Signed and Permanent Cookies in Rails 3 (opens in new tab)

    irb(main):033:0> 20.years
    => 20 years               # ??????
    irb(main):030:0> 20.years.to_i
    => 631152000              # number of seconds in 20 years
    irb(main):026:0> 20.years.from_now
    => Sun Feb 10 10:14:11 +1100 2030 # AEDT
    irb(main):027:0> 20.years.from_now.utc
    => Sat Feb 09 23:14:14 UTC 2030   # UTC/GMT

Ruby Time instances have a timezone, calling Time#utc returns the instance time converted from localtime -- or whatever timezone it is -- to UTC or Greenwich Mean Time. You are correct in that it shouldn't matter which one you use in this situation though.

It's independent of time zone. 20 years from now in any time zone will be the same "time" (in an absolute sense), but it will look different to different time zones. For example, it might look like 6:00pm for me and 5:00pm for you, but it is still the same time if we both convert our local times to utc. A Time object in ruby stores time zone, so 20.years.from_now.utc looks like this:

Sat Feb 09 23:07:46 UTC 2030

Usually signing a cookie means adding a HMAC to the end of it so the user can't modify the contents without invalidating it. The example given seems kinda misleading, because including the salt offers some measure of protection against tampering anyway.

I don't understand your objection.