The International Earth Rotation Service’s decision to skip the 2024 leap second and ultimately abolish leap seconds by 2035 relieves programmers of complex time‑keeping hacks, as current NTP, PTP, and newer Windows systems can already handle adjustments while past leap seconds have repeatedly disrupted software.
The article explains how the International Earth Rotation Service’s decision to cease adding leap seconds after 2035 will affect computer systems, recounts past leap‑second‑induced outages, and discusses the long‑term timing drift challenges programmers may face.
This article provides an in‑depth exploration of Linux’s timekeeping subsystem, covering how the kernel initializes and maintains system time, reads timestamps via vDSO and sequential locks, manages timers with various algorithms, and explains the underlying quartz crystal oscillator that generates the hardware clock.
This article details a real‑world investigation of unexpected Redis slowlog latencies after container migration, tracing the issue through slowlog mechanics, contradictory monitoring data, gettimeofday inaccuracies, NTP drift, and ultimately a kernel bug affecting Skylake‑X CPUs, and offers concrete recommendations for reliable time measurement.
