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No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

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Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#141

Post by b112 »

tialaramex wrote: post #70
_alternator_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In short, yes, the weather, geology, and signicantly, human movement of water via aquifer draining and dam building, as well as glaicial and ice melts, all contribute to unpredictable changes in the earths rotational period, as well as the axis of rotation. The models for this are IIRC trigonometric polynomials of fairly low order, so even if we could model the unpredictability perfectly, truncation error would limit…

2035 is the agreed drop dead date. Everybody agreed that "Leap seconds" are a sufficiently bad idea that they should be replaced by 2035. Nobody has agreed how to fix it, and "Just turn them off" isn't technically legal. However, "What if there were Leap hours instead?" is technically legal and of course those hours would happen in the very distant future (likely after our civilisation is gone) so it's functionally i…

Everybody agreed that "Leap seconds" are a sufficiently bad idea

No. Not everybody. I prefer accurate time, and all the complaints I've heard hold little water.

My servers need to timesync forwards and back all the time, eg timedrift. They need to jump to new times, or slowly drift, depending.

VMs can be hypervisor starved, or need to move to a new host.

Servers also need to handle missing time. Any daemon or program which cannot handle this is buggy, broken, and needs to deal.

Leap seconds are just part of all of this, and present no new issues compared to normal time change. I question the capabilities of any engineer who singles out time second as difficult to deal with, time is constantly changing on servers. Constantly.

So back to the start, no... everybody doesn't agree. Google isn't "everybody".

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#142

Post by layer8 »

doctoboggan wrote: post #30

What causes the unpredictability in this? I would have guessed we have earth's rotation and orbit down to many decimals. Does geological activity, weather, or something else cause rotation speed differences that we just can't predict?

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second#:~:text=Other%20co...

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#143

Post by layer8 »

returningfory2 wrote: post #26

As one HN comment said years ago: I feel leap seconds have always lived in the wrong abstraction layer. They should live in the same abstraction layer that does leap days and daylight savings: the time zones.

That would create much more chaos, because every region autonomously decides on its timezone(s). You'd have different countries and/or timezones using different leap second counts.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#144

Post by clickety_clack »

returningfory2 wrote: post #26

As one HN comment said years ago: I feel leap seconds have always lived in the wrong abstraction layer. They should live in the same abstraction layer that does leap days and daylight savings: the time zones.

Yes! I yearn for the day when central daylight savings time is 1:00:00:36 behind eastern time, but standard central time remains offset by 1 hour exactly (except for leap years, which are obviously 1:00:00:36 offset all year round).

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#145

Post by rzzzt »

Perz1val wrote: post #89
delichon wrote: post #21

Hear me out. We can just mount jet engines along the equator and rotate them 180 to gain or lose time. And then connect them to my snooze button.

No, jet engines push against the atmosphere and the atmosphere is a part of the earth

Then we'll have to decrease the radius a bit.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#146

Post by throw-the-towel »

latexr wrote: post #120
ninju wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who need more context of who the Time Lords are The Time Lords are a fictional ancient race of extraterrestrial people in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In-universe, they hail from the planet Gallifrey and are stated to have invented time travel technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Lord

For further context, Doctor Who is a member of the species.

And, I think, the last of them remaining.

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#147

Post by N19PEDL2 »

_alternator_ wrote: post #50
doctoboggan wrote: post #30

What causes the unpredictability in this? I would have guessed we have earth's rotation and orbit down to many decimals. Does geological activity, weather, or something else cause rotation speed differences that we just can't predict?

In short, yes, the weather, geology, and signicantly, human movement of water via aquifer draining and dam building, as well as glaicial and ice melts, all contribute to unpredictable changes in the earths rotational period, as well as the axis of rotation. The models for this are IIRC trigonometric polynomials of fairly low order, so even if we could model the unpredictability perfectly, truncation error would limit…

> because Russia needed time to update glonass satellites.

Why is this? As leap seconds don’t occur on a regular frequency, I assume they are not hardcoded on the software or hardware on board, but the control centre uploads them on the satellites enough in advance once they have been scheduled. So why can’t the control centre just stop sending those updates?

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#148

Post by throw-the-towel »

dmurray wrote: post #121
BoxOfRain wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the subject of amusing British political legislation, should he defeat Nigel Farage in the resulting by-election Count Binface will not be able to wear his costume in Parliament; not only is business attire required in the House of Commons, it's specifically forbidden to wear a suit of armour there due to a law from the 14th century. For those unaware, the major parties have declined to participate in the by-elect…

Quite a few MPs in Westminster already don't take their physical seats in Parliament (and never vote or address the House) because the conditions attached to doing so aren't compatible with their principles. Maybe Count Binface will be the next.

More specifically, that refers to the Northern Irish MPs from the Sinn Féin party who do not recognise the UK Crown as a lawful authority in NI, and hence, refuse to take an oath of allegiance to it. (They used to not recognise the Republic of Ireland as well, until the 1980s I think.)

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#149

Post by etskinner »

muvlon wrote: post #109
RugnirViking wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

god that would be awful. Can you imagine time zones being one second off from each other. Or two or three? ah yes, india is GMT+4:30:03, where europe is GMT+0:59:58

Already a thing between UTC and TAI.

Right, and orders of magnitude more people have to deal with UTC and timezones compared to TAI and the offset. So it's good to have it in the layer that it's in

Re: No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

#150

Post by stevekemp »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #146
latexr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For further context, Doctor Who is a member of the species.

And, I think, the last of them remaining.

The Master always comes back, of course. They're such perfect frenemies.

(Depends on the era of course, sometimes there are other timelords, sometimes not.)

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