On Tue, 23 Jul 2019 at 15:23, Mark E. Shoulson <mark@kli.org> wrote:
I noticed the {Hut} there too. But that doesn't necessarily mean nine bits. Maybe the name was derived from some one-indexed counting of the bits, and named something relating to its ending at (i.e. before) the ninth bit. Or whatever twisted logic gave the French "huit jours" (lit. eight days) for "a week" and "quinze jours" (lit. fifteen days) for "a fortnight" (which at least comes from "fourteen nights", so the math works out for the English at any rate). Me, I'm going to choose to believe that it's eight bits (an "octet" to be hyper-technical) and named off-by-one because of some... reason.
In case you missed it earlier in the thread, the real reason for the {Hut} is because the pun is based on the name of the actor John Hutton <https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404632/>. -- De'vID