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> By 2055, the "minute" displayed on a clock may be incorrect, which again may cause issues with legal timestamps. I'm not following here. What defines "legal

> By 2055, the "minute" displayed on a clock may be incorrect, which again may cause issues with legal timestamps. I'm not following here. What defines "legal timestamps" in our current system? I'm unaware of any laws in the US that uses the actual position of the sun to determine the time. "Noon" when the sun is at the highest point, can vary over an hour across a timezone.

DerpyBaby123 4y ago
>"Noon" when the sun is at the highest point, can vary over an hour across a timezone. this is "solar noon" - just "noon" denotes 12:00 on the clock [1] [1]https://www.bsu.edu/academics/centersandinstitutes/ceres/heliodon/staticheliodon/backgroundpages/background/solarvslocal https://www.bsu.edu/academics/centersandinstitutes/ceres/hel...
bonzini 4y ago
Way more than one hour. Even without taking China into account, A Coruña in Spain and Kosice in Slovakia are in the same time zone but they are 30 degrees (2 hours) apart.
lynguist 4y ago
A birthday is a legal timestamp. A car crash is a legal timestamp. When the time is off by a minute, these events can’t be catalogued correctly any more.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  "off by a minute" from what exactly? Shifting the timezone by a couple seconds does not prevent or hinder cataloguing events in any way whatsoever, certainly not more than switching to daylight savings time does or the mere existence of timezones, which may easily be half an hour or even more off from the solar time - the offsets we use for time are effectively arbitrary already, and adjusting the arbitrary choice of the offset by some seconds is not a fundamental difference. Event timestamps already map to different days depending on different timezones, you do need to know which timezone your clock is using, of course, but you already need to do that.
  - 0x0 4y ago
    For people born just around midnight, especially around new years eve, a few seconds could impact their DOB by a whole year. This could affect everything from university applications to boating licenses to social security.
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      It already does all that. Just unpredictably.
    - joshuamorton 4y ago
      Why does the position of the sun have any relation to the legal time? > This could affect everything from university applications to boating licenses to social security. Last time I looked, a boating license required you to be a certain age. Dec 31 and Jan 1 are still just as far apart as July 6 and July 7.
      - 0x0 4y ago
        Some countries have boating license laws that are different depending on whether your DOB year is >= 1980, as an example for this type of "grandfathering cutoff".
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Both can easily be placed on same monotonic time. Actually makes a things simple. You don't end up having 31/12/1972:23:59:60 and wondering why is there 60 there...
- cdash 4y ago
  Maybe you seem to think that was is being asked for is to retroactively remove leap seconds from UTC? That is not the case, all that is being called for is to stop adding more leap seconds.

DerpyBaby123 4y ago

>"Noon" when the sun is at the highest point, can vary over an hour across a timezone. this is "solar noon" - just "noon" denotes 12:00 on the clock [1] [1]https://www.bsu.edu/academics/centersandinstitutes/ceres/heliodon/staticheliodon/backgroundpages/background/solarvslocal https://www.bsu.edu/academics/centersandinstitutes/ceres/hel...

bonzini 4y ago

Way more than one hour. Even without taking China into account, A Coruña in Spain and Kosice in Slovakia are in the same time zone but they are 30 degrees (2 hours) apart.

lynguist 4y ago

A birthday is a legal timestamp. A car crash is a legal timestamp. When the time is off by a minute, these events can’t be catalogued correctly any more.

PeterisP 4y ago
"off by a minute" from what exactly? Shifting the timezone by a couple seconds does not prevent or hinder cataloguing events in any way whatsoever, certainly not more than switching to daylight savings time does or the mere existence of timezones, which may easily be half an hour or even more off from the solar time - the offsets we use for time are effectively arbitrary already, and adjusting the arbitrary choice of the offset by some seconds is not a fundamental difference. Event timestamps already map to different days depending on different timezones, you do need to know which timezone your clock is using, of course, but you already need to do that.
- 0x0 4y ago
  For people born just around midnight, especially around new years eve, a few seconds could impact their DOB by a whole year. This could affect everything from university applications to boating licenses to social security.
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    It already does all that. Just unpredictably.
  - joshuamorton 4y ago
    Why does the position of the sun have any relation to the legal time? > This could affect everything from university applications to boating licenses to social security. Last time I looked, a boating license required you to be a certain age. Dec 31 and Jan 1 are still just as far apart as July 6 and July 7.
    - 0x0 4y ago
      Some countries have boating license laws that are different depending on whether your DOB year is >= 1980, as an example for this type of "grandfathering cutoff".
Ekaros 4y ago
Both can easily be placed on same monotonic time. Actually makes a things simple. You don't end up having 31/12/1972:23:59:60 and wondering why is there 60 there...
cdash 4y ago
Maybe you seem to think that was is being asked for is to retroactively remove leap seconds from UTC? That is not the case, all that is being called for is to stop adding more leap seconds.