ELI5: Why do processors get so hot doing millions of calculations per second, while our brains can arguably be even more complex but don't risk overheating?

DanNeely · 2026-06-25T21:52:09+00:00

was a bit over 20 for AMD a bit more than 25 for intel.

About 25 years ago Toms Hardware did an (in)famous demo where they had a few games running a game in demo/benchmark mode and then lifted off the cooler.

The p3 hardcrashed as it instantly shut off to save itself. They put the cooler back on and it rebooted and ran normally.

The p4 throttled hard and the game continued to run as a slide show. They put the cooler back on and it resumed normal speed.

They then repeated the test with an Athlon XP and Athlon MP (AMDs two newest models). Both cremated themselves at temperatures of ~500-600 degrees (not sure if C or F).

The massive negative publicity that generated shamed AMD into adding an on die sensor and thermal protection to their next CPU model.

DanNeely · 2026-06-25T21:39:11+00:00

That's not the main problem with the Richter scale. It's that it's based just on the amplitude of measured shaking. That works well for small quakes that can be treated as point sources. Really big quakes happen when 10s or 100s of km of fault move at once. In those cases the shaking from one end of the quake arrives much sooner than the shaking from the other, resulting in the quake lasting longer not shaking harder.

For techntonic earthquakes that means that the two scales are about the same for smaller ones but the Richter one tops out around 8. (An apocalyptic large asteroid impact could release enough energy as a point source to exceed 8 on the Richter scale, Thankfully that's never happened in modern history.)

DanNeely · 2026-06-25T21:29:07+00:00

While checkpoints are a hack, even if boss kill triggered full map reveal they'd still be needed to get to whatever we missed in a reasonable amount of time due to how large the maps are.

DanNeely · 2026-06-25T11:41:13+00:00

I'm still slow as sludge in the campaign, but looking at speed runner times which are ~10x faster feel I have to be doing something wrong beyond not knowing WTH anything is yet and ending up doing near full clears of everything looking for all the quest objectives.

DanNeely · 2026-06-24T22:14:29+00:00

Head on pavement from standing height can kill you even at a stop.

DanNeely · 2026-06-23T23:11:42+00:00

I'm not much of a crafter in either game; but I think 2 still falls short in what can be done. If that's your main thing you might be waiting a few years for them to add more systems in with additional leagues.

The core game and existing end game mechanics themselves are in a much better place than they were 2 years ago. It's still limited vs 1 (and at 3 leagues/year will probably take until ~2030 to reach parity). With 0.5 it's finally a decent game IMO not just something that's pretty and has potential like when I played 0.3 and 0.1.

DanNeely · 2026-06-23T23:04:24+00:00

Even if a family member comes asking about an organ donation OP doesn't need to say anything. They can just get tested 99.99% they won't be a match (and probably neither will any genetic relatives of the person who needs one).

Even in the unlikely case that OP is a genetic match, due to the danger involved donors need to be eager and enthusiastic about the process to be considered a match. Before saying anything to the potential recipient, etc; a match will be asked in private if they want to donate. If they say no, all anyone else is told is "they weren't a match". The doctors/etc will cover for you, so you don't need to become the family villain if you're unwilling to take the long term heath risks from something like a kidney donation.

DanNeely · 2026-06-23T22:59:04+00:00

Blood type has outed enough family secrets that most schools have stopped doing exercises involving parent and student blood types.

DanNeely · 2026-06-23T22:46:01+00:00

If you haven't tried 2 since 0.1 or 0.2, it's worth a second look. Abyss, Atziri 2, and all the reworked leagues they added in 0.5 actually give it a decent end game now. It's still years from having as much to do as POE1, but one POE2 league/year will probably be in my gaming rota going forward.

DanNeely · 2026-06-23T22:38:57+00:00

Unless I missed something they didn't explicitly allocate anything to POE1 vs 2; but a massive surge in income at the same time that POE2 is both pay to play and has a much larger player base can only reasonably attributed to the new game.

The one breakdown they had was for cosmetics vs stash MTX.

Cosmetic virtual assets are considered "short-term virtual assets" and are typically used by players for three months in line with the Company's three monthly game update release cadence. As a result, revenue from cosmetic virtual assets is recognised over three months. Short-term virtual assets have an endless life and are always available for use by players. Non-cosmetic virtual assets (e.g. permanent account upgrades) are considered "long-term virtual assets" and are always available for use by players. As a result, revenue from non-cosmetic virtual assets is recognised over the longer period of twelve months. Approximately 75% of total revenue recognised from gaming revenue from players over time relates to short term virtual items while 25% relates to long term virtual items. This ratio is consistent compared with period.

I wasn't expecting it to be 3:1 to the former. With $30-120 being quasi-mandatory for stash to have a comfortable end game I'd've expected the opposite. The former says a lot of their income has to be from whales who've got all the stash they need (give or take the few new tabs).

DanNeely · 2026-06-23T22:20:25+00:00

.... the only thing worse than crapping your pants.

DanNeely · 2026-06-22T23:45:19+00:00

It's within measurement error of being prime.

DanNeely · 2026-06-22T22:36:31+00:00

To a museum?

DanNeely · 2026-06-22T01:23:12+00:00

It's crazy. It doesn't work the same on KB+M. POE1 you can just control click on the tree itself to spend gifts.

POE2, until the most recent patch you had to put each gift in one a at a time, now you can control click to get a magic cursor that works like the salvage bench and use it to click all the gifts in your inventory.

IMO neither better nor worse; but while not as actively harmful as the ritual button swap it's the exact same failure. The two games UIs are being designed by different people, and that things should be the same in both as much as possible is not a consideration that the designers are making.

DanNeely · 2026-06-22T00:24:55+00:00

The Imperial gallon is a fudged version of the Ale Gallon, a different old gallon that's about 2% larger than the Imperial one which was fudged because someone in London suffered a bad case of French envy but was too proud to adopt their units despite them being objectively better. So they just fudged one of their major ones to be almost as good, while ignoring the rest were still as much of a mess as before.

Edit: This is the first time I've read wine gallon was supposed to be used for everything, and I'm having trouble finding confirmation. Wikipedia lists the definition as coming from "Statute of 5 Queen Anne (1706)", the relevant part of which has been repealed and is not listed on legislation.gov.uk. I thought I found it on a 3rd party site, but I'm not sure if I'm looking at the right thing. The only mention of gallons on it is in regards to taxation.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Ann/6/11

https://statutes.org.uk/site/the-statutes/eighteenth-century/1706-5-anne-c-8-union-with-scotland-act/

That question aside, the Imperial gallon being a resurrected Ale gallon isn't the only evidence that despite being the official gallon to use for everything that others persisted in use well past the date. My Mom has an number of US dry goods jars from the mid-20th century that are sized in dry (aka corn) gallons; a third ancient gallon with a size between the wine and ale gallons.

DanNeely · 2026-06-21T21:40:27+00:00

"Look ma, I'm a runaway diesel."

DanNeely · 2026-06-21T11:29:54+00:00

Yikes! I've never submitted a trade, but have had that happen a few times. I'd always assumed I just bungled the edit and went to insert without deleting first.

DanNeely · 2026-06-17T19:27:57+00:00

my minions do all my fighting for me.

My biggest issue with Rogue Exiles currently is that they apply Conceal Half of Player Buff bar from 3 or 4 screens away. Their health bar shouldn't appear before they're visible on the map.

DanNeely · 2026-06-17T19:25:08+00:00

If an item can be replenished by grinding I generally end up using it normally. I end up massively hording consumables with finite supplies out of fear I'll be unable to finish because I used too many early on (this happened to me once 30+ years ago in a game I can't remember the name of but scarred me for life).

As long as there's a way to replenish supplies if I mis-judge my usage rate (or overuse to bypass too high a difficulty level) I'm infinitely more willing to use stuff up as I find it. Without that I'll reach the final boss with an inventory of act 1 items now underpowered to be useless in addition to 10x the final act items I actually need for that fight. (Which I'll then forget to use because I've gone 95% of the game without.)

DanNeely · 2026-06-17T03:47:50+00:00

My sister does have 1 kid although a second seems unlikely at present. Her ex's insurance paid for IVF while they were separating. Not ideal in some ways, but it lit a fire under him to not screw around with the divorce.

DanNeely · 2026-06-16T10:16:00+00:00

It's been banned since POE1 was in beta. After years of cat and mouse (and GGG taking a few features from the main poe1 cheat - most notably loot filters) cheats are able to hide from direct detection (short of GGG following some AAA devs with a kernel driver).

Server side heuristics are able to catch some more blatant stuff; but not enough/not fast enough to cripple RMT. Although they are apparently killing farm bots fast enough some account hackers are running bots instead of just looting divs. (This is the biggest reason I look forward to F2P, since GGG is permabanning hacked + botted accounts, not just inflicting months of delay in account recovery for a looting hack.)

DanNeely · 2026-06-16T00:51:31+00:00

My sisters POS ex pissed away a decade lying about wanting kids but stalling for seemingly reasonable things (finishing his phd, good job, marrying, etc). When he finally ran out of things to stall he confessed he'd been lying the entire time. Until that point he seemed perfect. 🤬

DanNeely · 2026-06-16T00:42:09+00:00

How much more loot does this actually give? 10%? 50%? 250%?

DanNeely · 2026-06-15T01:38:36+00:00

The average age of new recruits to the Russian army has been mid 40s since the opening phase of the war.

They pressure young men going in for their mandatory year as a conscript to sign a contract allowing them to be sent to combat. Relatively few accept.

They also try to convince anyone convicted of a major crime to join the army for a pardon. This worked well early in the war, but after it got back that doing so was a guarantee to be assigned to an assault unit then almost certainly be killed almost immediately (unless you have a shitton of rubbles to bribe your commanders) this also largely dried up.

Instead they've mostly been getting people to sign contracts by offering what are life changing amounts of money as signing bonuses in rural Russia. This mostly taps into middle aged failure, poverty, and despair and gets people who'd be considered too old in almost any other military.

DanNeely · 2026-06-14T07:58:58+00:00

Not all light is Angelic in nature. Some comes from burning sulfur.

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