According to the tech giant, this is enough to offset the effects of a leap second over the following 12 hours. For example, Google does it by slowing its server clocks so that one second is approximately 11.6 microseconds slower than the standard second. This comes years after tech companies began using ' smearing' during leap seconds. Microsoft, Amazon and Google announced they would also discontinue adding leap seconds. It said, ' Every leap second is a major source of pain for people who manage hardware infrastructures.' The post insisted that the time had come to introduce new technologies to replace this artificial adjustment. In a blog post from July 2022, tech company, Meta, announced it would discontinue adding leap seconds. For many tech companies, it represents unnecessary risk. The irony is that adding a single second can incapacitate computers capable of completing 200 quadrillion mathematic calculations per second. Since the added leap second is a rare line of code that has never been tested, it is a hit-or-miss undertaking rife with uncertainty.

If a program is supposed to perform the Y function 100 milliseconds after X occurs, a whole extra second thrown into the mix is worse than a ghost in the machine. They can malfunction for various reasons. Computer programs and servers run on protocols that tell them what to do and when.

The company fixed the error promptly but had to issue an apology to its customers for the inconvenience. A negative value was recorded for one of its Domain Name System (DNS) servers that should have been zero at most. Web security company Cloudflare faced a similar issue during the addition of a leap second in 2017. When the Linux systems ran the social news and discussion site Reddit in 2012, it could not accommodate an added leap second.

Most of that risk is related to machines and how humans rely on them to be accurate. Related: How Web3 Could Change How You Use The Internet

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