Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
PlantGPT
There are some things Feedback just isn鈥檛 good at, and one of them is plant care. Whatever鈥檚 the opposite of a green thumb (a red toe?), that is what we have. Plants wither and die under our ministrations, and we aren鈥檛 alone in this: Mrs Feedback is, if anything, even worse, to the point where she once managed to kill a house cactus.
Hence, there was great rejoicing in the Feedback household when executive editor Timothy Revell sent us a press release about PlantSenso, 鈥渁 gamified plant companion that transforms indoor greenery into an intelligent, interactive journey by giving nature a personality and voice through generative AI鈥�.
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O frabjous day, we thought. A solution is at hand: finally our plants will live. And so we read on.
is a plastic gizmo with a little screen on the front. You insert it into the soil of a plant pot, whereupon it monitors light, moisture and temperature. This raw data is then displayed on the screen through the medium of an animated critter that looks like a reject from Animal Crossing or 笔辞办茅尘辞苍. Readers old enough to remember the original Tamagotchi, or retro enough to still own one, may also experience a spark of recognition. If the plant is struggling, the PlantSenso animal will alert its owner, who can then intervene.
For instance, if the plant has been overwatered, the onscreen critter will be seen bobbing around in floodwater. If it isn鈥檛 getting enough light, its environment becomes glumly crepuscular.
The press release explains the overall vision: 鈥淒esigned specifically for plant beginners, Gen Z, and millennial families, PlantSenso replaces complex charts, technical parameters, and soil percentages with an intuitive, low-learning-curve visual experience. Instead of managing plants like a care chore, PlantSenso turns standard potted plants into emotionally connected digital pets, making plant care completely stress-free, fun, and highly giftable.鈥�
We discussed PlantSenso with Mrs Feedback and she made the distressingly valid point that, over the years, we have supported our plant-care efforts by purchasing expert books, reading online guides, setting routines, trying to rope in Feedback Jr (prompting much eye-rolling) and even creating online reminders. None of these got through to us for more than a few weeks, and she suspected PlantSenso would be the same. We might get her one for Christmas.
翱迟迟补飞补蝉苍鈥檛
Reader Kim Brooks was seeking information about , a gathering of fans of comic books, science fiction and other fun things, which is being held in Canada鈥檚 capital city from 11 to 13 September. She proceeded to the search engine DuckDuckGo, only to be met with a strange assertion. Ottawa Comiccon, according to the AI summary at the top of the page, was a 鈥淢ulti-genre fan convention in the United States鈥�.
Feedback would never just believe a story like this, even with the screenshot that Kim helpfully supplied, so we plugged 鈥淥ttawa Comiccon鈥� into DuckDuckGo and got exactly the same thing.
To be fair to DuckDuckGo, there are places in Illinois, Kansas and other US states called Ottawa. But the AI summary included a link to the actual convention website, which is explicitly Canadian, with an Ontario address at the bottom. This is exactly the sort of thing one might want an intelligent system to be able to figure out.
However, Kim offers an alternative explanation, beyond mere AI tomfoolery: 鈥淧erhaps I have simply missed an annexation decree.鈥�
Abbrev
Lately, we have been collecting examples of names that have been unfortunately truncated by social media and other modern afflictions, such as the Stroke Association being deprived of its -ociation (15 August) and a quality assurance manager being similarly offensively abbreviated (29 August).
On this note, we have a story sent in by Steve Powell. Steve wasn鈥檛 able to confirm it and our attempt also failed, as we will explain, but we like it, so what the heck.
Decades ago, Steve was told a story about 鈥渢he late great Christopher Strachey鈥�, a computer scientist who, among many other things, created one of the first video games. 鈥淎pparently some periodical (it could have been Computer Weekly), in the 1970s, received a complaining letter about computer-typed correspondence always truncating their name,鈥� says Steve. 鈥淭his complainant firmly blamed the computer. In response to this Christopher wrote a letter (which was, I believe, printed, though I cannot find a reference to it online).鈥�
At this point, Feedback will cut in with a reminder that we, too, could not confirm this. Computer Weekly鈥榮 online archive extends only as far back as 2000, and while Strachey鈥檚 papers are preserved by the Bodleian Library in Oxford, UK, Feedback was unable to find the letter Steve refers to in its online database. So take the following with a pinch of salt.
Strachey鈥檚 letter apparently argued that the computer shouldn鈥檛 be blamed for truncating the name. 鈥淭he fault lies entirely with the programmer that did not allow for names longer than a fixed amount. I myself suffer from this affliction receiving letters addressed to STRACHEY, CHRIST: a title to which, I need hardly add, I do not aspire.鈥�
Feedback really wants this to be true. Can anyone, perhaps a hoarder of old computing magazines, shed some light on it?
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