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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

#171

Post by defrost »

prerok wrote: post #134
tialaramex wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically we guessed wrong. We thought knowing "Solar time" would be more useful than in it, and we thought these "Leap seconds" would be less trouble than they are. It's like you buy a cat to help with your rodent problem, figuring the cat will eat mice and isn't much trouble to look after, but after purchasing a cat you find that your problem was actually rats, your cat is terrified of these large dangerous creatur…

Heh, I like the analogy but my question was really why it was considered such a hassle. I mean we deal with daylight saving time all the time and I know it's not the same because the leap second affects UTC, not just local time zone, it's just that you are either dealing with monotonically increasing time like epoch, or you are dealing with "human" time and I found no distinction in the latter. Is it "just" that leap…

It's a hassle for anybody doing or recording "physics" as they cannot log against UTC (which may or may not have an added second or removed second in some interval if it happens to overlap the adjustment zone).

Those things that really do rely on actual "elapsed time" rather than the difference between two recorded "book times".

Does this happen? Yes, a few times in my career in geophysical exploration - it's why multiple bits of gear are synced to a reference "real clock" which gets logged against the raw GPS epoch time (real time since Sunday last week(?)) and processed "UTC" time (some variation of it).

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

#172

Post by mtoner23 »

t1234s wrote: post #27

They should have a global holiday to celebrate the people who maintain time/date related code in OS kernels that keeps the world from imploding.

They're cool people but like it doesn't stop the world from imploding. Most of all of our code is full of trivial bugs and edge cases and most people don't mind too much. Certainly no one cares about leap seconds, they hardly even notice DST or leap days

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

#173

Post by alright2565 »

eqvinox wrote: post #165
aidenn0 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means that if you subtract two timestamps, you might not get the actual time between them. Though this is also true of most ways of representing time (TAI being a notable exception).

The really annoying part is that "leap smearing" (where people decided to just mush the leap second across about day) has made CLOCK_MONOTONIC unclear in this regard, since some leap smearing approaches affect that as well. Which destroyed any assumption a developer could make about CLOCK_MONOTONIC, since you won't know if leap smearing is in use :(. (And depending on the leap smearing implementation, it also smears…

> made CLOCK_MONOTONIC unclear in this regard

I don't understand what you mean. Doesn't smearing still mean the clock only goes forward? It's still steadily incrementing. The only difference is that a second is slightly longer/shorter than you expect, but you already have to account for that if you're doing the kind of physics experiment where it would matter.

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

#174

Post by dmurray »

tialaramex wrote: post #153
dmurray wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's understood by constituents that a vote for a Sinn Féin representative is a protest vote that results in specifically nobody going to Westminster to represent you. I cannot imagine that any significant number of people vote for them and are then astonished when this has the effect everybody else expects. On the other hand, Binface has not, as I understand it, ever said he would not serve if elected. He's made it…

Likewise, nobody will be all that surprised, or disappointed, if Binface never takes his seat. It's much more of a protest vote than voting Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, and voters will have achieved their aim of Farage not getting in.

Actually, I'd take issue with describing Sinn Féin as a protest vote at all. They've historically been the only choice that even claim to represent constituents in many areas. And they do seem to do much of the work of an MP (writing letters on behalf of constituents, lobbying government agencies...) they just don't vote or debate.

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

#176

Post by dmurray »

throw-the-towel wrote: post #148
dmurray wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I think they don't approve of the Crown as an authority even if they agree it's lawfully established?

It's more like an atheist refusing to swear an oath before God in a courtroom: even if you agree that the law says you must do so, you might still not want to give God that recognition. But worse, because God might also be the defendant and the judge in this case, and you have to swear not only that He might witness your testimony but also that you pledge allegiance to Him, so swearing that oath really impairs your ability to participate in a fair trial.

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

#177

Post by cwillu »

prerok wrote: post #134
tialaramex wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically we guessed wrong. We thought knowing "Solar time" would be more useful than in it, and we thought these "Leap seconds" would be less trouble than they are. It's like you buy a cat to help with your rodent problem, figuring the cat will eat mice and isn't much trouble to look after, but after purchasing a cat you find that your problem was actually rats, your cat is terrified of these large dangerous creatur…

Heh, I like the analogy but my question was really why it was considered such a hassle. I mean we deal with daylight saving time all the time and I know it's not the same because the leap second affects UTC, not just local time zone, it's just that you are either dealing with monotonically increasing time like epoch, or you are dealing with "human" time and I found no distinction in the latter. Is it "just" that leap…

‹looks around from saskatchewan, hoping that this is the moment the rest of the world realizes that dst is also a stupid and wasteful hassle.›

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

#180

Post by Dansvidania »

eqvinox wrote: post #165
aidenn0 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also means that if you subtract two timestamps, you might not get the actual time between them. Though this is also true of most ways of representing time (TAI being a notable exception).

The really annoying part is that "leap smearing" (where people decided to just mush the leap second across about day) has made CLOCK_MONOTONIC unclear in this regard, since some leap smearing approaches affect that as well. Which destroyed any assumption a developer could make about CLOCK_MONOTONIC, since you won't know if leap smearing is in use :(. (And depending on the leap smearing implementation, it also smears…

I don't think I understand.. can you please dumb it down even more?

I'd figured that UNIX time just counts actual seconds and that leap seconds and similar calendar shenanigans would be a problem of mapping epoch to the correct date, so that if normally epoch X maps to date D then both epoch X and X+1 map to date D.

Am i to understand that leap seconds "stretch" a epoch unit ? so that some epoch second "lasted longer".

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