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It’s a real story that had been shared from Microsoft Reveals Janet Jackson, A colleague of mine shared a story from Windows XP product support, a major computer manufacturer discovered that playing the music video for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” would crash certain models of laptops, it would not have wanted to be in the laboratory that they must have set up to investigate this problem, not an artistic judgment.
While they discovered during the investigation that playing the music video also crashed some of their competitor’s laptops.
And what happened after it, they discovered something extremely weird: Playing the music video on one laptop caused a laptop sitting nearby to crash, even though that other laptop wasn’t playing the video!
What the heck is going on?
After a lot of searching, It turns out that the song contained one of the natural resonant frequencies for the model of 5400 RPM laptop hard drives that they and other manufacturers used.
And when they took the device to the manufacturer worked around the problem by adding a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback.
And they put a digital version of a “Do not remove” sticker on that audio filter, (Though I’m worried that in the many years since the workaround was added, nobody remembers why it’s there, hopefully, their laptops are not still carrying this audio filter to protect against damage to a model of hard drive they are no longer using.)
Was that Rhythm Nation had the ability to make nearby computers and laptops crash – just by being in close proximity to the device playing the audio? Microsoft Reveals Janet Jackson Song.
The models affected laptops under wraps, Chen says that the discovery was first found by a “major computer manufacturer” and that after undergoing numerous experiments, the root cause was pinpointed.
The track contained a frequency that when played through the laptop’s speakers, would cause specific models of hard drives to vibrate and be damaged, thus meaning that the computer would malfunction, Think of it almost like how a high-pitched sound can cause a wine glass to shatter of break.
Meanwhile, the engineers conducting the experiment were able to isolate the direct cause of the issue, and they arrived at a somewhat simple solution, simply have the affected models recognize the specific frequencies and block them from playing.
Microsoft Reveals Janet Jackson dude who told the story, Chen, concludes the post by confirming that laptops that may be at risk should still have this audio filter preinstalled to prevent them from being affected by the song – something he refers to as a “digital version of a ‘Do not remove’ sticker”, with that being said, it seems Janet Jackson fans can resume listening in peace.
The song of Janet Jackson‘s ‘Rhythm Nation’ has been out for over three decades, but some laptop computers apparently are not fans of the chart-topper, the bizarre vulnerability in which playing the 1989 hit can cause certain laptops to crash and malfunction.
The bizarre story apparently began back when multiple users contacted Windows XP product support to report issues with their devices, mostly the widely used 5400-RPM laptop hard drive that was sold around 2005, the laboratory experiment found that the song didn’t just necessarily crash the laptop that it was being played on, but also nearby laptops that were using the same hard drive model.
This hard drive was a spinning disk hard drive and most spinning hard drives have been gradually phased out in favor of solid-state drives over the years, but as Chen notes, they still persist in a host of devices around the world.
Ironically, the news comes within a few days of Apple’s announcement of a serious security vulnerability (along with a software update) for iPhones, iPads, and Macs that could potentially allow attackers to take complete control of these devices.
Conclusion
Thankfully laptops today won’t suffer from the same issue – Microsoft Reveals Janet Jackson says the manufacturer added “a custom filter in the audio pipeline that detected and removed the offending frequencies during audio playback”.