Re:The technical actions needed to ensure the continuity of UTC
by creatonez on Saturday October 17, 2026 @02:21AM
(#50128474)
Right, we have the capability to update timezone definitions in a standardized automatable way right now, but 14 hours is the furthest timezone offset a political timezone has ever had. The distant future will require the offset to drift by multiple earth rotations, which puts a wrench in the flexibility of existing systems even if the tzdata database compiles properly. For example, this would break Java's ZonedDateTime as it only supports offsets up to 18 hours.
Random local government people declare it is to be, and ... as an industry we largely figure it out.
The more responsible governments give amble notice and as an industry we are very very good at that (you not realizing it, is an example).
And good riddance to leap seconds! It was too hard for us to figure out, and they didn't do anything useful for anyone.