alt Hacker NewsIf we have positive and negative leap seconds, why are we doing anything at all? 1 second forward, just to go 1 second back 10 years later…
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happytoexplain • yesterday at 7:19 PM
The Earth's rotation is slowing down in the long term, hence the need to adjust. In the short term (where 10 years is "short") it can speed up or slow down, but long-term it is slowing down.
Note that this is not an argument for leap seconds - just my understanding of their rationale.
I don't think we can predict ahead of time whether we'll need a leap second or not
If the question is "why bother syncing time to Earth's orbit around the sun at all", I don't have a good answer for that except at this point, it's tradition.