My hierarchy goes something like this:

• A relatively trivial configuration file? TOML
• A configuration file that needs a bit of complexity and nesting? YAML
• Is it getting so complicated and longwinded that you’re actually unlikely to touch it by hand anyway? JSON
• Have we become downright enterprisey? XML

It’s funny because GNOME was the first OSS X11 desktop environment to get actual usability testing from corporate developers (Sun Microsystems).

I’m not sure if they still have a user interface design guideline document, though. They probably burned it when GNOME 3 development started. Haven’t checked. I’ve mostly used Xfce since then (and very recently KDE).

Huh.

You know, when I think of supercomputer applications, I think of deeply analytical problems based on solid math and well understood algorithms that can be highly parallelised to take the maximum theoretical advantage of the hardware at hand.

You know, the opposite of what the “AI” crowd is doing. Throwing vast amounts of crunching power at a barely understood hypothetical black-box problem in hopes that it potentially yields some interesting results. Maybe.

From Explain XKCD:

This comic was released on Christmas Day of 2024, but makes no reference to Christmas. This year marks the first time in xkcd’s 20 year history (of releasing comics around Christmas), that there have been no Christmas comics released during those days. Also all nine times before this year, when a release day fell on Christmas Day, that comic has always been about Christmas.

…But when you really think about it, isn’t this comic about the true meaning of Christmas? That is to say, it is about avoiding the Sun. It’s still topical, I’d say!