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Okay, I have to ask: shouldn’t a system like this use TAI or at least UTC? If you are air gapped and really need accurate time, you at least have to deal with leap seconds. Even if a one-second error doesn’t bother you, there’s an entire two-hour interval when DST ends in which the local time is ambiguous. Or do these systems try to do the right thing by distinguishing 2:30 AM PST from 2:30 AM PDT?

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Sure, internally you will store it in something less ambiguous... but you still have to display the correct time & timezone and be able to set the time correctly (and note when the clock has been set). Time is generally set by humans according to their local time. So you do need to differentiate PST from PDT, even if something like that is kind of an edge case..

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