[LEAPSECS] BBC radio Crowd Science

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 11:14 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 10:37 PM, Zefram <zefram at fysh.org> wrote:
>> Warner Losh wrote:
>>>If you are going to willfully misunderstand, then I'm done being patient.
>>
>> I am not willfully misunderstanding.  I have tried to understand
>> what you're doing, and I've been unable to find a system that works
>> consistently, uses the labelling of leap seconds on which we are agreed,
>> and yields TAI-UTC changing at the start of a positive leap second.
>> Please enlighten me.  If you were to supply the couple of worked examples
>> that I have suggested, I believe that would shed much light on your
>> system.
>
> I've already done exactly that. I'll see if I have time tomorrow to
> write it up again using TeX or something that's easier to format and
> explain with than ASCII text. Based on Tom's description of my method,
> I think he may misunderstand it too. It's as consistent as the
> calendar system we have today.

I'm doing a longer write up, but work got crazy...

But consider TAI and UTC when they were equal, for the sake of
argument. I know they never were, but if we look at what the first one
would look like:

TAI                                      UTC                         delta
23:59:58                             23:59:58                    0
23:59:59                             23:59:59                    0
00:00:00                             23:59:60                    1
(since how can it be 0 if they are different?)
00:00:01                             00:00:00                    1

So either there's some weird math that lets one subtract two numbers
that are different and get 0 as the answer, or the delta has to change
at the start.

It's understanding what the weird math is that I'm having trouble with
for people that say it is after the leap second that the delta
changes.

Warner