The Y2K Bug Was (And Is) a Real Problem

Why is the US banning more Chinese technology? Reed Albergotti (Semafor) fills us in on the robot ban and what it means for American innovation. Then, new research on why Chinese open-source AI models may not be as big a threat as Washington makes it seem. Taylor Lorenz (User Mag ... Show More

What does it take to power the AI boom? Steve Vassallo, a roboticist turned General Partner at Foundation Capital, helped semiconductor company Cerebras figure it out. Steve and Oz discuss why AI workloads demanded an entirely new kind of chip, what "wafer scale" actually means, ... Show More

As AI adoption accelerates and global regulations evolve, digital sovereignty has shifted from policy concept to board-level priority. In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell sits down live at VivaTech with IBM’s Ana Paula Assis and AXA CIO Giovanni D’Aniello to ... Show More

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

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

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

<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

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

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

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. 

<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