Whoaaaa. Membership is where things get nasty, this is awesome. Punting on dynamic membership due to it&#x27;s extreme difficulty to get right is usually a good idea for many projects.<p>I&#x27;m still struggling to understand what happens in a RethinkDB &quot;reconfigure&quot;, especially around this epoch timestamp. Where does the wall-clock time come from, the raft leader of the shard?[0] I also need to read more and understand these value&#x27;s necessity over any other generation id&#x2F;sequence number type thing, I&#x27;m not sure I follow why they are used given the linked bug report[1]<p>Also, after embarrassing myself earlier in the week[2], I&#x27;m trying my best to read every link in a post before making absurd claims. It&#x27;s my much deserved penance. It seems there is one link that is broken in the post that I was curious to see due to my ignorance around Rethink&#x27;s epoch timestamp stuff[3].<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;blob&#x2F;a90bb0805160362125a03024eb9f309e578408c0&#x2F;src&#x2F;clustering&#x2F;table_manager&#x2F;table_metadata.hpp#L50" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;blob&#x2F;a90bb08051603621...</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;issues&#x2F;5289#issuecomment-175394540" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;rethinkdb&#x2F;issues&#x2F;5289#issuecomm...</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lobste.rs&#x2F;s&#x2F;cnthlp&#x2F;the_verification_of_a_distributed_system&#x2F;comments&#x2F;poc7h7#c_poc7h7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lobste.rs&#x2F;s&#x2F;cnthlp&#x2F;the_verification_of_a_distributed...</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aphyr.com&#x2F;data&#x2F;posts&#x2F;330&#x2F;link" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;aphyr.com&#x2F;data&#x2F;posts&#x2F;330&#x2F;link</a>