{"id":49281,"date":"2022-08-18T17:29:44","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T17:29:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/playing-a-janet-jackson-song-would-crash-some-old-laptops\/"},"modified":"2022-08-18T17:29:44","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T17:29:44","slug":"playing-a-janet-jackson-song-would-crash-some-old-laptops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/playing-a-janet-jackson-song-would-crash-some-old-laptops\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing a Janet Jackson song would crash some old laptops"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>I have a new favorite bug: Janet Jackson&#8217;s 1989 certified choon Rhythm Nation had an uncanny ability to crash certain old laptops.  this was nothing to do with the file itself;  even being near another laptop playing the song could cause a crash.  Turns out, one of the sonic frequencies in Rhythm Nation coincided with the natural resonant frequencies of a particular laptop hard drive, making it crash.  amazing.  perfect.  A perfect bug.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<figure class=\"video_wrapper youtube\">\n<div class=\"ast-oembed-container\" style=\"height: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Janet Jackson - Rhythm Nation\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OAwaNWGLM0c?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><\/iframe><\/figure>\n<p>In the days of Windows XP, Microsoft&#8217;s Raymond Chen says, a manufacturer discovered that playing Rhythm Nation\u2014and apparently only Rhythm Nation\u2014could crash some of their laptops.  It was able to crash some of their competitors laptops too.  But this was nothing to do with a virus or corrupted file or anything, it was all about the music.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The weirdest thing was if you played this song, it not only crashed the laptop playing it, it also crashed a laptop that was sitting next to it, that wasn&#8217;t playing the song at all,&#8221; Chen explained in<br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WindowsDocs\/status\/1558114944738103297\" target=\"_blank\">a video<\/a>.  &#8220;The reason was that this song contained a frequency that matched the natural resonant frequency of the hard drive that these laptops were using.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Basically, different objects are more inclined to vibrate at different frequencies.  With sound being vibrations, if you hit something with a noise at its natural resonant frequency, it&#8217;ll vibrate more in response.  That&#8217;s the way you can shatter a wine glass by matching its resonant frequency (and the way urban legend says you can make people poo themselves by making their bowels resonate with the &#8216;brown note&#8217;).  In a delicately balanced mechanical hard drive, unexpected intense vibration is bad.<\/p>\n<p>To fix it, Chen says, &#8220;the manufacturer had to write a special audio filter that detected these frequencies and filtered them out before they came out of the speaker and crashed the hard drive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>perfect.  Janet Jackson was too powerful.  Just perfect.<\/p>\n<p>Fun fact: Microsoft&#8217;s blog post also points to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse of 1940 as a giant disastrous demonstration of resonant frequencies, but supposedly that&#8217;s a common misconception.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script>\n    function appendFacebookPixels() {\n      if (window.facebookPixelsDone) return;\n      !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)\n      {if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n      n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};\n      if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';\n      n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n      t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];\n      s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,'script',\n      'https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');<\/p>\n<p>        fbq('init', '700623604017080');<\/p>\n<p>      fbq('track', 'PageView');\n      window.facebookPixelsDone = true;<\/p>\n<p>      window.dispatchEvent(new Event('BrockmanFacebookPixelsEnabled'));\n    }<\/p>\n<p>    window.addEventListener('BrockmanTargetingCookiesAllowed', appendFacebookPixels);\n  <\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have a new favorite bug: Janet Jackson&#8217;s 1989 certified choon Rhythm Nation had an uncanny ability to crash certain old laptops. this was nothing to do with the file itself; even being near another laptop playing the song could cause a crash. Turns out, one of the sonic frequencies in Rhythm Nation coincided with &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/playing-a-janet-jackson-song-would-crash-some-old-laptops\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Playing a Janet Jackson song would crash some old laptops<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":49126,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/janet-jackson-music-video-given-cve-for-crashing-laptops-the-register\/","url_meta":{"origin":49281,"position":0},"title":"Janet Jackson music video given CVE for crashing laptops \u2022 The Register","date":"August 18, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The music video for Janet Jackson's 1989 pop hit Rhythm Nation has been recognized as a cybersecurity vulnerability after Microsoft reported it can crash old laptop computers. \"A colleague of mine shared a story from Windows XP product support,\" wrote Microsoft blogger Raymond Chen. The story detailed how \"a major\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":48435,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/janet-jacksons-rhythm-nation-apparently-vibed-too-hard-for-some-laptops\/","url_meta":{"origin":49281,"position":1},"title":"Janet Jackson&#8217;s &#8216;Rhythm Nation&#8217; apparently vibed too hard for some laptops","date":"August 17, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"While it's normal for friends to judge our music tastes and take away your aux privileges, our devices usually won't complain about our listening habits (even if we ask them to repeatedly play a song that most humans would find insufferable). However, according to a story shared by Microsoft principal\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49290,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/old-laptop-hard-drives-will-allegedly-crash-when-exposed-to-janet-jackson-music\/","url_meta":{"origin":49281,"position":2},"title":"Old laptop hard drives will allegedly crash when exposed to Janet Jackson music","date":"August 18, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Western Digital It sounds like something out of an urban legend: Some Windows XP-era laptops using 5400 RPM spinning hard drives can allegedly be forced to crash when exposed to Janet Jackson's 1989 hit \"Rhythm Nation.\" But Microsoft Software Engineer Raymond Chen stands by the story in a blog post\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51543,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/how-to-destroy-a-computer-hard-drive-with-a-janet-jackson-song\/","url_meta":{"origin":49281,"position":3},"title":"How to destroy a computer hard drive with a Janet Jackson song","date":"August 21, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"In a recent blog, Raymond Chen, a software engineer Microsoft, discussed the surprising discovery that Janet Jackson's song \"Rhythm Nation\" is powerful enough to physically destroy some computer hard drives. Or, well, at least it resonates at the right frequency to destabilize and crash the hard drive: One discovery during\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Entertainment&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":49571,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/janet-jacksons-1989-mega-hit-rhythm-nation-sonically-smashes-old-hard-drives\/","url_meta":{"origin":49281,"position":4},"title":"Janet Jackson&#8217;s 1989 mega-hit &#8216;Rhythm Nation&#8217; sonically smashes old hard drives","date":"August 18, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The \"brown noise\" is a legendary tone purportedly capable of causing people to lose control of their bowels when subjected to its gut-punching harmonic resonance. South Park did a whole thing on it. Turns out that the 5400 RPM hard drives from a number of old Windows-era laptops possess a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Technology&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3642,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/janet-jacksons-performance-briefly-hampered-by-technical-issues-at-essence-festival-in-new-orleans\/","url_meta":{"origin":49281,"position":5},"title":"Janet Jackson&#8217;s performance briefly hampered by technical issues at Essence Festival in New Orleans","date":"July 4, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Janet Jackson's outing at the Essence Festival of Culture at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans Saturday was briefly hampered by technical issues, but she continued to perform.Audio during the 56-year-old singer's set cut out during her outing, TMZ reported on Sunday, but she was able to continue with her\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Entertainment&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2022\/07\/04\/02\/59828615-10978999-image-a-20_1656898032917.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/assets2.rockpapershotgun.com\/janet-jackson-rhythm-nation-c.jpg\/BROK\/thumbnail\/1600x900\/format\/jpg\/quality\/80\/janet-jackson-rhythm-nation-c.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49281"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49281\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}