This year's Y2K: 'Leap second' threatens to break the Internet

[Slartybart]

.....
What happens if the IERS network time servers goes down? Does Unix crash?

That would be the end of time, much worse than Unix crashing.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...You are not often right but this time you are wrong ...

:roflmao:Sorry but that tickled my funny bone for some reason.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there

A little bit of History -- back in 1582 the Gegorian Calendar (current one) was introduced in some European countries before it was universally adopted (Turkey actually being the last country which didn't adopt it until 1927 !!). The old Julian calendar which preceded it was getting dangerously out of Sync -- mid summer would noticeably appear at the wrong time, navigation charts would become increasingly inaccurate etc. (Longitude calculations etc) so obviously the calendar needed to be corrected.

France was the first together with Italy, Portugal and Spain where 10 days were removed. Germany in 1610 also by removing 10 days flowed by the UK, Canada, USA in 1752 where 11 days were removed.

People went rioting in the streets thinking they'd been robbed of 11 days of life. !!!

Judging by some of the comments on this thread it would appear people are STILL of the same mind set !!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Kari]

...You are not often right but this time you are wrong ...

:roflmao:Sorry but that tickled my funny bone for some reason.

At least someone understood it.

 

[TVeblen]

This is a good read to get a primer on the Network Time Protocol and why leap seconds matter to the internet:

Network Time Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Further down in the article you should note that servers adhering to the NTP should already be able to handle a leap second.
It looks like devices using time stamp protocols other than NTP could be affected.

 

[Slartybart]

This is a good read to get a primer on the Network Time Protocol and why leap seconds matter to the internet:
Network Time Protocol - Wikipedia
.....

From the wiki page TVeblen linked:

Leap seconds
... Because of the requirement that time must appear to be monotonically increasing,
a leap second is inserted with the sequence: 23:59:59, 23:59:60, 00:00:00
Although the clock is actually halted during the event, any processes that query the system time cause it to increase by a tiny amount, preserving the order of events. If it should ever become necessary, a leap second would be deleted by skipping 23:59:59

There seems to be a few solutions to this already available for the server side of things.

System programs are probably hardened by now, application programs, maybe not so much.

There's a lot of old software out that that is being maintained by one person. This might be a consultant who only supports the software when there is an issue.

How did (do?) some programs determine the passage of a day? Magic!

The magic number 1440 to be exact. That's all there was, no more than 1440.

 

[TVeblen]

Or 86,400 !

 

[Kari]

The magic number 1440 to be exact. That's all there was, no more than 1440.

Or 86,400 !

I was also wondering that about 1,440, number of minutes in a day. If we are talking about seconds per day that's of course 86,400.

 

[Indianatone]

It is fascinating that we have the technology to measure time so accurately that we can tell the Earth's rotation varies. That is really something. Kari you have to forgive grove. He is a Hoosier from Indiana which until recently did not do DST and parts near Chicago and the Far South West around Evansville are on Central time. The rest of the State is on Eastern time with DST. Before the state did DST the counties in several areas ignored the general time and followed DST. This happened around Louisville Kentucky those counties followed Louisville time so the TV schedules were correct. Some of the Northern counties did some weird things too even though they were not supposed to. That is why it is so confusing to Indiana natives until recently where we now seem to have the best plan. However some want to put the state on Central time which may lead to more problems such as darker evenings in Winter and early sunset in Summer.

 

[Slartybart]

Or 86,400 !

Thanks for doing the math TVeblen

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I thought the answer was 42.

 

[Layback Bear]

In some cases like stock market computer trading a ms could make you or break you. If your computer is a ms behind another traders computer you could loose a ton of money. I have read that some brokers will pay lots of money to located their computer close to the markets server just so their transaction will be done a fraction of a ms sooner than competitors.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there.

For most "Normal" people doing a bit of Day trading or Options trading (or both) that sort of speed difference is irrelevant -- for starters it's not just getting the best deal - you have to get the trade actually executed - by the time the automated system handles it the microsecond advantage is gone.

There's a Bid and Ask price -- you have to put your trade on with a value roughly between the limit ranges (experience will teach you what to offer) and then put your trade on -- there are options like Good for the day - means that if your trade can't be executed immediately attempts will be made until market closes to fulfil the trade at the price requested, Good till executed etc etc. You can put a "Stop Loss" on a stock too so that if the market changes you exit the trade if the price hits your stop loss (higher or lower depening on your trade).

While not going into the mechanics of trading - these stories about getting a few nano seconds by being nearer the server are just rubbish. Real time trading depends on many factors - often it's just "the feel of the market".

If there were any 100% successful automated trading systems around we'd all be using them !!!!!.

Maybe being nearer the server might cause a little bit of "Cranium Magnetic Stimulation" to the trader - whether that's an advantage or not -- who's to say !!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[Slartybart]

.....
Yet another SCAM designed for "Consultancy firms" to charge mega huge fees for doing non existent work for a non existent problem. Remember some "consultants" back in 1999 were getting paid over 2000 USD A DAY in money of that time --probably worth around 3,000 USD a day in today's money for simply eyeballing some lines of "COBOL" code (if anybody can still remember what that was) for some Banks.
.....
Cheers
jimbo

I really like the sensationalism of the article.
The headline:
This year's Y2K: 'Leap second' threatens to break the Internet
- ohhhhh, y2k and break the internet

The Heartbleed video and scary music

The sub-title:
Get your apocalypse bunker ready. This summer, a "leap second" will threaten to wreak havoc across the Internet.

Qantas' entire computer system went down for hours, forcing employees to check in passengers by hand.
Oh my goodness - forcing check-in by hand. Well it's a good thing the planes were still flying.

And just when you've finished praying that you've led a good life... the article tells you that there's a fix:

The good news is there's a solution. Google (GOOGL, Tech30) developed what it calls one of its "coolest workarounds" after a 2005 leap second made some of its computer systems to stop accepting new commands.
To avoid the leap second issue, Google gradually adds a couple of milliseconds to its servers' clocks throughout the day when a leap second is to occur -- just enough to stave off disaster by the end of the day but not enough to trip any alarm bells when the adjustments are made.

Oh my...... all of that and they already know how to fix it!
25 leap seconds since 1972 and the world is still here, the Internet is still here...... sheesh!

Bill
.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]