Not The Onion

22271 readers

920 users here now

Welcome

We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!

The Rules

Posts must be:

Links to news stories from...
...credible sources, with...
...their original headlines, that...
...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”

Please also avoid duplicates.

Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, ableist, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.

And that’s basically it!

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

kescusay@lemmy.world

133

Pet owners say smart pet feeder outage led to furry ones going unfed (arstechnica.com)

submitted 3 days ago by slaacaa@lemmy.world to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/c/technology@lemmy.world/p/902391/pet-owners-say-smart-pet-feeder-outage-led-to-furry-ones-going-unfed

This feels like bad design

Smart pet-feeder company Petlibro suffered an outage on Tuesday, giving users a harsh reminder of the risks of relying on smart devices.

Petlibro makes pet feeders that connect to Wi-Fi and, for setup with Petlibro’s mobile companion app, Bluetooth. Users can set the feeders to automatically dispense food at scheduled times, which is handy for pet care when the owner is out of the home.

In a statement to The Verge, Petlibro CEO York Wu said this week’s outage was “related to how the Petlibro app communicates with devices through its online servers.”

Some user reports have also conflicted with Petlibro’s claims about offline functionality. As The Verge pointed out, various users online claimed that during the outage, their devices did not perform any scheduled feedings, performed some feedings but not others, or performed feedings late (examples here, here, here, here, and here).

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] aldhissla@piefed.world 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Took me two takes with that title.

Yea, pet animals going unfed is bad...

Morons with their cloud-everything...

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago (2 children)

This is something that literally needs no internet connection.

Just a simple electric motor and a mechanical timer.

We've had this technology for a long time.

We don't need the fucking internet and smart screens and wifi shoved into every goddamn thing.

When will idiots learn that does not provide convenience, it just provides justification to charge you 200 dollars for a 20 dollar item.

[–] daannii@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Only reason they run this through their servers is because they are selling that data.

No reason why this setting couldn't be contained in the feeder itself.

Many have backup batteries to prevent this very situation.

[–] ThePunnyMan@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 days ago

Hell, if you want it connected to the Internet to adjust the schedule on the fly or to report when food is low or an error has occured that's fine. I could see that being useful. Why on earth would you make it so the actual timer functionality isn't local?

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago

or if the company goes under, adn the feeder becomes useless.