[LEAPSECS] Toasting Unix timestamp 1234567890

[Zefram]

Neal McBurnett wrote:

>So I'll also celebrate the passing of 1234567890 UTC seconds

>since January 1 1970, 00:00, which is 24 seconds earlier.


To be precise, you must also include the leap at the end of 1971,
of 10775800/100000003 UTC seconds.  That's 0.107758 TAI seconds, at
the then-prevailing rate of 1.00000003 TAI seconds per UTC second.
(All these numbers exact.)

It is somewhat more meaningful to treat Unix time as based on vague UT,
rather than specifically UTC.  The Unix time 1234567890 will, to within
a second, mark 1234567890 UT1 seconds since 1970-01-01T00:00:00 UT1.

-zefram