The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time (New Yorker)

The New Yorker has a
lengthy article on the Network Time Protocol and its creator David
Mills.

Coders sometimes joke, morbidly, about the “bus factor.” How many
people need to get hit by a bus before a given project is
endangered? It’s difficult to determine the bus factor for N.T.P.,
and time synchronization more broadly, especially now that
companies such as Google have developed their own N.T.P.-inspired
proprietary code. But it seems reasonable to say that N.T.P.’s bus
factor is rather small.