[conspire] UTC for the win! (was: Re: Ti-i-i-ime, is on my side, yes it is)

[Michael Paoli]

> From: "Nick Moffitt" <nick at zork.net>
> Subject: Re: [conspire] Ti-i-i-ime, is on my side, yes it is
> Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2020 07:47:27 +0000

> If I were in charge, I'd just go full China and say we all use UTC  
> and get used to what time things start/stop in our area.  No more  
> arguing about what time it is

Here here!

Yep, were I the planet's time czar,
we'd go full UTC planet-wide.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_Universal_Time

Other factors/benefits to keep in mind:
Works really well across geography - including for portable compute
systems that move.  Even works at the North and South Poles, and in space (
well, for us Earth/human oriented folks/stuff).
Ever deal accross timezones, or with logs of security related stuff?  If
you ever deal with an external agency over such, many won't even look at
one's logs unless they're UTC (most notably so they may be able to correlate
events).

And if many/most folks really still want to do something
Daylight/Summer Time-ish ... could just have, twice yearly,
National "shift your schedule day" ... but dag nab it, do not
screw with the clocks!  Sheesh!

Now, in the land/realm of POSIX, Unix, Linux, BSD, ...
and leap seconds and such ... some minor bits to be worked out and/or
squabbled over ... but if you start with UTC planet-wide, that gets
even all that "exact", and within ~0.5s within 24 hrs. of a leap
second event.

Now, there are arguments pro & con about how to deal with the leap
seconds on Linux, etc. - and there are some different approaches ...
but it would be good to much more standardize them ... so, say, we get
it down to only and exactly at most 2 time disciplines ... and you're
either on discipline one (exact time, insert leap second),
or you go the smear route - keeps within 0.5s, but doesn't add the extra
second as a distinct second ... but rather than umpteen or more
different smears ... everyone uses the exact same one - planet-wide
synced ... if they're doing the smear.  And, presuming it's not
already in the NTP protocol, maybe they're ought be some flag that
says, which discipline is being used, and flag to indicate currently
active (smear in progress around leap second).

Personally I prefer using correct time, and adding the leap second, ...
but unfortunately buggy software ... many prefer to go lower-risk
by doing less accurate / less correct time, and fudging the leap
second into a smear, so clocks are never off by more than 0.5s,
and no minute ever has a 61st second.

And bloody heck, don't even think of changing to a leap minute!
Egad, that's a crud idea.