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Twitter "Twitpocalypse" Snags Mac, iPhone Apps

Posted by kdawson on from the y2k-all-over-again dept.

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."

5 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. Let's see by tqft · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
    1. Re:Let's see by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      2^10 = 1 KB (1024)
      2^20 = 1 MB (1024^2)
      2^30 = 1 GB (1024^3)
      2^40 = 1 TB (1024^4)

      2^40 != 280GB. 2^40 != 280 Gb

      ((2^32)*140)/(1024^3) = 560 GB, or using 1000 instead of 1024, 601 GB.

      Including some other stuff, lets make it 160 bytes/tweet for things like username or something, 640 GB.
      Still, you can by drives that can hold that much for under $100.

  2. Re:Well. by vadim_t · · Score: 2, Informative

    AFAIK, Twitter itself was unaffected, it's just client applications that failed.

    Most client apps probably only handle the number internally, and never show it anywhere, so the developer possibly never even saw that it was getting close to the limit.

  3. Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not by ZyBex · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Wait the most important thing was left out... by maxume · · Score: 2, Informative

    Presumably it was this one ((2^31)+1, ids around 2.2 billion don't exist yet, so apparently the broken apps were using signed numbers):

    http://twitter.com/nk/status/2147483649

    Don't worry, they are rather simple to find:

    http://twitter.com/statuses/show/2147483649.xml

    (The first url can be constructed with information from the second...)

    --
    Nerd rage is the funniest rage.