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56 | NewScientist | 6 July2013 FEEDBACK AN ARTICLE about the world’s top 500 supercomputers on The Inquirer website informed reader George Neil: “The Chinese National University of Defence Technology houses the 3.12 million core Tianhe-2 cluster, which has 1 petabyte of RAM, uses a proprietary interconnect dubbed the TH Express 2 and consumes 17.8 GWatt [gigawatts] of electricity.” It was still saying this at the time of writing. “Wow! That’s a computer!” George comments. Readers puzzled by his reaction may like to know that, in round numbers, the total UK peak electricity demand is 60GW on behalf of a population of 60 million people – so London, with 8 million, could be expected to have a peak demand of 8GW, less than half of the stated consumption of the Tianhe-2 cluster. Or, to put it another way, a European electric kettle uses a shade over 3kW, so 17.8 GW would be the equivalent of 6 million kettles. We do not have the figures for the equivalent in blue whales. Georgina Seaman sends us a photo, taken on a road near Newbury in the English countryside, of a sign that says: “Access to Wasing’s secret walled garden 350 yards” THE spirit of “artistic” product reviews is spreading more widely than websites offering gadgets like banana slicers and books about “huge ships” (11 May). Clint Blight stumbled across a site where you can download the Samsung Push Service app for the company’s mobile devices that run the Android operating system. When we looked there were 42,935 reviews of the app, giving an average rating of 4.3 stars out of 5. Clint’s favourite, beyond those asserting the obvious benefits of the app in helping achieve world peace, is the one that states that it made a user’s dreams of becoming a carrot come true. And here we were at the curmudgeonly, unimaginative Feedback desk, thinking it was merely the most mundane of apps, allowing messages to pop up on a screen. WITHIN days of our item about a one-dimensional parcel appearing online, six readers wrote to chastise us (8 June). Tim Walker had been puzzled at myhermes.co.uk specifying “max volume up to 225cm” – but the readers point out that it is traditional for postal services to specify an “index” of maximum volume in units of length. You take the longest dimension of the parcel and add to it double the width and the height. Mark Dowson suggests this is a measure of “the difficulty of handling and packing the parcel” and River Att has a plausible detailed explanation: it “originates with the need to fit the parcel into a standard sized postal sack”. We still find it a bit odd and pedantic. We are reminded of a very, very boring afternoon reading the old UK Post Office Guide and wondering why it was forbidden to send “quinine coloured pink” to India. THE title of the sign William Pedder photographed at the Caledonian hotel in Edinburgh, UK, is “Abeille Royale Wrinkle Correcting Facial”. The sign invites hotel guests to “Initiate your face to the high performance of this ‘expert’ lifting and firming treatment that distils its infinite life force within the skin for a smoother and firmer face. £150.” William’s internet investigations revealed that Abeille Royale is royal Jelly from bees, but he failed to find anything to explain the mysterious claims made for it on the sign. SPURRED on by Feedback’s reference to announcements by disembodied voices on London’s Underground (8 June), Jonathan Singer tells us of one he heard at the city’s Victoria main-line station: “Customers,” the voice began (“we were once called ‘passengers’,” Jonathan laments) “are warned that unofficial pickpockets are operating on the station.” “Does this mean there’s a course they can take to legitimise the profession?” Jonathan wonders. CONGRATULATIONS to Ben Buckton for achieving a truly stupendous performance while training for the recent London Revolution cycle ride. His son Sam sends a screen-shot from a smartphone app that records Ben cycling 2.4 kilometres at 882.3 kilometres per hour. Feedback is wondering whether the app would work for buses. Sam is more concerned that the device will be “considered as illegal as performance-enhancing drugs”. OUR item about missing hyphens, featuring “Anti-skin ageing sun cream” (15 June), reminded Peter Groome of a conference advertised on the UK Ministry of Justice intranet recently on the subject of “Anti-people trafficking”. FINALLY, Bob Seymour sends us a picture of a notice on a hydrofoil sailing between Sorrento and Capri. The notice details the “Assistant Procedures for persons of reduced mobility” travelling on the boat. It assures passengers that “the persons with reduced mobility will be received by personnel designed by the master”. “Aren’t we all?” Bob muses. You can send stories to Feedback by email at [email protected]. Please include your home address. This week’s and past Feedbacks can be seen on our website. For more feedback, visit newscientist.com/feedback PAUL MCDEVITT
