[tz] New Yorker article on David Mills and NTP

[Paul Gilmartin]

On 10/4/22 13:01:31, dpatte via tz wrote:
> 
> I follow numerous astronomy lists, and there is serious discussion at the IAU (International Astronomical Union) to get rid of leap seconds altogether, and possibly replace them by something else, perhaps leap minutes (or even leap hours) - making them far less common. I believe they expect to make a decision soon, though they have been discussing it for years and had planned to make a decision 2 or 3 years ago.
> 
> In this case we would add or drop a minute (or hour), when UT1 and UTC were more than a half-minute (or half-hour) out of sync. The concept with hours is that it would work more like a day-light savings transition, and named UTC1, UTC2, etc.
> 
> Had this been done originally, there would have been no leap-second transitions up to now at all, in fact.
> 
With a "nearest minute" convention for leap minutes, there would have
been a leap minute in 1997, when TAI-UT1 exceeded 30 seconds.

I'd vote for UT1 for civil time and IT, and TAI otherwise.  Some
IT organizations have adopted leap smearing.

For information on a UT1 NTP server, see:
<https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-services/ut1-ntp-time-dissemination>.

-- 
gil