F-ckin Leap Seconds, how do they work?

Steve Allen sla at ucolick.org
Thu Jul 5 17:42:49 UTC 2012

On Thu 2012-07-05T10:26:22 -0700, Roy hath writ:
> Lets see.  There have been nine leap seconds in 20 years.  So at the
> start of the next century the difference will probably be less than a minute

There is no predicting how large the decadal variations in LOD will be,
but the difference should be somewhere between 1 minute and 3 minutes.
Please see these charts and tables for how unpredictable it is.

> Remember OpenTime is only for people who want their system clocks to
> ignore leap seconds.  I don't include myself among the possible users of
> OpenTime.

Anyone who needs that can already do that using existing, deployed,
and tested code and hardware and the GPS system time scale.  Please
see this worked example.  Please do not invent yet another private
time scale.


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