undefined | Better HN

0 pointsgerikson5y ago0 comments

I feel the solution is for the programming community to slowly and methodically move towards using TAI in basic infrastructure (operating systems, routers, NTP etc) and build a base on which to derive the civil timekeeping (UTC + localtime, DST etc).

That, or get involved in the standards work. That said, after ruining observations by sending a bunch of satellites into space, tech people might be even less popular than before in the astro community...

Edit I just got around to reading that Wired article and... ugh

> Reddit was just one of several web outfits that were hit by leap second glitches just after midnight Greenwich Mean Time on Saturday,

Article is from Jul 2012, GMT was not in effect at that time. I guess they meant UTC, but if tech journalists don't know that GMT is depreciated as a concept of "universal time" what hope is there for meaningful time reform...

0 comments

btilly5y ago

Do you have any idea how much work it is to rewrite all of that software?

The solution people are actually moving to is https://developers.google.com/time/smear. The downside is that measurements of elapsed time will be off in that day. But no rewrite needed, and most applications are going to be just fine with that.

Timezones may have multiple names. Greenwich Mean Time and Zulu, aka GMT and Z, are officially defined timezones that happen to be UTC+0. Both are in widespread use and are not wrong.

geriksonOP5y ago

There’s an ambiguity in that GMT is a civil timezone that in the UK is BST when DST is in effect. UTC cannot be affected by DST.

I hear a lot of Brits calling their time “GMT” even when DST is in effect. It’s a shorthand for “current time in the UK”. Hence, ambiguous.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse