The TLDR is that punchcard operators found the DTG date format convenient. Punchcard sorting is easiest when consecutive bits encode the sort key, and the DTG format is easy to split into different sets of bit ranges corresponding to common business logic.

> When you see something weird in the space, assume it is because someone in the 1960s thought using more than two characters world be a profligate waste of space.

And with 1960s technology, this might just have been a very reasonable decision.

That’s obviously not what’s happening. But if this upgrade is really implicated, the real question would be where the line of accepted residual risk for an outage like this was drawn.

Sorry I was unclear; the guess is that it caused an issue, not that they did this on purpose with no warning.

Well sure, but I wouldn't be shocked at all if someone greenlit a plan that wasn't supposed to involve closing the airspace, but which failed and which had an insufficiently thought out rollback plan.

Teams phone down?

Are these systems dependent on landlines?

VZW and AT&T are moving full tilt in shutting down landline central offices.

Literally the gay dude from Airplane pulling the plug from the socket may have happened here.

That would be a pretty concerning way of handling database failures, but I suspect you might be right.

Power is off? Let the dinosaurs out.