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It Was Y2K Revisited as Saturday's GPS Reset Risks Proved Minor

  • ‘Week number rollover’ quirk sent some systems back to 1980
  • Utilities, financial systems and airlines could be affected
Google to provide Android operating system for media displays in cars

Photographer: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

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It was the Y2K bug’s little brother, with about the same impact: the world as we know it didn’t end.

Thanks to a quirk in how Global Positioning Systems keep track of time, some devices were due to have their calendars reset at 7:59 p.m. EDT on Saturday. The change echoed the mostly overhyped hysteria about global computer systems that gripped the world when the calendar was about to tick over from 1999 to 2000. Societal collapse was again avoided.