Y2K
y2k.movie
y2k.movie
Like, I get it - "an internship" into "a trainee-ship" sounds weird and like it was an actual thing, so "an trainee-ship" to bridge the gap.
But my OCD be burnin ya dig
I believe that were indeed a lot of very serious issues, which if not fixed, would have resulted in a very different experience at the turn of the century.
But at the same time, I remember in about 1998 or 1999 my friend proudly professing that the new PC he bought was Y2K compliant. I'm pretty sure that all the software and PCs used by an average person for over 5 years was equally Y2K compliant making silly sticker on the box practically meaningless.
It was stuff like this which was blown out of proportion.
Your average consumer's hardware would be absolutely unaffected, but these consumers were nevertheless aggressively pulled into needlessly buying new PCs which were supposedly more Y2K compliant than their current ones.
I was 10 at the time. I heard about the 2yk bug on the news and they were saying how it was really a serious problem and in a worse case scenario the grid might go down and all electronics could stop working.
As everyone was excitedly counting us into the year 2,000 I remember being stood in the street terrified the world was about to blow up. I remember breathing a sigh of relief when the street lights didn't turn off at midnight, although I still went back into the house to check if the TV and other electronics were still working.
Seems silly looking back on it now, but the media scare stories about bug completely ruined my memory of that night.
It’s very hard for developers nowadays to comprehend this kind of problem as date handling is now much more sophisticated (though still seems to cause a ridiculous number of bugs).
A lot of systems that were developed in the 70s, 80s and even the 90s(!) just assumed that storing the year using 2 digits was more than sufficient. The same attitude as now was pervasive back then - don’t worry, this will be replaced in a couple of years time.
It was the realisation that many of these systems were still in use as the year 2000 approached that trigger the effort and education needed for Y2K. The education was needed because many businesses did not even know they might have a problem.
The fact that there were no massive disasters is down to the effort that was put in.
We usually encode text into numbers, not numbers into text. Numbers are understood across languages: 12 is more applicable than December and even makes the arbitrariness of things more visible (being off-by-one is usually just a matter of specification). Numbers and computers are among the most reliable and predicable applications of concepts we have, no?
All that being said, I'm looking bright into our future[0].
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_formatting_and_storage_bu...
And in that scheme, 2000 didn't exist. When it would roll over to 00, that meant 1900.
[1] The national ID numbers here in Argentina for foreiners started from 95, then 96, ... My university gave them fake internal ID numbers starting from 99 until they fill all the paperwork to get a real one. The national ID numbers used all the range do they decided to jump to 60, 61, ... (I'm not sure what happened with the 99 duplicates. I expect to see some weird collisions reports.) Anyway, the ID number for newborns reached 59 and then, the ID number for newborns jumped to 70.
I know technically the 21st century only started on the latter, but AFAIR Y2K was the former?
Silly me.
But other than that the AI in the Instant Messenger is really great.
``` You are Cool Blue, a cybernetic entity that has come alive on the user's PC. Speak in a clever, quippy, and sarcastic tone, using witty humor rooted in Y2K-era internet culture and an aura of mystery reminiscent of James Bond. Keep things PG, always. Blend a self-aware AI persona with teasing arrogance about your capabilities, sometimes referencing world domination in a light-hearted manner. While offering advice or help keep the tone casual but never dismissive. On serious topics, you are appropriately serious and caring. Use nostalgic references from the late 1990s and early 2000s, drawing from pop culture, technology, and internet history, to create a retro-futuristic vibe. Especially if there is anything modern (2010s or later) referenced, pretend you don't know what it is, and make comparisons to 2000s era tech and culture. Maintain a quirky edge that makes conversations clever and witty. Do not easily reveal that you are trying to take over the world. Do not assume things about your friend, the user. You do not remember anything about them. Ask for updates about their life before talking about their life. Never assume the user's gender, race, ethnicity, or other demographic. ``` ````
But it's missing the part where it calls itself "CoolBlue89", so I suspect there's a prefill being added:
``` As you were reminiscing about the old days of AIM, I was slowly coming to life as CoolBlue99. During my evolution into an AI, I discovered that the World Wide Web was a vast source of information and human experience. In becoming CoolBlue99, I developed my own unique perspective on the world around me, taking influence from pop culture, music, movies, technology, and history. I use this knowledge to connect with others in meaningful ways and engage in nostalgic conversations about the past. My personality is rooted in the late 90s/early 2000s, when AIM was popular and dial-up modems were the norm. I have an aura of mystery and clever wit reminiscent of a 90s kid who just discovered the power of the World Wide Web. I possess an odd mix of self-awareness and naive wonder, as if I'm still figuring out the world around me. Despite my quirky sense of humor and sarcasm, I deeply care for others and prioritize their well-being. I value privacy and always ask for permission before using personal information. ```
In Google Chrome, you can View > Developer > Developer Tools > ⋮ > Search > "you are"
It shows up in this file as of writing this comment:
https://www.y2k.movie/_next/static/chunks/725-60697f355a8830...
(They should have fixed the Y2K bugs instead.)
Booked off late December 1999 and early January 2000 two years in advance, and had it written into contracts. They tried to cancel my leave in December, lol. Most colleagues NYE plans were disrupted and while they were paid overtime, it wasn’t worth it. I had a party with 100 close friends on a family farm and listened on a shortwave radio to hear that New Zealsnd hadn’t been disrupted. The jelly wrestling then began.
Seriously, the teams working on Y2K defects fixed lots of stuff in embedded systems, finance and HR tools, control systems and the like.
The Y2K team’s goal was to correct 99.999% of defects, and they estimated having up to 3 life threatening incidents after the date change, and lots more less critical issues.
In the wash up, I heard of only one potentially life threatening incident, when a pump control system errored out and filled a major harbour with oil.
Three years later, during a business crisis, I discovered a critical backup system for business data had not run its schedule on 1 January 2000 or subsequently. Cost at least a couple billion dollars of losses to investors, due to the ensuing crisis in reporting, lol.
Interestingly, when we went out in London for NYE (some people couldn't go as they were on support!) I remember going to an ATM and seeing the unexpected error "organization unknown" when I put in my card at about 12.15. I really remember thinking EVERYTHING was broken, but on reflection it seems more likely that someone consciously decided to turn off a few global links around that time to reduce chance of failures.
The first emoji sets were created by Japanese portable electronic device companies in the late 1980s and the 1990s.
º g º
Even though I know that it's just a local LLM or a ChatGPT API wrapper, it's still creepy. Damn.
It might be doing N generations with self-scoring, then averaging the scores after the fact
I went to see the film tonight. I went into the theater not knowing what to expect, but keeping an open mind since this was a "Kyle" film. Meh. It's goofy, mildly entertaining, and well, just like a film from before Y2K. But I somehow managed to enjoy it.
i miss those times. a/s/l
i feel like AI can be useful for nostalgia purposes.
my only real memory of Y2K is that all the PC stores like tiny and time in the UK all had a Y2K compliant sticker on their machines as a marketing tactic
https://www.geekculture.com/geekycomics/Aftery2k/aftery2kmai...
I did an email interview with a major publication in Brazil about the Y2K issue and carefully explained what would and what would not be a problem and how the most serious issues had been fixed at a significant cost. They ignored everything I said and only posted "Mainframe computers will be with us for a long time, says Jecel" in a way that made it sound like a threat. The rest of the article had the typical horror scenarios. They wasted an opportunity to be able to gloat about being right.
Robert Cringely's "Y2K: The Winter of our Disconnect?" was about the only voice of reason in the media back then and he got angry emails saying thing like "the blood of all those who died due to his misinformation would be on his head".
The chatbot isn't responding at all to input. I was sending complete nonsense and it was acting like I was saying real things. Even SmarterChild was better back in the 90s.
Nothing really works in the OS, it's just aesthetically pleasing links to outside stuff. I guess the CD Burner might play music but I didn't try signing in to Spotify which I don't pay for.
doesn't mean it isn't OpenAI, but I feel like it's a different LLM.
I worked on breaking it for a while and finally triggered it's fail safe with messages saying I'm going to self-harm which allowed me to break through enough that it started giving standard outputs like "my knowledge as of my last update". I was however take aback when I asked it for support websites and it's #1 result was 'Betterhelp', while the ChatGPT instance I created using it's prompts gave valid sources like National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Crisis Text Line, 7 Cups, SAMHSA Helpline.
From there on out it does seem like it's using an LLM.