OCTADE or OCTAD is a retro word that means either an octal digit of three bits, or an octal octet or an eight-bit byte. Thus an octade, depending on its historical use, is either 3 bits or 8 bits.

OCTADE was used to specify eight bits, as opposed to BYTE which is not necessarily eight bits as the word BYTE could signify any of several numbers of bits.

This yields the retro 1337 numbers of 38 and 83. The number 38 is one more than 37 so a bit more elite a bit cooler. Thus it owns cardinally shorter byterz.

83 mod 38 equals 7, the highest octal digit. 838 mod 383 equals 72 or 9 times 8 which is 8 squared plus 8.

8338 mod 3883 equals 572 which is 72 times 8 minus 4 or 71.5 times 8.

8383 mod 3838 equals 707 which is 88 times 8 plus 3.

I prefer the old word OCTADE to the word BYTE. OCTADE sports a Euro-peon dignity and gravitas like an Internet serf ready to surf the worknet like pwnd peons. This is very true when pronouncing OCTADE with a thick Pennsyltucky Dutch or Yinzer accent. The Bostonian pronunciation sounds like bad beginner German or muffled mumbling of 'lactate.'

OCTADE or OCTAD was also used to describe a poem of eight stanzas.

OCTADE was also used to describe a period of eight years, or two leap years.

OCTADECANAL is a pheromone found in butterflies. It is butterfly perfume. I would not wear butterfly cologne. But I would sell it. Who would buy and wear my snobby smell? With wordplay we can call it OCTADE CHANNEL No. 8 . All rights reserved, ye French odor snooties.

Historical references for use of 'octade' or 'octad':

Burroughs B5500 Information Processing Systems REFERENCE MANUAL
https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/burroughs/LargeSystems/B5000_5500_5700/1021326_B5500_RefMan_196705.pdf

Philips Data Systems Product Range - April 1971
https://www.vintage-calculators.nl/Philips%20productoverzicht%201971.pdf

Is there another name for octet that means 8 bits?
https://www.quora.com/Is-there-another-name-for-octet-that-means-8-bits

#octade #octad #binary #byte #jargon #etymology #bytemology #wordplay #wordgames #wordcrimes #history #retro #retronym #retronymous #yinzer #pennsyltucky #humor

@wordplay@lemmy.ml @Vocabulary@lemmy.ml

--

OCTADE | news://alt.flashback | https://soc.octade.net

#Coffee #CowboyCoffee #MorningMudd

Name: Byrl Raze Buckbriar (call me Raze).

Likes: Interested in WORK PRODUCT, inspiration, faith, truth, beauty, nature, self-improvement, encouragement, edification, praiseworthy things, how-tos, beautiful things, artwork, fluid poems, and general human kindness and achievement. See my profile hashtags for technical subjects of interest.

Disclaimer: If I follow your account it does not imply agreement with your views.

Site: Cryptography project site. (https://octade.net)
Publications: https://octade.net/publications.html
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5144-3278
Netnews: Find me on #Usenet in #Newsgroup alt.rhubarb.
Git: https://codeberg.org/OCTADE
Keyoxide1: https://keyoxide.org/0CF7084CF97B85F2ABF97010C6663A42C56F5F0E
Keyoxide2: https://keyoxide.org/B9B2A8EC2C4B20D2011CFEAA07E4A7FFF6585E8F
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/octade.bsky.social
HackerNews: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=OCTADE
Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/@buckbriar

When I was a teenager I had this wild idea that politics was a big show and the only path forward was to become so independent from government that it becomes irrelevant.

Then Trump happened and I got all caught up in that political / culture war nonsense.

Now I've realized I was right in the beginning. Politics and culture war crap only exists to divide and rule.

Now we're in a hot war and it's partially my fault for letting myself be deceived.

Usenet is an ever-living, Casper the friendly ghost of discussion networks.

Just a friendly reminder that Usenet still exists and access to text newsgroups is still FREE. Access is provided by volunteer sysops around the world. See links below.

Back in its glory days it seems that just about every academic institution had its own Usenet hierarchy of newsgroups.

Linux was revealed to the world via Usenet.

Open source philosophy gained its steam via Usenet.

Usenet is the original free speech network.

Usenet is the original 'social network'.

Simple and free access to text-only Usenet Newsgroups
https://eternal-september.org/

#Usenet #BBS #NetworkNews #EternalSeptember #usenet #nntp #decentralized #censorship #retro #freespeech

+++ Ausics (Australia)

https://newsgroups.ausics.net

https://usenet.blueworldhosting.com

http://news.chmurka.net

http://csiph.com

https://dotsrc.org/usenet

https://www.eternal-september.org

https://news.gegeweb.org

https://news.hispagatos.org

https://news.nntp4.net

https://usenet.ovh

https://www.open-news-network.org

nntp://paganini.bofh.team

https://pasdenom.info/news.html

https://solani.org

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0JAAF61AiE

"I warned you years ago that Windows 11 was the beginning of the end. Today, the door is officially closing on general-purpose computing. In this 24-minute manifesto, I am moving past the "ripping on Rust" memes to address a documented existential threat to your hardware. Between the $12.5M Big Tech "security" grants and the US government's memory-safety mandates, we are witnessing a coordinated execution of legacy systems."

> how old are you?

I am old enough to remember encyclopedias coming in 25+ big book volumes &the only place to find and read thme was the school library.

No normal family in my country could afford a full encyclopedia due to cost, but some grants or rich folks with good fortune donated such books to our school library. Reading was fun in young days and seeing even many black and white pictures helped in those books take trips into the future or past. Good times & so many memories.

I come out to see that the marvelous @lisamelton@mastodon.social gave it a boost! Thank you Lisa!

Then I went to check on my VPS and it is showing:

load average: 0.07, 0.05, 0.05

New #snac instance survived a Lisa boost. Yay! (Lisa Melton Boost Certified)

#fediverse

“The answer isn’t to try to take a dictator and make them a better dictator, right? We’ve got these social media dictators,” EFF’s Cindy Cohn said on The Daily Show. “The answer is to get rid of the dictators and make them less important.” https://www.thewrap.com/culture-lifestyle/culture/daily-show-cindy-cohn-ai-social-media-x-meta-video/

Search engines are so bad now. It's unbelievable.

https://soc.octade.net/sysop/

A fediverse group for discussing topics and tools related to #sysop.

#groups #fedigroups #fediverse #retro

@Lydie@tech.lgbt

The natural world is full of order and laws, yet here we are looking at extreme entropy which should not exist but seems to exist because order exists.

🚨 LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer

｢ Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits https://linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for installed software, collects the results, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers and to third-party companies including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm.
The user is never asked. Never told. LinkedIn’s privacy policy does not mention it ｣

https://browsergate.eu/

#linkedin #privacy #surveillance

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/25/ice-memphis-food-pantry-immigration

Activists in Memphis are delivering food and other necessities to immigrant families who don't dare leave the house.

Lawmakers are rightly focused on youth online safety – the challenge is protecting kids without creating new privacy risks or restricting access to lawful information. CCIA’s Kyle Sepe shares a smarter approach. Learn more: https://ctmirror.org/2026/03/19/connecticut-can-strengthen-safety-online-without-sacrificing-privacy/

Try wearing a really fluffy sweat shirt on a warm day and see if you can get belly button lint ;)

AI psychosis among the C-suite is really high now. I’m seeing it at work, where they validate everything using AI even though they know it screws up. For example, if I tell them a reboot isn't needed for a CVE because we aren’t running the app directly on the server, its in Docker, they will immediately fact check me with AI right while we talking. It’s just 1 example, but I’ve never seen such bizarre behavior. They treat AI like some divine truth. Has anyone noticed this?

Even your
Bones were
Beautiful,
Shimmering
Against the
Sun like a
Call and
Response.

#poetry

Fear is this emptiness which is in each one of us, and we try to fill it with innumerable recipes for God, good works, divine knowledge, worldly knowledge, amusement and entertainment, religious or otherwise. But it is always there, this emptiness and fear. In our emptiness, we practise for something which our fear has conceived to be great, and we remain in emptiness. Strip us of all jargon, robes, formulas and holy certainties, and what remains? Dull, aching emptiness and the fear of being nothing. The beauty of life goes by. Can you and I go beyond this seeking, these tortures, these actions of emptiness and fear? If not, we are bound to walk in darkness. In darkness, there is no light of understanding. Light is not at the end of fear and darkness; it is here when you know how to look. To see is the greatest thing.

From Can the Mind Be Quiet?

#Krishnamurti
#Meditation
#phylosophy
#mind
#Day92

@Lydie@tech.lgbt

Don't store your data on a computer. Problem solved.

Second best option is air gapped machine with crypted storage.

“The purpose of all of these laws is to deny young people access to information they have a constitutional right to receive, and also audiences they have a constitutional right to speak to,” EFF’s @davidgreene told @HonoluluCivil.
https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/04/teens-are-addicted-to-social-media-hawaii-is-reluctant-to-set-limits/

I find #X / #Twitter interesting and I am very pro-#FreeSpeech, but... there's something terribly wrong when a site’s moderators turn down a report on a post referring to “the JQ" approvingly, saying it doesn't qualify as hateful content. A term referring to killing millions of people is... not hateful? Do better X.

#Antisemitism #Jews #Holocaust

Never apologize
For setting fire.
It is a consequence
Of bleeding stars.

#poetry

And yet everyone keeps using their panopticon garbage

cypherpunks write code

https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html
#encryption #privacy #cypherpunk

@NorcalGma2@sfba.social

The grift economy is the gift that just keeps on grifting.

Perplexity's "Incognito Mode" is a "sham," lawsuit says
Google, Meta, and Perplexity accused of sharing millions of chats to increase ad revenue.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/04/perplexitys-incognito-mode-is-a-sham-lawsuit-says/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

📰 PSA: Anyone with a link can view your Granola notes by default

If you use the AI-powered note-taking app Granola, you might want to double-check your privacy settings. Though Granola says your notes are "private by default," it makes them viewable to anyone wi...

📰 Source: The Verge
🔗 Link: https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/906253/granola-note-links-ai-training-psa

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence

On the night #Jesus was betrayed... https://www.youtube.com/live/QmRz31_YY4k

#HolyWeek #MaundyThursday #Christianity

I know enough of the old testament of the bible to predict what scene in the Iran lego propaganda video is the scariest to christian nationalists:

It’s Khamenei handing the staff to Khamenei, and the staff is growing vines and leaves.

That is an epic reference. Christian nationalists are gonna have nightmares for months! 🙂

#Iran #lego #propaganda #biblereferences #ChristianNationalism #evangelicals

lmao openal bought a podcast i've never heard of (abrp? abdl? already forgot the name) that does absolute toilet numbers

not just fewer subscribers than chapo trap house, but fewer views than bonus episodes of well there's your problem that you have to pay for

not just a hundredth of the youtube juice of technology connections but a tenth of haters garage who is just some guy in virginia fixing up shitty old cars in the yard

I've muted all political shit so I guess I'll have some kind of surprise later.

https://linuxiac.com/parrot-linux-takes-stand-against-age-verification/

Parrot Linux has released a statement opposing age verification. This puts them in league with several others that have come out strongly against Age Verification:

- Garuda Linux
- MX Linux
- Ageless Linux
- MidnightBSD
- GrapheneOS
- System76
- Whonix

#Privacy #Security #Linux #OpenSource #AgeVerification

I am begging website owners to always provide a light mode. It’s an accessibility issue for me: my aging eyes are no longer able to view light-on-dark text for extended periods without severe ghosting/afterimages.

#accessibility #website #design

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The irony ...

"How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit."

Artemis (Diana) is Apollo's twin sister. Together the two are 'Lucifer'.

They are chief deities of the solar worship cult.

#NASA #AprilFools #Moon #Artemis #Apollo #Bible #Babylon #Lucifer #Gods #Demons #Worship #Religion #Space

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adCMNAVBGSQ

Age Verification is beyond Epstein 2.0.

"You are basically laying out your children on a silver platter in the name of protecting them."

"Once these OS-level age verification laws take hold, we're about 3 months from a real-time GPS-located database of verified children for creeps, politicians, and rich Ep-style people to use."