[LEAPSECS] BBC radio Crowd Science

[Warner Losh]

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 8:12 AM, Steve Summit <scs+ls at eskimo.com> wrote:
> Part of the problem, as Zefram has pointed out, is that when we
> attempt to compute 00:00:36 minus anything, we're subtracting a
> relative time from an absolute TAI time, which gives us another
> absolute TAI time, *not* a UTC time.  So the method is already
> suspect.

I strongly disagree with this assertion. We're subtracting the time,
and converting bases from the regular radix of TAI to the irregular
radix of UTC at the same time.

In other words, the conversion process isn't just subtracting two
times in a vacuum, as I've explained already. My method is
self-consistent and produces the correct answers. It maps the TAI
sequence of second labels to the UTC sequence of second labels. It
doesn't just produce another absolute TAI time. Since Zefram's whole
complaint is based on that misunderstanding, I can offer no further
critique.

Warner