Comment on xkcd #3184: Funny Numbers

• ByteJunk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Yep I think pops here has this one, us Millennials grew up with leet speak, it already was a thing in the 80s.

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  • davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    That’s the first time anyone called me pops! NOW I feel old!

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    • sanguinepar@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Sorry to hear that, gramps!

      (Am also Gen X. Sigh…)

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    • n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      If you’re GenX and no one has called you pops before you have lived a Sheltered life

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      • davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        This is a fair point. I’m a programmer and this kind of banter is not super common in my workplace. We are all a little bit odd in our own ways.

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  • chunes@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    People get confused because leet speak had a resurgence around 1997 or so.

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• Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Y2K

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  • davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I remember it well.

    The newspapers were apoplectic about the coming millennium bug Armageddon (hospital equipment was all going to crash because programmes encoded a date as two digits and everyone was going to accidentally become of negatively age and all timers would break.

    COBOL programmers: there’s a serious issue with banking and other business systems and we need to concentrate on this above Abby other issue to resolve it
    Managers and newspapers: ARMAGEDDON!
    COBOL programmers: we’ve got this.
    Newspapers: nobody is doing anything about it! Armageddon!
    COBOL programmers: It’s a lot of work but we’re cracking on, we’ve been working at it a while and it’s going to be tight and we’re going to need to put in some overtime, but really, we’ve got this.
    Newspapers: OH FUCK LITERALLY EVERYTHING IS GOING TO CRASH

    Millienium dawns. Some slight issues remain. Most important systems already patched and fine. Society does not crash.

    Newspapers: There was no millennium bug after all!
    COBOL programmers: no, there was, but we fixed it like we said we needed to and then we did. Boy, that was hard work.
    Newspapers: It was ALL A HOAX.
    COBOL programmers: no, it was a problem and we fixed it.
    Newpapers: CELEBRITY WOMAN WEARS DRESS.
    COBOL programmers: we just see the world differently, I guess. Can I retire early with all this emergency business critical overtime money?

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    • ByteJunk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Ahahah I experienced only the media narrative, and it did play out exactly as you described it.

      Of course now it comes to reason that many people were actively working to fix the problem, but they never really explained that part on TV.

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      • davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

        Lol no, they did not!

        NERDS WORK VERY HARD INDEED AND FIX BUGS IN MASSIVE NUMBERS OF SYSTEMS doesn’t sell papers.

        For that matter, neither does TEENAGERS WORK NIGHT AND DAY IN UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS OF REVISION AND EXAM PREPARATION AND BREAK PREVIOUS SUCCESS RECORDS AGAIN BECAUSE TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS ARE GRADED AS FAILING UNLESS RESULTS RISE CONTINUOUSLY. Can you tell I have friends in the teaching profession?!

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