Janet Jackson had the power to crash laptop computers (2022)

Storage media reliability and “spinning rust”

• Discussion branches into HDD vs SSD reliability, especially for long‑term offline storage.
• Several comments claim HDDs, if stored well and not used, can retain data for decades and even be partially recoverable after mechanical issues; SSDs and flash are said to risk silent data loss if left unpowered for long periods.
• Others clarify that SSD “unpowered retention” is usually ≥1 year after the full write endurance is exhausted; cited torture tests found only tiny corruption after far exceeding spec, so the risk is framed as real but “extremely minor” for normal users.
• HDD magnetic domains weaken over time, but error correction adds a large safety margin, so practical corruption appears much later than raw decay suggests.
• Optical media are discussed: CD‑ROM vs CD‑R/RW, M‑Disc marketing claims, and the reality of media degradation over years.
• Overall message: no medium is perfect; periodic refresh and multiple backups are more important than HDD vs SSD tribalism.

Resonance, vibration, and the Rhythm Nation bug

• Many see the Janet Jackson story as an example of mechanical resonance in 2.5" laptop HDDs driven by specific audio frequencies, analogous to known issues where sound or vibration degrades disk I/O.
• Links are shared to demos of shouting at storage servers and Apple’s similar anecdotes; some note a video that matches a note in the song to measured resonant frequencies of certain laptop drives.
• There is curiosity about mechanism (audio vs video, EMI vs vibration), but consensus that audio‑induced head/disk resonance is at least plausible.

Authenticity, folklore, and naming

• Some question whether the story is accurately remembered or partly apocryphal, given it’s second‑hand and decades old.
• Others defend it as credible engineering lore and cite similar “weird bug” experiences where the exact cause was never fully understood.
• The blog’s deliberate choice not to name the OEM is seen by some as principled (teaching, not shaming) and by others as limiting verifiability and deeper investigation.

Sound myths, infrasound, and physics tangents

• A famous “7 Hz kills chickens” anecdote is brought up and then dismissed via skeptical analysis: 7 Hz wavelengths are far too large to couple meaningfully to a chicken’s skull.
• Extended discussion covers how hard it is to generate clean sub‑10 Hz tones with conventional speakers, marketing vs real capabilities, and comparison to pipe organ low notes.
• Related corrections include the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsing from aeroelastic flutter, not simple resonance, and broader musings on mechanical resonance in engineering (e.g., F1 axles, vinyl cutting).