Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – The Craziest News from 2022!
Mike Sanders / 2 years ago
There’s something of an expression at the eTeknix office. It goes along the lines of ‘if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well’ – ‘If it’s weird though, just give it to Mike’. – Yep, I make very little secret of the fact that while I love writing hardware news and keeping up to date with all the latest announcements, I take a lot of pleasure in discovering some of the more bizarre aspects of the tech/gaming world.
With this in mind, therefore, and in the festive spirit of Christmas let’s take a look at some of the maddest news I’ve covered over the course of 2022! – Grab a coffee because I promise you that 99% of this is solid gold!
Janet Jackson Song Can Ruin Hard Drives!
It’s been well-proven that certain harmonic frequencies can make HDD storage devices unhappy. It turns out though that one particular Janet Jackson song is capable of destroying your data. Well, on one very specific 5,200 RPM model at least.
Steamed Hams – Meme into Lucasarts Game?
Principal Skinner attempting to pass off Krusty Burgers as Steamed Hams, the subject of masses of memes over the last few years. – Taking things to a whole other level, however, one person decided to create a Lucasarts-like game based on the classic Simpsons click!
Yes, it’s still available to download, so click here for more info!
Battlefield 2042 – So Bad Even Cheats Don’t Work!
Battlefield 2042 is certainly much better now that it was on release day. That doesn’t change the fact, however, that as a game, it’s pretty terrible. – The PC version was, in fact, so bad that a major provided of cheats actually withdrew support for the title as Battlefield 2042 ran so poorly that even their hacks couldn’t cope!
Nvidia Starts Promoting Dogecoin?
Despite the fact that Nvidia directly sold graphics cards to industrial-scale cryptocurrency mining operations, they never went as far as to actually endorse any particular coin. That was, until earlier this year when their Taiwanese Twitter account, which had been inactive for years, started posting promotional material for Dogecoin.
Wow! Much Interest! Such controversy! – Click here for more info!
Henry Cavill Loves Noctua… And Maybe AMD Too!
Henry Cavill is a self-confessed geek and back in 2020, he posted a video of himself building his very own gaming PC. It seems, however, that 2022 has got him thinking about upgrades. Firstly, he’s decided to get himself some of Noctua’s beige and brown fans (which he loves!). And secondly, for his next graphics card, he’s actually considering dropping Nvidia for AMD!
For Noctua click here! – For AMD click here!
Lost Michael Jackson Sega Game Found at UK Car Boot!
Michael Jackson had a number of well-documented associations with Sega. One of which was apparently a cancelled motion simulator title in which he acted as both a video and voice-over artist. Thought to be lost, however, the video footage recently turned up (in all places) at a UK car boot sale!
Nvidia Launches Then Cancels A Graphics Card
Nvidia certainly played an interesting game when they confirmed the launch of two 4080 graphics card variants. It didn’t take the community long, however, before they noticed that the differences went well beyond just the VRAM. – The controversy did, in fact, hit so hard that Nvidia was forced to cancel (“unlaunch”) the 4080 12GB.
Don’t worry though, it’ll be back on shelves within the next month. It’s just going to be called the 4070 Ti now!
YouTuber Loses Pilots License After Fake Crash Stunt!
Some people will do anything to get famous. One YouTuber, however, decided to crash their aeroplane. – Attempting to put it across as a ‘happy accident’ that they just happened to be filming the entire event, I was convinced right from the start that this was entirely staged just in an attempt to go viral.
The good news is that it did go viral. The bad news is that the YouTuber lost their license after the FAA decided that he did stage it! – Put simply, the crash was real. The plane malfunction/drama was not!
Refund% Hits New Heights in Speedrunning
I daresay that many of you are aware that Steam has a rather benign policy when it comes to refunds. Typically speaking, if you’ve played the game for less than 2 hours they’ll automatically give you your money back without too much hassle. – It seems, however, that this has led to a rise over the course of 2022 in speedrunners attempting a new challenge. Namely, Refund%
Dad Attempts to Curb His Kid’s Internet Time – Ends Up Outting Two Towns Worth of Broadband!
Many parents face an uphill battle when it comes to making sure their children don’t spend an excessive amount of time on the internet. One dad, however, took things a little too far when they purchased a wifi jammer that was so potent it could kill the connection for not just his kids, but two whole towns!
Portable Gas Stove = PC?
While some portions of the PC modding community attempt to make nice, tidy, and sleek builds, there is undoubtedly a part of it which just wants to see what a system can’t be crammed into. With this in mind, therefore, we have the ‘Portable Gas Stove’ PC. Yep, a fully working PC build set within a gas stove case.
New Cheats Discovered in SNES Punch-Out
Super Punch-Out on the SNES is one of my favourite games of all time. Given that it’s nearly 30 years old, however, you’d have probably been forgiven for thinking that any secrets this title held had long been discovered. Guess again though as earlier this year new cheats were found that didn’t just reveal a match-up screen option, but also the ability to play it in two-player mode!
Nvidia 4080 Scalpers Pay The Price!
The Nvidia 4090 is proving to be an exceptionally popular graphics card, the 4080… Not so much. – With that being said though, lacking a crystal ball scalpers still gobbled up a lot of the initial stock in the hope of turning a fast (and substantial) profit. They didn’t, however, anticipate two major problems. Firstly, stock for the 4080 is good, and worse, nobody actually seems to really want the GPU!
Yep, scalpers are getting burned and it feels so good!
Wallpaper Engine Becomes Top Seller in China (To Bypass Pornography Ban)
Wallpaper Engine is an amazingly fun app (available on Steam) which allows users to apply animated backgrounds to their desktops. In China, however, it’s providing to be amazingly popular for another reason entirely. Namely, thanks to the user-created content, it is allowing people to bypass the state ban on *ahem* adult internet material!
Graphics Cards Get Pressure Washed Ahead of Crypto-Crash Fire Sale!
The transition of Ethereum to its new ‘proof of stake’ standard earlier this year effectively wiped out the need for mainstream graphics card-based cryptocurrency mining. With so many industrial-scale operations around the world, therefore, this clearly had them in a bit of a quandary. What do you do with all those now mostly redundant (in crypto terms) graphics cards?
Well, reselling them is clearly the obvious answer. In getting them in showroom condition, however, videos appeared online showcasing mining racks, with graphics cards still attached, getting pressure washed!
Nintendo Fan Buys $30K of Stock Just to Ask About F-Zero!
It has been a long time since Nintendo last made an F-Zero title. And in this regard, they’re always somewhat notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to the IPs they hold. Being frustrated at the lack of F-Zero news, therefore, one person bought $30,000’s worth of Nintendo stock, just so they could ask the board if a new game was on the way (it wasn’t).
EA Scores Own Goal With Foot in Mouth Twitter Post!
They say that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Well, in gaming terms, publishers who abandon and cancel single-player titles in the pursuit of microtransactions probably shouldn’t post bad things about them on Twitter. – EA, however, either had a bit of a brain fart or completely forgot their somewhat questionable history over the last 20 years!
Teenager Wins $1,800 Bet By Keeping Off Social Media for 6 Years!
I am not much of a fan of social media. The fact that I only tend to use a Facebook account for personal matters should be a pretty firm indication of that. – For kids, however, having social media seems to be practically a necessity these days. One teenager, however, managed to win $1,800 off his mom by managing (somehow) to keep off all social media platforms for 6 years!
Thousands Think They’re Watching Pirates World Cup Steams!
It is admittedly a little weird that we’ve had a World Cup competition leading up to Christmas. With any major sporting event, however, it’s clearly not unusual for people to attempt to watch it. When legitimate avenues are closed, however, the world of pirate streams can surely come to the rescue, right?…
Well, maybe not as over 40,000 tuned in to watch Germany VS Japan, and instead all they got to see was a rather pixelated match being played out in FIFA 23. And yes, it doesn’t appear that a lot of them noticed!
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Bombs Stream With Singing!
At the risk of sounding like I’ve been dogging Nvidia here, I might as well end on a positive one as earlier this year Jensen Huang decided to bomb a couple of Taiwanese streamers. They apparently had no idea who he was, but that didn’t stop Jensen from not only recommending a song but also joining in.
Let’s just say that he should probably stick to making graphics cards.
Mikes Rant Christmas Edition – What Do You Think?
Well, as much as it was something of a chore to put that list together for you, I must admit to taking more than a little pleasure in recapping some of the most amusing and bizarre stories I’ve come across over the last year! – If you too enjoyed this trip down memory lane, be sure to keep checking in on our website and social media portals as I fully intend to keep bringing you all the madness we’ll undoubtedly see from 2023! – As above, it does appear to be my job here at eTeknix!
For more of Mike’s Christmas-related rantiness, check out the link here! They’ll be a new rant (nearly) every day between Christmas and New Year!
