I didn't know what it meant, and looked it up. "Time-based One Time Password" explains a hell of a lot more that "TOTP." From just those 4 words I figured out we were talking about the kind of thing that powers 2-factor auth implementations where get a time-based one-time code.

Before I looked it up, I thought it was somehow related to NTP.

My point is that "time based one-time password" doesn't really tell you anything about what TOTP is; what you want is the phrase "the protocol code-based 2FA applications like Google Authenticator use", after which you don't care anymore about the stupid name the protocol has.

It's a little bit like expanding "transport control protocol". I mean, sure, I guess it's marginally better than the acronym TCP? But really, that's not the clarification you want to provide to someone who doesn't know what TCP is.

Also, obviously, if you don't know what TOTP is, you might just not be the audience for the article. Remember that most people don't write their personal blogs (or, in this case, their Github personal projects) specifically for an audience of Hacker News people, even though HN sometimes makes it seem that way.