Hacker News Reader

I guess most folks do know the difference between their own local timezone and UTC. That would have really saved me a couple of seconds to find out the difference between PST and UTC first.

0900Z - 1300Z

Furthermore, those "timezone" labels are inherently ambiguous. Either use the UTC offset (UTC-8) or the zoneinfo name (America/Los_Angeles).

> or the zoneinfo name (America/Los_Angeles).

Although it'd usually give me some idea, I wouldn't know what the offset of LA is.

It does seem to be a standard format though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones

I'm sure you can find PST in a standard somewhere too, but the point is that by using UTC+x everyone can instantly determine their local time.

Okay quick quiz: What time is it currently in Europe/Zaporozhye? ... Time up! Alright next question. What time is it currently in UTC-3? ... Time up! Final question: What time is it currently in the GST timezone? ... Time up!

All of them used standard formats. Which one was the easiest?