what on earth is firefox up to?

[Tom Horsley]

On Sun, 01 Jul 2012 00:53:11 -0700
Nataraj wrote:

> I think maybe this is caused by the leap second issue.   Try rebooting
> and see if it goes away.   See
> http://www.google.com/search?ix=acb&sourceid=chrome&client=ubuntu&channel=cs&ie=UTF-8&q=leap+second+linux

Thanks for the pointer, that may have been it!

I don't understand the complicated interactions that
make a leap second confuse a computer more than the
RTC running slow confuses it, but this issue did indeed
go away after a reboot (and I'm pretty sure I didn't
see the problem till after midnight UTC which is when
the leap second would have happened).

They really ought to switch to a new version of NTP
protocol that is just like the old one, but works from
TAI and sends a database of leap second info around as
well so computers can translate TAI into UTC.