I'd love to know whether that story is actually true.
Some dude hears somebody tell a story about sth 20 years ago, puts it in a blog, and here we are on HN, nobody questioning whether it's actually accurate. Of course Raymond Chen isn't just any random person, but the more important it would be to actually check? I mean, who hasn't heard people tell stories from decades ago, including colleagues reminiscing about the good old times "before y'all were born" only to realize later that it was vastly exaggerated or even outright made up.
Anybody around here with some actual first-hand info or at least another source besides this blog entry? I'd love to hear!
There's a really good video here that shows that it likely happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y3RGeaxksY Rhythm Nation is unique because it uses a nonstandard tuning that shifts the notes to less-used frequencies. The video creator found a paper that studied the resonant frequency of various 2.5 inch laptop hard drives, and found that it matched up with the frequency of the low E note used in Rhythm Nation.
As somebody that actually had development experiences, both PC companies and in the hard drive industry, I posted an upper level post on this. I won't repeat it here, but an awful lot of this sounds apocryphal but some truth behind it.
/* Emits a 7-Hz tone for 10 seconds.
True story: 7 Hz is the resonant
frequency of a chicken's skull cavity.
This was determined empirically in
Australia, where a new factory
generating 7-Hz tones was located too
close to a chicken ranch: When the
factory started up, all the chickens
died.
Your PC may not be able to emit a 7-Hz tone. */
#include
int main(void)
{
sound(7);
delay(10000);
nosound();
return 0;
}
An easier way to generate a 7 Hz tone is to just move your hands back and forth 7 times a second. Either way you won't be able to hear because we can't hear 7 Hz anyway
Weird. Digital recording and mastering was definitely a thing at that time. You’d think they would have been crashing the HDDs of PCs in the recording studios.
I've had a similar case before but for a much more boring reason: a certain YouTube video somehow triggered a spike in power draw and caused my Google Pixel to reset.
Google's response after looking at the crash dumps: "WAI, your battery is degraded" (IIRC my phone was less than 3 years old).
according to this video [0] the frequency was 84.2. that-s not unplausible.
a known problem in cutting vinyl records are sudden bursts of high volume frequencies around 100 hz, that have the potential to make the needle skip with a normal amount of weight on the tone-arm.
For a F1 drive axle the critical resonance frequency is around 2400 rpm. That's why you need to turn it up fast at start over the safe 4000 rpm, and never go down.
Without the ECU you can easily break it by starting too slow
Reminds me of Gödel, Escher, Bach in which there is a phonograph dubbed "Record Player X", which destroys itself by playing a record titled I Cannot Be Played on Record Player X.
34 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 55.9 ms ] threadThank dog for SSDs
Why the weasel words? Does Raymond Chen not know which models? Or is it actually apocryphal.
Some dude hears somebody tell a story about sth 20 years ago, puts it in a blog, and here we are on HN, nobody questioning whether it's actually accurate. Of course Raymond Chen isn't just any random person, but the more important it would be to actually check? I mean, who hasn't heard people tell stories from decades ago, including colleagues reminiscing about the good old times "before y'all were born" only to realize later that it was vastly exaggerated or even outright made up.
Anybody around here with some actual first-hand info or at least another source besides this blog entry? I'd love to hear!
Example (for both functions):
from the comments over there (2002)Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers (2022) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41534483 - Sept 2024 (79 comments)
Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32483211 - Aug 2022 (12 comments)
For resonance the external driving force must match the resonance frequency of the system, but wind is rarely/never purely sinusoidal.
Google's response after looking at the crash dumps: "WAI, your battery is degraded" (IIRC my phone was less than 3 years old).
a known problem in cutting vinyl records are sudden bursts of high volume frequencies around 100 hz, that have the potential to make the needle skip with a normal amount of weight on the tone-arm.
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[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y3RGeaxksY
Without the ECU you can easily break it by starting too slow