

Clocks Are Too Precise - jonchang
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/the-over-perfection-of-humans-global-clock/384355/?single_page=true

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DiabloD3
The problem with this article is that it implies software regularly uses human
datetimes, or that programmers regularly write their own code to convert to
and fro.

Programmers do not regularly write their own code to do so (and due to the
hairy and brain numbing nature of it, plus that Java, Perl, Python, and Ruby
all have good libraries to handle this anyways, no one wants to), and code
almost always uses UNIX epoch time (number of seconds since the beginning of
Jan 1st 1970 GMT) and does not observe leap seconds (as it is a linear
progression of seconds, and does not have any concept of minutes or higher).

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huxley
"And, more seriously, computer booking systems used by Qantas Airlines all
struggled, delaying flights by hours .... Matsakis spoke of a Switzerland
power company whose backup systems only turn on when needed—otherwise, they
sit disconnected from the network. When they were activated in a test after
the last leap second, they crashed."

Perhaps the fragility of these systems is more of a problem than the leap-
second?

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jschwartzi
Clocks are actually too accurate. They are never too precise.

