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Twitter Bug Locks Out Many Users
TechCrunch and ZDNet are among the many sources to report that many users are having trouble right now signing in to Twitter, and that the company is working right now to fix the glitch. As ZDNet describes the problem, According to Twitter's server response at the time of writing, most of 2015 has happened, and we are heading into a bright new 2016 in a couple of days time. Querying Twitter's HTTP response headers at https://twitter.com returns a time stamp dated one year into the future: "date: Mon, 29 Dec 2015 02:09:37 UTC". Consequently, users of Twitter's popular Tweetdeck application have experienced seeing every incoming tweet appear with a time stamp reporting the tweet to be from 365 days ago. At the same time that Twitter's servers began returning the incorrect date, some users of Twitter's official Android app were logged out of the service, and unable to log in again via the app. Users of some third-party Twitter applications have also reported being locked out of their apps.
Quantum mechanics does let you slightly violate relativity, sending very short messages back from the future.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
They are using ISO Year for the Date header, for some reason. (the last 3 years wouldn't have been affected)
As Mon Dec 29, 2014, is ISO year 2015, Week 1, Day 1.
The Last-Modified header is showing the correct date and time.
The Date: header is not.
Last-Modified: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 00:59:30 GMT
Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2015 00:59:30 UTC
So, they're using the "G" rather than "Y" designator for displaying the date (if C based)
As all the other fields are correct, but they are using the ISO Year, rather than Calendar Year.
It's a subtle issue, but a rather silly one.
And clients, can probably see that either a) Mon Dec 29, 2015 doesn't exist (invaild date); or is b) Ignore monday, and 2015-12-09 is too far out of range for a new session token.
However will I notify the world if I fart?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Yes. That's why the safety record of airliners has plummeted as computers control more and more of the cockpit and air traffic control towers, why antilock braking systems controlled by computers are universally derided as dangerous, why robotic surgery is outlawed in every civilized country, and why pacemakers were outlawed after a brief, tragic experiment with them ended in the computer putting a virus in the victim's brain and using the host as a primitive version of Skynet.
Or maybe ... just maybe ... the software controlling critical safety systems is written to a different standard of quality than the software controlling fucking Twitter.
vi ~/.emacs # I'm probably going to Hell for this.
So you're saying that Twitter was designed by the same people that did the accelerator controls for Toyota?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
... then find out who wrote the code and audit all of their other project contributions. Just saying.
To me, Twitter is like an improved RSS reader. Very useful to keep up with the headlines. Also, great way to utilize horizontal screen estate is to tuck TweetDeck next to the web browser.
Ahhh. That's fiscal year stuff. I had no idea that was even in ISO. I'm guessing the coder at Twitter who accidentally used it didn't either.
So now this makes sense: Today happens to be the first day of the fiscal year 2015. That field was using UTC as well, so basically as soon as it hit midnight GMT, blam. And as the GP said, the dates happened to match up the last two years, so nobody noticed the bug for 3 years.