
Leap Second in a graph - vyodaiken
https://twitter.com/FSMLabs/status/815589123121618944
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CharlesMerriam2
One day, developers will rise up and thump the astronomers that create leap
seconds, create a new "Astronomy Celestrial Time" zome, and try to forget
about the disruptions this causes every couple years.

~~~
pavel_lishin
"Abolishing the leap second all those centuries ago was the best thing we'd
ever done."

"I agree; now, come on, it's 3am - the sun's going to set soon, and if we want
to enjoy this warm January day, we'd better be off."

~~~
taeric
Aren't climates, in general, changing anyway. Not to mention that for half of
the globe that is an accepted fact anyway. So, temperature just isn't that
compelling of an argument for this.

~~~
pavel_lishin
My joke was actually about the calendar itself precessing, since it would
become decoupled from the Earth's rotation around the sun, but if you'd like
to contradict the entire scientific establishment, you're welcome to.

~~~
taeric
I wasn't contradicting any establishment. I just don't think weather is a
concern. Really, neither are dates. Our calendar system isn't that old, after
all.

Edit to add: I'm also being over brief, since I'm mainly posting from my
phone. I make no claim that there are reasons to ditch leap seconds. Or that I
fully understand why we have them. I just personally feel that calendar
weather isn't that compelling. The changes would be so minor per generation, I
would wager most wouldn't notice it.

Now, let none of this get confused with climate change. Which I do feel we are
contributing to and we should seek to control.

------
nerdponx
What are the axes?

~~~
richdougherty
This is what it looks like to me:

X axis - time of day

Y axis - NTP server's delta from actual time

What you're seeing with the yellow lines is "leap smearing" by Google's public
NTP time servers. They slowly diverge from the real time for the 10 hours
before and after the leap second, so that they can have 60 instead of 61
seconds at midnight. See:
[https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/11/making-every-
le...](https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2016/11/making-every-leap-second-
count-with-our-new-public-NTP-servers.html).

~~~
vyodaiken
Correct. The X axis is our estimate of actual time from GPS time. The Y axis
is the deviation from estimate. The estimate includes a slew of about 5
minutes around the leap second.

