<story><title>Leap seconds: Causing bugs even when they don’t happen</title><url>https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/leapseconds-expose-bugs-even-when-they-dont-happen/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FabHK</author><text>What we&amp;#x27;d like to have:&lt;p&gt;1. Use SI seconds&lt;p&gt;2. Keep in sync with earth rotation&lt;p&gt;3. Avoid leap seconds&lt;p&gt;Pick any two:&lt;p&gt;- UT1: 2, 3 (not 1) [&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Universal_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Universal_Time&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;p&gt;- TAI: 1, 3 (not 2)  [&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_Atomic_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_Atomic_Time&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;p&gt;- UTC: 1, 2 (not 3) [&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Coordinated_Universal_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Coordinated_Universal_Time&lt;/a&gt;]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dooglius</author><text>Who is the &amp;quot;we&amp;quot; who wants to keep &amp;quot;in sync&amp;quot; with the Earth&amp;#x27;s rotation to such high precision? Obviously having 3:30 pm suddenly become the middle of the night would be bad, but we&amp;#x27;re talking a delta of 18 seconds spread over
almost 50 years... hardly big enough to be called &amp;quot;out of sync&amp;quot; in any noticeable sense. Maybe in a millennium or two we&amp;#x27;ll lose the cultural context of what &amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s 5:00 somewhere&amp;quot; meant, but I&amp;#x27;m sure the historians could add a blurb.</text></comment>
<story><title>Leap seconds: Causing bugs even when they don’t happen</title><url>https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/leapseconds-expose-bugs-even-when-they-dont-happen/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>FabHK</author><text>What we&amp;#x27;d like to have:&lt;p&gt;1. Use SI seconds&lt;p&gt;2. Keep in sync with earth rotation&lt;p&gt;3. Avoid leap seconds&lt;p&gt;Pick any two:&lt;p&gt;- UT1: 2, 3 (not 1) [&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Universal_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Universal_Time&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;p&gt;- TAI: 1, 3 (not 2)  [&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_Atomic_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;International_Atomic_Time&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;p&gt;- UTC: 1, 2 (not 3) [&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Coordinated_Universal_Time&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Coordinated_Universal_Time&lt;/a&gt;]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thaumasiotes</author><text>As far as I remember from earlier discussion, the reason that problems arise is that the posix standard defines a &amp;quot;day&amp;quot; as 86400 seconds, so leap seconds need to be erased from history after they&amp;#x27;ve happened. This doesn&amp;#x27;t make a lot of sense; on March 1st, we don&amp;#x27;t start pretending that February 29th never happened.</text></comment>