7 ms·

This leap second business seems like a pretty dreadful idea. Considering timezones are way off-base all around the world as it is[1], it seems a lot simpler to

This leap second business seems like a pretty dreadful idea. Considering timezones are way off-base all around the world as it is[1], it seems a lot simpler to just let the clocks drift for a while. One less weird thing in our operating systems, much less opportunity for bugs in all kinds of code that deal with times. The set of people who really care about solar time "down to the second" is smaller than the set of people who'll be put out by 23:59:59 not being immediately followed by 00:00:00, and most of those people probably want sub-second accuracy anyway. Astronomers complaining about the clock time being wrong is exactly the same as farmers complaining about daylight savings. 1: http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-world/ http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~maggiolo/index.php/2014/01/how-...

VieElm 12y ago
Too bad leap seconds will not be abolished before this happens, abolishing leap seconds is up for consideration in November 2015 at the World Radio Conference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second#Proposal_to_abolish_leap_seconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second#Proposal_to_abolis... I wish they had a call for public comments.
- johansch 12y ago
  "In May 2014, David Willetts, the ex-UK Minister State for Universities and Science,[38] described as a non-scientist with a degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science,[39] expressed opposition to the abolition of leap seconds. He indicated that as a layman, he wanted to keep "the link between time and people's everyday experience of day and night." He also wanted to keep Greenwich Mean Time in Britain, and "warned" that it would drift towards the United States.[40] An article in the Times science section suggested that the abolition of leap seconds would mean the demise of Britain's role in timekeeping.[41]" Just gah. UK: please realize you are a medium-sized EU country, not a global super power. :) Sincerely, the rest of Europe
  - nullc 12y ago
    Gah. The ignorance, it burns. It will take thousands of years for the drift to even amount to one hour. If people care about it then, ... they can switch timezones (e.g. like DST causes twice a year in most places) to compensate for it.
  - IshKebab 12y ago
    I agree. This bullshit temporal nationalism was also used as an argument for stopping Britain from changing to the European time zone (it makes way more sense). Apparently we can't do that because GMT is British. Ugh.
    - LeoPanthera 12y ago
      > it makes way more sense I never understood this argument. The whole point of having a 24-hour clock is so that 12:00 is midday and 00:00 is midnight. If you break that link then there seems little point in even having time zones, but it is useful to understand that "09:00" is in the morning, in whatever arbitrary location that time is observed. The instant failure of "Swatch internet time" showed that the current system is still working.
      - outworlder 12y ago
        12:00 is almost never midday. Even in equator, "midday" drifts by several minutes as the year goes by. Sunrise and sunset times vary a lot by latitude, so 5:00 in one location might mean sunrise, where in another location the sun won't come up for a couple of hours. Ditto for sunset. Even DST can't compensate if the sun is rising at 6:00 and setting at 22:00.
        dwb 12y ago
        Midday doesn't have to be that precise, and you centre your day around it rather than move the day around sunrise and sunset. It may be that Swatch Internet Time was rather _before_ its time rather than something that will never catch on, but the current system works really well for pretty much everyone.
gcb0 12y ago
i for one vote to a base 10 system that takes all that into account. imagine splitting time not exactly in seasons begin/end (what was the last time you synched your clocks with a solstice?). no leap seconds. no 28-31 months. no 365+-1 years. even daylight saving time benefits can be worked in the system if we don't sync 100% with the solar day but skew it just enough that you get the drift to align things on daylight saving benefits and still can tell the time by simply looking at the sun. it's not hard. just nobody has the balls to even suggest this seriously out of math circles.
- dogecoinbase 12y ago
  At least most people who suggest this use one of the existing could-actually-work-even-though-it-will-never-be-implemented approaches (usually 364+1 "year day" or +2 for a leap). There are a fractional number of days in a year. You can't have a year with an integral number of days (without varying the number of days in a year, i.e. leap years). The proposal to abandon leap seconds is appealing but as short-sighted as two-digit years. You'll have to dynamically adjust times eventually because the rate of the earth's rotation changes. We can either do it right, incrementally, and programmers can manage to implement a standard that's been around for over forty years, or we can ignore it and pass the problem along. I suppose I can guess what will happen there.
- Ygg2 12y ago
  You sir, are a beacon. A bacon of hope, light, justice and marshmallows! Your idea has definitely never been tried or abolished. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  I don't think anyone should bring up DST when talking about time representations. DST is a stupid hack for artificially controlling economic forces, and has no meritorious bearing on timekeeping itself. Let's face it: decimal time was really only intended for people doing lots of math work involving time. If the argument for base 10 is that calculations and representations are "easier" than base 12 (mainly because all modern human civilizations use base 10), why not make the argument that base 2 should be used, since computers virtually think for us at this point? The real reason our representation of time is still so fucked up is that it has to be used by all humans, and all humans don't want to deal with lots of digits, fractions, floating point, etc. Sexadecimal is just simpler, even if we do have to occasionally jump through some hoops to keep this piece of crap timekeeping system in order. One second every couple years? Converting to decimal just to deal with little problems like that seems like a completely unreasonable suggestion to most people.
Florin_Andrei 12y ago
> Astronomers complaining about the clock time being wrong is exactly the same as farmers complaining about daylight savings. Well, and it's exactly the same (only the sign is changed) like software engineers complaining about leap seconds. Do a better job and the systems will not suffer from leap seconds. Of course, astronomers and farmers will be more inclined to agree with this statement; software engineers, not so much. :) We all complain when we are inconvenienced. When other people are inconvenienced, bah, it's a trifle.
- rcthompson 12y ago
  The point is that the leap seconds don't actually help astronomers because they need sub-second accuracy anyway, so they're going to need a more exact time and they won't really care whether it says "12:47:45.435" or "12:47:44.435". So it's a lot of work for dubious benefit. Also, we "suffer" from leap seconds not because we did a bad job designing the system, but because the Earth's rotation is slowing due to tidal forces from the moon, so an earth day today is already a tiny fraction of a second longer than it was when we defined a day to be 24 hours. So we have a couple of choices: change the length of an hour (and minute, and second...) to match the Earth's changing rotational speed; let solar time and clock time gradually drift apart; or add leap seconds to keep them roughly in sync. The first option is clearly insane, since having our measure of time vary over time would be a huge inconvenience. Out of the 2nd and 3rd, options, we have chosen the 3rd. A lot of people are arguing that the 2nd is really a better option. In the (very very) long term, it almost certainly is. Once the Earth's day becomes 25 hours, we'd be adding a leap hour every day! This is my understanding of the situation, anyway. Anyone with more experience here, feel free to correct me.
- voidz 12y ago
  Here I would suggest that we use a thrusters to fix (yes, fix) Earth's rotational speed. Heck, let's slow it down when we're at it, I could use more hours in a day!
  - eru 12y ago
    See https://what-if.xkcd.com/26/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/26/
mrgriscom 12y ago
Do astronomers actually complain about leap seconds? I was under the impression they had their own timescales that were independent of civil timekeeping. The real objection to leap seconds comes from legacy systems like US Air Traffic Control, who complained in the 70s when leap seconds were first instated. And rather than, you know, upgrade their systems in the intervening 40 years, clearly the best approach is to keep complaining about them until they go away.

VieElm 12y ago

Too bad leap seconds will not be abolished before this happens, abolishing leap seconds is up for consideration in November 2015 at the World Radio Conference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second#Proposal_to_abolish_leap_seconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second#Proposal_to_abolis... I wish they had a call for public comments.

johansch 12y ago
"In May 2014, David Willetts, the ex-UK Minister State for Universities and Science,[38] described as a non-scientist with a degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science,[39] expressed opposition to the abolition of leap seconds. He indicated that as a layman, he wanted to keep "the link between time and people's everyday experience of day and night." He also wanted to keep Greenwich Mean Time in Britain, and "warned" that it would drift towards the United States.[40] An article in the Times science section suggested that the abolition of leap seconds would mean the demise of Britain's role in timekeeping.[41]" Just gah. UK: please realize you are a medium-sized EU country, not a global super power. :) Sincerely, the rest of Europe
- nullc 12y ago
  Gah. The ignorance, it burns. It will take thousands of years for the drift to even amount to one hour. If people care about it then, ... they can switch timezones (e.g. like DST causes twice a year in most places) to compensate for it.
- IshKebab 12y ago
  I agree. This bullshit temporal nationalism was also used as an argument for stopping Britain from changing to the European time zone (it makes way more sense). Apparently we can't do that because GMT is British. Ugh.
  - LeoPanthera 12y ago
    > it makes way more sense I never understood this argument. The whole point of having a 24-hour clock is so that 12:00 is midday and 00:00 is midnight. If you break that link then there seems little point in even having time zones, but it is useful to understand that "09:00" is in the morning, in whatever arbitrary location that time is observed. The instant failure of "Swatch internet time" showed that the current system is still working.
    - outworlder 12y ago
      12:00 is almost never midday. Even in equator, "midday" drifts by several minutes as the year goes by. Sunrise and sunset times vary a lot by latitude, so 5:00 in one location might mean sunrise, where in another location the sun won't come up for a couple of hours. Ditto for sunset. Even DST can't compensate if the sun is rising at 6:00 and setting at 22:00.
      - dwb 12y ago
        Midday doesn't have to be that precise, and you centre your day around it rather than move the day around sunrise and sunset. It may be that Swatch Internet Time was rather _before_ its time rather than something that will never catch on, but the current system works really well for pretty much everyone.

gcb0 12y ago

i for one vote to a base 10 system that takes all that into account. imagine splitting time not exactly in seasons begin/end (what was the last time you synched your clocks with a solstice?). no leap seconds. no 28-31 months. no 365+-1 years. even daylight saving time benefits can be worked in the system if we don't sync 100% with the solar day but skew it just enough that you get the drift to align things on daylight saving benefits and still can tell the time by simply looking at the sun. it's not hard. just nobody has the balls to even suggest this seriously out of math circles.

dogecoinbase 12y ago
At least most people who suggest this use one of the existing could-actually-work-even-though-it-will-never-be-implemented approaches (usually 364+1 "year day" or +2 for a leap). There are a fractional number of days in a year. You can't have a year with an integral number of days (without varying the number of days in a year, i.e. leap years). The proposal to abandon leap seconds is appealing but as short-sighted as two-digit years. You'll have to dynamically adjust times eventually because the rate of the earth's rotation changes. We can either do it right, incrementally, and programmers can manage to implement a standard that's been around for over forty years, or we can ignore it and pass the problem along. I suppose I can guess what will happen there.
Ygg2 12y ago
You sir, are a beacon. A bacon of hope, light, justice and marshmallows! Your idea has definitely never been tried or abolished. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
peterwwillis 12y ago
I don't think anyone should bring up DST when talking about time representations. DST is a stupid hack for artificially controlling economic forces, and has no meritorious bearing on timekeeping itself. Let's face it: decimal time was really only intended for people doing lots of math work involving time. If the argument for base 10 is that calculations and representations are "easier" than base 12 (mainly because all modern human civilizations use base 10), why not make the argument that base 2 should be used, since computers virtually think for us at this point? The real reason our representation of time is still so fucked up is that it has to be used by all humans, and all humans don't want to deal with lots of digits, fractions, floating point, etc. Sexadecimal is just simpler, even if we do have to occasionally jump through some hoops to keep this piece of crap timekeeping system in order. One second every couple years? Converting to decimal just to deal with little problems like that seems like a completely unreasonable suggestion to most people.

Florin_Andrei 12y ago

> Astronomers complaining about the clock time being wrong is exactly the same as farmers complaining about daylight savings. Well, and it's exactly the same (only the sign is changed) like software engineers complaining about leap seconds. Do a better job and the systems will not suffer from leap seconds. Of course, astronomers and farmers will be more inclined to agree with this statement; software engineers, not so much. :) We all complain when we are inconvenienced. When other people are inconvenienced, bah, it's a trifle.

rcthompson 12y ago
The point is that the leap seconds don't actually help astronomers because they need sub-second accuracy anyway, so they're going to need a more exact time and they won't really care whether it says "12:47:45.435" or "12:47:44.435". So it's a lot of work for dubious benefit. Also, we "suffer" from leap seconds not because we did a bad job designing the system, but because the Earth's rotation is slowing due to tidal forces from the moon, so an earth day today is already a tiny fraction of a second longer than it was when we defined a day to be 24 hours. So we have a couple of choices: change the length of an hour (and minute, and second...) to match the Earth's changing rotational speed; let solar time and clock time gradually drift apart; or add leap seconds to keep them roughly in sync. The first option is clearly insane, since having our measure of time vary over time would be a huge inconvenience. Out of the 2nd and 3rd, options, we have chosen the 3rd. A lot of people are arguing that the 2nd is really a better option. In the (very very) long term, it almost certainly is. Once the Earth's day becomes 25 hours, we'd be adding a leap hour every day! This is my understanding of the situation, anyway. Anyone with more experience here, feel free to correct me.
voidz 12y ago
Here I would suggest that we use a thrusters to fix (yes, fix) Earth's rotational speed. Heck, let's slow it down when we're at it, I could use more hours in a day!
- eru 12y ago
  See https://what-if.xkcd.com/26/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/26/

mrgriscom 12y ago

Do astronomers actually complain about leap seconds? I was under the impression they had their own timescales that were independent of civil timekeeping. The real objection to leap seconds comes from legacy systems like US Air Traffic Control, who complained in the 70s when leap seconds were first instated. And rather than, you know, upgrade their systems in the intervening 40 years, clearly the best approach is to keep complaining about them until they go away.