Filed under: Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Blogging, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, iPhone, Mobile, Web, Android, Windows x64, Microblogging
Twitpocalypse II: arriving tomorrow morning
by Nik Fletcher Sep 21st 2009 at 7:00PM
Twitter's phenomenal growth means that people are posting updates to the service faster than ever. Earlier in the year, the number of tweets posted to the service hit a wall: more specifically the number 2147483647 which was the maximum size of an integer in a fair few programming languages. Tomorrow morning, however, Twitter will be forcing through Twitpocalypse II where the number of tweets pushes past the unsigned integer limit of 4294967296. And that may cause issues for unprepared Twitter applications.
In a mailing to the Twitter API developers list, the Twitter API team have reminded developers that their applications need to cope with numbers of this size - and if you're wondering why your favourite mashup isn't working after 11:30am Pacific Time tomorrow, this may well be the culprit.
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
acme said 8:18PM on 9-21-2009
delete old twits
Reply
sRc said 8:47PM on 9-21-2009
if they decided to do that right now, they would still have to make some significant changes to their structure to allow for the recycling and readdressing of tweets, and in the end would be a much more complicated system than what it has now
acme said 10:28PM on 9-21-2009
so continuously expanding the limit everytime its hit is a smarter solution?
XBL: Burritoclock PSN:Herbie Hat said 9:59PM on 9-21-2009
Instead of going to 4294967296 they should just go to 42949672964294967296 and completly fix it.... meh
Reply
TVGenius said 10:18PM on 9-21-2009
Just get rid of Twitter. Much simpler and saves humanity.
Reply
Sean said 1:09AM on 9-22-2009
Seconded. If it doesn't save us, well then it should make my WLAN network in the office faster I hope :/
captain underpants and the bringdown gang said 5:26AM on 9-22-2009
Kill twitter? but how will I know when someone is having oatmeal? OH GOD THINK OF THE REPRICUSSIONS. *jumps out a 10 story window on to the back of a horse and gallops off into a painted wall made to look like a sunset*
Plain Jane said 1:21AM on 9-22-2009
Twitter support sucks, really! You can't seem to contact them and even if you send an email to support_at_twitter_dot_com , you get an automated response complete with suggestions...! We want a human's reply not some robot!
I can't log in, my email no longer works on Twitter, and no email arrives when i retrieve my password. Great!
Reply
Prof. Michael Stoll said 3:49AM on 9-22-2009
i love to watch evolutional processes in the internet als well :-)
Reply
shyataroo said 5:28AM on 9-22-2009
If we get rid of twitter...that means I won't know when someone had oatmeal for breakfast or if their nose is itchy or worse... I Won't know when people are hanging out with other people
Reply
Mike said 1:06PM on 9-24-2009
Uh... Twitter64, anyone? I'd imagine 16 billion billion twits should be enough, no?
Reply