Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Odds and ends, Freeware, Internet
Beware the coming Twitpocalypse
The good news is that just like the Year 2K panic, this one is more or less unfounded. We've already spoken to our friend Ged Maheux of Twitterrific, and he says that the problem has already been fixed in the latest version of the software. We'd imagine that most of the really big Twitter apps have already addressed the issue, and taken care to make sure they'll still work (either that, or they'll get on it ASAP). Plus, a Twitter outage wouldn't really be anything that might cause riots in the streets (or different from the usual downtime, actually -- rimshot!).
But it is funny and strange that as long as we have people who can't foresee the future (so, all of us) programming computers, we'll keep running into problems like this. If your favorite Twitter client goes out on Saturday, just find a basement to stay in, stock up on shotgun shells and water, and put your head between your legs -- help is on the way soon.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Paul Mensah said 8:06AM on 6-12-2009
I can't wait for Facebook to kill Twitter just like they did to MySpace...All they have to do is open up Facebook statuses to the public and with Vanity URL's coming this weekend it looks like facebook is taking the right approach
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Michael Rose said 8:42AM on 6-12-2009
The last thing I want is my Facebook statuses open to the public.
antiorario said 9:24AM on 6-12-2009
Personally, I can't wait for Twitter to kill Facebook.
:-D
Martin said 10:53AM on 6-12-2009
Personally, I can't understand why either of you want one or another app to be killed off.
teej said 11:55AM on 6-12-2009
they're two different sites, and they serve two different purposes. personally, i wish friggin Zuckerberg didn't update FB to look like Twitter. that's why Twitter exists... people like FB for what it was. anyways, FB is a more personal overview of your life as a whole (to some extent- at least for the avg user). whereas, Twitter is the more spontaneous, impulsive view of your daily life.
Capri said 1:08PM on 6-12-2009
Please, let's stop using that insulting term "vanity url." It judges you as vain for having a preference for an easier personalized url with a name or word instead of a bunch of random numbers. Just because I'd like an easier profile url does not make me vain! Let's call it "personalized url" instead. Thank you.
itguy08 said 9:55AM on 6-12-2009
We wouldn't be so lucky as to have the POS of Twitter go down in flames.
Twitter = Stupid and for Twits.
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Ryan said 11:46AM on 6-12-2009
Screw Twitter. One of the worst things they do is suspend accounts with zero reason given and then never, ever respond to support inquiries. Their forums are littered/clogged with people complaining about their accounts being suspended out-of-the-blue, even while in the middle or Twitting, never to be un-suspended. They care more about celebrities apparently than actual users. And if you say "why not just open a new account" it is not that easy for people who have spent months and years building up contact lists. Especially people who have businesses/bands/etc. who cannot afford the time to rebuild their Twitter contact list from scratch.
I've never had a problem with Facebook and Facebook could easily implement a Twitter-like service and wipe Twitter off the map.
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ipod touch owner said 10:03AM on 6-12-2009
I can't understand why this is a problem at all.
If your using a 32bit signed integer, it is very predicatable that it will run out of space at some point of time. And if you look at the number of tweets published each day (or lets say minute, we still want this number to be displayable) it is very obvious, that you will run out of space before your program is obsolete and replaced by a newer version (which in fact is the reason for the y2k problem: in the 70s and 80s no one thought that those programmes would be used at all in the year 2000. The difference between those programmers and the ones responsible for the Twitpocalypse is: they had reason to think that there programmes will be out of use thirty years later, Twitter application programmers probably didn't think of rewriting their program within two years).
So how to solve this problem?
Since an 32bit integer has 32 bits that can be used they should all be used (actually they are using only 31 bits and the last ist used to determine the sign of this number). Why the heck would one expect a negative number of tweets? This is ridiculous!
Simple change: from an signed integer to an unsigned one, gives you a total of 4,294,967,295 Tweets.
For the mathematically gifted ones: this are 2,171,201,402 more Tweets. Twitpocalypse is using 161 Tweets per second, which means your programs are good to go for another ~13,485,723 seconds or ~224,762 minutes, or ~3746 hours, or ~156 days meaning: in less than half a year, those programs are going suck once more!
Gladfully Apple is releasing Snow Leopard within less than half a year and all those programmers can then change to 64bit versions of their variables (they could do so actually today, but hey, they have been using vairables able to indicate a negative number of tweets! Don't expect Redmond to become Cupertino within one day! They only hope is: when they are readying there programs for Snow Leopard they change to 64bit versions of their variables, or Apple is doing this automatically for them.)
With 64bit unsigned variables (it is still very unlikely that a negative number of tweets is going to be seen) the next Twitpocalypse is kind of far away: a total of 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 Tweets that are displayable, meaning there are 18,446,744,071,562,067,968 Tweets to go (from the upcoming Twitpocalypse). At a rate of 161 Tweets per second: 114,576,050,133,925,888 seconds, or 1,909,600,835,565,431 minutes, or 31,826,680,592,757 hours, or 1,326,111,691,364 days, or 36,331,182,716 years (365 days per year). Meaning: 64bit is good to go.
Even if your reserving the space for the negative number of tweets your 1,816,591,357 years to go.
So, AFTER its 64bit, your save to tweet about it.
And for those who want to see a 64bit Twitpocalypse within one year from this Twitpocalypse on and asuming we are using unsigned 64bit from no on: increase the number of tweets per second to 5,849,424,172,869; and for signed 64bit to 2,924,712,086,094 Tweets per second.
Hopefully your cat is able to tweet by herself...
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Ryan said 10:26AM on 6-12-2009
I've never really understood why people choose to use signed ints for unique identifiers that start a '0'. I'm not some super awesome programer, but it always seemed obvious to me to use unsigned to start with in my programs.
Am I missing something that my missing CS degree could have taught me?
milkmage said 10:40AM on 6-12-2009
no more coffee for you
Wevah said 2:06AM on 6-13-2009
You do know that you can use 64-bit integers (long longs) in a 32-bit app, right?
dude said 12:33PM on 6-12-2009
I must be on the wrong site, you see, I thought this was an APPLE blog.
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Patrick said 10:11AM on 6-13-2009
Really, they used an int instead of an unsigned long?? Shame on the developers.
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magnetmaterialyl said 2:23AM on 7-21-2009
I can't wait for Twitter to kill Facebook.
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magnetmaterialyl said 2:24AM on 7-21-2009
I can't wait for Twitter to kill Facebook.
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