https://xkcd.com/2867

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It’s not just time zones and leap seconds. SI seconds on Earth are slower because of relativity, so there are time standards for space stuff (TCB, TGC) that use faster SI seconds than UTC/Unix time. T2 - T1 = [God doesn’t know and the Devil isn’t telling.]

  • icydefiance@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    When a leap second happens, unix time decreases by one second. See the section about leap seconds here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time

    As a side effect, this means some unix timestamps are ambiguous, because the timestamps at the beginning and the end of a leap second are the same.

    • nybble41@programming.dev
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      11 months ago

      It might be more accurate to say that Unix time is the number of days since Jan 1st, 1970, scaled by 24×60×60. Though it gets a bit odd around the actual leap second since they aren’t spread over the whole day. (In some ways that would be a more reasonable way to handle it; rather than repeating a second at midnight, just make all the seconds slightly longer that day.)