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by quotemstr
672 days ago
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The leap second mechanism amounts to a collective agreement to rewrite chronological history. It's like a git rebase for your clock. Everyone (almost) in practice does math as if leap seconds never happened, and the consequent divergence from physical time ends up not mattering. |
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If we add a leap second at the end of 2025, nothing in 2024 gets rewritten. Only the future meaning of pointer expressions like "12 pm on January 2nd 2025" change their value. When I want exactly 48 hours after 12 pm Dec 31, I use a leap second independent time representation. But since usually I want the same thing everyone calls 12 pm Jan 2, I usually use a representation that gives me that.
And I, among many, take meticulous care to do my date math (for a bank core system) only in ways that naturally support leap seconds.