The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks

The leap second’s time is up: world votes to stop pausing clocks
nature.com

The decision was made by representatives from governments worldwide at the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) outside Paris on 18 November.

[…]

> The CGPM — which also oversees the international system of units (SI) — has proposed that no leap second should be added for at least a century, allowing UT1 and UTC to slide out of sync by about 1 minute. But it plans to consult with other international organizations and decide by 2026 on what upper limit, if any, to put on how much they be allowed to diverge.

So everything about this hasn't quite been sorted out yet.

At some point there may need to be a reckoning like was done with the calendar:

> Second, in the years since the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325,[b] the excess leap days introduced by the Julian algorithm had caused the calendar to drift such that the (Northern) spring equinox was occurring well before its nominal 21 March date. This date was important to the Christian churches because it is fundamental to the calculation of the date of Easter. To reinstate the association, the reform advanced the date by 10 days:[c] Thursday 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday 15 October 1582.[3]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_calendar

As annoying as handling a leap second could be, if it happens even somewhat regularly it can be testing more often. Deciding in the future to do a 'one-off' event may be more challenging from both a coördination point of view, as well as trying to handle a rare event correctly in (e.g.) code.