Slashdot has reported:

Timekeepers have voted to eliminate the leap second, ending decades of occasional one-second additions or subtractions from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Under the change, UTC can drift as much as one hour from Earth’s rotation before a correction is made. The adjustment would take the form of a hypothetical “leap hour,” which is not expected to be needed for hundreds or even thousands of years.

The decision concludes 30 years of debate over leap seconds, which have caused problems for computers and websites. Reddit famously crashed when a leap second was added on June 30, 2012. Judah Levine, a former researcher in the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Time and Frequency Division, told Scientific American’s Emma Gometz that the leap second has “always been a problem.”

Adding a full second at once can disrupt systems, so companies including Google and Meta spread the extra time across smaller increments through a method called “smearing,” according to The Conversation. The process is not simple, and companies that use it have long lobbied to end the leap second.

Earth’s recent spin acceleration also raised the possibility of the first negative leap second, which would require a second to be removed from UTC. That prospect prompted fears, likened to concerns about Y2K, that modern technology might not handle such a change. Darryl Veitch, a researcher who leads the Timing Lab at the University of Technology Sydney, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Ellen Phiddian: “It's never happened before, and therefore the software for that has never been tested.” Others argued that a negative leap second would not cause much trouble.

Christian Bizouard, director of the IERS Earth Orientation Center in France, described the decision as postponing a future choice. “It's kind of a philosophical discussion, because if a leap hour happens, it won't be for a very, very long time,” he told the Guardian’s Ian Sample. “What we are doing is pushing back the decision.” The vote means UTC will be allowed to diverge from astronomical time more than ever before.