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."

Comments

Strangely reminiscent of a facebook group

[Mr_eX9]

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2208738307&ref=ts

Well.

[dov_0]

Which twit didn't see that one coming? Surely it should have shown up in testing?

Re:Well.

[Darkness404]

In later testing, it should be dected, but to overflow 32 bits thats over 2 billion messages. For being founded as a not-so-major project, I don't think they would think that in 3 years that it would reach that much.

Re:Well.

[maxume]

You might start thinking about it around 1 billion though. Maybe even at 500 million (especially if you are in some sort of obscene growth phase...).

Re:Well.

[vadim_t]

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.

Re:Well.

[0100010001010011]

I want to know who setup twits as signed. Are there going to be negative twits? Twits by your evil twin?

THINK about what your code does and choose the appropriate data type.

Re:Well.

[Brian Gordon]

People just think "integer" and type "int". That's what happens when you learn from 5-page tutorials instead of a comprehensive spec.

Re:Well.

[TJamieson]

I thought most every developer dealing with C or C-like languages will generally use some imports header that has something like:

typedef unsigned int UINT32;

(Adjust UINT32 depending on system).

Re:Well.

[HTH NE1]

In later testing, it should be detected, but to overflow 32 bits that's over 2 billion messages. For being founded as a not-so-major project, I don't think they would think that in 3 years that it would reach that much.

It doesn't get said often enough: Reasonable Limits Aren't. Whatever limit you think is reasonable will be exceeded. If you can't be unlimited, think up a reasonable limit, then choose a limit that it outrageously unreasonably large and maybe you'll be OK.

The move to IPv6 is because we're running out of space in IPv4 which is 32 bits (unsigned). Surely you should be able to handle a tweet count larger than one tweet per IP address over the life of the Internet.

Were the applications being bit by this bug written 3 years ago?

Overflowing 32 bits

[AuMatar]

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.

Re:Overflowing 32 bits

[Fishchip]

It took twitter to break the camel's back for you? =P

Re:Overflowing 32 bits

[johnlcallaway]

Have faith .. if you ignore the orphan tweets, the remaining messages were only created by 37 people who aren't smart enough to realize that their friends don't really give a crap about what they are doing, or are willing to wait to hear about the important stuff when they get together to do stuff instead of sitting with deer eyes in front of the iPhone waiting for the next tweet to show up.

And...

[dangitman]

... nothing of value was lost.

Re:And...

[eldavojohn]

... nothing of value was lost.

Actually what was lost was any hope left I had for humanity. More than 2,147,483,647 'tweets' have been 'tweeted.' God, I feel stupid just saying that. But what is that? Like half the population of earth?! And then they go so far as to call lack of mobile Twitter applications apocalyptic? Humanity has officially jumped the shark, people. Some other animal should have been given a shot at ruining the world.

I mean at least I can derive cheap entertainment from cell phone texts but Twitter transcripts have little to no value in my eyes. If anyone needs me, I'll be in the backyard building a rocket ship to seek out another planet free of Twitter. Hopefully it'll just have more minor problems like being covered in methane or a flesh eating silicon based virus ...

Re:And...

[russlar]

If anything screams for that tag, this is it.

Re:And...

[MichaelSmith]

If anyone needs me, I'll be in the backyard building a rocket ship to seek out another planet free of Twitter. Hopefully it'll just have more minor problems like being covered in methane or a flesh eating silicon based virus ...

You can't escape. Twitter travels at the speed of light. But this is a generational thing. For my sister, her neurons have been modified by consumption of ecstasy. Mobile phones have been cheap and available since she was 15 or so. Emailing small bits of crap around the world is a way of life for her.

Sure, I would like to live 1000 years but I am not going to like the world that distance into the future.

Re:And...

[e9th]

You send anonymous tweets?

Re:And...

[master5o1]

No, can't you see he tweets under the username "_I_". Clearly he would be at http://twitter.com/_I_

Re:And...

[MrMista_B]

You feel stupid saying 'tweet', but you're posting on a site called 'Slashdot'.

Re:Is it just me...

[paazin]

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.

Probably because they realize as soon as this fad passes, pretty much the only value they'll have are those upgraded servers.

Let's see

[tqft]

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.

Re:Let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Let's see

[tqft]

At this level of analysis being out by less than a factor of 10 is fine

Looks like I screwed converting 140 2^6 = 64 2^7 = 128 2^8 = 256 and used 2^32 instead of 2^31

Re:Let's see

[strredwolf]

It's mainly chatter, so if you could fit it in a few gig with some nice compression.

Re:Let's see

[MichaelSmith]

What do we get out of this? Is it any different?

Re:Let's see

[master5o1]

We get a nice message stating that we have either "Bad" "Neutral" "Good" or "Excellent" karma, and occasionally some funny posts.

Re:Let's see

[tqft]

It just seems to me if have something worthwhile to say 140 char isn't enough.

With the volume of information I am interested in increasing I know there is a sacrifice between speed, completeness and size. I can't see getting good info from 140 char to make it worthwhile - unless we are going to play follow the link and I would rather hit a big blog (eg /. ) that has summaries and many links than try and follow a vast volume of little stuff and piece it together.

Maybe it just won't work for the way I want my information.

 

Re:Let's see

[Mage Powers]

One bit one way, one bit the other way. You did forget the usernames that the tweets belong to, and timestamps

; (12+168)*2160459012/2^30
                ~362.17516489326953887939

Re:Let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you don't have any friends?

Seriously: you value your RSS news feeds - but can't understand the value of updates from people that you actually know?

It's just a matter of priorities.

Re:Let's see

[tqft]

None of the people I know IRL are on twitter or and only a few are twits. Some know how to browse porn and use iTunes, but they generally have a life on the 'net.

Re:Let's see

[Anonymous Coward]

Here I go:

1. My research computer cluster at work twitters to tell me simulations are done.

2. The journal of the American Chemical Society twitters updates on interesting papers and news

3. My friends twitter at research conferences to tell me about a good seminar (so I can read about the research)

4. I twitter status updates about when I'll be at work, late for a meeting, running simulations for a few hours, just finished edits on a paper, or when the firewall is screwing around with me.

I'm a graduate student, if you couldn't guess. Although many of these things could be done with RSS and e-mail, it's just nice to have everything in one spot and quickly digestible. Hopefully this should clear any confusion for the "get off my lawn" slashdot.

Re:Let's see

[amRadioHed]

Admit it, you just added that second paragraph to make your post longer than 140 characters to try and prove your point. In reality your first 78 characters said it all.

Re:Let's see

[tqft]

Have trolled someone in there journal for that - whinging about twitter and I did a word count on his post and said he could have twittered it.
---------------------
144 am safe

Re:Let's see

[Peganthyrus]

It's "having an IRC window open to the channel all your buddies hang out in all day long", without the part where it is actually happening via this cryptic old protocol called IRC.

Re:Let's see

[FireFury03]

Seriously: you value your RSS news feeds - but can't understand the value of updates from people that you actually know?

Oddly enough, I have personal conversations (in real life, or online) with my friends rather than just reading "status updates" broadcast as summaries to the masses. Generally I couldn't care less about the status of people who aren't my friends, let alone people I don't even know (there seems to be a trend for people to follow celebrities on twitter that I just don't get...).

Re:Let's see

[FireFury03]

1. My research computer cluster at work twitters to tell me simulations are done.

Seems that something like XMPP, SIP/SIMPLE, or maybe even email, might be a better and more standard solution. Your mileage may vary though.

2. The journal of the American Chemical Society twitters updates on interesting papers and news

Wouldn't a professional organisation be better off running their own server providing this sort of update by a standard protocol (RSS, ATOM, etc.) be more sensible than relying on a third party service of which they have no control (especially one run by an organisation that doesn't really seem to have a viable business plan)? I know this isn't your decision, it's the Americal Chemical Society's decision, but it seems a bit crazy to me.

Although many of these things could be done with RSS and e-mail, it's just nice to have everything in one spot and quickly digestible. Hopefully this should clear any confusion for the "get off my lawn" slashdot.

I'll agree that having everything in one place is important (this is one of my primary problems with web fora - no I don't want to have to poll 15 different websites several times a day with my web browser, I'm far happier with mailing lists where it all lands in a mail client of by choice). This is one of the reasons why I read RSS feeds using rss2email - my online communications tend to be in 2 places - email for non-instantaneous stuff, XMPP for instantaneous communications (actually, also SIP for phone calls). It just seems to me that there are (and have been for years) technologies that offer pretty much the same functionality as Twitter with less limitations, so I'm not sure why anyone would choose to use Twitter instead - the only thing Twitter seems to have going for it is an awful lot of undue media hype.

Re:Let's see

[jbengt]

Admit it, you just added that second paragraph to make your post longer than 140 characters to try and prove your point. In reality your first 78 characters said it all.

The first 78 characters:
"It just seems to me if have something worthwhile to say 140 char isn't enough."

The first 140 characters:
"It just seems to me if have something worthwhile to say 140 char isn't enough.
With the volume of information I am interested in increasing I know th"

The entire post (about 560+/- characters, depending on how you count spaces and endlines):
It just seems to me if have something worthwhile to say 140 char isn't enough.
With the volume of information I am interested in increasing I know there is a sacrifice between speed, completeness and size. I can't see getting good info from 140 char to make it worthwhile - unless we are going to play follow the link and I would rather hit a big blog (eg /. ) that has summaries and many links than try and follow a vast volume of little stuff and piece it together.
Maybe it just won't work for the way I want my information.

I'm sure he could have said it in fewer characters, but you are quite wrong to say that the first 78 characters said it all.

Re:Let's see

[drinkypoo]

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.

Yeah, that's pretty much it. These days you can be a twat and twit from your mobile device, so you can be connected all the time.

Eventually, everyone will be connected all the time. We'll all grow up with ubiquitous, always-on high speed internet access wherever we go (well, or civilization will collapse first, but let's be positive) and we'll all want to be talking to people we know (and maybe people we don't) all the time.

Google allows you to know what people are doing and thinking about; Twitter lets you know what they're doing and thinking about right now. It's a vast source of intelligence that can let you know to the second what is happening and where, and moreover, what people think about it. Just imagining what you could do with that kind of intelligence in the stock market should make you dizzy.

Re:Let's see

[HTH NE1]

It's "having an IRC window open to the channel all your buddies hang out in all day long", without the part where it is actually happening via this cryptic old protocol called IRC.

So it's still a Sartric hell.

(I.e, to layer paraphrases upon paraphrases of Jean Paul Sartre, "Hell is being locked forever in a chat room with your friends.")

"Yes, it's... wonderful, isn't it?"

Re:Let's see

[IBBoard]

You don't get the trend for following celebrities? When you follow them you, like, get to, like, be their friend and say you're, like, friends with them and everything...

Hang on, no, you get to "follow them". That'd make you sound more like a stalker! I suspect the lives of celebrities are about as interesting as every other person I know - i.e. not. I'm quite happy with my own life, thank you very much, without trying to follow someone else's life.

Re:Let's see

[Peganthyrus]

Exactly. I participate in neither Twitter nor IRC!

I must be getting old...

[religious freak]

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?

Re:I must be getting old...

[Snarf You]

Just wait until 64 bits becomes too small... yes, I am referring to Twittageddon.

Re:I must be getting old...

[WebManWalking]

Read and wrote without a chart: 01110011 01101111 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101

Re:I must be getting old...

[amicusNYCL]

Just to see, I punched out 2^64 in the calculator. That's a really big number, that's over 744 trillion. By "over 744 trillion", I mean that there are 5 other digits in front of the 744 trillion, but I don't know how to say those.

18,446,744,073,709,551,616

Re:I must be getting old...

[spartacus_prime]

64 bits should be enough for everybody!

Re:I must be getting old...

[Minwee]

Maybe it's just me, but I thought the Twitpocalypse happened some time around September 1, 1993.

Re:I must be getting old...

[2obvious4u]

So whats growing faster tweets or the US national debt?

-OR-

Thats less than the projected deficit at the end of Obama's first term in office...

Re:I must be getting old...

[amicusNYCL]

Well I guess if you want to get political about it, it could also be the % increase in debt from Clinton to Bush.

This is not a Twitter problem

[jabelli]

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.

Re:This is not a Twitter problem

[JimboFBX]

actually its the clients not smart enough to use an unsigned integer.

The clients not smart enough to use 64-bit integers will have their day in a couple years.

Wait the most important thing was left out...

[immortalpob]

What was the tweet that did it?

Re:Wait the most important thing was left out...

[Shikaku]

fml

Re:Wait the most important thing was left out...

[maxume]

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...)

Re:Wait the most important thing was left out...

[amicusNYCL]

That's so perfect. The message that broke poorly-written clients is one that said "The tweets must flow" with a link to a lolcat. This is like critical mass for a pop-culture black hole.

Re:Wait the most important thing was left out...

[maxume]

I got the common representation of 32 bit signed ints wrong though. Fortunately, statuses 2147483647 (the largest 32 bit signed int) and 2147483648 (which should trigger the overflow) do not exist, so I linked the correct tweet, if only by accident.

If you look at all of nk's tweets ( http://twitter.com/nk ), it becomes apparent that he works at Twitter, and if you work down from ...649, it becomes apparent that they fudged it in. That they did it on purpose takes away some of the magic. He also got the representation wrong: http://twitter.com/nk/status/2137112302 so I guess I shouldn't feel bad about it (I mean, I'm the one who doesn't even work as a programmer, let alone on a massively visible public service).

(The easy way to work down is to use a bookmarklet: https://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/misc.html#decrement )

Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[ZyBex]

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.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[MBCook]

This doesn't surprise me. Even if they started out on 32 bit IDs, they must have realized this was coming at some point and upgraded everything to 64 bits. It's no surprise Twitter was ready for this.

It's interesting that 3rd party apps broke. Why would anyone store the ID of something in a signed variable? I can understand not thinking of using a long, but why a signed int?

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[ZyBex]

Most occasional programmers don't think about these issues or even, god forbids, check the API's documentation. They just happily use "long a,b,c;" all over the source code. I even bet that version 0.1 of some of those apps used "int a,b,c;" ...

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[maxume]

For these apps, where the amount of data isn't huge and much of it is transient, storing the id as a string makes lots of sense.

It wastes some bits, but it won't overflow.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[threephaseboy]

Why would anyone store the ID of something in a signed variable?

You ever read the comments in the documentation on php.net?
I weep for humanity.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[Marcos Eliziario]

Do you realize that most of those applications were made in languages where programmers don't even need to know what a unsigned int is, don't you?

Come on.... I saw a lot of applications out there use floats to store ammounts of money, calculate compound interests.

Let's not be that harsh with those app writers.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[FireFury03]

The funny thing is that these are probably the same poeple who then complain about personal privacy and pubic safety cameras watching them.

I agree with everything you said up until this point - I think you have completely missed the point here.

Giving a running commentary on your life, using credit cards, store loyalty cards, filling in questionnaires etc. (all of which can be used to gather data about you) are personal decisions. The governments legislating the requirement to track everyone is very different as you do not have a choice - if the government suddenly turned evil (lets say they do something completely unheard of and unlikely to ever happen*, such as rounding up and gassing all the jews for example), you can stop (micro)blogging, pay for everything in cash, etc., but you can't stop the government exercising the powers that they have already legislated for (such as CCTV cameras, warrantless phone-taps, the requirement for ISPs to log all your email activities for the security services, the ability to detain anyone without charge, warrantless stop-and-search powers, etc.).

(* for the Americans amongst you, this is sarcasm)

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[Ant P.]

A lot of scripting languages don't have an "unsigned" modifier. PHP and Perl do something stupid at 2^31, Python is smart enough to typecast the number to arbitrary-precision. This isn't just scripting languages being lazy; PostgreSQL doesn't do unsigned types either.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[HTH NE1]

I remember encountering a similar problem years ago. An installer for Microsoft Word 5.1a for Mac refused to install because the hard drive was too big. The amount of free space in bytes was larger than could be stored in a signed 32 bit integer and it reported the remaining capacity as a negative number. I ended up repartitioning to create a volume small enough for the installer to handle.

Back in the days of multiple-floppy installers.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[Cro Magnon]

Come on.... I saw a lot of applications out there use floats to store ammounts of money, calculate compound interests

I once wrote one that stored my finances in 16 bit ints. The sad thing is that it actually worked.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[Marcos Eliziario]

The sad thing is that I could do the same right now, living from month to month sucks.
As a sidenot, I live in Brasil, and yesterday I just found out, that discounting the inflation since 2001 I am barely making no more than 20% of the 2001 earnings today. This, after having being promoted or changing jobs for better positions and bigger companies from year to year.

Re:Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not

[Minwee]

Come on.... I saw a lot of applications out there use floats to store ammounts of money, calculate compound interests.
Let's not be that harsh with those app writers.

No, you need to be harsh with those app writers. If you don't swat them with a rolled up newspaper while they're peeing on your rug then they'll never learn.

On a related note

[MLS100]

I'm quickly running out of synonyms for 'pointless' to troll all these Twitter stories.

"Twitter itself was unaffected"

[John Hasler]

Yes. When I first saw mention of this I got my hopes up but they were soon dashed.

Re:"Twitter itself was unaffected"

[dov_0]

Yes. When I first saw mention of this I got my hopes up but they were soon dashed.

Same here. I think the only people calling it the 'twitpocalypse' and sensationalist journalists. Only two apps were affected and we can presume, as other free apps are available according to the article, that the number of users affected is rather small.

Re:"Twitter itself was unaffected"

[Goldberg's Pants]

I was one of them. I use Twitterific.

Figured it was just overhyped but around 6:30pm my time last night, the app just died. And of course with the Appstore having such a stupid approval process it'll take a while for any fix to appear.

Re:"Twitter itself was unaffected"

[Marcos Eliziario]

Right from CSI /.

"Looks like we have anothe double fashioncide here....
Hey!!! You lieutnant! move your fat donut ass and get all these people from the scene, for goddamn's sake!
I think that we will get those web 2.0 gang's assess this time."

Twitpocalypse?

[Reed Solomon]

Man am I glad I never got on this bandwagon.

Re:Twitpocalypse?

[jo42]

It's up there with "Blogosphere"...

Re:Twitpocalypse?

[selven]

Just wait for the Twitargeddon. And then the Twapture. Hold on a sec, let me open up my trusty thesaurus. Twitastrophe. Twinihilation. Holotwaust. Twataclysm. Twitimation. End of the tworld. Don't let Elmer Fudd find out about this cause that would be a great big Twagedy!

Re:Twitpocalypse?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Twitastrophe. Twinihilation. Holotwaust. Twataclysm. Twitimation...

I think I saw a porno named twataclysm once...

Can you see the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Can you see the point?

[ResidntGeek]

Not seeing the point isn't the same thing as not understanding why people do it.

Also, you seem to be suggesting that attempting to elevate one's self above others is a bad thing. Okay, so ivory towers and arrogance are bad, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't think that dumb things are dumb.

Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[loteck]

You guys have been calling twitter a fad for at least two years, meanwhile families, businesses, celebrities and politicians have been flocking to it in droves and using it extremely successfully. For example, Dell.

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.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[Anonymous Coward]

It comes from the fact that Twitter's gotten a shitload of media hype far beyond what it deserves, to where something is important not because of its substance but because it's on Twitter. It's like when TV shows would heavily advertise their website, and their website had fuck-all for content.

There are a couple of big differences between websites of old and Twitter, though: The web offers a flexible format for content delivery and websites have eventually started to make use of this flexibility, whereas Twitter is inherently extremely limited. Also, websites are not all reliant on a single private company that has absolutely nothing resembling a viable business model -- whereas Twitter mostly certainly is.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[tsa]

Some fads last long. See Second life, or SUVs. Both useless but it took a long time for most people to realize that.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[dpille]

More on Internet drops avg IQ Thus explosive growth MySpace etc now Twitter Relevant in 140 chars? Twtr Tolstoy reads: sh*t happens 2 peeps There, fixed that for you. Sorry to make you counter your own argument.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[drew]

Eh, I know what it does. It's essentially one gigantic IRC chat room.

What I'm having a hard time figuring out is why so many people think it's such a big deal.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[Brian Gordon]

I hate the product. Who cares that you're brushing your teeth or climbing a particularly steep flight of stairs? Microblogging is maddeningly inane.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[paazin]

Eh, I know what it does. It's essentially one gigantic IRC chat room.

What I'm having a hard time figuring out is why so many people think it's such a big deal.

Because it's part of new media and as such also part of the new economy; that is, for the cynical, selling hype with grade A marketing. ;)

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[FooBarWidget]

Everything has a life cycle. How long does something need to live before you can no longer declare it a fad? Is Linux a fad too?

Disclaimer: I am a Linux user and I've contributed to open source Linux/Unix apps.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[FooBarWidget]

Urgh, Slashdot posted my reply under the wrong topic. Bug?

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[malkir]

Think about it, it's following the progression of the net - primarily social media platforms. MySpace was the first big social media explosion, they had bullitens to send mass messages. Cue Facebook, they had status updates, remember "Joe Brown is..."? Twitter coming in as a 'status updater' is just following a growing trend. The retarded thing is, it's so stripped down that people often resort to public, shortened, grammarless conversations pretending like they're text messaging.

Source: I work at a company who opened a Twitter account, the general population online = assholes.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[seriousthinker]

If even communism is still around after 160 years, I'd imagine that Twitter might last for a long time. It might be useless, but at least it isn't actively evil.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[LordSnooty]

Exactly. Twitter is reductive, the antithesis of in-depth discussion like wot we get at slashdot. Thus we are happy to leave the low-IQ LOL-crowd to their ever-decreasing space to express.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[jbengt]

In spite of someone thinking that your demonstration of twitterizing was insightful, it was not a lossless compression.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[ezzzD55J]

Disclaimer: I am a Linux user and I've contributed to open source Linux/Unix apps.

What are you disclaiming?

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[paazin]

If even communism is still around after 160 years, I'd imagine that Twitter might last for a long time. It might be useless, but at least it isn't actively evil.

Yeah, that Marx was a real spawn of Satan.

Lookit - unless they actually find some way to make real money off of Twitter (actual profit not just venture marketing), those servers are going to be consistently overloaded.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[FooBarWidget]

I'm disclaiming any association with trolling.

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[ezzzD55J]

Oh, I see.

I would suggest that is a 'claimer' then ;-)

Re:Why is twitter hate so cool around /.

[OrangeTide]

I love it when twitter fans imply that twitter haters have low "IQ's".

Re:Is it just me...

[iluvcapra]

I mostly agree with you, but I'm going to take it easy on hating twitter for the time being, since it seems to be the only mass media still operating in Iran at the moment.

why use a signed integer for that?

[MrBallistic]

if you know you're getting a positive number back, why not just use uint?

Re:why use a signed integer for that?

[Marcos Eliziario]

Because you're using a language where all variables are signed by default?
Because the CS course at the prestigious University you attended thought that they should adapt to the market and teach you Java, Python, RUP, Scrum and the PMBOK?
And that because of that, you use floats to store money because, well, they have cents....

Re:why use a signed integer for that?

[4D6963]

Maybe -1 would be a code for something, like, post not found? I know it doesn't seem to make sense to used a signed integer for things that can only be positive at first but here's a few things about using signeds instead :

• you can use the negatives for some extra stuff like codes
• it can avoid you some bugs if you do a subtraction of integers and use the result for some more maths (so you get 4 billion something instead of -1)
• and then concerning the range, there are only a few cases when 2 billion numbers is not enough but 4 billion is always enough. If you care about range it doesn't matter whether you get 31 or 32 bits, either you have enough with 2 billions or you use 64-bit integers.

Didn't Affect Twittering From My C64

[fyrie]

Funny... Breadbin64 was not affected by this issue:
http://www.vandenbrande.com/wp/2009/06/breadbox64-a-twitter-client-for-the-c64/

Doh

[J05H]

Some clients didn't plan for growth?

Yet another reason...

[polymerousgeek]

to use unsigned 128-bit integers for everything.

Re:Yet another reason...

[Waccoon]

Great. Now all of your molecules can join in on the fun!

31 bits, not 32

[pescadero]

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).

Re:31 bits, not 32

[HTH NE1]

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).

One would hope that the authors of such apps would treat this as a canary in the coal mine and fix their apps before they become affected. It's still a RLA bug.

Like what language

[SuperKendall]

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.

Deadly Alphanumeric

[Ukab the Great]

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.

Re:Deadly Alphanumeric

[Minwee]

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.

So what you're saying is that you can't see any possible drawback to that change either. Let's go with it.

Correct name should be Twitterdammerung

[elwinc]

The correct name for the Twitter Apocalypse is "Twitterdammerung" first mentioned in http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/04/gop_twitterdammerung.php

Re:there sure are a lot of wankers on /.

[NeoSkandranon]

post of the day

Re:Is it just me...

[redwoodtree]

You make a really good point, and it's really disappointing that this happened today of all days on the day after the Iranian elections were apparently stolen from the winner.

Never understood the animosity...

[MrPerfekt]

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.

Re:Never understood the animosity...

[jurgenaut]

It's the usage of it. Who cares that you went out to buy cereals and a carton of milk? It's like in the early web days, everyone had to get a web page with a picture of them and their dog. No one cares, it's just pathetic.

RLA

[HTH NE1]

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.

UINT32 as 64-bits?

[OrangeTide]

if you adjust a name that is literally like "UINT32" you should probably change its name along with its size.

Re:Y2K

[HTH NE1]

Are you kidding? There are people who haven't learned from the Y2K bug as it applies to storing the year!