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Why Leap Seconds Crash Websites — The Engineering Disaster That Happens Every Few Years (and Won't After 2035)

Why Leap Seconds Crash Websites — The Engineering Disaster That Happens Every Few Years (and Won't After 2035)

A leap second adds 23:59:60 to the clock — a second most software assumes can't exist. Here's how the 2012 Linux kernel leap second bug took down Reddit, Yelp, and LinkedIn by sending CPU usage to 100%, how Google and AWS "smear" the leap second across hours to make it disappear gracefully, and why the ITU voted in 2022 to abolish leap seconds entirely before 2035 — ending a recurring distributed systems disaster that occurs every few years.

Jun 25, 2026
10,000 Hours Is 1.14 Calendar Years — But in Work Years, It's 5: Why Time Conversion Needs Context

10,000 Hours Is 1.14 Calendar Years — But in Work Years, It's 5: Why Time Conversion Needs Context

"How long is 1,000 hours?" has an arithmetic answer (41.67 days) and a contextual answer that depends on hours per day and days per week — and two people asking the same question usually want the contextual answer. Here's why "hours to months or years" needs a working-rate input the pure conversion can't provide, the working year (2,000 hours) vs calendar year (8,760 hours) distinction for project planning, why months aren't fixed-length, and the 10,000-hours-to-mastery conversion unpacked.

Jun 18, 2026
From Sundials to Atomic Clocks: How Timekeeping Precision Enabled GPS Navigation

From Sundials to Atomic Clocks: How Timekeeping Precision Enabled GPS Navigation

The second was once 1/86,400 of a day. Now it's defined by caesium atom oscillations — 9,192,631,770 per second — because GPS requires nanosecond timing to achieve metre-level accuracy. Here's the history from sundials to atomic clocks, how GPS trilateration works, and why relativistic corrections are essential.

Jun 11, 2026