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PayPal Credits Man With $92 Quadrillion

Posted by timothy on from the ok-but-are-those-old-imperial-credits-or-new dept.

solareagle writes "Pennsylvania resident Chris Reynolds got quite a shock when he opened his most recent PayPal statement — it said he had a $92,233,720,368,547,800 balance in his account. 'I'm just feeling like a million bucks,' Reynolds told the [Philadelphia] Daily News yesterday. 'At first I thought that I owed quadrillions. It was quite a big surprise.' When asked what he would do with the money, he said, 'I would pay the national debt down first. Then I would buy the Phillies, if I could get a great price.' The Daily News speculates that the astronomical balance may be related to PayPal's new Galactic initiative, announced last month, to expand its business beyond Earth." He should have quickly minted a new coin.

5 of 151 comments (clear)

  1. Signed integer overflow by GerbilSoft · · Score: 5, Informative

    2^63 - 1 == 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

    Assuming PayPal's currency values are stored in cents, dividing that by 100 results in $92,233,720,368,547,758.07. Looks like a 64-bit signed integer overflowed (or in this case, underflowed), resulting in integer wraparound.

    1. Re:Signed integer overflow by Omega+Hacker · · Score: 5, Informative

      Not sure you quite get the concept of underflow.... If it's a 64-bit field in cents and he had $1, an unsigned subtract of $2 would result in a balance of $92,233,720,368,547,757.08 (give or take a few cents).

      --
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    2. Re:Signed integer overflow by The+Rizz · · Score: 4, Informative

      My brain vaguely recalls a Sherlock Holmes reference (father? brother?), but I've only read a few of the stories....

      Mycroft Holmes is Sherlock's brother, but that's not the reference he's alluding to here - it's a reference to the computer named Mycroft Holmes in Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

  2. Man, slashdot *is* behind the times by neminem · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'd never really followed other similar news aggregators before, but I've been following Consumerist for a few months, and indeed, that blog tends to post interesting news a couple days before it ends up here. In fact, it just posted a followup story, that apparently when paypal heard that upon seeing the windfall, even though he the guy knew it wasn't real, he felt compelled to donate 30 dollars to a local charity, paypal offered the guy the chance to donate an unspecified but supposedly substantial amount to the charity of his choice as compensation for the mistake.

  3. Re:What would happen with a national debt of $0? by BrokenHalo · · Score: 1, Informative

    If so, what affect would having our debt be at 0 for a day be?

    I can tell you exactly what it would be like. We would see a massive spike in the US military budget, and half a dozen new wars started.