Leap seconds. When they occur, they cause bugs. When they do not occur... they cause bugs.

The article on Berthub discusses the complexities surrounding leap seconds and their impact on software systems. Leap seconds are added to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) to compensate for irregularities in the Earth's rotation. The author highlights that even though leap seconds are infrequent, they can expose significant bugs in systems that are not equipped to handle them properly. Many software solutions and systems fail to anticipate these anomalies, resulting in unexpected behavior and time synchronization issues. The long-term implications of these issues can be particularly severe in critical systems such as satellite navigation and communication. The article encourages developers to rigorously test their applications for leap second handling to mitigate the risk of complex and potentially disruptive failures in the future.