The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time

A profile of David Mills, an engineer who coded the Network Time Protocol that runs much of the internet. His methods, his code, are slowly be replaced by other ways of measuring and coordinating time, and this story does a good job of framing the personalities of those involved, the trade-offs, etc.

- "The speed of the Earth’s rotation is affected by a variety of atmospheric and geologic factors, including the behavior of the planet’s inner layers; the reshaping of its crust, such as through the growth of mountains or bodies of magma; and the friction of the ocean’s tides against the seafloor. The aggregate effect of these forces has historica... See more

- "Clock time, Mills learned, is the result of an unending search for consensus. Even the times told by the world’s most precise government-maintained “master clocks” are composites of the readings of several atomic clocks. The master clocks, in turn, are averaged to help create international civil time, known as Coördinated Universal Time and... See more