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Comment by growse | Hacker News Reader

Sure, but that doesn't mean that we invented and practise leap seconds for the sheer fun of it.

There's very good reasons that are important behind why we try and keep UTC near UT1, so saying "it doesn't matter to anyone" without even entertaining that some people might care isn't very constructive.

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UTC, and leap seconds, originate from (military) navies of the world, with the intent of supporting celestial navigation. It is already dubious how useful leap seconds were for that use, and much more dubious is its use as civil timescale.

We have leap seconds to save us from having leap minutes, or leap hours.

Generally, it's useful for midnight to be at night, and midday during the day. UT1 is not regular, so you need some form of correction. Then the debate is about how big and how often.

You don't need leap minutes. Nobody cares if the sun is off by minutes, it already is anyways thanks to timezones. You don't even need leap hours. If in seven thousand years no-one has done a 1 time correction, you can just move the timezones over 1 space, like computers do all the time for political reasons.

It’s going to be multiple centuries until the cumulative leap seconds add up to 30 minutes, and by that point, a majority of the human population is likely to be living off the earth anyway.

Okay, I’ll bite. Who does this matter to, and why?

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