Leap Seconds in Unix Time
Discussions focus on whether Unix time includes leap seconds, the problems they cause in computing like glitches and non-monotonicity, alternatives like TAI over UTC, and calls to abolish leap seconds.
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Only if they get rid of leap seconds as well.
Isn't Unix time UTC, which includes leap seconds which is what is causing all these glitches?
yeah, but what about leap seconds?
Including leap seconds in unix time was a mistake - it should follow TAI instead of UTC and leave leap seconds entirely as a matter of the formatting/timezone code.
Are you counting leap seconds? (UNIX does not!)
What strategy are you guys using for leap seconds?
The leap second is being abandoned:https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03783-5
Leap seconds aren't a precision issue unless you need to calculate time delta's between events.
You could side-step leap second issues by using a TAI based timestamp.
> Why has it never been appropriate?Because UTC has never worked that way.UTC is an international standard for a "time of day" standard where every second is exactly one second long and is boundedly synchronized to the rotation of the Earth. But the Earth wobbles. The UTC solution is to occasionally add or remove leap seconds, so sometimes you see 58, 59, 60, 0, and we might someday see 58,0.People complain that "leap seconds are hard" but there'