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Discussion summary

No leap second will be added at the end of December 2026, and discussions are ongoing about replacing leap seconds with leap hours. The decision depends on Earth's rotation, and systems like Spanner are unaffected by these irregular adjustments.

What the discussion says

  • Leap seconds are based on Earth's rotation and are not on a fixed schedule.
  • There is consideration to replace leap seconds with leap hours.
  • Decisions are made about 6 months in advance, depending on Earth's measurements.
“They're not adding a leap second this year, possibly not next year either.”
— ChrisArchitect
“Leap seconds depend on Earth's rotation, not a fixed calendar schedule.”
— metalliqaz

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  • Hacker News
  • Hear me out. We can just mount jet engines along the equator and rotate them 180 to gain or lose time. And then connect them to my snooze button.
    by delichon
  • What happens to systems such as Spanner under these circumstances?

    Is it a headache or a non-issue

    by srean
  • If the UTC-TAI offset remains at -37s, then it also means the UTC-GPS offset remains at -18s. TAI and GPS have a constant 19s offset from each system.
    by KboPAacDA3
  • "To authorities responsible for the measurement and distribution of time" is just the best preamble ever.
    by bombcar
  • Isn't this anti-news? I vaguely remember they have stopped introducing leap seconds until further notice because they cause too much trouble with today's computing systems. On my phone now and did not research it, as I say vaguely remember. Now we are 37 seconds off. Nobody of us will have to worry that Christmas is around Easter time. We can leave that problem to future generations much more responsibly than many other problems.

    That the notice comes every 6 months is just to meet the letter of the original international treaty.

    by usr1106
  • ELI5: How does this impact UNIX timestamps? Particularly for things that are in maintenance mode or otherwise minimally maintained.

    Nothing I do requires this level of precision, but certainly there are things that do.

    by AbstractH24
  • Notice they only said leap second.

    Meanwhile....

    International timekeepers to vote on changing the leap second to a leap hour

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/international-tim... (https://archive.ph/GnQUj https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842329)

    by ChrisArchitect
  • What causes the unpredictability in this? I would have guessed we have earth's rotation and orbit down to many decimals. Does geological activity, weather, or something else cause rotation speed differences that we just can't predict?
    by doctoboggan

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