Meta Calls for , Putting an End to , the Leap Second.<br />Meta has added considerable pressure to the tech industry's push to do away with the leap second. .<br />Engadget reports that the leap <br />second was introduced in 1972.<br />It was implemented to adjust Coordinated Universal Time <br />(UTC) and make up for the difference between International <br />Atomic Time (TAI) and observed solar time (UTI).<br />Those different time-keeping methods <br />sometimes don't match up due to irregularities <br />and slowdowns in the Earth's rotation.<br />Meta's production engineer, Oleg Obleukhov, and research <br />scientist Ahmad Byagowi recently posted about how <br />a leap second can wreak havoc on a network.<br />With a growing demand for clock precision <br />across all industries, the leap second is <br />now causing more damage than good, <br />resulting in disturbances and outages, Oleg Obleukhov and Ahmad Byagowi, Meta's production engineer and research scientist, via Engadget.<br />The offset caused by a leap second <br />can cause issues all over the industry.<br />In 2012, the time change confused <br />Reddit's servers and locked up <br />its CPUs for 40 minutes.<br />In 2017, a similar situation<br />affected Cloudflare's <br />DNS service. .<br />Since 1972, the body responsible for deciding whether <br />to adjust the UTC, the International Earth Rotation and <br />Reference Systems Service, has added 27 leap seconds.
