But here's the message. It may affect computer clocks.

Primary time scale failure at NIST Boulder campus; significant impact on NTP services

Dec 20, 2025, 12:18:52 PM (yesterday)

Dear colleagues,

In short, the atomic ensemble time scale at our Boulder campus has failed due to a prolonged utility power outage. One impact is that the Boulder Internet Time Services no longer have an accurate time reference. At time of writing the Boulder servers are still available due a standby power generator, but I will attempt to disable them to avoid disseminating incorrect time.

The affected servers are:
time-a-b.nist.gov
time-b-b.nist.gov
time-c-b.nist.gov
time-d-b.nist.gov
time-e-b.nist.gov
ntp-b.nist.gov (authenticated NTP)

No time to repair estimate is available until we regain staff access and power. Efforts are currently focused on obtaining an alternate source of power so the hydrogen maser clocks survive beyond their battery backups.

Full message here: https://groups.google.com/a/list.nist.gov/g/internet-time-service/c/o0dDDcr1a8I

I’m melting …
🫠

goodbye gruel whirled



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This is what it told me:

Short answer: yes, it’s a big deal operationally for NIST and some dependent systems — but it is not a global time crisis, and most people and systems will not notice.

Here’s how to think about it, from “headline scary” to “practical impact.”

What actually failed (and why it matters)

What’s down is NIST’s Boulder-based atomic ensemble and Internet Time Services, not UTC itself.

Key points:

The atomic clocks didn’t suddenly become “wrong” — they lost their traceable reference and distribution path.

NIST is correctly taking servers offline to avoid distributing bad time, which is exactly what a responsible time authority does.

This is a power + infrastructure resilience failure, not a physics or clock-design failure.

The real risk here is silent time drift, which NIST is explicitly preventing by disabling the servers.

What is not happening

Let’s kill a few scary interpretations:

❌ UTC is not broken

❌ GPS time is not broken

❌ Financial markets are not about to lose timestamp integrity

❌ TLS certificates are not going to globally fail

❌ The internet is not about to desynchronize

UTC is a composite international time scale maintained by the BIPM using data from dozens of labs worldwide (USNO, PTB, NPL, SYRTE, etc.). NIST Boulder is important — but not a single point of failure.

know unless you're already expert on the subject (in which case you don't need the chatbot answer) or you checked every detail.

I visited NIST a couple of times in my career. It's a cool place.

I worked in rubidium atomic clocks. It's a lesser standard than cesium or hydrogen masers, but it's still pretty accurate time wise, less than 1 microsecond/day error. H2 masers are several orders of magnitude better than that.

I would agree with your assessment. Situation not ideal, but also not the end of the world. It's one reason why UTC (and TAI) are "coordinated' between multiple nations, and their respective time reference systems.

can hallucinate in different ways every time you use it. It offers fake expertise at great cost to those whose IP was stolen, and every time its output contains errors and is posted anyway, it adds to the pollution of our information ecosystem.

I'm glad you at least identify it as chatbot-generated. But I can't understand anyone feeling it's okay to use when it's such an unethical and unreliable tool from an unethical (thieving and dishonest) company.

You can decide for yourself whether or not to take it seriously.

with errors/hallucinations.

Or aware that chatbots can give different answers even when given the same prompt, just as AI image generators can offer endless different options from the same prompt.

Or aware of the illegal training data.

Or aware that chatbots aren't in any way intelligent and are just assembling responses based on the most likely next word or token, with no understanding of the meaning.

violate that law, or are likely risking doing so, should all AI posts be alerted ?

Personally, I'd accept any justification for removing AI-generated posts. They do not belong here, and serve no helpful purpose that isn't weighted with uncertainty which can never be dispelled.

genAI slop needed as an example. And a waiver for people who weren't aware something was AI-generated.

I recommended yesterday that FarPoint leave a Robert De Niro deepfake in her OP

https://www.democraticunderground.com/132299818

because she was going to complain directly to YouTube about it, and without leaving the video she couldn't show as clearly both which video it was and how much harm the deceit did. (The creator of that video has now added the synthetic-content label YouTube tells their creators they have to add, but the label wasn't there originally.) I also thought it was a useful example because the wording of a disclaimer in the YouTube descriptions suggested the creator is the same fraudster who earlier had fooled DUers with deepfakes of Jimmy Kimmel and Obama.

and apparently use it heavily in their work, which makes me wonder if they don't have a vested interest.

knowledgeable or talented than they are. Some people using AI have clearly bought into the con that it's inevitable and that helps them shrug off all the problems with it. There's a hell of a lot of pressure to use AI tools, hype started and funded by the companies that profit from it or expect to profit from it.

But I don't have the impression we have any paid AI influencers here. Might have some DUers who have invested heavily in tech stocks and are praying the AI bubble won't burst.

And we seem to have some people who feel - wrongly, in my opinion - that even though the arguments against AI are valid, it still gives users enough of an edge that it should be used while we're fighting Trump. Which ignores the fact that the AI companies are on Trump's side, those AI tools are also ideal for surveillance of Trump's opponents, every public use of AI is in effect advertising for the AI companies to get more users, and those corporate-owned AI tools can be taken away completely or their use restricted at any time.

My hundred-year-old Sessions half hour chime pendulum mantel clock says it's 7:09 pm PST.

I just wound it, so can we go with that?

The longest night of the year …






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to cry

Print out the notice and put it in your back pocket.
Blame it on Siri

lot of people don't know about his full career in music -

Parsons was the sound engineer on albums including the Beatles' Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970), Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (1973), and the eponymous debut album by Ambrosia in 1975. Parsons's own group, the Alan Parsons Project, as well as his subsequent solo recordings, have also been commercially successful. He has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, with his first win occurring in 2019 for Best Immersive Audio Album for Eye in the Sky (35th Anniversary Edition)

I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one.

Henry David Thoreau.

living in Texas so why are they so unprepared?

Notice the rebellious rock-n-rollers in coat and tie.

Times have changed.

Best look at your time service