Warren Buffett's Encounter with a 32-Bit Integer Limit

Description

A screenshot of a Twitter thread discussing a real-time stock market glitch. The main tweet by Steve Weis reads, 'Berkshire Hathaway just hit $429,496.7295 and now Warren Buffet is broke.' It includes a stock chart for Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A) showing its price plummeting from over $426,000 to nearly zero. The visual joke is explained in the replies: Steve Weis comments, 'Classic Buffet Overflow attack,' a pun on 'Buffer Overflow.' Another reply from Thomas H. Ptacek clarifies, 'it's 32-bit integers, baby.' The humor originates from a real-world software bug where a system likely used a 32-bit unsigned integer to store stock prices (multiplied by a factor to handle decimals). When the price exceeded the maximum value for this data type (2^32 - 1, which is 4,294,967,295), an integer overflow occurred, causing the value to wrap around to a small number and triggering a reported crash. This is a highly relatable and amusing scenario for senior engineers who have dealt with data type limitations and their catastrophic consequences in legacy systems

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Anonymous ★ Top Pick Some banks still measure risk with 32-bit integers. We're about one good market rally away from seeing the entire economy get a segmentation fault

Anonymous ★ Top Pick

Some banks still measure risk with 32-bit integers. We're about one good market rally away from seeing the entire economy get a segmentation fault
Anonymous

Turns out uint32 tops out at $429,496 - now Berkshire’s trading at $2k and the PM who called int64 “premature optimization” is paging SRE
Anonymous

The best part about this incident is that somewhere a senior engineer had to explain to Warren Buffett that his net worth temporarily went negative because someone stored a stock price in an unsigned 32-bit integer - proving that even billionaires can't escape the fundamental laws of computer science
Anonymous

When your financial system uses a 32-bit signed integer for stock prices and Berkshire Hathaway's share price finally exceeds $429,496.7295, triggering an integer overflow that wraps around to near-zero - proving that even Warren Buffett isn't immune to off-by-one errors in legacy trading systems. The real vulnerability here isn't in the code; it's in assuming stock prices would never need more than 32 bits. Classic case of 'it'll never happen' meeting 'narrator: it happened.'
Anonymous

Store prices as uint32 with scale=1e4 and BRK.A will do your chaos test for you - next sprint: DECIMAL(38,4) and a range check
Anonymous

BRK.A: the integration test for anyone storing USD as uint32 with 4 decimal places - hit 429,496.7295 and watch your quote service wrap to $2,003
Anonymous

The one buffer overflow where smashing the stack retires you richer, not with a segfault
@deerspangle 5y

Your watermark is covering the last tweet though
1. @nkormakov 5y
  
  No watermark if someone needed, you’re welcome
@deerspangle 5y

"32 bit integers, baby" Is what it says, I think
@Supuhstar 5y

Buffet Overflow!! 😹
@Daler_XYZ 5y

Wtf is it? Idk. I know English, but Wtf is it? Can somebody understand it for me. Please???
1. @lavolpenoire 5y
  
  Understand- it what you made to yourself If someone to you- he will EXPLAIN
  
  @Daler_XYZ 5y
  
  Thank you, now I know it, в общем understand понимать, explain объяснить
2. @lavolpenoire 5y
  
  So, yes, you even don't know English for level of 5 year child
  
  @anyo822 5y
  
  yours is not that much better)
3. @asoteric 5y
  
  a 32 bit "buffer" overflow broke mr "buffet"'s stock price the joke is that its almost the same word - a "buffet" overflow a buffer overflow is where youre representing a number with a specific amount of binary bits and if you run out of bits it does weird stuff depending on the system. it could go to zero, become negative, or whatever depending on the format its being interpreted by
  
  @Daler_XYZ 5y
  
  Thank you
@gerseray 5y

Вы нахуя на английском пишите?
1. @Pifagorov_pirog 5y
  
  Potomu cto my iz anglii
2. @RiedleroD 5y
  
  Please use English in this chat. warning 1/3 for @gerseray
3. @Zaicol 5y
  
  Tak nado
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  have you not seen my messages, mate? warning 1/3 for @Zaicol
@gammapopolam 5y

napishite na russkom pozhaluista ya niche ne ponel
1. @theodolu 5y
  
  Idi nahuy
  
  @gammapopolam 5y
  
  toxic blin
2. @PsLXd 5y
  
  You can just use goggle translate
3. @RiedleroD 5y
  
  This is an English-only channel, please refrain from using Russian or any other non-English language. warning 1/3 for @gammapopolam
@choke_hazard 5y

The thing I can note on this channel is no one asking to write comments on their native language except russian retards
1. @lirys 5y
  
  kicked africans and russians asses in a double😄
@choke_hazard 5y

Do some self-education guys. Stop behaving like cave africans
@Agent1378 5y

Is it because GameStop?
1. @RiedleroD 5y
  
  this has literally nothing to do with gamestop. Search for "integer overflow" and you'll see what the meme is about.
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  Just for some unexperienced with this matter: sometimes same 32bit integer value may be used to present part of number after dot. E.g. 16bit for value before dot and 16 for value after
  
  dev_meme 5y
  
  That makes processing of transactions for exchanges much faster
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  and definitely safer than using floats for money… I've seen some shit, man.
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  woah, you are not anon now
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  ye, admin disabled it for me :)
  
  Deleted Account 5y
  
  no more amogus
  
  @RiedleroD 5y
  
  y e s m o r e A M O G U S
@kennyotsu 5y

Such a good meme

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Warren Buffett's Encounter with a 32-Bit Integer Limit

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