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Gangnam Style Surpasses YouTube's 32-bit View Counter

First time accepted submitter neoritter writes "The Korean pop star PSY's viral music video "Gangnam Style" has reached the limit of YouTube's view counter. According to YouTube's Google+ account, "We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32-bit integer (=2,147,483,647 views), but that was before we met PSY. 'Gangnam Style' has been viewed so many times we had to upgrade to a 64-bit integer (9,223,372,036,854,775,808)!"

36 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Rick-Roll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would have figured Rick Astley would have hit that count first!.

    1. Re:Rick-Roll by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, if you combine all different versions it beats even the 64bit integer.
      Techsmartly made a fancy pivot chart of it a while back:
      http://techsmartly.net/freePS3...

    2. Re:Rick-Roll by Russ1642 · · Score: 4, Informative

      YouTube doesn't count a hit the instant a video starts playing. They have further criteria that depend on how much of the video was played, whether or not parts were skipped, etc. Well, at least I remember reading about it sometime. It had to do with their efforts to combat click fraud and only count legitimate views.

    3. Re:Rick-Roll by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What kind of sick person would see a link described as a "fancy pivot chat" and still click on it?

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    4. Re:Rick-Roll by tobiasly · · Score: 2

      Bravo. I'll admit the "freePS3" URL gave me only slight pause.

    5. Re:Rick-Roll by Charliemopps · · Score: 2

      Bravo. I'll admit the "freePS3" URL gave me only slight pause.

      Yea, sorry... I was in a hurry to find a "Not youtube or tinyurl" link so it wouldn't be obvious and get it out before the thread got too stale.

  2. Signed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why the hell was it signed?

    1. Re:Signed by magarity · · Score: 5, Funny

      That's for the never implemented feature to allow extremely sucky videos to have a negative view count.

    2. Re:Signed by Trailer+Trash · · Score: 2

      That's for the never implemented feature to allow extremely sucky videos to have a negative view count.

      The explains Rebecca Black. Unfortunately, they *display* it as an unsigned int so it looks like she got huge views.....

    3. Re:Signed by i.kazmi · · Score: 2

      I think more likely explanation is someone declared the data type in the DB as int(11) instead of int(11) unsigned.

  3. numbering by gbjbaanb · · Score: 5, Interesting

    who cares really?

    The numbering should go 1.. 2.. 3.. etc.. thousands.. tens of thousands.. hundreds of thousands.. millions.. too many to give a fuck about.

    1. Re:numbering by istartedi · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Billions and billions served. I remember when McDonald's changed that. It was sad. It was also like they were saying that they were too lazy to keep track of their hamburgers any more. It made me wonder what else they were too lazy to keep track of. Billions and billions of rodent hairs?

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    2. Re:numbering by bunratty · · Score: 2

      Uh, well how do you incrementally add 1 to "thousands" and wind up at "tens of thousands" at some point? Randomly?

      Or did you mean count up to 2 billion, at which point you report billions and billions served and stop incrementing?

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    3. Re:numbering by lexman098 · · Score: 2

      You don't. You just stop counting at 2 billion and say "over 2 billion". No one cares what the number is after that.

    4. Re:numbering by xaoslaad · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ya, I was fond of saying, "2 Billion served. Not one digested."

    5. Re:numbering by amicusNYCL · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Whoever has the second most viewed video on YouTube probably cares.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    6. Re:numbering by neoritter · · Score: 2

      To the leader boards!

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

    7. Re:numbering by xaotikdesigns · · Score: 5, Funny
      But it's only one song. Psy has three videos on the list, beating everybody except Katy Perry in the number of hit videos, but still beating her in the total number of views. Katy Perry also has a total view count that is higher than Justin Beiber's one video.

      From this I can assume that Beiber only has one good song, and his "beliebers" just sit in dark rooms kissing their pillows while this video plays on repeat, while other people actually like Psy, and seek out more of his music to watch and listen to. I would also assume that people are watching the Katy Perry videos on mute because she has boobs. Most youtube comments on the videos support this as well.

      --
      XDInd
    8. Re:numbering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Alli++

      Ah, the beloved Alli, or Xenical in its prescription strength form. I've used it for a long time, and let me share with you the gory details of it's side effects that Sir AC is hinting at.

      First of all, it is important to remember that Orlistat (the active ingredient of Alli and Xenical) ensures that the body's fat-digesting enzymes are unable to bind to the ingested fat. This means that if one consumes large amounts of fat, this will have to leave the body one way or another.

      For example, after a nice meal at Panda Express with noodles and orange chicken, expect your anus to transform into an oil pipeline. Men: if you ever want to experience the horrors of starting your monthly period unexpected, try it. The oil will slowly leak and color your buttocks, underwear and, if you're not fast enough, pants. It has a weird orange-looking color, and a very distinctive smell.

      The same will happen after eating a couple of burgers. The oily substance will start to leak withing 24 hours, and there is no way to stop it. When you give in and run to the restroom, expect your ass to transform into a vulcano, erupting vast amounts of solid-like and oily substances with orange as its primary colors. Once you get some of the oil on your clothes you can throw them away, as no matter what you try, you will not be able to remove the stench or oil.

      Also, never ever, ever ever wear white clothes. You don't want to end up on the internet with orange skid marks on the back your pants.

      But even worse: it will be impossible to fart. Every time you fart, you'll have an 80% of farting oil rather than the odorous reminiscences of last nights meal. It will be impossible to fart. If you do, you'll run the risk of running to the toilet like a penguin: buttcheeks held together to avoid the oil from leaking in your pants.

      I once wanted to fart in my ex-girlfriend's face after she did the same to me. Unfortunately, I had a heavy meal the night before and ended up facepainting her lovely nose, lips and cheeks. After she cleaned herself up, I never saw her again.

    9. Re:numbering by ILongForDarkness · · Score: 2

      Billions served to 1 million lard asses. That has been my theory for a while.

    10. Re:numbering by dbIII · · Score: 2

      The net had already got a log scale for cat videos.
      The numbers watched increased so much we had to go from Cat5 cable to Cat5e.

  4. Re: 32 bit signed integer, obviously by Threni · · Score: 2

    Months? Why, were views being added exponentially?

  5. Re: 32 bit signed integer, obviously by sideslash · · Score: 2

    Maybe Gangnam would be the one to exceed 2^32 in another 6 months, and maybe another video would. I assume YouTube's viewer base is being constantly increased, and that the "norm" for top viral video views is constantly rising.

  6. Re:unsigned int anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Because they were following the Google C++ Style Guide?

    "You should not use the unsigned integer types such as uint32_t, unless there is a valid reason such as representing a bit pattern rather than a number, or you need defined overflow modulo 2^N. In particular, do not use unsigned types to say a number will never be negative. Instead, use assertions for this."

  7. I guess Einstein is wrong by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 2

    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

    Stupidity, according to google, can now be measured as a 64-bit value.

    --
    "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  8. Re:32 bit signed integer, obviously by unrtst · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If they'd used a 32 bit unsigned integer they might have bought another 6 months or something.

    You could say the same of the unix time_t problem, which is a signed 32bit int. If it were unsigned, it'd go to 2106 instead of 2038. Either way, that's not not really the solution. The solution, as youtube has done, is to move to 64bit int.

    Personally, I'm amazed at the hit count!
    There are 2^31 seconds between 1970-01-01 and 2038-01-19.
    If this video was watched once every second since 1970, it'd still have 24 years before it rolled over that counter.
    By comparison, it hasn't been available very long. How many views a second is that thing getting? On average, more than 28 hits a second!!!

    28 hits/sec may not seem outrageous for a very popular file on a very popular site, but that's averaged since July 2012 until today. That, IMO, is nuts.

  9. Re:32 bit signed integer, obviously by iluvcapra · · Score: 3, Informative

    Java doesn't have unsigned integers as a primitive type. (Speculative but I'd guess this is what's going on.)

    --
    Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
  10. Psy2K? by GrahamCox · · Score: 5, Funny

    I assume they're gonna be calling this the Psy2K bug.

  11. Re:Parody? by neoritter · · Score: 4, Informative

    The song and video are a parody of the lifestyle of Koreans in the Gangnam District of Seoul.

  12. "Oughta be enough for everybody" 4.0 by Alien1024 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Signed 32-bit oughta be.

  13. Half of the credit... by Ecuador · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ... for the successful rick-rolling goes to the "informative" mods...
    Even though "beats the 64bit integer" was very obvious BS, I still clicked...

    --
    Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    1. Re:Half of the credit... by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ... for the successful rick-rolling goes to the "informative" mods...

      Even though "beats the 64bit integer" was very obvious BS, I still clicked...

      That was part of my evil scheme.
      No Slashdotter can resist the sense of superiority that comes from correcting a trivial math error. ;-)

  14. Re:unsigned int anyone? by petermgreen · · Score: 4, Informative

    There can be good reasons to use it but there are also a couple of reasons to avoid it.

    1: overflows are "hidden", with a signed number overflow will usually* result in a nonsensical (very large negative) number, with an unsigned number overflows will usually bring you back to zero which is much less likely to be noticed
    2: the rules for operations (especially comparisions) involving a mixture of signed and unsigned types are seriously counter-intuitive.

    * Yes I know the C standard doesn't actually require this and modern versions of gcc are being retarded about it in some cases but for the most part it holds true

    --
    note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  15. the real headline should be by loserhead · · Score: 2

    The Korean peninsula continues its campaign-of-inconvenience against American computer networks.

  16. Re:What PSY is costing YouTube by VanessaE · · Score: 2

    If the values are straight storage, well that's an extra 4 bytes per video for the count. Some quick googling turns up a couple of figures that aren't too terribly old, and which don't actually add up to much:

    As of 2008, there were around 83M videos on YouTube, so that's 332 MB for storage for the counters, assuming every video's record were updated and the count data is stored uncompressed. I'd guess double that amount for 2014, but I couldn't find a reliable figure.

    Currently, about 4 billion videos are watched per day (!), so allowing for four extra digits on the displayed "watched" count, that would add up to 16 GB of added bandwidth, were every one of those videos to significantly exceed the former 32-bit counter.

  17. Re:First Unsigned Post by Lab+Rat+Jason · · Score: 2

    Can't... it's unsigned.

    --
    Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?