Leap second bug takes out Reddit, Mozilla
Reddit, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Gawker, and a number of other sites encountered issues when an additional leap second was added to the atomic clock at midnight, Sunday.
The leap second adjustment was made by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, in order to keep the atomic clocks in line with the Earth’s constantly-changing speed of rotation.
Many systems use an NTP (Network Time Protocol), which keeps them in sync with the world’s atomic clocks. When those are changed, some systems don’t compensate for the addition or subtraction of time.
While some companies were more prepared for the addition of the leap second (such as Google), Reddit and Mozilla openly blamed the time change for the outage.
This is not the first shift of the atomic clocks, as dozens of leap seconds have been added since their introduction in 1972.
Source: Wired
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