onceuponaban's recent activity
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Comment on ASCII art generator: Create ASCII art for websites and marketing from images, video, live cam, and templates in ~design
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Comment on Interresting Reddit/Discord alternative : surikata.app in ~tech
onceuponaban LinkThe first thing the website did as I scrolled down to see what it's about was interrupt me with a login prompt. That instantly killed any interest I may have had for this.The first thing the website did as I scrolled down to see what it's about was interrupt me with a login prompt. That instantly killed any interest I may have had for this.
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Comment on Megathread: April Fools' Day 2026 on the internet in ~talk
onceuponaban Link ParentAre you using a third party application? Over on the website I see OP listed as being Tildes itself without a userpage link, so I would assume the true author is Deimos using an admin tool.Are you using a third party application? Over on the website I see OP listed as being Tildes itself without a userpage link, so I would assume the true author is Deimos using an admin tool.
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Comment on Indie Pass, a PC subscription service for indie games to launch on April 13, 2026 in ~games
onceuponaban (edited )LinkQuoting the Developers page: This right here is worrying to me. Play time is not a good metric to base revenue splits on if you're attempting to reward game quality and/or popularity. Something...Quoting the Developers page:
You earn revenue based on how much time subscribers spend playing your game. There's no exclusivity requirement, and no long-term commitment; you're free to join and leave on your own terms.
This right here is worrying to me. Play time is not a good metric to base revenue splits on if you're attempting to reward game quality and/or popularity. Something like an idle game will by nature accrue a lot more play time than, say, a 2-4h long narrative-focused experience without it having any bearing on the actual quality of either game in their respective genre. I hope this isn't the only metric they're basing this on otherwise they're going to kneecap the exact genre of game I would see this subscription model making the most sense for to customers in the first place.
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Comment on Indie Pass, a PC subscription service for indie games to launch on April 13, 2026 in ~games
onceuponaban (edited )Link ParentThis is not necessarily a mistake. As oxymoronic as it might sound, games that label themselves as "cozy-horror" have been gaining traction, combining a chill atmosphere and incremental gameplay...This is not necessarily a mistake. As oxymoronic as it might sound, games that label themselves as "cozy-horror" have been gaining traction, combining a chill atmosphere and incremental gameplay loops with occasionally unsettling worldbuilding/lore.
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Comment on Any beginners advice or resources on developing a 2D RPG/Puzzle video game? in ~comp
onceuponaban (edited )LinkI'm going to echo most of the other comments in this thread and say: start small. Something as ambitious as an RPG as your first project might result in unforeseen complications piling up and...I'm going to echo most of the other comments in this thread and say: start small. Something as ambitious as an RPG as your first project might result in unforeseen complications piling up and getting discouraged by a lack of progress, and I know how lethal that can be to a project especially when ADHD gets into the picture from first hand experience.
This doesn't necessarily mean don't start work on your project, but I would advise also setting some simpler challenges for yourself that you can complete in a short timeframe to gain momentum as you get the hang of software development and the other aspects of game design and hopefully gain more knowledge through practice that you can apply to your longer term project.
One tool I've picked up that is very useful for this is PICO-8, an hybrid of an IDE and a fantasy retro game console inspired by 80s era hardware. It's based on Lua, and lets you build and play games while setting arbitrary limitations (128x128 screen, very limited color palette and sprite space, size limit for the codebase of any given "cart", 8-bit era style audio...) to force you to keep things short and simple. It's very handy to test smaller ideas and get a working prototype for a concept without having to whip out a full-fledged game engine.
While the native executable is paid software, you can try it out for free using the education edition which runs in the browser. You can also browse the PICO-8 website and run games made for it on your browser (there's also a way to do it within the native application called SPLORE, though it's not available in the education edition). Fun fact: Celeste started out on PICO-8!
There are many resources dedicated to PICO-8 (in fact the main website has a resources section including a user manual). Among those, I would recommend SpaceCat and Lazy Devs who both provide game dev tutorials using PICO-8 on their channel.
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Comment on What is a non-problematic word that you avoid using? in ~talk
onceuponaban Link ParentFunnily enough I've seen the term yap and associated grammatical variants suddenly barge into the vocabulary of the online circles I'm in, namely vtuber fanbases, usually referring to the...Funnily enough I've seen the term yap and associated grammatical variants suddenly barge into the vocabulary of the online circles I'm in, namely vtuber fanbases, usually referring to the streamer's tendency to go off tangents while (or instead of) doing whatever else was planned, though since this tendency was already extremely widespread among vtubers (and I assume livestreamers in general) since before the term was adopted and the audience largely accepts or even outright considers it part of the appeal, the connotation is actually neutral to positive.
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Comment on I think I’m done thinking about genAI for now in ~comp
onceuponaban (edited )LinkI deeply relate to the author's struggle to focus on the core of your thoughts on a broad topic (as opposed to endlessly going into secondary tangents). And I think that's actually part of the...I deeply relate to the author's struggle to focus on the core of your thoughts on a broad topic (as opposed to endlessly going into secondary tangents). And I think that's actually part of the issue: "AI" is such a broad topic that any attempt at meaningful discourse on the subject is often derailed from the get-go because people aren't on the same page regarding what the subject even is. Are we talking about decision making algorithms in their entirety? Specifically machine learning? More specifically those relying on transformers, the architecture which was central to the currently ongoing "AI boom"? Are we even more specifically talking about the subset used for generating content, like here? Are we talking about Artificial General Intelligence? The layman often doesn't even know all of these are meaningfully different topics, and I don't think anything useful can be gained from discussing "AI" without understanding at least this.
I think this is also what's happening with the "anti-antis" Glyph mentions, which outlines a pattern similar to what I've done myself trying to talk about AI; The amount of discussion in the wake of the AI boom combined with, frankly, most people talking about it not properly understanding the topic as a whole means that quite often the issue isn't even that you disagree with someone's arguments but more that they're going in the wrong direction entirely. I personally hold a very dim view of how generative AI is currently being implemented but I cannot meaningfully express my concerns with it if the criticism starts and stops at "ChatGPT is evil incarnate, will take over the world and boil away the oceans". And within this context, I would find it pointless to talk about something like the use of generative AI as a mass-disinformation tool or any other gripe I do have when the part I actually need to clear up is "No, I don't want to start the Butlerian Jihad".
Though the thought becomes more appealing by the day...For example, I believe that the data gathering/training process for generative AI models is ethically in a dismal state and would be favorable to heavily regulating it (the uncontrolled data scrapers alone are doing measurable damage to critical aspects of the Internet's infrastructure, for one, which this very article rightfully calls out), but meaningful discussion about how we should go about it to actually improve the situation requires a general awareness of what the problem is and right now that's definitely not the case. This makes clearing up misconceptions about flawed criticism of genAI an important part of working toward a proper solution to the very real risks posed by its currently unfettered proliferation, and I don't think that should just be dismissed as "getting mad at people that do not exist" because I can guarantee you that they do exist. If we are to ever curb the abuse tech companies are perpetrating with the AI craze, public awareness of what isn't a problem to address is IMO critical to make sure any effort at proper legislation doesn't end up focusing on the wrong thing, and there is a lot of precedent regarding hamfisted digital laws around (be it simply because of cluelessness or active interference from bad actors) that backs up this specific concern.
While I've been lucky enough to mostly dodge the various ways companies keep trying to force feed genAI to me (If I ever find a valid use for feeding my data into a turbocharged autocomplete I'll do it on my own terms and on my own hardware, thank you very much), I do agree with the author that it's been getting annoying enough that I'd love nothing more than for all the genAI server farms to spontaneously melt away and for everyone to shut up about it forever. But given how relentless the push has been for adopting this technology everywhere regardless of whether it's appropriate and the damage this will keep causing, I don't think we can afford to just ignore it. The technology is already there and ultimately does have its uses, so hoping for it to fully vanish would be wishful thinking. Pushback does needs to happen (and the very vocal debate on the subject thankfully shows that it is happening), but it needs to happen in the right direction and given how many people and companies have a vested interest in preventing that, we're unfortunately not free from this mess any time soon.
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Comment on What is a non-problematic word that you avoid using? in ~talk
onceuponaban Link ParentSpeaking of they: I have an (admittedly very minor) gripe with the singular they because it throws a wrench into what is otherwise pretty much the only English conjugation rule: adding an S to...Speaking of they: I have an (admittedly very minor) gripe with the singular they because it throws a wrench into what is otherwise pretty much the only English conjugation rule: adding an S to verbs conjugated in the third person singular. All the other singular third person pronouns apply the rule as normal (including neopronouns), but using they is grammatically treated as third person plural even if used to refer to a single person. It's still currently the best candidate for a gender neutral pronoun so I'll default to it unless requested otherwise but that bugs me regardless.
I'm not sure how I would go about "fixing" this, though. Conjugating they differently depending on whether it's singular and plural feels just as arbitrarily weird as the current situation (why would we still be using the same word for this pronoun if we're effectively making it two different ones?), removing the third person singular conjugation rule entirely seems like a disproportionately wide change, and introducing a dedicated singular third person pronoun means having to choose what it would be, and presumably if there was a popular enough candidate for adoption we'd already be using it.
(I also usually avoid mentioning my dislike of the singular they because that tends to attract the sort of crowd that has a significantly more malicious motive behind speaking out against its use but that's another subject entirely...)
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Comment on What is a misconception you are passionate about and would like to clarify? in ~talk
onceuponaban LinkThe assumption that children who grew up during or after the period where personal computers became omnipresent are naturally computing experts... which has been going on for long enough that the...The assumption that children who grew up during or after the period where personal computers became omnipresent are naturally computing experts... which has been going on for long enough that the "children" this originally applied to are now adults. This couldn't be further from the truth. Computer literacy is a skill that needs to be trained like any other, and while learning how to use a computer effectively might have required a deeper awareness of the underlying systems in the past, that has not been the case for over a decade. If anything, this belief that children automatically become "good with computers" without needing to be taught actively drags down the general public's computer literacy and should really be done away with by now.
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Comment on I dont want Windows 11, how easy is it to use Linux? in ~tech
onceuponaban (edited )LinkYou can check if the software you use can be found on Linux (or an acceptable substitute if it cannot) by installing it in a virtual machine, which will let you try out a distribution of your...You can check if the software you use can be found on Linux (or an acceptable substitute if it cannot) by installing it in a virtual machine, which will let you try out a distribution of your choice without affecting your current Windows installation. I'll echo most of the rest of the thread and recommend Linux Mint. It fits the "just works" criteria very well, has a solid knowledge base and community support if you do run into issues, and its flagship desktop environment, Cinnamon, has an interface layout that is familiar to users coming from Windows, which should help getting used to a new OS.
You can use Virtualbox to set up the virtual machine. The virtualization process has limitations that wouldn't be there on a full install (like the virtual machine not being able to directly use your GPU and having to share resources with the host OS which will limit performance), but it should be enough for testing things out.
The installation media itself can also be used for further testing prior to installation, as most distros provide a fully working live environment alongside the installer. Note that the internal file system isn't persistent, so any changes you make to the environment (other than editing files on your machine's actual storage, of course) will be reverted upon restarting.
There are quite a few Windows programs which can be made to work using Wine (though testing reports for CorelDRAW in particular aren't encouraging) so that's something you can try if you can't find an alternative you're happy with. If that doesn't pan out either, if you have a decently powerful computer you could also go with running Linux as your main OS but keeping a Windows virtual machine that you can occasionally launch for whichever programs you can't do without and will not run on Linux, which would let you reduce dealing with Windows to a minimum while not having to abandon the software you depend on. Note that if you go that route, while Virtualbox should also work fine, I personally prefer using virt-manager on machines where Linux is the host OS.
As for a more direct answer to the question in the title, I'd say that by now Linux is pretty much as easy to use as Windows for the average user, with the obvious caveat of software compatibility, and even that has improved massively over the years. Naturally, since you'll be dealing with a different OS there will be some idiosyncrasies and different ways of doing things you will need to adjust to, but I'd say the goal set by the current general purpose distributions to provide a user-friendly experience has been achieved.
EDIT: One more thing I've noticed, CorelDRAW seems to have a web version available which would therefore run just fine on a browser on Linux, and Corel also offers Corel Vector which is web-based as well. Might be worth looking into.
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Comment on I dont want Windows 11, how easy is it to use Linux? in ~tech
onceuponaban Link ParentCurrently I would refrain from recommending Pop!_OS to new users, not because I don't like the distribution (quite the opposite, in fact) but because they are currently developing their own...Currently I would refrain from recommending Pop!_OS to new users, not because I don't like the distribution (quite the opposite, in fact) but because they are currently developing their own desktop environment to replace the current one, which is a customized GNOME, and the transition is expected to happen sometime this year. A change this major is bound to be disruptive to a new user. I agree it'll be a great choice once COSMIC gets a stable release and is implemented into the distro proper, but until then I'd steer newcomers to Linux Mint (or other distros in the Debian family) instead.
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Comment on Have you ever witnessed the Butterfly Effect? in ~life
onceuponaban LinkYou may know about or even have participated in /r/place, an event hosted by Reddit where any user could place a colored tile from a limited palette on a large canvas, at a rate of one pixel per 5...You may know about or even have participated in /r/place, an event hosted by Reddit where any user could place a colored tile from a limited palette on a large canvas, at a rate of one pixel per 5 minutes per user account for a limited time before the canvas eventually freezes. This event occurred three times, in 2017, 2022 and 2023. An individual user (...unless making use of a bunch of bot accounts, which definitely happened too especially in 2023, but for the sake of not getting myself lost in details I won't cover that) can't do much on their own, but an organized group could manage to have a meaningful effect of the canvas, as hinted by the event's tagline:
Individually you can create something.
Together you can create something more.
This naturally drove people to gather in groups ...and with Reddit not exactly being well equipped for real time coordination, most of that funnily enough happened on Discord servers (with Twitch and Youtube livestreams also being a common way to coordinate starting from 2022), while Reddit itself served at most as a redirection point to the various coordination centers. While the canvas was large, at the scale of Reddit's userbase it was small enough to get filled up pretty quickly (in fact, the 2022 and 2023 iterations both had the canvas expanding over the course of the event as a gimmick). As factions emerged on the increasingly crowded canvas, some unique to the event and others being representatives of existing communities and groups, this had the kind of consequences you'd probably expect.
With the knowledge that the event would eventually end and conflict arising over what gets to stay on the canvas (and more importantly what will not), this suddenly wasn't just about messing around with pixel art anymore, it was about protecting what you've made. Now, obviously, events taking place within a glorified online mspaint are not exactly of critical importance to the world at large, but this was something that a lot of people participated in, and I do think it works well as an example of individuals being capable of affecting things on a large scale.
Most people stumbling upon the canvas probably just took a casual look and placed a handful of pixels to help maintain artwork they liked, other more invested users looked more closely into what the groups they were in were doing on the canvas and headed to the coordination servers to help out... And of course, there were the people who took up the task of organizing these coordination servers and getting in contact with other groups who did the same, and for those people the event became less of a virtual graffiti wall and more of a pretend geopolitics game (with some shades of actual geopolitics because as everyone who heard of /r/place knows, groups representing their countries popped up all over the place to the dismay of many, but I'm getting off track here).
The thing is that while by numbers the amount of organized users in these coordination centers were far, far lower than the total amount of users interacting with the canvas, this much larger group of less organized people are much more likely to engage with something they can recognize, such as helping complete an artwork in progress or spread a pattern like a country flag or a grid of some sort, than to create one of their own. Part of the game was therefore to manage to establish enough of your desired artwork that the broader userbase would recognize, and hopefully contribute to it. Properly leveraging this effect (often jokingly referred to within the coordination centers as "the hivemind") allowed groups to punch well above their weight compared to what they could achieve on their own. Even within the coordination servers, plenty of people were content with simply following the instructions of whoever decided to take charge so long as their plans didn't wildly differ from the overall group's intent.
A common practice among the organized groups was to set up pixel art templates that could be distributed to the whole group in the form of a browser userscript that highlighted desired colors on specific positions of the canvas, allowing people to contribute to the exact same artwork much more reliably and enabled much more effective defense against groups trying to wipe it out (or simply natural decay from people placing random pixels). So long as someone could provide pixel art for it, one could potentially secure a desired artwork on the canvas simply by convincing an established group to add it to their template, and many alliance networks were formed on that basis. If you took part in the diplomacy layer of this event, you could potentially single-handedly influence the canvas in ways one wouldn't expect someone to be able to in an event where millions took part.
And, speaking from experience, the barrier for entry wasn't high. While many well known content creators obviously took advantage of their existing reputation and audience of dozens of thousands (if not more) to massively impact the canvas for better or for worse, I, despite being otherwise pretty much a nobody as far as the Internet in general is concerned, can point to many artworks particularly over the 2022 and 2023 iterations of the canvas that I was personally involved in getting established, and even led a faction of my own. Many other people have similar stories of getting to influence the overall canvas from participating in the event, and I think that's neat, even if in this case the only lasting effect is as part of a PNG file.
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Comment on Do you have a game that you love from “before your time?” in ~games
onceuponaban (edited )LinkBit of a boring answer on my end as "before my time" includes the first half of the 2000s, which puts the entire Playstation 1 library on the table and a significant part of the Playstation 2...Bit of a boring answer on my end as "before my time" includes the first half of the 2000s, which puts the entire Playstation 1 library on the table and a significant part of the Playstation 2 library, alongside any handheld from the same timeframe (and of course PC games, though I don't actually have many examples of very old games I specifically play on PC in mind, at least not ones I played recently). In fact, since I tended to lag behind quite a bit regarding game releases, plenty of the games I did play regularly would qualify. There are however outliers that come to mind:
- The Generation 1 to 3 Pokémon games
The oldest memories I can recall of playing video games in general involved the Gen 1 Pokémon games on Gameboy Color which set the stage for a long running interest in the franchise. While I no longer keep up with the modern games, I do still have a soft spot for the series. I'd also fold them together with the Gen 1 remakes and Gen 3 games on the GBA, which I also played a ton... but which were also old enough that by the time I played them I was doing it on a Nintendo DS (in fact, I never actually owned a GBA in the first place, skipping straight from the Gameboy Color to the Nintendo DS).
- Metal Gear Solid 2
While significantly newer than the above (at least regarding gen 1), it still came out way before I was young enough to play video games but it was still one I enjoyed to the point of clearing it multiple times when I did get around to playing it, which is something I've rarely done for any narrative-heavy game, recent or otherwise.
- The PS1 Gran Turismo games
Racing games were among my favorite genres as a child (and I still have an interest in them), but the Gran Turismo series was what kickstarted it. I started with Gran Turismo 4 (which I wouldn't actually consider old enough to qualify as "before my time") but I also looked back to both of the PS1 games afterward which are both pretty strong entries in their own right and I ended up clocking quite a few dozens of hours in both GT and GT2. The GT games are among my favorite overall and Moon Over The Castle registers as the anthem of car racing in my mind to this day.
Honorable mention goes to the Destruction Derby 1 and 2 games, also on PS1. While I don't think they stood the test of time quite as well as the older GT games might have, I did also play them way past their prime and I suspect they were the catalyst for me eventually getting both BeamNG.drive and Wreckfest...
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Comment on Playing DOS and Windows 98 games on a retro PC (real hardware) in ~games
onceuponaban Link ParentIt should be noted that the video in question is 5 years old, which in the ReactOS project's time frame might as well be the Neolithic. I would probably still rely more on the "intended" software...It should be noted that the video in question is 5 years old, which in the ReactOS project's time frame might as well be the Neolithic. I would probably still rely more on the "intended" software of the era than ReactOS for this specific use-case (...or any, really, ReactOS is still very much experimental), but it's definitely better now than back then.
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Comment on Looking for low-precision, mouse-only Steam game recommendations in ~games
onceuponaban LinkIf you haven't already played through it, the Henry Stickmin Collection are nice little choose-your-own-path games that shouldn't be hurt by a touch-screen only control scheme.If you haven't already played through it, the Henry Stickmin Collection are nice little choose-your-own-path games that shouldn't be hurt by a touch-screen only control scheme.
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Comment on Looking for low-precision, mouse-only Steam game recommendations in ~games
onceuponaban (edited )Link ParentJust chiming in to further support the claim that pausing is vital to the game's core gameplay loop. While you could play the game fully in real time, "No-pause" is understood by the community to...Just chiming in to further support the claim that pausing is vital to the game's core gameplay loop. While you could play the game fully in real time, "No-pause" is understood by the community to be an extremely difficult self-imposed challenge. Playing on easy but without pause is undeniably much, much harder than playing on hard with pause, and this is a game where "easy" mode is already pretty hard. That being said, FTL has been made to work on phones through other means so I would assume using Steam Link would work fine.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
onceuponaban Link ParentSee, that is exactly why I use the "y'all" spelling, because I specifically intend to convey that I'm actually using a contraction of you and all. The similarity to the southern ya'll is a...Saying it’s because it’s a contraction of you and all is saying you don’t know the culture. We don’t say you, we say ya.
See, that is exactly why I use the "y'all" spelling, because I specifically intend to convey that I'm actually using a contraction of you and all. The similarity to the southern ya'll is a coincidence, I just want to bring a "true" second person plural pronoun back into English because y'all dropped the singular version and been using the plural one for everything ever since.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
onceuponaban (edited )Link ParentWhile I agree with your overall point; people usually don't think of non-literal use of "literally" as "I'm including the meaning of the word figuratively in how I use the word literally"...While I agree with your overall point; people usually don't think of non-literal use of "literally" as "I'm including the meaning of the word figuratively in how I use the word literally" similarly to how someone saying "Yeah, right." to voice disagreement is just using sarcasm, not redefining "right" as meaning "wrong". Saying "literally" is being used to mean "figuratively" was a mental shortcut I failed to elaborate on, fair enough. That being said:
To summarize by way of example: Nobody has ever said "I am figuratively going to kill you if you don't stop talking about your new boyfriend."
Counterexample: myself. As a direct result of noticing this tendency, I have deliberately started using "figuratively" (or "figurative" in the specific linked example) whenever I would have been tempted to use "literally" for emphasis, and I have noticed other instances of people doing the same (I also tried "proverbially" before realizing that wouldn't match the meaning of the word except in specific cases). This is uncommon (for now?), but this does happen. As for why I do this, I figured highlighting a word that is usually only used implicitly would promote using it for emphasis instead of "literally" down the line, which would help shifting the understanding of "literally" back to what I consider to be its actual intended use.
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Comment on Grammar errors that actually matter, or: the thread where we all become prescriptivists in ~humanities.languages
onceuponaban Link ParentYeah, "word" in this context is more of a generalization of the concept of "some amount of bits a computer is capable of treating as a discrete unit" than a specific case (...until it's not), I...Yeah, "word" in this context is more of a generalization of the concept of "some amount of bits a computer is capable of treating as a discrete unit" than a specific case (...until it's not), I mostly wanted an excuse to write "word" thrice in quick succession.
Fun fact: in French, while the overwhelming influence of the English language in computer science means people will still understand you if you say "byte" (though you would need to stick to the English pronunciation as French has also adopted bit as-is and you would end up pronouncing it the same way), the standardization of the 8-bit byte led to its use quickly falling out of favor (probably because of the pronunciation issue I mentioned) and being replaced with, you guessed it, octet, alongside a lowercase o as a matching unit symbol. Alternatively, "multiplet" apparently exists as a more direct translation of the generic byte, but to be honest the first and so far only time I saw that word was 5 minutes ago before writing this while checking if one did exist.
Come to think of it, is there an html tag that lets you mark what would otherwise be rendered as text as media to signal to screen readers that it should be skipped/process accessibility metadata attached to the tag instead?