with yields about a tenth of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Only a tenth? I won't need the sunglasses then, will I?
but I suspect a lot of that power is going on the 3d and isn't actually available for games to use on straightforward visual quality.
Depends on how you look at it. The screen is 800 pixels wide, but for the 3D effect every other vertical line is directed at your respective eyes, making the resolution effectively 400 pixels wide. Other than the double horizontal width (which of course is quite far from negligible), the 3D effect doesn't need extra processing power. The hardware does the light redirecting, which is why you have a smooth slider for adjusting the 3D depth, or "intensity" if you prefer.
users reported instances where their 3DS screens grew black shortly before their consoles became unresponsive
That happens to me all the time. Then I charge the battery.
What MS really need to do is educate people - instead of an intimidating dialogue that says "DO YOU WANT TO ALLOW THIS YES | NO" there needs to be an explanation of the consequences.
If they don't care, they don't read it. For those people, any kind of message box is in the way of them getting to what they wanted to do and thus they click on YES just to get rid of the it.
I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"