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[RagnarokIV]

wtf man hahaha never heard of this:

Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' would still be crashing hard drives without this audio processing filter

In 2005, it was discovered that Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation would crash a particular laptop because it matched the natural resonant frequency of its hard drive. The PC manufacturer behind this model solved the issue by introducing an audio filter to Windows XP that dampened the offending frequency and prevented it from killing the laptop. Programmer Raymond Chen posted on the Microsoft Dev Blog that this particular filter was installed "at least until Windows 7".

Janet Jackson's 'Rhythm Nation' would still be crashing hard drives without this audio processing filter

This filter will stop an old song from crashing your PC.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[jason10mm]

So you are saying that when the ai takes over, we can kill it with Rhythm Nation, Attack from Mars style?

 

[Hookshot]

So you are saying that when the ai takes over, we can kill it with Rhythm Nation, Attack from Mars style?

What style?

 

[AJUMP23]

With Michael gone, no Jackson's are a threat.

 

[jshackles]

I love stuff like this, and it still happens pretty often. A couple of years ago, a radio station in Seattle was bricking Mazda infotainment units all over the city because they uploaded an image without an extension

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/thanks-to-a-glitch-some-seattle-mazda-drivers-cant-tune-their-radios-away-from-kuow/

Mazda headquarters says the problem was that KUOW "sent image files with no extension."

The files would be maybe the album cover of a song being played on the radio, or its release date, "to, quote, improve the experience," says Tappan.

What could have happened, says the professor, is that the station sent a file that didn't identify its format, whether a Word document or image such as a JPEG.

 

[Audiophile]

Spek of the original JP CD press below, not seeing anything glaring:

Only thing is it's a relatively early CD and there's zero roll-off before the 22,050Hz cut off (see here for an eg of relatively normal roll off.), maybe if zoomed in there's an extremely steep, rapid roll-off causing artefacting and some sort of ringing. Or perhaps some poor, early filters were used and it folded aliasing or high frequency clipping back into the 'audible' signal range post-capture.

I'd think there'd be plenty of other releases that cause the same issue though if the specific frequency range is merely present at a reasonable level, I'd expect to see something more prominent here if it's loud enough and/or sustained for a period of time; at least to the degree that it'd cause an issue. That said, it may just be a case of the spectrum and the mix here just being a bit too congested to tell (here for eg. is an example of prominent, sustained and reasonably well isolated frequencies being in a recording due to a CRT TV being in the room at the time, you can see the transformer/coil hum just shy of 16KHz).

It's a shame they didn't provide more info, but then I guess they probably don't want to as folks would probably go around killing peoples' HDDs just for teh lulz.

You could probably test it though, get a bunch of drives running, have a program checking for errors, then blare out this song next to it with a narrow frequency audible using a high and low pass filter, then just shift the frequency until any given drive starts kicking out errors or straight up fails to work.


EDIT:

These are the most prominent sustained frequencies I can find after looking closer, just shy of 8KHz in the left channel, apparently the resonant levels will likely sit between 5 &12KHz (?!):

EDIT 2:

Here it is isolated, lol: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16tZwoaB8zIOe-xxbQWqI8jmMvwkubP74/view?usp=sharing

..actually sounds a bit like a HDD seeking.

EDIT 3:

I think I have too much time on my hands,...

 

[mopspear]

Spek of the original JP CD press below, not seeing anything glaring:

Only thing is it's a relatively early CD and there's zero roll-off before the 22,050Khz cut off (see here for an eg of relatively normal roll off.), maybe if zoomed in there's an extremely steep, rapid roll-off causing artefacting and some sort of ringing. Or perhaps some poor, early filters were used and it folded aliasing or high frequency clipping back into the 'audible' signal range post-capture.

I'd think there'd be plenty of other releases that cause the same issue though if the specific frequency range is merely present at a reasonable level, I'd expect to see something more prominent here if it's loud enough and/or sustained for a period of time; at least to the degree that it'd cause an issue. That said, it may just be a case of the spectrum and the mix here just being a bit too congested to tell (here for eg. is an example of prominent, sustained and reasonably well isolated frequencies being in a recording due to a CRT TV being in the room at the time, you can see the transformer/coil hum just shy of 16KHz).

It's a shame they didn't provide more info, but then I guess they probably don't want to as folks would probably go around killing peoples' HDDs just for teh lulz.

You could probably test it though, get a bunch of drives running, have a program checking for errors, then blare out this song next to it with a narrow frequency audible using a high and low pass filter, then just shift the frequency until any given drive starts kicking out errors or straight up fails to work.


EDIT:

These are the most prominent sustained frequencies I can find after looking closer, just shy of 8KHz in the left channel, apparently the resonant levels will likely sit between 5 &12KHz (?!):

EDIT 2:

Here it is isolated, lol: https://jumpshare.com/s/WMCf4kKVgsVVpragM8bM ..actually sounds a bit like a HDD seeking.

EDIT 3:

I think I have too much time on my hands,...

I appreciate the work you put into this- OH YEAH I just read your username!

 

[IntentionalPun]

Been a long time since I used a laptop with a mechanical hard drive.

 

[TheDreadBaron]

Saw a video or something that claimed the reason this particular song was an issue was because it was slightly downtuned whereas most songs are A440, seemed plausible.

 

[Azelover]

I like Runaway..

 

[MrCunningham]

This is the first time I have ever heard of this. Does this mean, that I could walk into a computer store, and just connect every laptop to youtube and play 'Rhythm Nation'?

 

[jufonuk]

This is the first time I have ever heard of this. Does this mean, that I could walk into a computer store, and just connect every laptop to youtube and play 'Rhythm Nation'?

But for disclaimers I didn't say I'm ordering you to. You do this under your own free will.

 

[Mistake]

so you're telling me Janet invented the brown note, causing computers to shit themselves?

 

[MrCunningham]

But for disclaimers I didn't say I'm ordering you to. You do this under your own free will.

I mean, after reading about this more... it really wouldn't work on any modern laptops. because the article states that it only works on certain types of mechanical hard drives that run at specific RPM speeds that operate at the same frequency as Rhythm Nation. Current laptops all use solid state drives. In my head, it sounded much funnier, until I actually put some thought into it.

Sadly it all falls apart. Shame I didn't know this back in 2005... I probably would also need the right version of the song. Maybe in FLAC format on a USB stick.

I have a feeling that it is part of the engineering mixing of the song. It is funny because I do remember the actual music video, and it has a totalitarian theme to it.

 

[jufonuk]

I mean, after reading about this more... it really wouldn't work on any modern laptops. because the article states that it only works on certain types of mechanical hard drives that run at specific RPM speeds that operate at the same frequency as Rhythm Nation. Current laptops all use solid state drives. In my head, it sounded much funnier, until I actually put some thought into it.

Sadly it all falls apart. Shame I didn't know this back in 2005... I probably would also need the right version of the song. Maybe in FLAC format on a USB stick.

I have a feeling that it is part of the engineering mixing of the song. It is funny because I do remember the actual music video, and it has a totalitarian theme to it.

next best thing invent time travel to do only this. if you succeed we will here about it on Wikipedia,

time paradox created

 

[Melon Husk]

Modern era mummy's curse

 

[Ownage]

Wait til you play with this.

USB Kill devices for pentesting & law-enforcement

The USBKill, or USB Killer is a device used by pentesters, industrial clients and law-enforcement world-wide to perform security checks against power surge attacks on USB ports. USBKill.com is manufacturer of the USB Kill device, USBKill Shield - which defends against USB Attacks like a USB...

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[Just_one]

Only thing worth it of Janet were her great tits, dont know how she is today though