Is this article for real? There is no clock (except atomic) that runs at the exact time. They either run a few secs ahead/slower each month and need to be readjusted accordingly. I'm pretty sure banking system and major web site clocks aren't atomic either.
It is very real, no hoax. Of course no single, normal clock is atomic. Not in computers or websites, not in corporations or banks. But the UTC, base for all time and how it is measured in the world is based on exact atomic clock and rotation of the earth.
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Yeah, okay. So how exactly do those non-atomic clocks resync every now and then? Oh wait, the article suggests that they don't, and when this leap second (which is nothing compared to the tens of seconds gained/loss by the clocks) happens this summer, the world is going to end... d'oh!
Kari,
I agree with hirobo2. That why I gave him a thumps up. No clock keeps exact time except for one. Even my computer clock is about 5 minutes off. My computer still is running without any issues. I still don't see why adding a leap second could crash a computer? The simplest way to fix would be to turn off the auto clock adjustment for that day. All systems and clocks lose time. Some computers are adjusted for Daylight Saving Time world-wide, that doesn't seem to foul up computers
OK. Should we agree that if any of us does not understand a certain thing or principle, it is thereafter collectively considered as not true? Truth being only something everyone understands?
What on earth has adjusting a clock or DST to do with universal time and leap second? UTC is not a timezone.
It's about the rotational speed of the Earth, which has slowed and is not longer 24 hours.
We can't speed up the Earth to correct time measurement, so the only thing to do is add time to our measuring system.
I had to think about this, at first glance I said "Wait, we're a second ahead and we're adding a second ... wouldn't that make us 2 seconds ahead?"
No, the second is being added to make up for the time already lost by the slower rotational speed.
Too much weight on the planet? More gravitational pull from the Sun? A killer comet close by? An invisible dark hole?
Someone probably knows why the Earth is spinning slower, I won't start calling the mother ship until it's spinning slower by minutes. :)
Major sites ?? Reddit, Yelp, LinkedIn (LNKD, Tech30), FourSquare, Gawker and StumbleUpon ???
My definition of major is different from the author's definition of major.
Spoiler alert: there is a fix in the linked article.There have been 25 leap seconds since they were introduced in 1972. But some groups have been looking to get rid of leap seconds. At the next meeting of the standards-setting International Telecommunication Union, nations' representatives will vote on abolishing the practice.
Don't have IERS network tell computers the last minute of the day will have 61 seconds. Then computers should adjust with the next check-in on the following day really simple.Computers check in from time to time with the IERS' network to make sure that they are telling the time correctly (like wristwatches, they have to be "rewound" every now and then). When leap seconds happen, IERS tells computers that the last minute of that day will have 61 seconds. That makes Unix-based software go haywire.
What happens if the IERS network time servers goes down? Does Unix crash?
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