5 ms·
The more reasonable thing to do would be to just forget about leap seconds altogether, not to put them elsewhere. Who cares if midday happens at 12:00:00 or at
by Matumio 12y ago
The more reasonable thing to do would be to just forget about leap seconds altogether, not to put them elsewhere. Who cares if midday happens at 12:00:00 or at 12:00:30? Those who do need to add their exact longitude anyway, and they don't like time jumping around either. Human culture can adapt to a slow drift (over centuries) of the meaning of 08:00.
- lostlogin 12y ago"Due to inflationary pressures the standard work day has been extended another hour". I didn't downvote but suggesting a fudge factor is never going to fly around here!
- Matumio 12y agoFudge factor? What I meant to suggest is to just define that UTC is now equal to TAI, and forget about the offset (set leap seconds to zero, or drive slowly towards zero if required).
- DenisM 12y agoWe could also accumulate leap seconds and release them as leap minutes once a century or so.
- Matumio 12y agoAn actual proposal was to wait until an hour has accumulated and then change time zones.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- organsnyder 12y agoI like the current system better. They happen often enough that software is (or should be) written with them in mind. Otherwise, we'd have y2k-style scrambling every time they occurred (since it would be infrequent enough that the pain of the experience would be dulled with time).
- WillyNourson 12y agoBecause of High Frequency Trading
- voidz 12y agoValid point imho. Sad to see your comment turned to grey within as little as 8 minutes after you posted it.
- lkbm 12y agoWhy does HFT care where we are or how we're rotated in relation to the sun? So long as we all agree on what time it is, whether 12pm denotes high noon or not is arbitrary and irrelevant.
- clord 12y agoThe only thing I can think of: a good HFT algo might be able to exploit leap seconds to somehow gain an advantage over those that are ignorant of them (or vice versa).
- lutorm 12y agoThe repercussions of such a changed are addressed at http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/ http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/ Many things depend on using mean solar time, astronomy being one of them. The places that actually need a strict accounting of elapsed time can already use TAI or GPS time.
- robbrown451 12y agoWhy does astronomy "depend" on anything like that? Why should they care how the rest of the world standardizes on time? Seems like they can adapt, rather than forcing everyone else to. I'd bet the number of non-astronomers inconvenienced by leap seconds outnumbers astronomer 1000 to one.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- nullc 12y agoAstronomy usually needs sidereal time. Mean solar time is a largely mathematical construct that has no direct relation to anything immediately observable. (Notice the word 'mean' ... to _observe_ mean solar time you'd need to watch the sun for a whole year from the equator.) To the extent that astronomy applications want solar time at all, they probably wants it with more precision than you get from UTC.