[LEAPSECS] BBC radio Crowd Science

[Zefram]

Warner Losh wrote:
>I'd suggest that you re-read what I wrote, because these two
>paragraphs do not represent that at all.

It certainly involves a different result from what you stated, but as
I said, your result doesn't seem to follow from the principle that
you stated.  Rereading, my view of your statements hasn't changed.
Of course it's conceivable that I didn't grasp your intent, in which
case I still don't.

You never explicitly performed the computation for an example such as my
case of 2016-12-31T23:59:59.0 UTC, 2017-01-01T00:00:35.0 TAI.  Perhaps you
could clarify your intent by walking through the computation of TAI-UTC
for that instant, contrasting it with the equivalent computation for
2016-12-31T23:59:60.0 UTC, 2017-01-01T00:00:36.0 TAI.  Or, if you prefer,
walk through the computations of the UTC values from the TAI and TAI-UTC
values for those instants.

>For a negative leapsecond, it's clear that the offset changes at the
>end of :58 second. Briefly, you are adding two to get the next second
>instead of the customary one.

"Adding two to get the next second" implies the use of the regular
60-second radix.  That's not compatible with your system of `borrowing'
in the irregular radix.

>My irregular-radix system?

The aspect of this that I'm attributing to you is the use of the irregular
radix for the arithmetic around the TAI-UTC difference.

-zefram