Y2K
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Shoddy coding has some Honda cars stuck in the year 2002
Some Honda cars owners have recently found themselves in something of a time loop.
Microsoft fixed a Y2K-style bug that broke Exchange email
Microsoft has fixed an Exchange bug that broke email services at the start of 2022 — and it comes down to simple integer math.
Hitting the Books: The Y2K bug could come back sooner than you think
Welcome to Hitting the Books. With less than one in five Americans reading just for fun these days, we've done the hard work for you by scouring the internet for the most interesting, thought provoking books on science and technology we can find and delivering an easily digestible nugget of their stories.
Y2K: Paranormal elevator death, new RPG systems, no hipsters
Y2K stars Alex, a young man with thick-rimmed glasses, a full beard and a flannel shirt over a nerdy retro tee and jeans. He fights enemies with vinyl records. Need more hipster cred? Developer AckkStudios describes the plot of Y2K as follows: "When an erratically behaving elevator claims the life of a young woman, unemployed recent college graduate Alex Eggleston takes to a primitive 1990s message board to find answers about the death of this stranger. His quest for answers leads to more questions as his research points him to a mysterious van the internet has dubbed the 'Death Cab.'" Yes, Death Cab. Y2K may seem like a hipster paradise, but AckkStudios co-founder Brian Allanson tells Joystiq that Alex isn't a hipster – he's just a guy who knows what he likes. The same goes for the entire, real-life development team. "For the characters in the game: No, they don't view themselves as hipsters," Allanson says. "Alex is a little bit oblivious to the fact that he's so hip. He's just living his life with his interests. Personally, speaking for the team, we don't call ourselves hipsters. If someone called us that we'd accept that as a description because we are some young people making an indie game – and that's pretty hip, I guess. Although we're really nothing like the characters in Y2K."
The Game Archaeologist and the Asheron Recall: Player sagas
It's an odd thing to realize how far MMOs have come right in front of our eyes in a relatively short span of time. After all, 1999 wasn't that long ago, despite what Prince and Y2K would have you believe. One day we'll be telling our children -- if we aren't already -- about the primitive MMOs that didn't feature RealGore™, motion sensor-linked emotes, and mostly nude elves dancing for tips on mailboxes. They may gasp and sputter in disbelief, but you'll assert that it is true: You experienced an era when polygons were blockier than LEGO pieces, people logged in over dial-up connections, and the community was small enough for GMs to host personal live events. There's been a lot of love flowing into my email inbox and Twitter since posting the first Game Archaeologist on Asheron's Call, enough to tell me that this title is a dear old friend to many a seasoned gamer out there (including a few on the Massively staff who won't stop writing epic haikus about AC in its honor this month). As a result, I got in touch with two die-hard fans of the game, and they agreed to scribe their memories of this MMO for future generations to discover, generations who will undoubtedly marvel at the hardship and perserverence that such scrappy gamers showed in being part of the first wave of MMO players. Without further ado, please give a warm round of applause to Amanda and Jon. No, nobody can hear you clap over the internet, but it's the thought that counts.
Ten gadgets that defined the decade
As 2009 winds down and we try to come up with new and clever ways of referring to the early years of this century, there's really only one thing left to do: declare our ten favorite gadgets of the aughts and show them off in chronological order. It's arguable that if this wasn't the decade of gadgets, it was certainly a decade shaped by gadgets -- one which saw the birth of a new kind of connectedness. In just ten years time, gadgets have touched almost every aspect of our daily lives, and personal technology has come into its own in a way never before seen. It's a decade that's been marked the ubiquity of the internet, the downfall of the desktop, and the series finale of Friends, but we've boiled it down to the ten devices we've loved the most and worked the hardest over the past ten years. We even had some of our friends in the tech community chime in with their picks on what they thought was the gadget or tech of the decade -- so join us for a look back at the best (gadget) years ever!
Beware the Newtapocalypse, a 2010 bug for the Newton MessagePad
We made it through Y2K and we appear to be surviving Twitpocalypse, but will Apple Newton MessagePad fans make through the Newtapocalypse? Apple's ill-fated and technologically advanced personal digital assistant was hot stuff in the 1990s until it was axed in February of 1998. There are still a good number of Newton MessagePad fans who not only use their devices every day, but are also working together on hardware and software updates to their units to bring them into the 21st Century. The Newtapocalypse occurs next year at 6:48:31 PM on January 5th, 2010. While a majority of the functions of the MessagePad are not affected by the impending doom, calendar functions are. Here's a description of the problem from 40hz.org: The overflow happens in all NewtonScript functions which use seconds as the resolution. In contrast to the 32 bit unsigned integer used by the C++ functions, NewtonScript integers are only 30 bits wide. While the C++ functions can handle times from 1904 until 2040 without an overflow, the NewtonScript functions had to be designed with a smaller range of applicable times due to the limited precision. The seconds-based functions are implemented by taking the value of the real-time clock, subtracting the offset to January 1st 1993, and converting the results to a NewtonScript integer. This limited range causes an overflow on Tuesday, January 5, 2010 at 6:48:31 PM. This is the list of affected functions: SetSysAlarm TimeInSeconds TimeToTimeInSeconds TimeInSecondsToTime Got that? John Sculley and company were probably hoping that by now you'd be using your Knowledge Navigator instead of a Newton MessagePad, and 2010 seemed far, far away. For anyone who wants to use calendar alarm functions on a Newton OS 2.1 devices after January 5th of next year, there's a fix that is being tested. Now you'll be able to sleep better at night, won't you?Update: I should change the title of this post to "Don't fear the reaper", since several commenters have pointed out that the update was released three weeks ago. The 40hz.org web page originally cited still says that "A solution is under testing". Frankly, considering the caveats listed on the update page, I think it would be a much better idea just to get an iPhone, guys!
Y2K finally strikes, crushes Grand Theft Auto 2 fans' dreams
Those who spent New Year's Eve, 1999 holed up in a bunker beneath their house, eating astronaut food while your superterranean contemporaries amused themselves with the ramblings of Dick Clark and the chonologically appropriate jams of Will Smith probably felt pretty silly when, you know, the world didn't end. Perhaps a technical snafu on Rockstar's website will slightly justify these worryworts' absence from the centennial shenanigans.The snafu in question was an apparent countdown for Grand Theft Auto 2, leading many to believe the PS1 classic would soon be heading to XBLA and PSN Stores near you. Unfortunately, a quick check of the page's source code reveals that the timer was created in 1999, and that certain parameters have caused the countdown to malfunction in the 21st century. Rockstar confirmed that they have no plans to port the title, but reluctantly admitted that the countdown timer has become self-aware, and that today is, in fact, Judgment Day.
