[LEAPSECS] Toasting Unix timestamp 1234567890

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <20090214175734.GL2263 at fysh.org>
            Zefram <zefram at fysh.org> writes:

: I believe some people do do the 24 s offset that you suggest, however.

: I think it's through ignorance of the rubber-seconds era and its leaps.

: These people are effectively using an epoch of 1972-01-01T00:00:00 UTC

: = 63072000.  There's no clean description of what they're counting since

: 1970.  If doing this then it seems more consistent for pre-1972 timestamps

: to count back in TAI seconds, but in practice I think a vague-UT pre-1972

: timescale gets grafted onto the TAI-synched post-1972 timescale.  Bit of

: a mess.


It is a useful engineering approximation.  Oh, wait, you said a bit of
a mess already...

Warner