Facebook Goes To 64 Bit User IDs

NewsCloud writes "Facebook has announced to developers that they are moving to a 64 bit user ID in November. At 32 bits, the current ID allows nearly 4.3 billion user accounts. Yet, despite having only 47 million users today, Facebook's move to 64 bits will allow it to have more than 18 quintillion (18,446,744,074,000,000,000) user accounts. Of course, there are currently only about 6.5 billion people in the world. Is Facebook setting their sights beyond Earth or just trying to avoid what happened when Slashdot ran out of space for comment IDs last year. Perhaps they are planning to implement personas."

Facebook?

[Gabest]

Never heard of it, but I already want my own account, or two.

Reminds me of a Facebook group

[langelgjm]

Reminds me of a Facebook group: "If this group reaches 4,294,967,296 it might cause an integer overflow."

Facebook loners rejoice!

[Bruce McBruce]

You can be your own 5000 best friends.

Population growth

[Mostly a lurker]

Facebook's move to 64 bits will allow it to have more than 18 quintillion (18,446,744,074,000,000,000) user accounts. Of course, there are currently only about 6.5 billion people in the world. Is Facebook setting their sights beyond Earth ...?

My assumption is that Facebook is betting on the success of the Vatican's campaign against birth control. I just cannot imagine extra terrestrials being willing to put up with the multi-year latency required to post and retrieve photos from an earth-based server.

thank god

[friedman101]

finally I can register my bacteria colony!!

staphylococcus aureus #19392133943904 is in a relationship with staphylococcus caprae #93939394839483934

Two-Faced

[Nom du Keyboard]

Clearly this is meant to accommodate two-faced people, people of multi-faced discrimination, and Hexadecimal.

i for one.

[sh3l1]

I for one will take go with Facebook's initiative to welcome our new alien overlords who will certainly see Facebook's superiority to Myspace.

Re:News?

[Joe U]

HTML, not [i][b]BBCode[/b][/i]. OK?

Spammers

[kryten250]

They have to do something, what with all those pretty girls wanting to get to know me and give me private shows...

Re:Reminds me of a Facebook group

[Nom du Keyboard]

"If this group reaches 4,294,967,296 it might cause an integer overflow."

Obviously that group number wasn't computed using Excel.

I guess they believed the hype

[pushing-robot]

64 bits are WAY FASTER [pcworld.com] than 32 bits!

Re:News?

[larry bagina]

or at least change the name from firehose to high velocity diarrhea.

Re:thank god

[Firehed]

What the hell? That's my S. caprae, the dirty slut!

but...

[RockoTDF]

...is it backwards compatible with web 1.0...?

Re:Facebook loners rejoice!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming I can stand myself...

Finally

[Romicron]

Finally, a little sensitivity for those of us with DID [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org]

Re:thank god

[Dr. Photo]

Can germs get V.D.?

No worries

[CSMatt]

We can all just join "If this group reaches 18,446,744,073,709,551,616, it WILL cause an overflow" [facebook.com]

This is the dumbest article...

[ChronosWS]

So they changed the column type of userId from INT32 to INT64. Who gives a fuck? It would be much less expensive for Slashdot to simply post SQL change logs than to have editors on the clock.

We need the ability to mod stories, so that the editors can more clearly see when they aren't doing their job.

In other news...

[suv4x4]

I just changed the type of column "content" on my blog from "text" to "mediumtext". I'm ready to give a press conference as to the reason behind my decision to all interested.

Re:Spammers

[dricci]

I think you're confusing Facebook with MySpace, which doesn't have this problem as they appear to still use a flat-file database updated in notepad.

Re:Population growth

[foobsr]

I just cannot imagine extra terrestrials being willing to put up with the multi-year latency required to post and retrieve photos from an earth-based server.

They have invented instant messaging.

CC.

Re:It's funny. Laugh.

[msormune]

Geeks get lost in the details, because it's their job to get lost in the details, and find their way out. Suits manage the bigger picture. If a geek starts to worry about the big picture, he/she is in danger of becomng a suit :)

Re:getting pussy goes 64 bit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod Correction: gay == flamerbait

so close