On Tue 2022-10-04T22:51:35-0400 Steve Summit via tz hath writ:
As I understand it, one way of looking at the new, leap-secondless plan is that if you wait long enough, the multi-minute jump that you then need isn't a "leap" anything, it's a political change to the definition of a time zone, readily handled by the well-tried mechanism that we on this list all know and love.
Puttig the onus onto legislators is perhaps payback for the fact that the inception of the leap second was prompted when Germany passed a law that made mean solar seconds illegal. With the telecom technology of 1970 the only viable option for a single time scale that could be broadcast everywhere as legal time was TAI offset by leap seconds. This was adopted despite a report from astronomers which pointed out that the leaps of time would wreak havoc for automated systems when such systems would become commonplace. -- Steve Allen <sla@ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB 260 Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 https://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m