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by informatimago 3449 days ago
When I programmed by -30 C outside, (10 C inside), I used a big bowl (2 liters) of tea to heat my fingers. Hands on the bowl, slurp tea, hands on keyboard, repeat. When the bowl, is empty refill it.

But this was before USB, you know, when you had to go uphill in the snow both to and from school. Nowadays you can get something like:

https://www.amazon.com/USB-Heated-Shawl-Lap-Blanket/dp/B01BH...

And of course, you should be careful in your choice of computing hardware and software. Nowadays, hardware and software are optimised to spare energy usage, processors go to sleep or reduce frequency while you're working, etc. All this doesn't produce much heat, in top-notch computing hardware. Instead, choose cheaper, less "green" hardware, some laptop that heats a lot, and run some background tasks (eg. you may compile the linux kernel in a loop, or have some 3D rendering game running in background), so that the processor is used close to 100% full frequency, and produce more heath. Then you can put your fingers on the hot surfaces or on the air vent exits.

2 comments

I second the tea solution. It also forces you to get up to use the bathroom.
Suggestion alternative solutions to the bathroom approach is considered Discussthing and will get the thread locked and loaded.
If you're going to deliberately make your computer run full pelt for the surplus heat, you might as well do something useful with it - eg, you could run Folding@Home or some BOINC project, burn those cycles for a good cause.

Or, if you'd rather get something out of it for yourself, you could mine cryptocurrency.