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Please donate to keep Network Time Protocol up – Goal 1k

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301 points gastonmorixe | 2 comments | 12 Nov 25 07:56 UTC | HN request time: 0.54s | source
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mhovd ◴[12 Nov 25 10:53 UTC] No.45898645[source]▶
I am surprised that NTP project is not funded, fully or partially, by larger organizations or governments, given the criticality of the project.
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nickelpro ◴[12 Nov 25 12:19 UTC] No.45899269[source]▶
The reference implementation, while historically important, has largely been displaced by more secure/performant implementations (ntpsec, chrony), or by in-house implementations (Amazon, Google).

Notably NTPd doesn't support leap-smear, which means those who absolutely must have monotonic time can't use it at all.

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mananaysiempre ◴[12 Nov 25 12:26 UTC] No.45899310[source]▶
> Those who absolutely must have monotonic time

... shouldn’t be using a Unix timestamp, or anything else that’s not a count of SI seconds elapsed since a fixed reference point, to begin with.

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1. bobmcnamara ◴[12 Nov 25 12:46 UTC] No.45899476[source]▶
Pitch: TAI
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2. mananaysiempre ◴[12 Nov 25 13:07 UTC] No.45899675[source]▶
Kind of. If you “absolutely must” have monotonic time, though, and also care about NTP, then just pointing to TAI (in DJB’s naïve definition) or GPS time is not enough. You need to make decisions on whether you, for example, would prefer your imprecise seconds to be more even individually or for the aggregate count to be more accurate (NTP of course gets you the latter by default). Dear Sir[1], you have done metrology.

[1] https://people.csail.mit.edu/rachit/post/you-have-built-a-co..., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29891428