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If I've learned one thing about dealing with exceptional events, it's that the less often they happen, the less likely you are to handle them well. Switching fr

If I've learned one thing about dealing with exceptional events, it's that the less often they happen, the less likely you are to handle them well. Switching from leap seconds every few years to leap minutes every century, pretty much guarantees we'll screw it up. But maybe that's ok? Y2K was a fat nothingburger, after all the fuss.

an1sotropy 5y ago
It's a little like a public health success: if done right, the worst that happens is that people have to prepare, and people complain about it, but disasters are avoided. Pre-Y2K there was a lot of fuss and hand-wringing, but there was also a lot of software development that happened to ensure that Y2K would not be a disaster. So then when Y2K rolled around the preparations mostly worked. My first programming job in high school was over-hauling a (mainframe-hosted) code base for handling lab data at a hospital. This was in the mid-90's; before most of the Y2K fuss had started. Without my work, pee and poo samples would be time traveling from the late Victorian era. You're welcome.
bee_rider 5y ago
Push it out to a century, and then hope we have the ability to slightly accelerate the planet by then?
jonas21 5y ago
Y2K was a fat nothingburger, because of all the fuss. Millions of person-years and $300 billion were spent to avert disaster - and it worked! But then all anyone ever sees is that nothing went wrong, and they assume it was nothing to begin with.
wmf 5y ago
That's why we should eliminate leap seconds/minutes/hours and just change time zone definitions to keep the sun overhead near noon.
- StefanKarpinski 5y ago
  Is the concept that UTC would become "detached" from a particular location on Earth and the offset of time zones relative to UTC would change over time (very infrequently since it would take on the order of a millenium for a time zone to shift by half an hour).
  - wmf 5y ago
    Exactly.

an1sotropy 5y ago

It's a little like a public health success: if done right, the worst that happens is that people have to prepare, and people complain about it, but disasters are avoided. Pre-Y2K there was a lot of fuss and hand-wringing, but there was also a lot of software development that happened to ensure that Y2K would not be a disaster. So then when Y2K rolled around the preparations mostly worked. My first programming job in high school was over-hauling a (mainframe-hosted) code base for handling lab data at a hospital. This was in the mid-90's; before most of the Y2K fuss had started. Without my work, pee and poo samples would be time traveling from the late Victorian era. You're welcome.

bee_rider 5y ago

Push it out to a century, and then hope we have the ability to slightly accelerate the planet by then?

jonas21 5y ago

Y2K was a fat nothingburger, because of all the fuss. Millions of person-years and $300 billion were spent to avert disaster - and it worked! But then all anyone ever sees is that nothing went wrong, and they assume it was nothing to begin with.

wmf 5y ago

That's why we should eliminate leap seconds/minutes/hours and just change time zone definitions to keep the sun overhead near noon.

StefanKarpinski 5y ago
Is the concept that UTC would become "detached" from a particular location on Earth and the offset of time zones relative to UTC would change over time (very infrequently since it would take on the order of a millenium for a time zone to shift by half an hour).
- wmf 5y ago
  Exactly.