Y2K
loreops cultureprogramminggovernance & risk
Stands for: the Year 2000 problem
The two-digit-year defect that threatened date logic worldwide at the 1999 to 2000 rollover, and the remediation effort that largely defused it.
Decades of software stored years as two digits to save memory, so 00 could sort before 99 and break everything from interest calculations to embedded controllers. Hundreds of billions of dollars in global remediation later, the rollover passed with only scattered failures. Y2K became the field's standing lesson in the preparedness paradox: when prevention works, it looks afterwards like the danger was never real.
Also known as: millennium bug, Year 2000 problem