Warn HN: Flickr Photo ID is about to overflow a 32 bit unsigned int

7 pointsby eddvor 17 Jahren1 comments

Flickr is just about to have photo id number 4294967295 which is otherwise the size of an unsigned 32 bit integer. If you have any code which typed to an 32 bit unsigned int or if your database column is of type unsigned int its probably time to change it. I predict (at a rate of 5000 uploads a minute taken from http://flickr.com/photos/? ) it should reach that number in the next 2 hours.

If you were wondering what image it was that caused the overflow it will appear hear: http://www.flickr.com/photo.gne?id=4294967296

1 comments

lannvor 17 Jahren

Even better: stop storing photo ids as numbers entirely. From Flickr's API docs: "These IDs should always be treated as opaque strings, rather than integers of any specific type."

http://www.flickr.com/services/api/misc.overview.html