Latest news with #Lorelei
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Turns out Janet Jackson's laptop-crashing cursed bassline was the scourge of notebook makers for at least half a decade
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. In a recent campaign of TTRPG City of Mist, I played a world-weary lounge singer increasingly finding the watery despair captured in the poem Lorelei was sending unwelcome ripples through her life. Perhaps needless to say, the idea of a songstress who harbours a voice with devastating power is a creative idea I find extremely compelling. So when I caught wind of a song with the power to crash laptops, I knew I had to dive deeper. It sounds like an urban legend but for years vendors of certain laptop models would quake in fear over a particular melody: Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson. Once upon a time, playing this 1989 banger through certain laptop speakers wouldn't just crash that specific laptop, but could also temporarily compromise nearby laptops from different manufacturers within shoulder-shimmying, head-bobbing distance. Jacob wrote about it when this bizarre tech vulnerability first came to light, but now we know that this absolute belter was a cursed melody to some laptop vendors for half a decade (via PC World). The story originally surfaced second-hand in a 2022 blog post from Raymond Chen, explaining that after a great deal of testing, the cause of the crashes was isolated to the sound of the song itself. It turns out 1989's Rhythm Nation harbours the resonant frequency for components within 5,400 RPM hard drives, causing the moving parts of the hard drive to vibrate in arcs that would gradually sweep wider than intended. Ultimately, sustained exposure to the resonant frequency created enough read errors to crash some laptops' operating systems—David Plummer, another Microsoft alumnus, breaks down how this works in his own retelling of the story. As for what specific part of the song is doing the laptop crashing, Chen's follow-up post points to a brilliant musical analysis by Adam Neely; to summarise in a few words from someone who is definitely not a music theorist, Rhythm Nation's bassline is just that powerful, with a resonant peak of about 84.2 Hz. Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) describes the issue as affecting laptops and PCs from "approximately 2005 and later." To combat it, Microsoft wrote some Digital Signal Processor code to effectively filter out the offending frequencies on Windows XP machines. To be clear, this wasn't a bit of code specifically targeting Jackson's optimistic bop about the uniting power of music, but a notch filter intended to prevent speakers from playing all instances of the laptop crashing resonant frequency. So, how long was that bit of code in effect? Well, Chen wrote one more followup blog this month that revealed the filter was still present until at least the launch of Windows 7 in 2009. At this time, Microsoft imposed a new rule requiring that users must have the option to disable Audio Processing Objects (APOs)—like the aforementioned frequency filtering code. That's about half a decade of Microsoft and laptop vendors attempting to circumvent Rhythm Nation-induced crashes. The vendor of the primarily affected laptops applied for an exception, fearing that the bounce back of the bass might not just physically damage their products but also their reputation. On these grounds, the exemption was granted—meaning that out there somewhere a vendor of HDD laptops may still be haunted by the incredible bassline of Rhythm Nation. Best SSD for gaming: The best speedy storage today. Best NVMe SSD: Compact M.2 drives. Best external hard drive: Huge capacities for less. Best external SSD: Plug-in storage upgrades.
Telegraph
27-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
The stories behind some of the world's weirdest motorways
In the first half of the 20th century, motorways – also known as expressways or, more generally, controlled-access highways – were heralded as utopian. They were the embodiment of progress, launched with huge parades, decked in Art Deco ornament and applauded by a jubilant press. The optimism would not last long. All too soon, around the world, such gigantic roads would become symbols of dystopian urban planning from above, wounds inflicted upon cities, mechanised floods tearing communities apart: as Richard J Williams puts it, they were seen as 'an everyday form of devastation'. The Expressway World challenges this binary. Williams, professor of contemporary visual culture at the University of Edinburgh, points out the self-deception and absolutism in this Manichean way of seeing the built environment. Instead, he views these roads more soberly, as attempts to solve a traffic crisis, the evolution of which branched off into divergent paths. In doing so, he makes a compelling case for truths that lie beyond exaltation or condemnation. Each chapter focuses on a different place, approach and outcome: the West Side Highway in New York, the Samil Elevated Highway in Seoul, the Minhocão in São Paulo and so on. (The last of these is named after a worm-like folkloric beast.) While his book is notionally centred on automobile infrastructure, Williams effectively creates a portrait of the rise and fall of modernist urbanism. A great deal of its charm lies in returning to the delusionally halcyon days when architectural critics, in this case Reyner Banham, could herald an interchange as a 'work of art'. Still, given the architectural torpidity and piety of our contemporary age, the megalomania on display here has a certain villainous charisma. For instance, in celebrating the elevated panoramic view over the Hudson that New York motorists would enjoy, the notorious urban planner Robert Moses claimed that 'by comparison, the castled Rhine with its Lorelei is a mere trickle.' Moses's egocentric ambition was exceeded only by Paul Rudolph's gargantuan proposal for Lomex (Lower Manhattan Expressway), which Williams dubs 'Futurism meets the Death Star'; it's still a stunning vision and, if it falls absurdly short of its inspirations, which included the Parthenon and Chartres Cathedral, the audacity is easy to admire. Thankfully, given it would have involved mass evictions and bulldozing swathes of SoHo and Little Italy, Rudolph's Bladerunner-esque design remained a series of unbuilt renderings. The car was both an object of desire and a tool of democratisation, and the motorway was its apotheosis. Even now, hit one at the right speed and hour and you can still feel, in Banham's words, it's 'the nearest thing to flight on four wheels'. But as these monumental roads spread via government planning, from Fascist autostrada and Autobahn to the American post-war building boom, 'autogeddon' followed. Expressways went from panacea to poison. All the initial hyperbole flipped to denunciations. They were a no-man's-land, embedded with structural violence, so grievous that their very existence put 'civilised life at stake'. Today, they're seen by critics as a necessary evil at best, though the photogenic brutalist retrofuturism of their bridges and service stations continue to attract admirers. Williams is a scholarly guide: literary, artistic and cinematic references abound. But his strength is his aversion to histrionics. He acknowledges the 'severed neighbourhood[s]', displaced citizenry, race and class issues, pollution and noise that many controlled-access highways caused in urban areas. He quotes from jeremiads, and charts various 'occupations', including the artistic festivals that flourished on the Minhocão. Yet he resists easy partisan positions, and his resolute critical eye makes him something of a gadfly. This is why The Expressway World, which could have been arid or marginal, has a zing to it. For instance, rather than settling for the monstrous caricature of popular lore (The Spectator labelled him 'the psychopath who wrecked New York'), William argues that Robert Moses was motivated by his own admittedly twisted conception of progress; and while admiring Jane Jacobs's ardent work in opposing the New York expressways and preserving neighbourhoods, Williams rejects her latter-day sainthood, contending that the clashes were, partly, 'one set of privileged actors battling another'. Though he is by no means contrarian, Williams can be commendably sacrilegious. His scepticism towards artwashing and performative politics is timely, especially on how both can reinforce the social inequalities they feign to oppose. At the same time, he acts as a Devil's advocate for London's Ballardian Westway, which has had few defenders from the beginning (there were over 20,000 objections filed to the Greater London Council at the time regarding their motorway plans): he claims that, for all its ills, it 'brought new possibilities the old city lacked'. Formerly the site of slum tenements, he argues 'the Westway became a carnivalesque space […] in which a certain amount of bounded disorder was possible'. Whether this ideal of 'bounded disorder' can survive either gentrification or deprivation remains to be seen. William's strongest argument comes in the chapter on the Cheonggyecheon redevelopment in Seoul, where a seven-mile-long elevated motorway, running through downtown Seoul since 1976, was replaced with a riverine space that is, if its global press coverage to be believed, the best thing since Arcadia. 'It's hard to imagine,' Williams retorts, 'a more controlled space outside of an airport or prison.' As he points out, Cheonggyecheon has simply exchanged one form of authority for another, one that has greenery instead of concrete and tarmac, while continuing to consist of 'constant exhortations to behave in approved ways', predicated on 'surveillance and the pressure to spend money'. The Expressway World is a discerning study of fantasy and erasure. Twenty-first-century urbanism, after all, has become a realm dominated by mythic or near-Biblical thinking, in which the automobile is sinful, the environment (or rather 'simulated nature') is Edenic, and the expressway a convenient scapegoat for modernity's ills. In truth, these roads are just another arena for competing centres of power, their visions and blindnesses. Until that is recognised, we'll be vulnerable to the comforts and temptations of ancient fantasies and those selling them; and for all the talk of the future, society will be hurtling forwards with its eyes firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror.
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 review – reality-bending daftness
The haunted house has become a ripe location in which to set weird video games. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, Blue Prince, Botany Manor and Layers of Fear spring to mind. The manor as a site of danger, supernatural peril, untrustworthy architecture – perfect, surely, for an unsettling experience. Or even a silly experience in unsettling surroundings. Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 promises much in its title. It presents initially as a high-concept dinosaur-hunting adventure in spooky house run by a sinister old mogul, then quickly reveals to the player that it knows it is a video game. A broken video game, that is, and it is up to us to patch it as we go. The player explores the mansion through text and puzzle vignettes, pushing the limits on every scenario in the hopes of finding bugs and glitches, ultimately in the hope of defying the wishes of the unseen developers and 'finishing' the game themself. This is a big concept, but the game seems to be interested in telling us its ideas rather than showing them to us – or demonstrating them within the play itself. The combat system through which our butch, confused protagonist operates is a clever little game of match three, the rules of which bend and flex depending on what he is fighting. Sometimes it is a dinosaur with a gun. Sometimes it is a tripwire, sometimes it is a legion of clones – sometimes his own clone. Sometimes it is talking vegetables. Sometimes a dinosaur in a wig. The silliness is one note and becomes flat quickly, saved only by the pleasing nature of the puzzles. Still, in order to have an effective game of match three – or, frankly, Candy Crush – you have to use high-contrast colours to make it kinder on the player. There were rounds when I played in which the symbols were really difficult to differentiate, which interrupted the otherwise pleasing flow. This visual issue is not limited to the puzzles: the entire colour palette of this game is muddy. It neither commits to the gothic nor leans full chaos. The same issues applies to the text. The game is text based, but the dialogue and descriptive writing are as muddy as the visuals. The jokes are fine, though they aim to be subversive and shocking (dinosaur romance being a recurring gag). However, the game being about gameplay and game development means that much of the descriptions are couched in jargon. Discussions of files and version history are beyond inside baseball. So if you are a seasoned enough gamer to be up to speed with the meta language, surely you don't need swearwords to be starred out. Surely we were all laughing at dinosaur romance five years ago. The writing is so close to great. It just needed to be sharper. The art style is sketchy, but not in a way that evokes a deliberate aesthetic. There are times in which reality is said, by the text, to be bending and glitching. There are moments in which we disappear into voids and exit the world. There is even a somewhat climactic moment in which we enter the internet. Still, the visuals pull their punches. These strange occurrences can be evoked with drawings and don't require flashy graphics. I recognise the illustrative style is deliberate but the game would have been better served by even a little more playfulness, or even intentionality, in the art style. Two moments did make me laugh – one involving some unexpected clowns, the other, pets – when the visual style actually did move into the meta and demonstrate some of what the game tells us it is about. I wanted to love this game. On paper it is outrageous. Strange Scaffold, the developer, is known for the weird – notably Clickholding, which is sinister, experimental and truly queries what a game is in its execution (there is a lot of clicking, and being watched in the action of clicking). Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 certainly is creepy, and set in a mansion, and does have dinosaurs and some really satisfying puzzles. It also has some great ideas and isn't quite a failed experiment. While it doesn't bend reality in the way that it seems to want to, it aims high, and if the player can manage the places where the aesthetic falls short, they'll have a great time. They might even meet a nice, blond dinosaur they can take home with them. Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 is out now, £15.99
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Wichita Falls first female Cub Scout earns Eagle Scout rank
WICHITA FALLS (KFDX/KJTL) — On August 30, 2018, Lorelei Mitchell was the first girl to join the Northwest Texas Council as a Cub Scout. On January 23, 2025, she earned the rank of Eagle Scout. 'My dad also tells this story a lot,' Lorelei said. 'When he said, 'Do you want to be a Cub Scout? Do you want to join Boy Scouts?' I was like; I want to be an Eagle Scout like you and my fathers, my grandfathers and my uncles before me.' River Bend Nature Center invites the public to Sip'N Science featuring John Cameron Her dad, Michael Mitchell, played a pivotal role in her scouting advancement. Their shared experiences are, in part, what the scouting movement is all about. 'You talk about a bonding experience. I mean, lots of people have a tough time figuring out what to bond with their kids over,' Mitchell said. 'We don't have that problem. We got scouting.' One bonding experience kickstarted Lorelei's scouting career after failing her swimming merit badge at her first summer camp. She tried again at the end of the week, and her dad was right there. 'She gets to the end, and I said, 'Well, show me how you float. I know you're not very good at it, but show me how you float,'' Mitchell said. 'So, she does it, and then she gets up, and she said, 'Do you think I can test for my Swimming badge now?' And I said you just did.' From that moment on, Lorelei's journey continued. Years of merit badges, camping trips, and leadership led to Lorelei earning the Eagle Scout rank. 'I've made it to the top of the mountain. It's going to follow me forever now,' Lorelei said. 'I'm always going to be an Eagle Scout, and I'm always going to act like it because I know now what it means to be an Eagle Scout, how much work I had to put into this.' Though Lorelei reached the top of this mountain, the Eagle Scout rank will be with her while she climbs many more. Close Thanks for signing up! Watch for us in your inbox. Subscribe Now Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
