http://blognomic.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:Darth_Cliche/4294967295
The first image is one that I’ve already pointed out, from back in my dynasty. The other two are from today; and note how the first one from today has the same number of phantom PMs as from my dynasty.
Hopefully Wak and Ienpw, who originally “fixed” this problem, will be able to figure it out.
If anyone else has this problem, post it here. I think it is limited to DC.
I don’t have this problem, but I do find it curious that it’s a long string of numbers and appeared shortly after DC started using his encrypted posts… with long strings of numbers. Someone having fun?
Nevermind, the problem existed back in September, apparently. Shows you where my mind goes though, I guess. :)
The long strings of numbers was a reference to the Fourth Metadynasty. We reference past dynasties a lot here, so you may want to read up on your history.
Hmm. I googled 4294967293 and I got this:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/geofharries/3464243164/
perhaps it’s a common bug in mail-type systems?
I think we worked this out before - it’s an overflow error, where a variable can’t support negative numbers and just wraps around to the biggest possible number instead. EE has somehow gotten to the point of trying to express “-4 messages” due to some bug, but when it subtracts one from zero, it wraps around to 4,294,967,296 (2^32) and counts down from there.
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Klisz:
Also, now I constantly have 4294967294 new messages.