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by FabHK 1953 days ago
Unless sub-second accuracy is required, I'd be in favour of UT1. It doesn't use SI seconds (while TAI and UTC do), but it has the advantage that a day has exactly 86400 seconds, so you don't ever have to deal with "23:59:60" timestamps.

Summary:

UT1 - noon is when the sun is above you, day has 86400 seconds (not SI seconds)

TAI - noon drifts away from when the sun is above you, day has 86400 SI seconds

UTC - noon is when the sun is above you (+/- 1 second), day has 86400+/-1 SI seconds

Difference UT1-TAI: continuously diverging

Difference UT1-UTC: continuously diverging up to less than +/-1 second, then discretely jumps back when it gets too big (leap seconds)

Difference TAI-UTC: increasing in discrete increments of +/-1 full second (leap seconds)

1 comments

I'd rather just use TAI and never have to worry about anything. Let the conversion to UTC be the client's problem.

Having the length of a second always be the same is kind of important.

For logs, fine. But you do deviate more and more from what the world is using (as of 2017, TAI is exactly 37 seconds ahead of UTC, according to Wikipedia)