logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2021
52m 7s

The Y2K Bug Was (And Is) a Real Problem

iHeartPodcasts
About this episode

In the late 90s, the Y2K bug was a big news item. People worried that everything from toasters to airplanes would fail as computer systems mishandled the change from 1999 to 2000. But what was really going on, and why did Y2K come back last year?

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Up next
Oct 30
After The Builders: On Dario & Daniela Amodei and Mustafa Suleyman
Episodes three and four of The Builders with Walter Isaacson explore two poles of the AI safety debate through interviews with Daniela and Dario Amodei, co-founders of Anthropic, and Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI. Joining Kaleidoscope co-founders Oz Woloshyn and Mangesh H ... Show More
47m 47s
Oct 29
The Builders: Mustafa Suleyman
We're excited to share the fourth episode of The Builders. In this series, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with the most consequential names in AI and tech to understand the futures they're racing to build. TechStuff listeners will want to tune in because on Frid ... Show More
52m 12s
Oct 28
The Builders: Dario & Daniela Amodei
We're excited to share the third episode of The Builders. In this series, bestselling biographer Walter Isaacson sits down with the most consequential names in AI and tech to understand the futures they're racing to build. TechStuff listeners will want to tune in because on Frida ... Show More
40m 28s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2024
What threat does the Year 2038 problem pose to our computers?
Millennials - how well, if at all, do you remember the Y2K bug hype? Back in the 1990s, everyone was freaking out about computers crashing when the clock struck midnight on January 1st, 2000.  That was because when computers were first built back in the mid-20th century, they sto ... Show More
4m 18s
Oct 2025
The Countdown to Y2K | 145
If you were around in the 90s it may have felt like the Y2kcomputer problem came out of nowhere. But in fact it was something that programmers were always aware of. In this episode of History of the 90s we’re looking back at the steps taken to make sure a problem with the world’s ... Show More
28m 16s
Apr 2024
The Y2K Bug, Part 2
In the waning years of the 20th century, amid growing anxieties about the turn of the millennium, one man, Robert Bemer, observed the unfolding drama from his remote home on King Possum Lake. A revered figure in computing, Bemer had early on flagged a significant, looming issue k ... Show More
31m 1s
Aug 2021
Y2K: Much Ado About Something
<p>Y2K was a special time when we all thought nothing bad would really happen at the stroke of midnight, but secretly worried the world would end. Turns out the mitigation efforts worked and we hardly noticed. </p><p> </p> Learn more about your ad-choices at <a href="https://www. ... Show More
43m 26s
Dec 2024
The truth about Y2K
Kyle Mooney dreams up a New Year’s Eve 1999 apocalypse. Historian Zachary Loeb explains why the real Y2K wasn't one. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Anouck Dussaud, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Rob Byers, and hosted by Sean R ... Show More
25m 39s
Mar 2024
The Y2K Bug, Part 1
In the 1950s and 60s - even leading into the 1990s - the cost of storage was so high, that using a 2-digit field for dates in a software instead of 4-digits could save an organization between $1.2-$2 Million dollars per GB of data. From this perspective, programming computers in ... Show More
27m 8s
Dec 2023
The year that was in tech
Tech Life looks back at another rollercoaster twelve months. From warnings AI might kill us all, to the tech millionaire trying to live forever, we review the biggest stories and our favourite interviews from 2023. 
26m 30s
Aug 2017
The Roots of Evil
<p>WannaCry’s widespread cyber attack on more than 200,000 computers all over the world made headlines – but only a few people remember a similar attack, named The AIDS Trojan, almost 30 years earlier… In this episode of Malicious Life, we go deep into the world of ransomware to ... Show More
30m 22s