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Icy-Bauhaus t1_iwz2nv6 wrote

The reason to change is because of glitches of digital systems, while they should have used atomic time instead of UTC in the first place. It's their design peoblem. Instead, they are companies big enough to change UTC standard so that they can save some money to fix their own problem.

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dv_ t1_ix0dk3v wrote

Atomic time is great for timestamps that have zero relation to localtime. But if you want to be able to convert to localtime, UTC is easier, since it only involves an offset. Atomic time to localtime also requires fitting in the leap seconds. This is also the reason why scheduling stuff based on atomic time is impractical - you won't know when leap seconds will be inserted in the future.

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jorge1209 t1_ix1qaew wrote

Very few (almost zero) digital systems need atomic time.

They need a coordinated time, but it need not be atomic.

Their ideal time is one with exactly 86400 seconds in a day, and each second being equal within the natural variation when measured by the quartz crystal in the system clock

That variation is relatively enormous and provides a wide range for how long a day could actually be according to a more accurate atomic clock.

The challenge is how to bootstrap a coordinated time across the worldwide network of computers without it being atomic time.

But almost no computer programs care if a second is long or short by a few parts per million. If they did they would already be exhibiting bugs on commodity hardware.

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