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An update that happened later can be discarded in favor of an earlier one, because clock differences gave the earlier write the larger timestamp, and the newer data disappears with no error raised.
Clock skew can cause a later write to be discarded in favor of an earlier one, silently losing the newer data. ✦ AI generated
Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · 2026-07-23 · original ↗
An update that happened later can be discarded in favor of an earlier one, because clock differences gave the earlier write the larger timestamp, and the newer data disappears with no error raised.
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If events on different machines are ordered by comparing timestamps, a small difference in the wrong direction can change the result.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 95%On a single computer, every event can be measured against one clock, so the order of the events is never in doubt. However, a distributed system, where work is spread across many independent machines, lacks a shared reference.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 90%Each machine can read time from its own hardware clock, but those clocks do not stay aligned. Network Time Protocol (NTP) tries to bring the clocks together, but it cannot eliminate the problem.Author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 90%A read-path fix can break write-path correctness by leaving a copy of the data out of sync with its source.The author · ByteByteGo Newsletter · conf 70%