I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
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we're discussing after the fact, with next to perfect knowledge of what we did not know six years ago.
My primary point was: Information alone, knowledge, is not enough to overcome the prevention paradox.
If we look at a different domain, climate change, things are slightly different, here, science almost unanimously agrees on "if we stay on this path, we're f'ed", we have high quality information.
@johnzajac
If you read the IPCC report, you can even see how the contributing scientists rate the probability of the verious predictions the models make.it's all right there, but what do we do?
Do politicians act according to the facts?
Do countries elect politicians that do?That is my key point: it's not enough to *know* what's coming, you also have to feel it, to *fear* it.
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@johnzajac
If you read the IPCC report, you can even see how the contributing scientists rate the probability of the verious predictions the models make.it's all right there, but what do we do?
Do politicians act according to the facts?
Do countries elect politicians that do?That is my key point: it's not enough to *know* what's coming, you also have to feel it, to *fear* it.
the y2k example you opened with was different in one way: the people to act were all part of a group of people that deeply understood both the reason and the possible outcomes of the issue, that could act based on information.
Things that need broad collaboration from society at large work, as far as I can see, different.
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That's great, that‘s how science should work. Would it have been better to understand this earlier? To self-correct quicker? Yes.
I am by no means saying everything went right, not by a long shot, I‘m saying that, in the situation back then, I understand why people werde unwilling to go out on a limb.I said it earlier: to me, the situation was easy, I believe I understood the situation as good as I could, I had access to developing information
To me, "not going out on a limb" would look something like "we're not completely sure of the ins and outs of this thing, so in the meantime let's be on the safe side, here's what we're pretty sure will help, more when we know more".
The thing is, the WHO _did_ "go out on a limb". They actively assured people that it _wasn't_ airborne.
Moreover, when they changed their minds and backtracked, there was no campaign like "hey everyone, sorry, we called this one wrong - please revise the protocols you built on top of our mistake".
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac It's called prevention paradox. You probably knew that already, just wanted to add the name for it.
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@johnzajac @pjakobs It may not have been formally taught, which I suspect is what you're wanting, but it's certainly been mentioned a reasonable amount.
Every time someone who isn't in IT hears about it, they won't believe it was a problem. Sure, some of the 'BIOS updates' were rubbish, and for some applications all that was affected was the display of a date (although that can itself be an issue), but even mentioning real bugs doesn't tend to shift opinion much.
Even with the huge numbers of public hacking incidents, security is still a maligned profession. Same with backup.
@syllopsium @johnzajac @pjakobs I see dismissive comments about the supposed overreaction to the Y2K bug every now and then, and invariably, someone (sometimes me) will jump into the replies to correct the person of their complete lack of historical context.
I doubt it's formally taught in any particular regard — maybe in computer science classes, when it comes to data storage standards? 🤭
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac my mother spent years helping to fix COBOL programs for the Y2K bug
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TBH "never let a good catastrophe go to waste" is a good rule of thumb, here: use an existing catastrophe to slip in disaster prevention.
Were I more cynical, I would say that political strategists should *plan* disasters to "allow", in order to *use* those disasters to pre-fix much worse disasters by slipping them into the response to the ongoing one.
Like, "Marie, we've identified that all Go Carts will stop working; if we let it happen,can we use that to update our grid infra?"
@johnzajac @koakuma I’m cynical enough to expect most political groups to use disasters to entrench their power rather than to benefit society
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac Honestly sometimes it feels like handling it like fucking grownups and just fixing it was a mistake. Like, we should've let some shit break.
Obviously not actually, but god fucking dammit it's horrifying how so. many. everyones. look the 1000% wrong lesson from us getting it right.
Drives me fucking insane.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac Prevention is unsexy. That's it. It makes no headlines, it blows no minds, it sparks no joy, it generates no dopamine - it simply does its job effectually and without fanfare. And yet it is by far, far, far the best tool to avoid unwanted outcomes that we have.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac prevention paradox strikes again! (I'm working in public health and the whole of it is basically prevention)
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
. We worked like animals to fix the code. -
@johnzajac worthwhile pointing out that many websites displayed an impossible time due to a Y2K issue in Perl. The world did not stop.
Also, the consulting companies made out like bandits. They used the concept of Y2K compliance to drive business.
Because of that I am always cautious about Y2K as an analogy.
@glent @johnzajac the current Perl error comment is a classic example of survivorship bias - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
That’s the bullethole that did not disable the plane(or world wide computer network)Y2K impact would have been the equivalent of every Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Oracle datacenter shutting off at the same instant in time and going offline.
ATMs, Supermarket Point of sales, planes, power stations, etc. all going offline too. -
I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac the most recent Y2K failure i saw was only a few years ago, when a liquor store sign told me i couldn't buy alcohol unless i was born after this day in 1900.
i've been telling non-tech people about fixing a lot of Y2K38 stuff lately, including the "this is why Y2K wasn't a problem - we fixed it" part. there were so many basic issues including "system won't boot" that would have awful to deal with. also, IMO, Y2K38 is a harder problem... i plan to skip Y2106 issues.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac vaccines
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Why should my taxes pay for a "fire department"? My house isn't on fire!
[since I can't quote-boost it]
"Why should my taxes pay for a "fire department"? My house isn't on fire!"The real problem is that they then demand that the fire get put out at cost without understanding that the cost is cheaper when you do prevention.
This is one of the reasons that US health care is so expensive. People use emergency rooms for basic health care, which they only go to when things get so bad they have to. Because health care premiums and copays and deductables are so high.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac there's a handful of these kinds of things, getting the ozone layer to recover was another one. Underappreciated efforts spread out globally and backed by massive amounts of paperwork that actually did a thing.
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
@johnzajac As always: There is no glory in prevention.
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@johnzajac the most recent Y2K failure i saw was only a few years ago, when a liquor store sign told me i couldn't buy alcohol unless i was born after this day in 1900.
i've been telling non-tech people about fixing a lot of Y2K38 stuff lately, including the "this is why Y2K wasn't a problem - we fixed it" part. there were so many basic issues including "system won't boot" that would have awful to deal with. also, IMO, Y2K38 is a harder problem... i plan to skip Y2106 issues.
Well, the liquor store sign is not *wrong*. No one born in 1900, or before can buy alcohol today. It's a moot point, as they're all dead.
(And I'm assuming that the sign actually said "on or before," not "after.")
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@johnzajac the most recent Y2K failure i saw was only a few years ago, when a liquor store sign told me i couldn't buy alcohol unless i was born after this day in 1900.
i've been telling non-tech people about fixing a lot of Y2K38 stuff lately, including the "this is why Y2K wasn't a problem - we fixed it" part. there were so many basic issues including "system won't boot" that would have awful to deal with. also, IMO, Y2K38 is a harder problem... i plan to skip Y2106 issues.
I'm working on the Y10K problem. I'm a real forward-thinker.
And, actually, in reality, I'm having a remarkably hard time convincing my superiors that there are really problems with a bunch of files we have, ... in spite of the fact that one of them even has a five digit year in it. Parsing error and the file can't be used, of course. So it *is* a real-world example of the Y10K bug. (And a typo, as that field can only have past dates, and 22025 is in the future)
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I wish we had spent the last 26 years teaching people that the reason the 2000 bug didn't destroy a significant amount of our infrastructure is because *we caught it* and *spent thousands of hours fixing it* BEFORE the year 2000
Because within that little perplexion - people thinking the problem was a hoax because it was fixed before it destroyed shit - is an encapsulation of the current era of Western politics, including COVID mitigation, lesser evil politics, fascism, and crime rate hyperbole
It's very hard to get people to care about infrastructure, because it's boring.
Future problems are even more boring.
I do find the concept of "technical debt" (as flawed as it is) is useful to get people thinking about infrastructure.
