Twitter Bug Locks Out Many Users 69
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 vs. Relativity (Score:5, Funny)
Quantum mechanics does let you slightly violate relativity, sending very short messages back from the future.
Re: (Score:1)
Twitter.com
You can clearly read messages from the future. It's right there in the timestamp.
Re: (Score:2)
Only when using the Phone Microwave (name subject to change).
Re: (Score:2)
Quantum mechanics does let you slightly violate relativity, sending very short messages back from the future.
Yup. No longer than 140 characters.
Re: (Score:3)
If you were in the future, you be here by now!
Re:Think about this when... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
So you're saying that Twitter was designed by the same people that did the accelerator controls for Toyota?
Re: (Score:1)
I'd think a person with such a low slashdot ID would be around long enough to not throw mechanical problems in a computer/software safety issue. NASA and NHTSA said it was mechnical errors (The accelerator could physically stick to the floor or could be held down by the floor mat.). They still got a jury ruling against them, because it could have been cosmic rays flipping bits and and not a PEBKAC. I'd give cosmic rays hitting the right bit inside a car in the right circumstances a lower chance than people
Re: (Score:2)
None of those things you describe even comes close to autonomous automobiles.
Re: (Score:2)
Nor do the algorithms that control Twitter.
Re: (Score:2)
No, except that in many cases the impact of failure begins to be comparable. It would be interesting to see data though on:
1. How many times auto pilot makes enough of a mistake to cause loss of life
2. How many times anti lock brakes fail and result in an accident that wouldn't have occurred without them
3. How many times a surgery robot fails and causes a patient to die, or necessitates drastic action on part of the supervising surgeon
4. How many times a pacemaker fails in an unexpected way causing damage
Re: (Score:2)
I've driven a car that had its antilock brake system decide the car was stuck in a skid when it wasn't. Which of course greatly increases your stopping distance. I nearly hit someone else in front of me, the only reason I didn't hit them is I swerved to the shoulder and was half in the ditch. Had the antilock brakes not interfered I would've stopped safely with lots of time. I'm just glad it wasn't a pedestrian crossw
Re: (Score:2)
You can't synthesize a general rule from systemic failures? Keep It Simple Shithead.
Planes do fail by software errors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q... [wikipedia.org]
http://it.slashdot.org/story/1... [slashdot.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... [wikipedia.org]
Antilock brakes are very simple systems, and you have a mechanical backup as well. But, for the record, I don't like computer controlled brakes. I drive a mechanical car.
If ABS do fail or malfunction, I doubt anyone is keeping track as to how or when. As no one keeps track, you can't perceive s
Re: Think about this when... (Score:2)
I'm not going to look at all your links because they prove nothing other than that computer-controlled systems sometimes fail. Of course they do, nothing is 100% reliable. But it is possible to fail gracefully. For instance, antilock brake systems have two identical computers doing the same calclations; if they disagree on what to do, the system fails gracefully and reverts to manual brake control. In the case of an automated car failure, graceful failure would be using a backup system to pull over to t
arrogance amongst revolutionaries (Score:2)
In a video game they can. In the real world, they will fail to do so; Google and others are simply positing that the robot can drive better. It can on a test track. In the real world, no.
Again, I love this posting from 2010: (Great thread on this very subject, probably influenced me.) Better informed posters than I.
http://it.slashdot.org/story/1... [slashdot.org]
This post http://it.slashdot.org/comment... [slashdot.org]
"we already fixed it. its called 'trains'. (Score:5, Insightful)
by decora(1710862) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @12:54A
Re: (Score:2)
http://it.slashdot.org/comment... [slashdot.org] Great thread on this subject. Here's a good post by a better writer than I:
"we already fixed it. its called 'trains'. (Score:5, Insightful)
by decora(1710862) on Tuesday December 20, 2011 @12:54AM (#38430976) Journal
the idea that a bunch of automatically piloted vehicles is somehow a better solution to city transport than mass-transit, it boggles my mind.
real people do not have money to maintain their cars properly. things are going to break. there are not going to be 'syste
Re: (Score:2)
Remember this conversation, about five years from now.
Re: (Score:2)
You have no imagination and too much confidence in your coding abilities. The world isn't a video game. As I pointed out in my longer response, robot airliners and other craft have gone wild and hurt and killed people. Refusal to look is not a rebuttal. (But of course it is- any problem can be solved by a more expensive solution combined with a complete refusal to look at any evidence that contradicts the solution).
Software piloting is fine. On a plane, with a priesthood of techs looking after it daily, and
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]
Medical[edit]
A bug in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine was directly responsible for at least five patient deaths in the 1980s when it administered excessive quantities of X-rays.[13][14][15]
A Medtronic heart device was found vulnerable to remote attacks in March 2008.[16]
Funny: I remember this story. The USS Yorktown BSODed at sea when it let Window NT helm the ship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U... [wikipedia.org]
Smart ship testbed[edit]
From 1996
Huh (Score:2)
I got in just long enough to see #lahar is trending.
But 2014-12-29 is 2015 Week 1 Day 1 (ISO Standard) (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Good catch!
Re: (Score:1)
and the change will have begun?
Re: But 2014-12-29 is 2015 Week 1 Day 1 (ISO Stand (Score:3)
... then find out who wrote the code and audit all of their other project contributions. Just saying.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: But 2014-12-29 is 2015 Week 1 Day 1 (ISO Stand (Score:1)
I'm thinking one of the date formatters is using a capital Y rather than a lower case y and hence rendering year of week which is 2015 for this week.
Re: (Score:2)
They are using ISO Year for the Date header, for some reason. (the last 3 years wouldn't have been affected)
Care to elaborate on this a bit? The only ISO standard I know of that says anything about dates is ISO 8601 [wikipedia.org], which just deals with date/time representations. There's nothing in there I know of that could actually change the year on you (unless it happens to be the last day of the year and you are far enough from the UTC time zone).
Re: (Score:3)
Ahhh. That's fiscal year [wikipedia.org] 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.
Y2K (Score:2)
There are still people running around claiming that the Y2K problem was a hoax or overrated ...
Re: (Score:2)
There are still people running around claiming that the Y2K problem was a hoax or overrated ...
It WAS overrated. It ended up causing a lot of annoying problems - but trucks didn't stop running, and there were no food shortages.
Sure, a lot of man-hours were spent in preparation for it - otherwise it could've been really bad. But even with all the prep there were people claiming civilization was going to collapse.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously serious problems only could occure if software was not patched.
If one claimes even patched software will cause serious problems (your preparations) he is an idiot. And if anyone belived him, he is an idiot, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Obviously serious problems only could occure if software was not patched.
If one claimes even patched software will cause serious problems (your preparations) he is an idiot.
I think the people predicting Y2K doom were under the assumption that someone somewhere might miss a very important patch.
OMG (Score:5, Funny)
However will I notify the world if I fart?
Re: OMG (Score:2, Funny)
I think you just did #liquidsurprise
Re: (Score:1)
You'll just have to hold it in until service is restored.
Re:OMG (Score:5, Insightful)
What, is Facebook down as well?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Twitter is as useless as all the rest of the "social" "media" crap out there. It's a massive waste of your time.
Exactly! Why can't all those people using twitter do something constructive with their time? You know, like posting smug AC comments on Slashdot.
The sky is falling!! (Score:1)
Give the Twitters a break! (Score:1)