Janet Jackson’s 1989 Hit “Rhythm Nation” Damages Old HDDs
Some time ago, users noticed a strange bug on Windows laptops: if you turn on the song Rhythm Nation by American singer Janet Jackson at full volume, then the laptop literally fails in a few seconds. Curiously, the song in some way acted not only on the device on which it was played, but also on all other laptops in the “kill zone”. The reason for such a “killer” effect of the song could not be established until Microsoft was directly involved in the matter.
According to the company’s specialists, the frequencies in the song are arranged in a completely random way, strongly resonating with certain models of hard drives operating at a speed of 5400 rpm. For security reasons, Microsoft does not specify what these frequencies are. It has previously been observed that peaks are observed at the following frequencies: 12.5 Hz, 87.5 Hz, 1100 Hz, 1450 Hz, 1700 Hz and 1850 Hz.
It is reported that at the moment the problem has already been solved, and Rhythm Nation will not affect the performance of laptops. To remove an unwanted system bug, laptop manufacturers have built a filter into the audio codec that recognizes those same frequencies and filters them out in time.
