Prepping for food shortages

[Yellow Fang]

Maybe I should build my own anaerobic digester.

 

[Profpointy]

This whole thread is becoming a walk down memory lane for me 😆
Y2K is something I remember well as I was heavily involved with it at work. There was a lot of nonsense talked about things like doors not opening (they have manual options), but there was a lot of serious stuff too that was either computer patched or mitigated against.
Y2K wasn't an issue because people prepared for it, not because it wasn't real.

It wasn't entirely nonsense but the effort expended was hugely disproportionate. No vendor will guarantee their software is fault free, which led to ridiculous measures over 2000AD. No one expects such guarantees over bugs in general. OK there might have been the odd misprint on a report, but most (UNIX at least) systems deal in seconds since 1970 or whatever it is. A lot of vendors and consultancies and indeed IT folk needing an excuse to upgrade did seriously milk it.

To be fair we did manage to ditch some old shyte using it as a pretext, and I think I got a good bonus, but it was seriously over egged.
A non IT neighbour, nice enough intelligent guy, ask us (me and the Mrs both in IT) if we as a street should make emergency plans and we both laughed. He did believe us but had been caught up by the alarmism in the press .

I did read that in Italy they basically did f-all, yet still had few problems of any note.

To be honest if major companies had just paid their top techies a £5k each to do a couple of days and nights in the office with beer and takeaways provided, that would have sufficed for most (non-) issues

Granted known deficiencies needed sorting, but to guarantee every last line of code was ridiculous.

 

[Profpointy]

Pendant alert. @Drago was not playing poker

Indeed but he was (incorrectly) using poker language

Similarly people wrongly use the musical term "crescendo" when not speaking of music.

 

[SteveH80]

Continuing the Y2K thing...
A lot of our stuff (NHS) was making sure the machine that goes 'ping' would continue to go 'ping', which is quite important when there is some poor sod on the other end of it.
My particular bit was the Estate, much of that was ensuring staff where on hand in case a door didn't open, lift refused to lift or an electrical supply system decided not to supply.
Nobody realised how much low level stuff had embedded technology that might be date sensitive.

 

[Rusty Nails]

I can understand keeping a supply of stuff in the house to last a month or two because looking at what we keep in the house we probably have enough for that long anyway.

I know I am pushing my luck here but I feel all this talk about survivalists and guarding against predators/looters is very far-fetched and the result of too vivid an imagination or watching post apocalypse TV shows/films like the 28 Days Later/Walking Dead series.

We might get some shortages as a result of El Nino...but that is all they will be, and they will be temporary and more expensive.

Having said that I might get a stockpile of coffee beans in. Some things are just too essential to do without, and you never know.

 

[katiewlx]

That sent me off down another rabbit hole 🙂
Perhaps Y2038 will upend all this AI stuff and it will revert from being a LLM to a S*LM (*small) and just sit there soiling itself and making "goo goo" noises 🤣
Although this might already have happened 🤔

well yes, and Ill guarantee alot of folk have forgotten about it....

 

[Binky]

As others have said, I might get more catfood as if that goes short then it's a problem. Cats I find become used to a particular brand/kind of food so if regular supplies run out then it's a problem.
So, in times of trouble I think I'll worry more about them than me!

Edit, Lol.

 

[Punkawallah]

Granted known deficiencies needed sorting, but to guarantee every last line of code was ridiculous.

Given the ‘Terms and Conditions’ customers have to read and agree to, I’m bloody sure every last line of code should be guaranteed.

 

[SteveH80]

I did my first bit of survivalist activity yesterday, I made an early Christmas cake from what I could scavenge from the baking box (and the shelves of Morrisons).
I know it won't keep long, perhaps a week with me and her about 😁

 

[Ming the Merciless]

Granted known deficiencies needed sorting, but to guarantee every last line of code was ridiculous.

Y2K took the years 1998 to 2000 for me in IT. Worked in supply chain / replenishment for food. Happy days identifying all the locations we used dates, writing all the tests and expected outcomes, configuring the full systems, setting the initial data conditions, executing the tests, and checking and documenting results. A great collaboration with my business analyst partner in crime.

 

[annedonnelly]

Y2K took the years 1998 to 2000 for me in IT. Worked in supply chain / replenishment for food. Happy days identifying all the locations we used dates, writing all the tests and expected outcomes, configuring the full systems, setting the initial data conditions, executing the tests, and checking and documenting results. A great collaboration with my business analyst partner in crime.

I worked on making sure that nPower could still register new customers for a gas supply. The checking was left very late as the system was supposed to be replaced before the millennium. It was a few years later before it was finally decommisioned.

 

[Ming the Merciless]

The checking was left very late as the system was supposed to be replaced before the millennium

Ha, I have heard from colleagues still at my old places of work; that code I wrote around 1990 is still running unchanged. Legacy systems continue on, and those who built it and understand it retire or are already retired.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Electricity likely to be one of the first things to go so unless you have a generator then your microwave be useless.

If you do have your own generator, presumably you would have to be able to disconnect your house from the grid. Or maybe have a different circuit. How does it work in hospitals? You'd think hospitals would have a lot of sensitive equipment that needs its power just so.

 

[Yellow Fang]

I did some Y2K testing. There were three bugs. The was the 9/9/99 bug. 9/9/99 was used as a test date or some sort of back door. There was the actual year 2000 rollover, and there was the leap year. There is a leap year every four years, except every century, except every four centuries when there is a leap year. I wondered who would know about there being no leap year in a new century who did not also know there was a leap year every four centuries. Apparently my line manager, so I should have kept quiet.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Continuing the Y2K thing...
A lot of our stuff (NHS) was making sure the machine that goes 'ping' would continue to go 'ping', which is quite important when there is some poor sod on the other end of it.
My particular bit was the Estate, much of that was ensuring staff where on hand in case a door didn't open, lift refused to lift or an electrical supply system decided not to supply.
Nobody realised how much low level stuff had embedded technology that might be date sensitive.

You wouldn't have thought there was much date sensitive code in embedded software. Embedded software would care about the time, including when it turned midnight, but why would it care about the date? Often there would be a layer of software on the user interface side, usually on Windows that would care about the date. Windows at the time was still a bit flaky. I suppose there was still quite a bit of older software running on kit which did not interface to Windows.