A global panel of scientists and government representatives voted to eliminate leap seconds. The gradual slowing of the Earth's rotation has caused headaches for many tech companies over the years.
In 1972 the leap second was introduced as a way to adjust Coordinated Universal Time. Due to the different speed of the Earth's rotation, these seconds can disrupt systems that need precise timekeeping. In 2012 a new leap second interfered with the company's server and caused it to go down for 40 minutes. Cloudflare blamed the leap second for its service going down on New Year's Day last year.
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures almost unanimously supported Resolution D at a meeting in Versailles, France, on Friday. It is hoped that a better system for keeping atomic and astronomical time scales in sync will be developed by the time of Resolution D.
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