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Comment by seregine | Hacker News Reader

epoch timestamps don't need timezone offsets. The epoch timestamp is the number of seconds from a specified "zero" time. That number can be translated to a time in any timezone. E.g. right now:

  % date +"%s"; date; date -u
  1408580844
  Wed Aug 20 17:27:24 PDT 2014
  Thu Aug 21 00:27:24 UTC 2014

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Sure, an epoch timestamp can be translated to any time zone, but what was the original time zone?

Consider these questions: Do I use Uber more often before or after noon? Is this a photo of a sunrise or a of a sunset? How late do I typically go to bed?

In the case of Uber we could try to guess the time zone from the coordinates, but it's not trivial.

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