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Twitter "Twitpocalypse" Snags Mac, iPhone Apps
awarrenfells notes coverage in Macworld of what is being called "the Twitpocalypse" — Twitter applications breaking as the number of tweets exceeds 32 bits. "The first apparent victim of the Twitpocalypse was The Iconfactory's Twitterrific for iPhone, which stopped working immediately following the event. ... Atebits Software's Tweetie has also been affected by the Twitpocalypse. The program continues to function for browsing and posting tweets, but searches no longer work in the Mac version and results appear one at a time in the iPhone version."
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208738307&ref=ts
Which twit didn't see that one coming? Surely it should have shown up in testing?
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Is it just me or does Twitter seem to be the most unreliable of all social networking sites? I mean, between these outages and the "fail whale" that appears every day or so, can't they get some decent servers? I mean, even Facebook which has way more people consuming way more bandwidth doesn't go down near this often.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So that means there are 2-4 billion messages (depending on if they meant signed or unsigned)? There goes the last of my faith in humanity.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
... nothing of value was lost.
... and then they built the supercollider.
2^32 * 140 char is approx 2^40 = 280Gb so all the actual tweets would fit one smallish (new) hard drive
Amount of time used - a lot
Benefit? Unknown.
What do people get out of it? I thought about it and don't see the point unless I am desperate for continual updates about everything. I just took a week off from my regular news sources (website - bloomberg and newspaper types), because I am not having a holiday this year and needed a break. There a few hundred unread rss messages waiting for me (/., groklaw and so on).
Educate me.
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
Funny computing names like beans, cookies and web were pretty cool and hip... then came blogs, vlogs and pods, which I found rather to be rather silly words... but Twitpocalypse??? WTF?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Please note that this is not a problem with Twitter, only some third-party clients that were not smart enough to use 64-bit integers for the tweet ID.
What was the tweet that did it?
I'm kind of tired with reading that this is Twitter's fault. Twitter actually uses 64 bits ID internally. The "problem" is with 3rd party apps that interface with Twitter's API and expect to receive only a signed 32 bit integer.
http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/2048659057
Disclaimer: I've never used twitter.
I'm quickly running out of synonyms for 'pointless' to troll all these Twitter stories.
Does this have to do with creating thousands of accounts that run amok around a website, pretending they're someone else??
Oh wait, wrong twitter.
Yes. When I first saw mention of this I got my hopes up but they were soon dashed.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
http://twitter.com/twitterapi/status/2048659057
Man am I glad I never got on this bandwagon.
Apparently so. Perhaps even more in this age, pretending you're someone else seems a good indication that whatever it is you're doing has fa
"I don't see the point". That's a lazy response. Millions of people are sending billions of tweets, surely not every single one of them is completely a fool, deserving to be humbled by your genius' stated lack of understanding?
Whatever the reason, you seem to think it's important to tell everyone how much you don't understand, and really it just looks silly.
Maybe you say "I tried it for a while and I didn't get it". OK, you tried to understand, and couldn't, so you gave up. It's not any more impressive than just outright telling us you don't understand.
Understanding why people do things, even if you disagree, is a good thing. Understanding lets you work with people. Understanding gives you insight towards changing their mind. You should strive for understanding, rather than wallow in telling people how much you don't understand. "I don't see the point" is a step on the road towards anti-intellectualism.
Also, I see a lot of "what does Twitter really do??" posts. Either these posters are simply being obtuse or /. IQ's have plummeted recently.
if you know you're getting a positive number back, why not just use uint?
Funny... Breadbin64 was not affected by this issue:
http://www.vandenbrande.com/wp/2009/06/breadbox64-a-twitter-client-for-the-c64/
Some clients didn't plan for growth?
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
to use unsigned 128-bit integers for everything.
53 49 47 53 20 53 55 43 4B
A bit of nitpicking, but 2 billion (and change) is only the maximum value for 31 bits. So only apps which treat this number as a signed int are affected. Apps that treat it as an unsigned int won't be affected for another year or two (when the count passes 4 billion and change).
Oh boy..haven't they learn from Y2K bug?
Because you're using a language where all variables are signed by default?
The Mac and iPhone API's use NSUInteger all over the place for ID values - you can guess the typedef...
If developers had followed that lead they wouldn't have run into this wall.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is 'twat' the past tense of tweet?
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Actually, any seasoned DBA or database application developer will tell you that any numeric designator/ID number issued by someone other than yourself should always be represented and handled as a string value to deal with the situation of a numeric designator suddenly going alphanumeric.
If Twitter switched to alphanumeric designators for records, all the existing apps would not only not handle the tweets, some less well written apps would probably crash altogether.
Interestingly, the Twitter client I use is written in Python, so this wasn't even an issue. :)
The correct name for the Twitter Apocalypse is "Twitterdammerung" first mentioned in http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/04/gop_twitterdammerung.php
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
I too had my hopes dashed when this did not confirm Twitter no longer worked as well
It provides nothing of intrinsic value. Just the illusion that some semblance of human interaction is taking place.
And to any jackass that defended twitter in their comment... Why?
My blood hurts...
ooo, look at me! I'm posting on /. which is such a trendy social news site! I better make a post about how I dont see the point in another social communication site, and how lame it is; since that'll get me modded up, leading to me getting mod privileges, leading to me feeling slightly better about my small penis.
christ, you sound like such tryhard posers. wake up and listen to yourself!
What do people get out of it? I thought about it and don't see the point unless I am desperate for continual updates about everything. (..)
Educate me.
Things I get from the video below:
- It makes people feel connected
- You can learn about hidden interests
- see different sides of people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddO9idmax0o
So it breaks down the walls between people, and brings them closer to each other. The video explains it quite nicely imho.
I was hoping this meant that they had accidently killed everyone who used twitter using a snowcrash esc virus.
Nerds seem to have a good bit of hate towards Twitter. I've never really understood why. It could be because of the ridiculous names associated with it. Twitter, tweeting, twits, etc. But these are the same people that have no problem whatsoever using Google, Yelp and even WYSIWYG apps.
Names aside, perhaps its because the 'common' people use it and find it enjoyable. Ditch the air of superiority and embrace what communication is becoming. For better or for worse, it's here to stay like e-mail. That fad from 30 years ago that is still around today.
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
And three words of warning for programmers and system designers: "Reasonable Limits Aren't".
I look forward to the day where this can be said with just the letters RLA. Then maybe we'll see fewer examples of it needing mention.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
if you adjust a name that is literally like "UINT32" you should probably change its name along with its size.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire