Mass media article on leap seconds
D. J. Bernstein
djb at cr.yp.to
Tue Apr 13 07:02:26 UTC 2004
Markus Kuhn writes:
> Keeping a computer synched to something like TAI would only be
> practical in the real world if a leap-free timescale (e.g., the existing
> TAI or GPS time) were widely enough available, along with a regularly
> updated UTC-TAI offset table.
http://cr.yp.to/clockspeed.html converts from NTP's wobbly timescale to
TAI, and sets the UNIX clock accordingly.
The tz library, in ``right'' mode, then produces accurate local-time
displays from the UNIX clock, even during leap seconds.
Welcome to the real world.
---D. J. Bernstein, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics,
Statistics, and Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
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