[tz] New Yorker article on David Mills and NTP

[Fred Gleason]

On Oct 4, 2022, at 12:07, Steve Allen via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> The implementation of time in computing systems is fragile because it
> is based on an unrealistic notion that clocks are always right and
> never need to be reset.

I suspect that one of the primary reasons that such time resets have been so fraught (and hence bitterly opposed by many ‘operations’ type folks) is their relative rarity. There have been only 27 leap seconds introduced since 1972, which means that deployed systems rarely have to cope with one and thus get the inevitable bugs identified and shaken out.

It would almost be beneficial if such an event would occur at least once per annum, to allow the ‘reset’ logic to be regularly exercised.

Cheers!


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| Frederick F. Gleason, Jr. |             Chief Developer             |
|                           |             Paravel Systems             |
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