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Twitter "Twitpocalypse" Snags Mac, iPhone Apps

Posted by kdawson on Sat Jun 13, 2009 06:26 PM
from the y2k-all-over-again dept.
Social Networks The Internet Software
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."
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Submission: Twitter "twitpocalypse" affects Mac, iPhon by awarrenfells (1289658)
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Twitter "Twitpocalypse" Snags Mac, iPhone Apps 50 Comments More /

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  • Well. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dov_0 (1438253) on Saturday June 13 2009, @06:29PM (#28323283)
    Which twit didn't see that one coming? Surely it should have shown up in testing?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Darkness404 (1287218)
      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: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by maxume (22995)

        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: (Score:3, Informative)

          by vadim_t (324782)

          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.

          • "Twitter itself was unaffected" (Score:5, Funny)

            by John Hasler (414242) on Saturday June 13 2009, @07:09PM (#28323525)

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

            • 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.

              • 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.

                • 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."

      • Re:Well. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 0100010001010011 (652467) on Saturday June 13 2009, @09:07PM (#28324083)

        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.

  • Overflowing 32 bits (Score:5, Funny)

    by AuMatar (183847) on Saturday June 13 2009, @06:33PM (#28323307)

    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.

    • Have faith .. if you ignore the orphan tweets [slate.com], 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... (Score:5, Funny)

    by dangitman (862676) on Saturday June 13 2009, @06:33PM (#28323309)
    ... nothing of value was lost.

    • Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by eldavojohn (898314) * <my/.username@@@gmail.com> on Saturday June 13 2009, @06:42PM (#28323367) Homepage Journal

      ... 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 [textsfromlastnight.com] 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 ...

      • 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... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MrMista_B (891430) on Saturday June 13 2009, @08:22PM (#28323877)

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

    • If anything screams for that tag, this is it.

  • Let's see (Score:5, Informative)

    by tqft (619476) <ianburrows_au@NOsPAM.yahoo.com> on Saturday June 13 2009, @06:38PM (#28323339) Homepage Journal

    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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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.

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

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MichaelSmith (789609)
      What do we get out of this [slashdot.org]? Is it any different?
      • We get a nice message stating that we have either "Bad" "Neutral" "Good" or "Excellent" karma, and occasionally some funny posts.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by tqft (619476)

        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 m

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FireFury03 (653718)

        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...).

  • I must be getting old... (Score:5, Funny)

    by religious freak (1005821) on Saturday June 13 2009, @06:39PM (#28323347)
    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?

  • Twitter uses 64bits, 3rd party apps do not (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZyBex (793975) on Saturday June 13 2009, @07:03PM (#28323487)

    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 [twitter.com]

    Disclaimer: I've never used twitter.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by MBCook (132727)

      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: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ZyBex (793975)

        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;" ...

      • 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.

      • 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.

        • 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.

  • On a related note (Score:4, Funny)

    by MLS100 (1073958) on Saturday June 13 2009, @07:04PM (#28323495)

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

  • Twitpocalypse? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Reed Solomon (897367) on Saturday June 13 2009, @07:16PM (#28323563) Homepage

    Man am I glad I never got on this bandwagon.

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

    • Re:Twitpocalypse? (Score:5, Funny)

      by selven (1556643) on Saturday June 13 2009, @08:25PM (#28323899)
      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!

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

    • 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....

  • Some clients didn't plan for growth?

    • Re:Is it just me... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by paazin (719486) on Saturday June 13 2009, @06:37PM (#28323337)

      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.

      • Why is twitter hate so cool around /. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by loteck (533317) on Saturday June 13 2009, @07:44PM (#28323711) Homepage
        You guys have been calling twitter a fad for at least two years [slashdot.org], 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 /. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by tsa (15680) on Saturday June 13 2009, @08:31PM (#28323933) Homepage

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

          • 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: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by LordSnooty (853791)
            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:Is it just me... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by iluvcapra (782887) on Saturday June 13 2009, @07:49PM (#28323729) Homepage
      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 [theatlantic.com].

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