Jul 26, 2022 11:00:00

Meta calls for the abolition of 'leap second', in the past there was a large-scale failure in Internet services

It is well known that February 29th, which is once every four years, is a

leap day , but in fact, there are leap seconds that adjust one second. Leap seconds were introduced due to the need to balance the movement of celestial bodies with the time of human society, but their significance is diminishing due to the development of the Internet and technology for accurately adjusting time, and they may cause system malfunctions. As a result, major IT companies have begun efforts to abolish it.

It's time to leave the leap second in the past --Engineering at Meta
https://engineering.fb.com/2022/07/25/production-engineering/its-time-to-leave-the-leap-second-in-the-past/

Meta engineers join tech industry efforts in calling for no more leap seconds --SiliconANGLE
https://siliconangle.com/2022/07/25/meta-engineers-join-tech-industry-efforts-calling-no-leap-seconds/

Leap days are meant to be adjusted by adding one day because the time it takes for the Earth to orbit around the sun is not exactly 365 days, but in reality one day is not exactly 24 hours, so an agreement World Time (UTC) uses 'leap seconds' to add or remove 1 second to adjust the time. From the introduction in 1972 to the time of article creation, leap seconds have been added 27 times, and most recently, '23:59:60' was added after 23:59:59 on December 31, 2016. It was done (January 1, 2017 8:59:60 in Japanese standard time).

by Brian Stubley

However, leap seconds were introduced before technologies such as the Internet became widespread, and problems caused by leap seconds often occurred in the Internet service industry.

The addition of leap seconds in June 2012 affected Reddit, one of the largest social news sites in the English-speaking world, Mozilla's service, which develops Firefox, and Australia's Cantus Airlines reservation system. The flight was delayed by 2 hours due to a failure. Since then, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Netflix, and Amazon have been hit by obstacles in 2016 due to Cloudflare's leap second problem.

Moreover, until now, 'positive leap seconds' that add 1 second have been implemented, but in the future there is a possibility that 'negative leap seconds' that delete 1 second will be required due to changes in the rotation of the earth. I have. A large-scale problem has occurred even in the 'positive leap second' that has been performed more than 20 times, but what kind of problem has occurred in the 'negative leap second' that has never been performed before? I can't predict if it will happen.

'Negative leap second' may be born by the faster rotation of the earth --GIGAZINE

Regarding these leap second problems, Meta engineer Oleg Obleukhov and researcher Ahmad Byagowi said, 'Leap second events have caused problems throughout the industry and still carry many risks. The IT industry is leap second. Every time a second is introduced, we run into problems. These problems are rare, but once they occur, they can be devastating to the community. Clocks are more accurate in every industry. In modern times, leap seconds only cause failures and power outages, and there are more bad things than good things. ' I have stated.