Microsoft engineer Raymond Chen told an interesting story about “mystical” breakdowns on the company’s blog
What happened?
So, one large computer manufacturerdiscovered that the 1989 Rhythm Nation song sung by Janet Jackson contains a frequency that matches the resonant frequency of a laptop hard drive. As a result, when playing it, laptops with Windows XP failed. Moreover, there were cases when not only the laptop on which the song was played broke down, but also devices located in the hearing zone.
Initially, the manufacturer could not understand thatwhat is happening and what the “mysticism” is about. As a result, no one is recalling the drives—the company simply added a special filter that detected and removed unwanted frequencies during audio playback.
Unfortunately, Chen does not specify who the manufacturer of laptops and hard drives is. He only noted that the failure extended to some drives with a rotation speed of 5400 rpm.
By the way, here is that same Rhythm Nation song: