On 7/25/26 09:38, Aaron Brown via tz wrote:
On Sat, Jul 18, 2026 at 1:54 PM Tim Parenti via tz <[email protected]> wrote:I noticed the poor quality of the article, too. In particular, these two statements stood out as most jarring to me: "Any system that uses elapsed-time calculations to rate-limit operations, generate sequence numbers, or verify audit logs built on the assumption that time only moves in one direction — and only stops momentarily, never jumps." This feels backwards, at best. Any system that can handle the positive leap seconds we've already had can, in fact, deal with the fact that "time" either slows, stops, or repeats, depending on the implementation. The negative leap second is arguably the easier case, because time /does/ only end up moving in one direction — the discontinuity is the hard part, yes, but no harder than the positive ones. Either speed up a bit or skip, but time is always moving forward.
Note that assuming the length of the day increases linearly, Δ/T varies quadraticly, more positive on both sides of 1900: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%94T_(timekeeping)> Still, it's a long time to accumulate an hour. -- gil /
