Computers are really good at counting. But humans introduce irregularities like leap seconds that can throw a wrench in the works. One of the most infamous was the Y2K bug, when human-authored databases recorded only the last two digits of the year and messed up math when 1999 became 2000. A related problem is coming in 2038 when a 32-bit number that some computers use to count the seconds from Jan. 1, 1970, is no longer large enough.

Sitting second on the ladder at 12-5, the Cowboys could potentially burn off the chasing foe in the race for a home qualifying final across the next three games as they face the Tigers (16th), digital products St George Illawarra (11th) and Canterbury (14th).

“We’re pretty hopeful we can go deep into the finals so, but given how tight all the spots are on the top eight, it’s pretty crucial in this part of the season to be getting two points, separating ourselves from a bit of a cluster where anyone can finish as high as second.”

However, the current pattern of public and bank holidays is well established and while an additional bank holiday may benefit some communities and sectors, the cost to the economy of an additional bank holiday is considerable.’

The tech giants and two key agencies agree that it’s time to ditch the leap second. Those are the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its French equivalent, the Bureau International de Poids et Mesures (BIPM).

‘They have already done us proud, but if they win it will be a truly historic achievement – one that should be marked with a proper day of celebration, where clubs can open and promote access for women and girls.’

‘I was so frightened of being crushed in the bus crowd last night with peoples desperation escalating as the morning approached. No crowd control and no staff in sight! Thank god there were no casualties,’ she wrote.

We’ve already spoken to the girls down the road in the campervan and they’re pretty bogged,’ festival attendee Ewan Roxborgh told the Splendour had its opening day cancelled on Friday after torrential rain turned the site into a marsh.

“We are predicting that if we just stick to the TAI without leap second observation, we should be good for at least 2,000 years,” research scientist Ahmad Byagowi of Facebook parent company Meta said via email. “Perhaps at that point we might need to consider a correction.*

Among the quartet of champion Maroons is Tom Dearden, who in steering his state to a famous game three win looked more like a veteran leader than a 21-year-old emerging halfback who’s yet to even appear in the NRL post-season.

The temporal tweak causes more problems — like internet outages — than benefits, they say. And dealing with leap seconds ultimately is futile, the group argues, since the Earth’s rotational speed hasn’t actually changed much historically.

‘Come on Splendour we deserve better than that and so do the bus drivers that were out there all night! More toilets and water isn’t going to fix a thing, especially those that couldn’t make it today because of getting home at a time when the rest of the state is waking up. What a slap in the face.’   

Since 1972, the world’s timekeeping authorities have added a leap second 27 times to the global clock known as the International Atomic Time (TAI). Instead of 23:59:59 changing to 0:0:0 at midnight, an extra 23:59:60 is tucked in. That causes a lot of indigestion for computers, which rely on a network of precise timekeeping servers to schedule events and to record the exact sequence of activities like adding data to a database.

To ease the problems with computer clocks that don’t like 61-second minutes, Google pioneered the idea of the “leap smear” that makes the leap second’s changes in many tiny steps over the course of a day.

About 50,000 revellers descended on the three-day festival near Byron Bay at the weekend – but the excitement quickly turned to frustration with the wild weather kicking off unlivable conditions and lengthy bus delays to leave the event.

‘We know last night’s journey home was sh*tty for some of you. It usually takes some time to get everyone out of the venue, we’re so sorry you had that experience at Splendour,’ the statement said on Sunday.

‘While the music was incredible, your festival sucks. It was so poorly organised it appears you don’t actually care. Caring means resourcing the event adequately. You have to over resource so you have contingency to fall back on,’ another commented.

Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon launched a public effort Monday to scrap the leap second, an occasional extra tick that keeps clocks in sync with the Earth’s actual rotation. US and French timekeeping authorities concur.

The leap second change triggered a massive Reddit outage in 2012, as well as related problems at Mozilla, LinkedIn, Yelp and airline booking service Amadeus. In 2017, a leap second glitch at Cloudflare knocked a fraction of the network infrastructure company’s customers’ servers offline. Cloudflare’s software, comparing two clocks, calculated that time had gone backward but couldn’t properly handle that result.