I find most timestamps useless. It's rare that they include the time zone, so I'm always left wondering if they mean my browser detected time zone (through some

I find most timestamps useless. It's rare that they include the time zone, so I'm always left wondering if they mean my browser detected time zone (through some JS), the TZ that the server uses, UTC, or whatever. "N minutes ago" is compact and does not require any client-side JS to provide an unambiguous value. At least LWN includes the timezone, which is a step ahead of most of the sites I've used.