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I haven't seen a patent application for a time machine, so we can rule out the possibility that they're actually slowing down time.

However, I do wonder how they implement this. Do you change timekeeping in the kernel so that a fraction of extra time must pass for each second to be "counted"?

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It's probably just a patched NTP server that lies about current time.

You are exactly correct. The aforementioned thread[0] on Serverfault mentioned timesmearing with `ntpd -x`, as per [1]. It's a fairly well-known technique for avoiding some weird kernel-related bugs on leap seconds.

[0]: http://serverfault.com/questions/403732/anyone-else-experien...

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20140221084401/http://my.opera.c...

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