving it away to people who

[00:48:12] don't?

[00:48:12] Yeah.

[00:48:12] I think Jesus, even if Jesus had had checks with the proper dates on them in CE, he would

[00:48:19] have helped businesses stay afloat.

[00:48:20] That guy wasn't like, oh, you know what?

[00:48:22] I couldn't help but notice we're out of wine.

[00:48:24] Guess I'll sell you some wine.

[00:48:26] Now he was like, I'll make things we have like water into wine and we can all have it.

[00:48:31] We can all get fucked up.

[00:48:32] Yeah.

[00:48:32] And have a great time at this wedding.

[00:48:35] Dude, Jesus was a vibe, man.

[00:48:36] People keep forgetting that.

[00:48:38] He was.

[00:48:38] They're using his name in all the wrong ways, dude.

[00:48:40] Luckily, calmer minds prevailed.

[00:48:42] Reverend Steve Hewitt, the editor of Christian Computing Magazine, took to traveling the

[00:48:48] country, counseling calm among the pious.

[00:48:50] He said, I'm at war to stop the panic.

[00:48:52] Windows 98 is not a spiritual issue.

[00:48:55] Pentium 2 is not a spiritual issue.

[00:48:57] This guy rules.

[00:48:58] Yeah.

[00:48:59] I can imagine him shouting that from the pulpit like a...

[00:49:02] God, do you remember Pentium being like a fucking word?

[00:49:05] People were like, it's like Intel inside.

[00:49:08] Like boom, boom, boom.

[00:49:09] Yeah.

[00:49:09] Yeah.

[00:49:10] And like Pentium 2 is just like the marketing terms and stuff that were just really pervasive

[00:49:15] in our society.

[00:49:17] Yeah.

[00:49:17] It was everywhere.

[00:49:18] It was a vibe, but it was also crazy.

[00:49:19] There was a huge wave of turn of the millennium paranoia and anxiety in pop culture too.

[00:49:24] The X-Files obviously was still very popular and it's spinoff Millennium.

[00:49:28] Which I love, which everyone who listens to this show knows I love.

[00:49:30] Well, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about Millennium and I know it's a particular

[00:49:33] favorite of yours.

[00:49:35] Let's talk about it in the context of Y2K.

[00:49:38] I mean, they're the Millennium group.

[00:49:40] They believe that some crazy shit's going to happen at the Millennium and they get a series

[00:49:46] of pretty much almost every...

[00:49:48] Well, really the episodes are about not petty crimes, but just normal shit.

[00:49:52] But there's a bigger canon-y thing going on where all the stuff they do is in service of

[00:50:01] the world ending.

[00:50:02] Is it worth watching?

[00:50:03] The first season is.

[00:50:05] Yeah.

[00:50:05] And the second season's interesting.

[00:50:07] It's like X-Files writers took it over.

[00:50:09] I mean, Chris Carter started it, but I'm saying like other X-Files writers took it over and kind

[00:50:13] of made it a little silly.

[00:50:14] And then they tried to kind of recorrect the trajectory of the show in season three and

[00:50:20] didn't...

[00:50:21] I wouldn't say they were successful in that.

[00:50:24] And then the show either got canceled or just ended without a great resolution.

[00:50:30] They did try to wrap it up.

[00:50:31] They did an X-Files episode.

[00:50:33] Yeah.

[00:50:33] In X-Files, they did like a crossover, which was not great.

[00:50:36] I thought Millennium was just rad.

[00:50:38] It was pretty half-baked in a lot of ways.

[00:50:41] And the Millennium group, it was never really clear what was going to happen.

[00:50:45] And then it got like very religious at times where they were like, oh, there's a competing

[00:50:49] Millennium group who got the like wood from the cross, like Jesus's crucifixion cross.

[00:50:55] And that was going to...

[00:50:57] And then I don't remember what it was going to do because I think they just dropped that

[00:51:00] storyline.

[00:51:01] But I don't know.

[00:51:02] I really liked it a lot.

[00:51:05] Looking at it in the year 2023 when I kind of revisited it, it was kind of a wild show

[00:51:11] for the time.

[00:51:12] It was just kind of like...

[00:51:13] That was back when Fox had fucking balls, dude.

[00:51:16] But yeah, what questions do you have about it?

[00:51:18] I couldn't be that.

[00:51:19] It's not like...

[00:51:20] They never really got to the year 2000, so it's hard to express whether or not the world

[00:51:24] blew up for them.

[00:51:26] No, that's fair.

[00:51:27] I was just curious.

[00:51:28] But I will say none of the show was about computer code.

[00:51:30] It was all about very religious bent.

[00:51:32] Right, right, right, right.

[00:51:33] And a lot of the pop culture and paranoia around the turn of the Millennium because of the idea

[00:51:38] of some sort of a religious doomsday or Armageddon happening at the turn of the Millennium.

[00:51:46] I think a lot of that...

[00:51:47] There was a lot of crossover.

[00:51:50] There was also, I found in my research, a TV movie made for NBC called Y2K The Movie.

[00:51:56] Oh my God, there's a colon in the movie?

[00:51:58] Yeah.

[00:51:59] Or Countdown to Chaos in some markets.

[00:52:02] I put the trailer in the show notes, but it's about exactly what you think it's about and

[00:52:09] was made and broadcast specifically to play on people's fears about the turn of the Millennium.

[00:52:14] I have no memory of this movie, although there is one shot in the trailer of a plane skidding

[00:52:18] off the runway that hit nostalgia heroin.

[00:52:22] I was like, oh shit, I remember that one shot I remember seeing in this trailer and being

[00:52:27] like, whoa, that looks so cool.

[00:52:29] Are you sure you're not just thinking of that guy who made that really impressive plane lands

[00:52:34] on a highway on top of a car video in his basement?

[00:52:38] I'm pretty sure I'm not thinking of that.

[00:52:40] That changed our industry?

[00:52:41] Put that in the show notes.

[00:52:42] I don't know what video this is.

[00:52:44] Oh my God, there was a video.

[00:52:45] I had to download it on a real media player file and it was a plane landing on a highway

[00:52:52] and it either didn't have front wheels or the front wheels landed on top of an SUV and the

[00:52:58] SUV was like, oh shit, I have to help land this plane by being its front wheels.

[00:53:03] Oh, I do vaguely remember this video.

[00:53:05] Yeah, it was made by a postage stamp size file.

[00:53:09] But it was made by a guy and it ended up being this thing where industry transforming of the

[00:53:16] shit we can do with computers.

[00:53:17] Holy shit, that looked like a plane landing on a highway.

[00:53:20] Is that the guy who went on to make Sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow?

[00:53:24] Dude, maybe.

[00:53:25] Which is a movie that I don't recommend any of our audience listens to.

[00:53:28] But that was one of the first fully CG world movies with real actors in it.

[00:53:33] Yes.

[00:53:34] Yeah, Sky Captain in the World of Tomorrow was absolutely groundbreaking, just not in storytelling.

[00:53:38] Yeah.

[00:53:39] But anyway, we'll link it in the show notes.

[00:53:42] It's definitely a synapse that started firing in my brain to remember that existed while talking

[00:53:47] to you right now.

[00:53:48] But I do remember this now that you're talking about it.

[00:53:50] He was like, oh, you have to understand.

[00:53:52] There was a time when people were very crazy about computer power where it was like, oh,

[00:53:58] we can't do this with a computer.

[00:53:59] But then some guy in Idaho decided to daisy chain six G4 Macs together and was able to render

[00:54:07] this file in his basement.

[00:54:09] Like, it was an awesome time to be.

[00:54:11] That guy's probably got a lot of money now.

[00:54:12] Even if he didn't direct that movie I was talking about, he probably did all right.

[00:54:15] He probably figured something out.

[00:54:16] Like, we'll get into it later.

[00:54:17] But the Lonely Island has more to do with you guys being on YouTube right now than you

[00:54:23] know.

[00:54:23] Are we going to get into that later?

[00:54:25] No, I just meant in life.

[00:54:27] If someone wants to ask me a question about my personal knowledge on that, like, yeah,

[00:54:32] YouTube owes a lot to the Lonely Island making videos on their website.

[00:54:35] Yeah.

[00:54:36] Well, anyway, Y2K, the movie, was scheduled to air November 21st, 1999.

[00:54:42] Did it have any major stars?

[00:54:44] No, it did not.

[00:54:45] Didn't even have, like, schlock stars?

[00:54:47] Ah, I think it had, like, Eric Dane, maybe?

[00:54:50] Hold on.

[00:54:51] No, Eric Dane wouldn't be popular until, like, I worked with him on a movie called Burlesque.

[00:54:56] I'm pretty sure he was popular from Grayson.

[00:54:57] It had to be.

[00:54:58] Oh, no, sorry.

[00:54:59] I'm thinking of...

[00:55:00] Eric Stoltz.

[00:55:00] So, it stars Ken Olin, who I think is who I was thinking of, Joe Morton, and Kate Vernon.

[00:55:06] I've heard of none of these people.

[00:55:07] They were all, like, TV actors.

[00:55:10] Gotcha.

[00:55:11] Zach Ward was in it.

[00:55:13] I remember Zach Ward.

[00:55:13] Ronnie Cox.

[00:55:14] I love Ronnie Cox from a lot of schlock, but also RoboCop.

[00:55:18] Yep.

[00:55:19] Yep.

[00:55:19] Yeah.

[00:55:20] Pretty anonymous cast here, I would say.

[00:55:22] They couldn't get Michael Moriarty?

[00:55:23] No.

[00:55:24] This does seem like something he should have been in.

[00:55:30] It sparked a controversy after some utility and banking industry trade associations, including

[00:55:35] the Edison Electric Institute, asked TV stations not to air the film out of concern that it

[00:55:40] would spark a panic.

[00:55:41] Oh, my God.

[00:55:41] It doesn't seem like they had much to worry about, though, because I found an IMDB review

[00:55:45] of the film with the title, I'm a Y2K expert, and found this movie to be, capital letters,

[00:55:51] lame, bland, irritating, and stupid.

[00:55:53] Oh, my God.

[00:55:54] The review, and this is one of the fun things about going back and, you know, all the research

[00:55:59] I do on this show, or most of it, tends to be about pretty distant history.

[00:56:02] It's really fun to be able to go back and research modern history that's still archived

[00:56:07] on a big website.

[00:56:08] So, this review was written November 23rd, 1999.

[00:56:12] So, just two days after the movie aired.

[00:56:15] And two days after that guy spent his fortune every dime he had on Beanie Babies.

[00:56:19] Yeah.

[00:56:21] So, this review says, quote,

[00:56:23] I wrote the primary Y2K software used by thousands of programs at one of the world's largest insurance

[00:56:28] companies.

[00:56:29] I was really looking forward to seeing this movie and found it very disappointing.

[00:56:33] This movie was poorly done and lacked suspense.

[00:56:35] Virtually no thought or creativity went into making this movie.

[00:56:39] Some parts were just plain stupid.

[00:56:41] For example, a person from Washington comes to sit in on a high-level meeting the day before

[00:56:45] Y2K, and the Washington person has to be told what Y2K is.

[00:56:49] Obviously, that was done for the audience, but almost any layman knows what Y2K is, and it

[00:56:54] seemed foolish having someone on a high-level committee that didn't have a clue about Y2K.

[00:56:59] Another really stupid thing was the nuclear power plant that was getting ready to blow up.

[00:57:04] The guy was running around in a room with exposed rod cores.

[00:57:07] In real life, I think he would have been killed by radiation.

[00:57:10] Some of the dialogue also seemed unnecessary and somewhat irritating.

[00:57:13] In particular, the lady that comes into the nuclear power plant and says she knows what the

[00:57:17] problem was, but does she tell people what it is?

[00:57:19] No.

[00:57:20] She wastes a lot of time talking in riddles.

[00:57:22] If a plant is going to blow up in 60 minutes, I really doubt if someone would be that stupid

[00:57:27] and waste time beating around the bush.

[00:57:29] Wow.

[00:57:29] This guy took to the internet to fill this out in 1999.

[00:57:32] The technical problems had lame excuses, poor setups, and unrealistic events.

[00:57:36] It's obvious that the writers of this movie didn't bother to ask programmers for input,

[00:57:40] which I think is maybe his real sore spot is like, hey, my phone didn't ring, buddy.

[00:57:45] I'm one of the guys who authored the Y2K.

[00:57:47] This is pretty much a poor excuse of a science fiction movie, all fiction, very little fact.

[00:57:51] This is just a bad, poorly done movie.

[00:57:54] But maybe that's good.

[00:57:55] If it was done well, it might have been taken more seriously and caused unrealistic concerns

[00:57:59] about Y2K.

[00:58:00] However, if you are looking for entertainment or realistic info about Y2K, then don't

[00:58:05] watch this movie.

[00:58:06] It's a waste of time.

[00:58:07] So this was not the, what was it, British movie about the nuclear weapons that like shocked

[00:58:12] the world the day after?

[00:58:14] The day after, that's a Nicholas Meyer movie.

[00:58:17] Yeah.

[00:58:18] Is that the one about the...

[00:58:19] It's about nuclear weapons?

[00:58:20] Yeah.

[00:58:21] I think it's the day after.

[00:58:22] It was the most watched television movie ever made.

[00:58:25] Yeah.

[00:58:25] It scared the shit out of everybody.

[00:58:27] Yeah.

[00:58:27] Was it McDowell?

[00:58:28] I think, yeah, Malcolm McDowell.

[00:58:30] Or no, Roddy McDowell.

[00:58:31] No, it's Malcolm McDowell.

[00:58:32] It was Malcolm McDowell?

[00:58:33] And you look it up.

[00:58:34] I think it's Malcolm McDowell.

[00:58:36] And it's directed by Nicholas Meyer, written by Nicholas Meyer.

[00:58:40] I think Mary Steen Merger might be in it.

[00:58:44] Starring Jason Robards, Jo Beth Williams, Steve Guttenberg, John Lithgow, Amy Madigan.

[00:58:49] Not a single person we mentioned.

[00:58:50] Was that hot?

[00:58:51] You sure is the right movie?

[00:58:52] The day after?

[00:58:53] Yeah, no.

[00:58:54] First aired on November 20th, 1983 on ABC Television Network.

[00:58:57] Postulates a fictional war between NATO forces in Warsaw Pact over Germany that rapidly escalates

[00:59:01] into a full-scale nuclear exchange.

[00:59:03] Who wrote and directed it?

[00:59:03] Nick Meyer.

[00:59:04] Oh, wow.

[00:59:04] We just got the cast completely wrong.

[00:59:06] Hold on.

[00:59:07] I'm going to look it up.

[00:59:07] What are we thinking of?

[00:59:08] I'm looking it up right now.

[00:59:09] Malcolm McDowell.

[00:59:10] The movie that they met on.

[00:59:12] Oh, you're thinking of Time After Time?

[00:59:14] I'm thinking of Time After Time.

[00:59:15] You're thinking of Time After Time.

[00:59:16] It's not the same movie at all.

[00:59:17] No.

[00:59:18] Very different tone, concept, execution.

[00:59:21] How are the posters?

[00:59:22] Do they look the same?

[00:59:22] No, nothing.

[00:59:23] Nothing at all.

[00:59:24] I don't know why we got there.

[00:59:25] But have you ever seen Miracle Mile?

[00:59:28] No.

[00:59:28] That's a great fucking movie.

[00:59:29] That's one of those forever on my list.

[00:59:31] I know I need to watch it.

[00:59:32] It's a great movie.

[00:59:33] It actually is all shot in Miracle Mile, which rules.

[00:59:36] And it's a great nuclear scare movie.

[00:59:39] Yeah.

[00:59:40] Well, bad movies or not, as the millennium drew to a close, Y2K was on everyone's mind.

[00:59:45] The world started getting nervous.

[00:59:47] Gun sales spiked.

[00:59:48] Doomsayers hawked things like gas masks and radiation kits.

[00:59:51] Worried people stashed batteries and food.

[00:59:53] In February 1999, the United Nations set up an international Y2K cooperation center.

[00:59:59] In December 1999, which seems cutting it a little close.

[01:00:03] Yeah, that's right there.

[01:00:04] The United States and Russia opened a joint center for year 2000 strategic stability to try to avert accidental missile launches or nuclear attacks.

[01:00:12] Oh my God.

[01:00:13] I love this.

[01:00:13] They're saying that the computers that control.

[01:00:16] The nuclear weapons.

[01:00:17] Yeah.

[01:00:17] Yeah.

[01:00:18] We're making sure like that's something we address.

[01:00:20] Well, to this day, we use like floppy disks.

[01:00:23] I know.

[01:00:23] Which is some people argue is actually smart because it makes them harder to like.

[01:00:27] Yeah.

[01:00:27] Have you ever.

[01:00:28] Hack?

[01:00:28] Yeah.

[01:00:28] Have you ever seen fucking Battlestar Galactica?

[01:00:31] Yeah.

[01:00:31] The more modern one, that miniseries that turned into a television series people loved.

[01:00:36] Yeah.

[01:00:36] The 70s is what I don't give a shit about.

[01:00:37] But that's the whole thing is like the one ship that didn't upgrade is the one that survives.

[01:00:42] Oh, right.

[01:00:42] And I very much agree with that mentality.

[01:00:45] Well, yeah, except I mean, I think some of our nuclear control computers are like so old that there's dangers of them malfunctioning just because they're old.

[01:00:55] You know what?

[01:00:55] I'll take that.

[01:00:56] Yeah.

[01:00:56] Versus the modern nuclear scare Hawaii.

[01:01:01] Yeah.

[01:01:02] Yeah.

[01:01:02] That was.

[01:01:02] Yeah.

[01:01:02] Like, yeah.

[01:01:03] Let's just let it be.

[01:01:04] You know what?

[01:01:05] If a fucking nuclear base just starts shooting off missiles because, I don't know, boredom or old age, I'll take it versus like, I don't know, crowd strike update didn't work.

[01:01:16] Yeah.

[01:01:16] And now we're all in a global peril.

[01:01:19] Well, good for us for having the phone lines open to the radio station all night so that we could keep in touch with our Russian friends.

[01:01:27] Meanwhile, for individual personal protection, a Massachusetts company marketed an $89 Y2K survival kit that included an abacus, a flashlight and a compass.

[01:01:36] Oh my God.

[01:01:37] They didn't want to have a sextant in there.

[01:01:39] Yeah.

[01:01:39] Just in case you need to draw a map.

[01:01:42] As New Year's Eve drew near, the Federal Reserve ordered the printing of an extra $70 billion in paper money or about $255 per person in the United States in case there was a run on the banks.

[01:01:53] The Chase Manhattan Bank set up 27 command centers to monitor its network around the clock.

[01:01:59] Citigroup opened a central command center in a secret location.

[01:02:02] The world's eyes were glued to its screens.

[01:02:05] According to an article called Y2K Crier's Crisis, published in The Street on December 29th, 1999, Stephanie Moore, an analyst with Giga Information Group, will be at ground zero of the media feeding frenzy.

[01:02:18] She has been publishing and consulting with Fortune 500 companies, helping them evaluate their Y2K assessments for most of the last four years.

[01:02:25] So as the year 2000 rolls around the globe, Moore will be part of a marathon broadcast with ABC News' Sam Donaldson.

[01:02:32] The unlikely duo, Moore, an attractive 30-something blonde, and this is the article, and, well, Donaldson, will be crammed together for 23 hours on New Year's Eve

[01:02:43] in an 8x6 plot inside the federal government's Y2K command center at a former Secret Service Center on G Street in Washington, D.C.

[01:02:52] Their vigil will kick off when midnight hits the Marshall Islands, which is the first country to experience the stroke of midnight.

[01:02:59] These five small islands located in the Central Pacific midway between Hawaii and Australia will be the first place to see the New Year.

[01:03:05] The television event will culminate with reports from Hawaii, the last place the New Year rollover will occur.

[01:03:11] Through phone calls and televised reports, quote, we'll be checking with correspondents and contacts all over the world, says Moore,

[01:03:18] and there will be officials from 67 government agencies to give us progress reports on whether problems are occurring.

[01:03:24] And that night, when the date finally flipped over from 1999 to the year 2000, it's probably not a spoiler to tell you nothing happened.

[01:03:33] Unless we all instantly died and our consciousness all shifted timelines like one massive incident of quantum immortality.

[01:03:39] But if you put a gun to my head with one bullet in it and told me I had to say which version was more likely or face my own quantum immortality experiment,

[01:03:46] I'd probably come pretty firmly down on the side of nothing happened, which left a lot of people with a big expensive question.

[01:03:53] What the fuck? Was Y2K a hoax? What happened?

[01:03:56] No, I, in my brain, just enough major institutions took it seriously enough and put like two years of work into it.

[01:04:04] And is that foolish? Is it naive?

[01:04:06] No, well, to this day, there's debate as to how overblown the issue was.

[01:04:10] But most people will tell you the continued existence of the human race came down to really busy and fast IT folks

[01:04:15] working double and triple time to fix the problem before it caused a catastrophe.

[01:04:19] I found a piece from American Public Media that ran a few days after the new year in which Paul Sappho,

[01:04:25] director of the Institute for the Future in Menlo Park, California, is quoted as saying,

[01:04:31] this was not hype. This was not software consultants trying to create a full employment act for themselves.

[01:04:37] In the 90s, Sappho worked to persuade businesses that they would have to do something about the Y2K bug.

[01:04:43] Quote, this really could have screwed up our lives.

[01:04:45] And, you know, a whole bunch of little geeks saved us.

[01:04:49] So thank you, little geeks.

[01:04:51] Appreciate that, Buzz.

[01:04:51] Sappho says some businesses underreacted to the problem at first and then spent more money than they should have

[01:04:56] scrambling to fix their software.

[01:04:58] But it did have to be fixed.

[01:05:00] Before Y2K hit, many businesses ran tests in which they advanced their computer clocks to 2000

[01:05:06] and the computers didn't work.

[01:05:08] One of the programmers who worked on the fix was David Eddy, the guy who coined the term Y2K.

[01:05:14] Oh, boy.

[01:05:14] The article says that Eddie is still sore that people think there wasn't really a problem.

[01:05:19] I'd love to do a poll, says Eddie, and eliminate anybody that actually worked on year 2000 work and just talk to what I would call civilians.

[01:05:26] And if you ask them, I bet you hard money that most civilians would say, oh, Y2K, whole thing was a hoax.

[01:05:32] Bodies didn't fall from the sky at the stroke of midnight.

[01:05:35] I knew the thing was a hoax.

[01:05:36] But the reason nothing bad happened was that so many people put so much hard work into it.

[01:05:41] Eddie would like a little gratitude for the people who raced to fix the Y2K bug, but doing a good job made them invisible.

[01:05:48] Just ask John Koskinen.

[01:05:50] He was appointed by President Clinton to oversee Y2K fixes.

[01:05:54] The only way to be a hero, says Koskinen, would be for half the world to stop and then somehow get it started again, which was not one of our goals.

[01:06:01] That's true.

[01:06:02] Shit.

[01:06:03] Like a lot of things in government, he said, if it works well, nobody cares much.

[01:06:06] That's how I feel about like even politicians where it's like, if I don't know who the fuck you are, maybe you're just doing your job.

[01:06:12] Yeah.

[01:06:12] Yeah.

[01:06:12] Yeah.

[01:06:13] And that's what a lot of people argue happened here was just a lot of people did their jobs really quickly and really well.

[01:06:18] And it is funny that the note in here about companies poured more money in than they probably needed to because they waited so long reminds me of everything in the film industry.

[01:06:28] A hundred percent.

[01:06:28] Where it's like you see problems, whether you're a writer or a director or a line producer, a lot of times you see the expensive problem coming from a hundred miles away.

[01:06:35] Yeah.

[01:06:36] And everyone's just like, well, but is it real?

[01:06:38] Maybe we'll find a way.

[01:06:39] We're not going to spend money now.

[01:06:41] Yeah.

[01:06:41] We're not going to spend money now to fix the oncoming problem.

[01:06:45] Potentially very clear in our vision problem.

[01:06:47] Yeah.

[01:06:48] So Koskinen was in the Y2K Nerve Center in Washington, D.C. that night with Stephanie Moore and Sam Donaldson monitoring systems all over the world.

[01:06:55] I'm sorry.

[01:06:55] This is the guy, the Beauty and the Beast?

[01:06:57] Yeah.

[01:06:58] This is Koskinen, who was appointed by Clinton, who was in there with Stephanie Moore and, well, Donaldson.

[01:07:03] Yeah, the Babe and Donaldson.

[01:07:05] He says the public doesn't realize how many things went wrong.

[01:07:09] He describes the scene as he saw it unfurl.

[01:07:11] Quote, the low-level wind shear detectors at every major airport went out at seven on Friday night.

[01:07:16] The defense intelligence satellite system went down.

[01:07:19] The French intelligence satellite system went down.

[01:07:21] The Japanese lose the ability to monitor a couple of their nuclear power plants.

[01:07:25] And come Monday morning, there were thousands of businesses that, when you buy something with your credit card, charge you every day of the week.

[01:07:31] Which I think is a business model now.

[01:07:33] Yeah, that's how they do it now.

[01:07:34] It's called a subscription plan.

[01:07:35] Yeah.

[01:07:36] All of those problems were quickly ironed out.

[01:07:39] And I wanted to give a particular shout out to Italy.

[01:07:42] In a move that should surprise no one, the Italians started addressing the Y2K challenge later than many countries and did far less than most.

[01:07:50] Oh my God.

[01:07:50] So doomsayers expected especially extensive chaos there.

[01:07:54] But with the exception of some prisoners who briefly had their prison sentences extended by a century.

[01:07:59] Oh my God.

[01:08:00] In the middle of the night, the country made it through unscathed.

[01:08:04] The reason this is my favorite Y2K non-disaster is because of the country's attitude in the days after 1999 gave way to the year 2000.

[01:08:15] Lorenzo Robostelli, one of the people in charge of Rome's Holy Year celebrations, offered the rest of the world his sympathy.

[01:08:22] I'm so sorry, but Italy works sometimes.

[01:08:26] So...

[01:08:26] What does that mean?

[01:08:27] I think he means that, you know, Italians, Italian culture and government has a history of being kind of riddled with errors and difficult to get people to do things.

[01:08:40] And he's saying, hey...

[01:08:41] So he's saying in the sense that the country didn't collapse even though they did nothing.

[01:08:45] He's like, hey, it turns out our way of thinking works.

[01:08:47] Basically, yeah.

[01:08:47] What a fucking idiot.

[01:08:48] I'm so sorry, but Italy works sometimes.

[01:08:50] Oh my God.

[01:08:51] It's such a bitchy thing to say.

[01:08:53] Lorenzo!

[01:08:54] You have no control over your people.

[01:08:55] You couldn't get anyone to get off their ass to change fucking Linguini 2.0 to work with the new date system.

[01:09:03] The article goes on to say that these were all technical failures that on any other day of the year or in history might have been considered fairly large concerning glitches.

[01:09:11] But because of the hype for what could happen, the resulting problems seemed relatively tame in comparison.

[01:09:17] The morning after the globe exhaled its collective breath, Computer World interviewed Peter DeJager.

[01:09:22] After all, his Doomsday 2000 piece printed in their pages was a catalyst for much of the concern.

[01:09:28] And they wanted to get his take on how the crisis was averted.

[01:09:31] His answer raised a lot more questions for me.

[01:09:35] So Computer World's question is,

[01:09:36] Indications seem to be that we've done pretty well addressing Y2K, at least so far.

[01:09:40] But do you think IT has learned anything from this episode?

[01:09:44] DeJager says,

[01:09:45] I'd love to say yes, I really would.

[01:09:47] Certainly there are lots of lessons available to us should we choose to learn, but I don't think we've learned anything from this.

[01:09:53] The proof of that is we've solved Y2K not by getting rid of the problem, but by postponing it and by using windowing instead.

[01:10:02] Windowing is a stopgap.

[01:10:03] And the reason we were doing it, the excuses we gave was,

[01:10:06] It's cheaper.

[01:10:07] It's what we had to do at the time.

[01:10:08] Someone else will fix it later.

[01:10:10] We'll replace the software by the time it breaks,

[01:10:12] which are exactly, exactly the same excuses we used when we used the two-digit year in the first place.

[01:10:24] And that brings us to how on earth this problem got solved,

[01:10:28] because obviously this code wasn't going to fix itself.

[01:10:30] And no one wanted to rewrite every computer program in the world from scratch.

[01:10:35] I'm not sure there was even time for that to happen.

[01:10:38] Instead, corporations, governments, hospitals, airlines, banks, schools, law enforcement,

[01:10:42] and everyone else in the world turned to a few different strategies.

[01:10:46] The first and most expensive solution was to completely upgrade a system,

[01:10:50] because it's not like there wasn't any hardware and software that was Y2K compliant.

[01:10:55] It's just that most businesses and governments with a legacy of early computer use,

[01:11:00] which are the most important businesses and most governments,

[01:11:03] had only iterated on old systems and they've never actually upgraded.

[01:11:08] So we're talking about massive mainframe programs that have been running since the 60s and 70s,

[01:11:14] written in languages like COBOL that younger programmers didn't even know anymore.

[01:11:18] So imagine you're a bank and your entire accounting system is millions of lines of code

[01:11:23] written over 30 years by programmers who have long since retired.

[01:11:27] You either had to fix all the date problems in that code,

[01:11:31] or you could say screw it and buy a modern banking software package

[01:11:34] that's already guaranteed to function in the year 2000.

[01:11:37] It would cost you millions because the company selling you that software

[01:11:41] knows that they have a gun to your head.

[01:11:43] Yeah.

[01:11:44] But at least you know it'll work.

[01:11:46] A lot of companies, especially big ones like insurance companies and banks, went this route.

[01:11:50] They didn't just update their code.

[01:11:52] They completely replaced their core business systems.

[01:11:55] That also meant rewriting decades of business logic from scratch,

[01:11:59] migrating mountains of data from old systems to new ones,

[01:12:02] and retraining entire departments on new software.

[01:12:06] The other really tricky part going this route was that you couldn't just like

[01:12:10] turn off the old computers and bring in new ones and turn them on.

[01:12:13] You had to keep your old systems running while building and testing the new ones.

[01:12:17] So it was like the, you know, the old building the plane while you're in the air kind of thing.

[01:12:22] Sure, sure.

[01:12:22] It was tricky and it was expensive.

[01:12:24] The second approach was what programmers called date expansion.

[01:12:28] This meant going through the existing code line by line and expanding every two-digit year to four digits.

[01:12:34] But that's not as easy as it sounds.

[01:12:37] First, you had to find every single place dates were used in a given piece of software.

[01:12:43] Some of those are obvious spots like invoice underscore date or customer underscore birthdate.

[01:12:48] Yeah, but if it's not tagged or put into that section.

[01:12:51] Right.

[01:12:51] There were dates buried in calculation functions, hidden in report generators,

[01:12:56] squeezed into fixed width database fields that couldn't be made larger.

[01:12:59] And some programs even use dates as part of their logic in ways that had nothing to do with dates,

[01:13:05] like using 99 as special code to mean this record is inactive.

[01:13:10] So that's problem one with making all of these four digits.

[01:13:13] Problem two is that the systems that had to be fixed were still systems that didn't have the space.

[01:13:19] They were still built when memory was expensive.

[01:13:20] So if you suddenly doubled the size of every date field in those databases built over 30 years,

[01:13:27] you might need way more storage space.

[01:13:30] Yeah.

[01:13:30] And some of those older limits had hard limits on field sizes and record lengths and file sizes

[01:13:35] and changing any of those could break something else in unexpected ways.

[01:13:38] And it's like every single decision that is now a hurdle for you got someone a promotion.

[01:13:43] Mm-hmm.

[01:13:44] Like it's like everybody was like, no, boss, just take out these two numbers.

[01:13:47] It was like, we're going to save a billion dollars for this corporation.

[01:13:51] You're the president of the company now.

[01:13:52] Yeah.

[01:13:52] Yeah.

[01:13:53] And now it's like, no, you actually doomed, you doomed the world.

[01:13:56] And then the really tricky part was on top of all of that, just like the replacement method,

[01:14:01] you couldn't fix everything at once and flip the switch.

[01:14:04] These were live systems handling real money, real patient records, real inventories.

[01:14:08] So you couldn't shut down the transaction processing for a few months while programmers fixed everything.

[01:14:13] Airlines couldn't pause reservation systems.

[01:14:16] Hospitals couldn't stop tracking patient records.

[01:14:18] So programmers had to carefully fix each piece of code, test it thoroughly to make sure it worked with both old and new date formats,

[01:14:26] and then roll it out piece by piece all while the system was still running.

[01:14:31] And because a lot of these systems were written in those older languages,

[01:14:34] companies had to drag programmers out of retirement to help fix them.

[01:14:38] And these motherfuckers made out great.

[01:14:40] You got space cowboys now.

[01:14:41] It's like, we got to send you old timers up to fix the satellite because you're the only ones who understand these old Russian satellites.

[01:14:46] Yeah.

[01:14:47] Some of these guys were making consultant rates of more than $1,000 per day to fix code that they'd written like 30 years earlier.

[01:14:54] As a writer, I've gotten many consultant rates of $1,000 a year.

[01:14:57] So I get it.

[01:14:58] Of course, both of these options were expensive and difficult, which brings us to D. Yeager's quote about windowing.

[01:15:05] So I'm not a programmer.

[01:15:06] I think I can explain how this works.

[01:15:08] It's kind of hard to do.

[01:15:10] It's easier to do if I can show it to you visually or if you're looking at something.

[01:15:14] But I think it'll basically make sense.

[01:15:16] So you've got your code with all the two-digit dates from 00 to 1900 to 99 for 1999, right?

[01:15:25] Yep.

[01:15:25] You need to extend the life of that system without adding any additional digits.

[01:15:30] You got to keep it to two.

[01:15:31] So programmers came up with this pretty clever solution.

[01:15:34] They would pick a pivot year.

[01:15:36] So let's say 50.

[01:15:37] Any two-digit year below 50 would be assumed to be 2000 to 2049.

[01:15:43] So 00 to 49 would be assigned the 2000s.

[01:15:48] Okay.

[01:15:48] Anything 50 or above would be 1950 to 1999.

[01:15:53] So just like buy them time by reversing the flow of information.

[01:15:57] So it'll buy us 49 years to fix this problem.

[01:16:02] If a computer saw 49, it would interpret that as 2049.

[01:16:05] But if it saw 50, it would read it as 1950.

[01:16:08] Essentially, they're creating a 100-year window with the pivot year determining where that window is placed.

[01:16:13] Now, like you just said, you might be thinking, well, wait a minute.

[01:16:16] That doesn't really fix anything.

[01:16:18] What happens in 2049?

[01:16:19] No, it buys us 49 years or whatever.

[01:16:21] And that's exactly the point DeJager was making.

[01:16:23] Windowing is just a band-aid.

[01:16:25] It doesn't fix the underlying problem.

[01:16:26] But it was fast, cheap, and it worked.

[01:16:28] And the really wild thing about windowing is that some of these fixes are still out there quietly ticking away.

[01:16:35] And 50 is just the example used here.

[01:16:38] Some of these systems use 30.

[01:16:39] Some used 20s.

[01:16:41] So these systems will all need to be updated again when we start getting close to those pivot years.

[01:16:46] So we basically just created a bunch of mini Y2Ks scattered across different years in the future.

[01:16:52] And in fact, one of the articles I used to research this episode, which is titled The Nothing Happened Y2K Bug,

[01:16:58] How the IT Industry Worked Overtime to Save the World's Computers,

[01:17:02] ends with a kind of alarming postscript.

[01:17:04] It says,

[01:17:06] Some of the dates for windowing fields were picked in the 2020s and 2030s.

[01:17:10] The assumption at the time was that the software would be completely replaced when that date came around.

[01:17:14] But that was true of the millennium bug in the first place.

[01:17:17] So after all that, we're right back where we started, which I think is kind of good for the fear tier.

[01:17:23] Because when I started this episode, I thought, well, obviously, this is a zero on the fear tier.

[01:17:27] Because Y2K came and went and we're fine.

[01:17:30] Oh, innocent me.

[01:17:32] Innocent me before I researched this and found out that the situation might be even worse.

[01:17:36] Because if you think about it, I don't know.

[01:17:38] I'd like to think somewhere somebody was keeping track of A, who used windowing,

[01:17:43] and B, what years were chosen for that windowing.

[01:17:46] But there was no top-down oversight saying, okay, the fix is windowing and we're using 50,

[01:17:52] and then we know we'll have to do this again.

[01:17:54] It was just every man for themselves.

[01:17:56] It was just like at the end of that fiscal year, did we get through it?

[01:17:59] And then no one thought about it again.

[01:18:00] Yeah.

[01:18:01] Because it's like we have 40 years to worry about this.

[01:18:03] We're all going to be retired by then.

[01:18:04] Who gives a shit?

[01:18:05] Yeah.

[01:18:06] That's the reason why I don't like super old politicians,

[01:18:08] where it was like, you don't give a shit what happens 20 years from now,

[01:18:11] you'll be fucking retired or dead.

[01:18:13] And we've now, you know, the motivation, the cultural motivation that came about to fix the

[01:18:19] Y2K bug because it was new and scary and culturally everywhere and tied in with the new millennium.

[01:18:26] And in the next 12 minutes, it's going to happen.

[01:18:29] So everyone got paid a ton of money to just do it right then to fix the solution for just that moment.

[01:18:33] But now we've created who knows how many thousands of mini Y2Ks that there will be no groundswell

[01:18:40] of people beating the drum about because A.

[01:18:43] It's not all one.

[01:18:44] It's not one.

[01:18:45] They're scattered.

[01:18:46] And B, I don't know if anyone knows where they are.

[01:18:48] Well, if they do know where they are, I guarantee you in the world we're living in,

[01:18:52] it's going to be like, don't worry.

[01:18:54] I asked ChatGBT how to fix it.

[01:18:56] And it gave me an answer regardless of whether it was right or not.

[01:19:00] Yeah.

[01:19:01] So it's fine.

[01:19:03] ChatGBT asked me, do you want to fix this?

[01:19:05] I said yes.

[01:19:07] And I think it did it.

[01:19:10] So yeah, it's like they're going to use AI to find and solve whatever mini Y2Ks happen.

[01:19:17] And it's going to go just the same as every healthcare place that used it where it was

[01:19:21] like, yeah, that was 90% error rate.

[01:19:24] So...

[01:19:24] And I'm, you know, I'm sure we'll get through it because ultimately the scary thing about

[01:19:28] Y2K was that all of these systems were going to fail at once.

[01:19:31] Whereas now we're facing a potential where if some of these systems do fail, they'll be

[01:19:35] scattered and not necessarily interfacing with each other to cause that domino effect of

[01:19:41] everything going to shit.

[01:19:42] But it's just disconcerting that there was that big of a, hey, this is a big problem and

[01:19:48] this is our chance to fix it.

[01:19:49] And everybody still went, yeah, but what's the cheap and easy way out?

[01:19:53] We don't want to...

[01:19:53] It's always going to be the case.

[01:19:54] We don't want to show that we made a little bit less profit this quarter because we had

[01:19:58] to save the fucking world.

[01:19:59] And I will say that that was a time period where you probably could show less profit.

[01:20:06] Now where profit, it seems objectively at this point, is even beyond the excess of the 1980s,

[01:20:14] like a level of at any cost show profit every quarter.

[01:20:19] Yeah.

[01:20:20] There's no way anything's going to be addressed.

[01:20:22] If someone's going to be like, hey boss, we have a Y2K problem.

[01:20:25] They're going to be like, okay.

[01:20:27] Yeah.

[01:20:27] Yeah.

[01:20:28] Don't tell anyone but me.

[01:20:30] Yeah.

[01:20:30] And when this breaks, we'll file bankruptcy because we're allowed to do that.

[01:20:34] Yeah.

[01:20:34] And it'll be a thousand little crowd strikes where like computer systems will go down

[01:20:39] for a day.

[01:20:40] And, you know, hopefully most of them will be things that you do barely notice or yes.

[01:20:44] I mean, I think there were like billions of dollars lost that day that those computers

[01:20:48] went down.

[01:20:48] Yeah.

[01:20:48] But we got through it.

[01:20:50] Crowd strike's stock is back up.

[01:20:50] Yeah.

[01:20:51] So.

[01:20:51] So I'm sure if these little things happen, I'm not, as we discuss where this goes on

[01:20:56] the fear tier, I'm not placing it super high, but it is ultimately the scariest thing about

[01:21:02] it is what it reveals about the way that we've chosen to run this system, which is as shittily

[01:21:07] as possible.

[01:21:08] Yeah.

[01:21:08] I feel like, I feel like not enough people have re-watched Battlestar Galactica.

[01:21:13] We need to reduce our dependency on computers to the point where if two numbers are off,

[01:21:19] it's not going to grind the world and do a halt.

[01:21:22] Well, now if two numbers are off, it's the difference between creating a tameable AI and

[01:21:26] a super intelligent AI that enslaves the human race.

[01:21:29] So.

[01:21:29] I don't know.

[01:21:29] That's just a two number situation.

[01:21:32] Well.

[01:21:32] But all computer programs are two numbers.

[01:21:34] It's zeros and ones.

[01:21:35] Yeah.

[01:21:35] Well, until we get to, we're recording this the day after Google announced its new quantum

[01:21:40] computing chip.

[01:21:41] Did that happen today?

[01:21:42] It happened yesterday, I think.

[01:21:43] I don't watch the fucking news.

[01:21:45] So.

[01:21:45] I mean, that sounds like marketing.

[01:21:47] I know.

[01:21:47] I know.

[01:21:48] We went to a party, you and I, I don't know, like a year ago, maybe even more.

[01:21:52] We're a guy who's working for like Bezos's quantum computing like team.

[01:21:57] Yeah.

[01:21:57] They were like, yeah, we're not really any further along, but it's a lot of money we're

[01:22:01] spending.

[01:22:02] Well, I think, I think from what I read about this particular chip, it does sound like progress

[01:22:06] has been made.

[01:22:07] It's still not like the, the math that they're using it to try to do is apparently kind of

[01:22:13] very esoteric kind of like it's sort of, it doesn't have any use case yet.

[01:22:17] It's just sort of like, we've built a thing that seems like it can do the things that

[01:22:22] we thought it would do.

[01:22:23] And now we kind of have to figure out, you know, quantum computing is in the stage that

[01:22:27] computers were in the sixties, where we're talking about the size of buildings being

[01:22:32] used to cool metals down to negative 4,000 degrees or whatever, so that they can run, you know,

[01:22:39] one math problem.

[01:22:40] Yeah.

[01:22:41] That's going to be a future episode of scared all time.

[01:22:44] I mean, I really enjoyed the book chip war by Chris Miller and it was excellent, like

[01:22:48] history of Silicon Valley and the, and the Silicon chip and how many transistors we can

[01:22:54] put on it and how the world changed because of it and Moore's law and all that stuff.

[01:22:57] It's a great book, but what it doesn't address because that's just dealing with chips is quantum

[01:23:03] computing, AI, what have you.

[01:23:05] The thing where you have, you now have billionaires being like, we should get the water rights to

[01:23:10] Canada.

[01:23:10] Yeah.

[01:23:11] We should get the fucking whatever rights from Brazil because we're going to have to

[01:23:15] cool systems for the energy that we're going to expel to do math equations to, I don't

[01:23:22] know, get us more Amazon packages faster is going to deplete the, deplete America's resources

[01:23:30] in 16 days.

[01:23:32] It's like maybe when you start saying shit like that out loud, maybe you should reconsider

[01:23:38] what you're doing.

[01:23:39] Well, yeah, I mean, it's, I certainly understand that there are use cases for artificial intelligence

[01:23:45] and quantum computing and stuff where, you know, it can be used to save lives.

[01:23:49] I know a lot of the hopeful use cases, and I think it's already been used a little bit

[01:23:54] already.

[01:23:54] AI has been used to try to like find patterns in genomes and stuff so that we can try to

[01:23:59] develop, you know, cures for different cancers.

[01:24:02] That's great.

[01:24:02] But let's say finding a genome pattern depletes the fucking Brazilian rainforest.

[01:24:07] So does Meta telling me, do you want to change this text message to sound funnier?

[01:24:14] Yeah.

[01:24:14] No, for sure.

[01:24:15] No, I never want to click on that.

[01:24:16] But if I do, what third world country collapses?

[01:24:19] I, like, how are you getting the energy to add a chuckle to this text message?

[01:24:25] Yeah.

[01:24:26] When we can just be doing it with our brains.

[01:24:28] Yeah.

[01:24:28] I do find it funny the, the tenor around the, the, the official tenor coming from open AI

[01:24:34] around AGI or artificial general intelligence, which for years has been touted as this like

[01:24:40] world changing.

[01:24:41] When we achieve AGI, it's going to be the last invention and the computer will invent

[01:24:46] everything for us.

[01:24:47] And that's why we need, you know, $50 trillion.

[01:24:50] And because we need to build this thing.

[01:24:53] Recently, the language coming out of Sam Altman's mouth has been more along the lines of, you

[01:24:58] know, actually, um, AGI is here or it'll be here soon, but it, it's not really going to

[01:25:04] change anything.

[01:25:05] Um, like we've already actually built it and it's just this very kind of mealy mouth.

[01:25:10] Like you can almost see the, uh, the, like pulling the collar away, throat swallow, like

[01:25:17] Oh boy.

[01:25:18] This is character.

[01:25:19] Yeah.

[01:25:19] Like we've built a very big financial bubble here that we are pouring money into.

[01:25:23] And like, it turns out that maybe we're a little bit further away from some of this

[01:25:28] than we thought we were.

[01:25:29] And, uh, these, these, these breakthroughs are actually not as impressive as just like

[01:25:33] IBM Watson winning chess anymore or go.

[01:25:36] It's like now it's like, yeah, it's written a paper that a fucking eighth grader can write.

[01:25:40] Um, it ordered a lot of pizzas faster than we ever could have ordered pizzas on the internet.

[01:25:45] Yeah.

[01:25:46] There's, it's, it's, I agree with you that it is like, I, I think what's not being weighed

[01:25:51] is the large negatives to an unknown positive.

[01:25:56] You know, like there are clear concrete negatives to continue down this road towards a positive

[01:26:03] that while there are upsides to what artificial intelligence can do, you know, even the people

[01:26:10] who have pretty rosy paintings of what society would look like after an artificial intelligence

[01:26:15] kind of took over for lack of a better term.

[01:26:18] There's some real big caveats in how careful we would need to be with it.

[01:26:22] And like, so it's, it doesn't, it's, it's not, you know,

[01:26:26] Who's your most bipolar friend?

[01:26:28] Because that's who you're going to enter a fucking world.

[01:26:30] Like that's, that's the God you're creating.

[01:26:33] That's the God you're creating.

[01:26:34] Yeah.

[01:26:34] Yeah.

[01:26:34] We've created the Uber BPD mensch that won't stop texting you and can actually end your

[01:26:43] life via drone strike.

[01:26:45] Yeah.

[01:26:46] Yeah.

[01:26:46] Well, there's episodes about Y2K and mini Y2Ks and we'll do a whole AI episode at some

[01:26:51] point.

[01:26:52] Yeah.

[01:26:52] But anyway, so I, I'd put Y2K given the mini Y2K situation that comes up at the end

[01:26:57] here.

[01:26:57] I, I, I'd, I'd give it a four.

[01:26:59] Yeah.

[01:26:59] I'd give it a four.

[01:27:00] I'd give it a four in the sense that, uh, I'd give a lot of computer misplaced lines

[01:27:05] of code a four.

[01:27:06] Yeah.

[01:27:07] Cause we're so dependent on, on it now.

[01:27:10] We're dependent.

[01:27:10] They're out there.

[01:27:11] And I love that like Nate Bergazzi bit about not being able to go back in time and being

[01:27:15] believed you're from a future because you just don't know how anything we use works.

[01:27:19] And so because of that, because there is this, this mystery element to everything I rely

[01:27:25] on, uh, yeah, you'd have to be ridiculous to not put at least a four, the fear of it

[01:27:30] breaking because of something stupid.

[01:27:32] No one's addressing.

[01:27:33] Yeah.

[01:27:34] Well, on that cheery note, uh, here's to an awesome start to the season and a happy new

[01:27:40] year.

[01:27:41] Happy new year.

[01:27:42] Happy fucking new year.

[01:27:43] If you're hearing this after January 1st, 2025, uh, then we got into the new year without

[01:27:48] any massive Y2K style, uh, disasters.

[01:27:52] So congratulations.

[01:27:53] Go us.

[01:27:54] Pat's on the back all around.

[01:27:55] It's going to be a phenomenal 2025 and we will see you next time.

[01:28:01] Until then, I'm Chris Killari.

[01:28:03] And I'm Ed Ficola.

[01:28:04] Have some happy and safe holidays and we will see you in the new year.

[01:28:07] Scare It All The Time is co-produced by Chris Killari and Ed Ficola.

[01:28:11] Written by Chris Killari.

[01:28:12] Edited by Ed Ficola.

[01:28:14] Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel.

[01:28:17] Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

[01:28:20] And Mr. Disclaimer is...

[01:28:23] And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon and get all kinds of cool

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[01:28:38] Don't worry, all scaredy cats welcome.

[01:28:40] No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

[01:28:43] Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions.

[01:28:45] Night.

[01:28:46] Night.

[01:28:46] We are in this together.

[01:28:47] Together.

[01:28:48] Together.

[01:28:49] We're losing.