Post by @docwhozee
Just had a 5:30pm surprise CBC interview about leap seconds: https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/13/science/leap-second-elimination-time-standard
I didn't really have much of an opinion on leap seconds until I talked through it with the journalist. But wow, leap seconds are such a bad idea! What a silly way to get our timekeeping to work with the imperfect, constantly changing orbital system we live in.
@sundogplanets Back in my days, I worked on SWIFT system (international financial transations). The system ran local time and transactions timestamped to local time (aka bank's business day).
Spring forward was not a problem. One transaction at 01:59 and the next at 03:00. But fall backaward was a problem because you could have transaction at 01:59 and the next one at 01:00 so time stamped before the previous one. Solution: shutdown for one hour so next transaction would arrive at 02:00.
@jfmezei@cosocial.ca@cosocial.ca @sundogplanets@mastodon.social@mastodon.social #JustCurious was there a good reason to use local time instead of #UTC?
One of our customers had distributed systems that were running local time, were crossing borders and timezones. Web apps for the service UI had their own timezone settings — and of course, that should all make sense. Eventually we got there. For the next generation system we all agreed to use UTC internally.
@docwhozee older computer systems uses local time. And for a bank due to « business hours », local tine is important. If end of day is defined as 17:00 and a payment arrives 17:01 then the payment is processed the next business day. So when you send a payment to Chinese firm via Chinese bank, you need to know when their local end of day is to ensure payment arrives before their end of day.