[tz] Bulletin C 51: No leap second in June 2016, but new leap second file

[Martin Burnicki]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> In http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2016-January/023057.html Brian
> Inglis wrote:
> 
>> https://hpiers.obspm.fr/iers/bul/bulc/ntp/leap-seconds.list
>> The comment says 28 December 2016 but the expiry timestamp 3684182400
>> is actually 2016-09-30 00:00:00+0000
> 
> Ouch! That's definitely a bug in the leap-seconds.list file. I will BCC:
> this message to the webmaster for that web page.

I've been in touch with Olivier Becker from IERS who has actually
created the file. In the original file the expiration date was in fact
set to 30 September 2016, due to a misunderstanding of what should be a
proper date.

I've then asked them to change this to late December, and they did, but
obviously they only changed the human readable date but not the expiry
timestamp, and I didn't check this. :-(

I'll contact Olivier and ask him to fix this.

> A less-important issue: that web page has a Last-Modified time (reported
> via the HTTP header) of 2016-01-11 11:06:36 UTC, even though the web
> page's contents give a last update equal to 3661459200 NTP, i.e.,
> 2016-01-11 00:00:00 UTC. I guess they have just one-day resolution for
> theirannouncements' time stamps, but hey! they're time nerds! The two
> time stamps should be identical.
> 
>> so they must be fairly confident
>> that current predictions of dUT1 remaining low until year end will be
>> borne out, and Bulletin C 52 will announce no change in July. 

I don't think so. the bulletin still says it's published every 6 months.
I'm sure this is only a problem with the leap second file.

Martin