[tz] New Yorker article on David Mills and NTP

[Tim Parenti]

On Tue, 4 Oct 2022 at 13:06, Fred Gleason via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> 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.
>

…which is certainly a valid argument *against* widening the acceptable
delta beyond 1 second and kicking the can down to future generations whose
procedures would be less practiced and polished for *any* such change, let
alone one of larger magnitude.  At least until such time as our current
procedures start to fall short and we're going through these motions a few
times every year, at which point it would then become better to level-set
and widen the acceptable gap by some factor around 5 or 10 so we're back to
"every few years" again.

There's undoubtedly a "sweet spot" between impact and frequency, and so
those of such a view might well argue we're already in it (the last few
wobbles of the earth notwithstanding).  It seems it would be difficult to
maintain what balance currently exists by throwing one or more factors of
60 into the mix.

On Tue, 4 Oct 2022 at 15:01, dpatte via tz <tz at iana.org> wrote:

> The concept with hours is that it would work more like a day-light savings
> transition, and named UTC1, UTC2, etc.


Those on this list understand well just how wild (and political!) DST
changes on the order of an hour have gotten in places within a single
century or even individual years.  Imagine being the ones in charge of
getting everyone on board to renumber the hours after thousands of
individual local customs spent N millennia gradually adapting throughout
the generations!

Despite technical shortcomings with each change, there are certainly social
benefits to keeping these increments small and unnoticeable to most…

So, yes, of course we'll need major overhauls or something entirely
different eventually.  In the meantime, refinement is a worthwhile goal.
But it also seems wise to reflect on the fact that, at 50-ish years, the
whole practice is just *so* young on the timescales that would really seem
to matter here.

--
Tim Parenti
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