19:59:60
On June 30, 2015 at 8:00 PM ET, an extra second will occur. This "leap second" is added sporadically to keep the earth's clocks in tune with the rotation of the Earth.
While not a big deal with most humans, extra seconds are not particularly a good thing for computers.
- A 61 second minute
- The extra second will take place at 8 p.m. ET on June 30
- Markets around the world are frantically trying to avoid a leap second that threatens to disrupt global trading on Tuesday
- There’s a chance the leap second could crash your favorite website or maybe even delay your flight.
- The previous leap second, which took place in 2012, brought down Reddit, Yelp, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Gawker and StumbleUpon, among other sites and apps.
- Qantas' entire computer system went down for hours, forcing employees to check in passengers by hand.
- Amazon.com Inc. said it’s planning to add time to all 86,400 seconds of the day before the event so at midnight its systems will be caught up.
- Experts at Britain’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) who will officially add the second to UK time, warned that markets which are already jittery from Greece could suffer transaction delays if their software was not prepared.
So are all of your systems tested and ready for The Longest Day, 2015 Edition?
And how will you be spending your extra second? I'll be spending that time closing my eyes and coming up with a list of my all-time favorite metrics... and fending off zombies, as needed.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second
http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/29/technology/leap-second/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/06/29/on-tuesday-the-world-gets-a-leap-second-are-we-all-gonna-die/
http://www.livescience.com/49370-leap-second-added-2015.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-28/with-61-seconds-in-a-minute-markets-brace-for-trouble
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11706014/Clocks-to-read-115960-as-time-lords-add-leap-second.html
http://time.com/3666522/leap-second/
http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html
This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality
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My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://AllThingsQuality.com/. |
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