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Time is a-changin’: say goodbye to the leap second
The Verge • • technology
Key Points:
- The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) has voted to eliminate the leap second, a time adjustment used to align atomic time with Earth's irregular rotation, effective May 20th next year.
- This change is being expedited from the original 2035 deadline due to concerns that Earth's rotation may soon require subtracting seconds, a process never before attempted and potentially disruptive to infrastructure.
- Past leap second additions have caused outages on major tech platforms like Foursquare, Reddit, and LinkedIn, prompting support from companies such as Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to end the practice.
- Instead of leap seconds, timekeepers will adopt "leap hours," allowing atomic and astronomical time to slowly diverge until a full hour adjustment is needed, which is not expected for approximately 3,000 years.
