> Leap seconds have been in from the start so all software should be able to handle them. But obviously we have no confidence in that actually being true.
We in fact have high confidence that it’s not true. Google started leap smearing back in 2008 because so much broke on leap seconds.
Honestly I’d think a negative leap second would have way higher chances of just working than positive: a positive leap second causes a UTC minute to have a 61st second, and a unix timestamp to repeat. That is a highly rare condition and plays complete havoc on software which does not specifically support these.
A negative leap just means jumping a second, this is already relatively routine due to scheduling and suspends, your program can do one thing and then 20 minutes occur before the next, because right then the user closed their laptop lid.
We in fact have high confidence that it’s not true. Google started leap smearing back in 2008 because so much broke on leap seconds.
Honestly I’d think a negative leap second would have way higher chances of just working than positive: a positive leap second causes a UTC minute to have a 61st second, and a unix timestamp to repeat. That is a highly rare condition and plays complete havoc on software which does not specifically support these.
A negative leap just means jumping a second, this is already relatively routine due to scheduling and suspends, your program can do one thing and then 20 minutes occur before the next, because right then the user closed their laptop lid.