• AnyOldName3@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    The format was originally designed to interchange animated palettised depictions of giraffes, so Giraffic Interchange Format made sense. They just changed the acronym when they realised that by storing different colours in the palette, you could depict things other than giraffes.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      18 hours ago

      Giraffic Interchange Format made sense

      In no world does that collection of words ring true, regardless of context.

      you could depict things other than giraffes

      But why would you?

      • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
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        16 hours ago

        GPUs were originally created to render giraffes faster, hence the name. The fact that they’re also useful for gaming are as coincidental as their usefulness for crypto mining and LLMs.

        A gif is just the output format after running loads of OpenGiraffeLib code through a GPU.