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A comment on A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2015. Parent comment

Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by Matumio on Monday January 05, 2015 @02:53PM (#8840717)
The more reasonable thing to do would be to just forget about leap seconds altogether, not to put them elsewhere. Who cares if midday happens at 12:00:00 or at 12:00:30? Those who do need to add their exact longitude anyway, and they don't like time jumping around either. Human culture can adapt to a slow drift (over centuries) of the meaning of 08:00.
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by lutorm on Monday January 05, 2015 @04:53PM (#8841465)
The repercussions of such a changed are addressed at http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/

Many things depend on using mean solar time, astronomy being one of them. The places that actually need a strict accounting of elapsed time can already use TAI or GPS time.

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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by robbrown451 on Monday January 05, 2015 @05:20PM (#8841624)
Why does astronomy "depend" on anything like that? Why should they care how the rest of the world standardizes on time? Seems like they can adapt, rather than forcing everyone else to.

I'd bet the number of non-astronomers inconvenienced by leap seconds outnumbers astronomer 1000 to one.

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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by nullc on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @01:56AM (#8843216)
Astronomy usually needs sidereal time.

Mean solar time is a largely mathematical construct that has no direct relation to anything immediately observable. (Notice the word 'mean' ... to _observe_ mean solar time you'd need to watch the sun for a whole year from the equator.)

To the extent that astronomy applications want solar time at all, they probably wants it with more precision than you get from UTC.

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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by DenisM on Monday January 05, 2015 @03:20PM (#8840880)
We could also accumulate leap seconds and release them as leap minutes once a century or so.
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by organsnyder on Monday January 05, 2015 @05:04PM (#8841522)
I like the current system better. They happen often enough that software is (or should be) written with them in mind. Otherwise, we'd have y2k-style scrambling every time they occurred (since it would be infrequent enough that the pain of the experience would be dulled with time).
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by Matumio on Monday January 05, 2015 @03:31PM (#8840943)
An actual proposal was to wait until an hour has accumulated and then change time zones.
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by lostlogin on Monday January 05, 2015 @03:19PM (#8840874)
"Due to inflationary pressures the standard work day has been extended another hour". I didn't downvote but suggesting a fudge factor is never going to fly around here!
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by Matumio on Monday January 05, 2015 @03:37PM (#8840983)
Fudge factor? What I meant to suggest is to just define that UTC is now equal to TAI, and forget about the offset (set leap seconds to zero, or drive slowly towards zero if required).
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by WillyNourson on Monday January 05, 2015 @03:27PM (#8840916)
Because of High Frequency Trading
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by lkbm on Monday January 05, 2015 @03:45PM (#8841027)
Why does HFT care where we are or how we're rotated in relation to the sun? So long as we all agree on what time it is, whether 12pm denotes high noon or not is arbitrary and irrelevant.
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by clord on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @01:58AM (#8843221)
The only thing I can think of: a good HFT algo might be able to exploit leap seconds to somehow gain an advantage over those that are ignorant of them (or vice versa).
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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by voidz on Monday January 05, 2015 @03:39PM (#8840996)
Valid point imho. Sad to see your comment turned to grey within as little as 8 minutes after you posted it.
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