IERS ponders reverse leapsecond...

Wed Aug 3 15:49:36 UTC 2022

On Wed, 3 Aug 2022, Matthew Huff wrote:

> But it's hard enough to get developers to understand the need to code for
> 61 seconds in a minute, and now they would need to code for 59 seconds as
> well.
>
> If time systems simply skewed the time so that 60 seconds actually just
> took 61 seconds or 59 seconds, there would be other issues, but coders
> wouldn't be involved.

  Code will always be prone to failure due to inconsistent and incorrect
  assumptions. And blindly trusting dependencies.

  Hell, even the smartest engineers at Amazon built AWS using Pacific Time
  in the DB rather than GMT/UTC. It was still Pacific Time when I left in
  2014.

  I'm sure there is/was code to calculate billing related to the jump
  forward / fall back between Daylight Saving and Standard Time...

  I'm looking forward to January 19, 2038 at 3:14am UTC when the 32-bit Unix
  Timestamp will overflow.

  This shouldn't cause huge issues, as most systems will not freak out and
  die if the system clocks goes from 23:59:58 to 00:00:00. But things that
  were supposed to happen at 23:59:59 on that day will never occur.
  Hopefully the impact is minimal, but it won't be none.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+mhuff=ox.com at nanog.org> On Behalf Of Stephane Bortzmeyer
> Sent: Wednesday, August 3, 2022 11:19 AM
> To: Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com>
> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Re: IERS ponders reverse leapsecond...
>
> On Wed, Aug 03, 2022 at 11:09:25AM -0400,  Jay Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote  a message of 32 lines which said:
>
>> General press loses its *mind*:
>
> Indeed, they seem not to know what they write about. "atomic time – the universal way time is measured on Earth – may have to change" They don't even know the difference between TAI and UTC.
>
>

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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at angryox.com                                https://www.angryox.com/
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