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Cats, Dogs Go Hungry as Internet-Connected PetNet Plays Dead

posted by n1 on Saturday July 30 2016, @08:55PM   
from the in-the-dog-house dept.

"exec" writes:

Humans have been forced to temporarily interact with their dogs or cats -- perhaps both -- after PetNet's internet-controlled smart feeder system suffered a blackout.

For $149, the company provides a web-enabled dog/cat feeder that is pre-programmed to dispense food stuffs at certain time and portion sizes.

But PetNet warned customers [...] that all was not well in its virtual animal kingdom as it was "experiencing some minor difficulties with a third party server. This is being investigated."

[...] "You may experience a loss of scheduled feeds and failed remote feedings. Please ensure that your pets have been fed manually until we have resolved this issue."

Source: The Register .

-- submitted from IRC

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Original Submission

• “There Will Come Soft Rains” “There Will Come Soft Rains” (Score: 3, Insightful) by butthurt on Saturday July 30 2016, @09:23PM

  by butthurt (6141) on Saturday July 30 2016, @09:23PM (#382057) Journal

  This reminds me of Ray Bradbury's short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” in which an automated house continued with its housekeeping after its occupants perished.

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• Re:“There Will Come Soft Rains” (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @09:50PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @09:50PM (#382070)

  There Will Come Soft Rains by Bradbury.pdf [google.com]

  Parent

• Re:“There Will Come Soft Rains” (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @10:04PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 30 2016, @10:04PM (#382076)

  There's a Soviet short movie [youtube.com] based on that story. Kinda depressing, but at least the house kept on going. With modern tech it would stop as soon as it lost cloud access.

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• Re:“There Will Come Soft Rains” (Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Sunday July 31 2016, @05:06PM

  by Hyperturtle (2824) on Sunday July 31 2016, @05:06PM (#382320)

  It didn't remind me of that.

  In Ray Bradbury's future, nuclear war killed that family. The house worked. It was self-contained. The dog persisted until it died of complications from radiation, but it's actual feeding needs had been met. Then the cleaning robots swept it away.

  In our future, a virtual server becomes unresponsive and the humans don't notice their pets are starving unless the humans think to check their email for an alert from the robot dispsensor manufacturer.

  Even in Fallout, the Mr. Handy still can walk little Muffy -- or comment on the corpse. In our future... we're doomed if this is our future.

  For the record, X10 stuff doesn't have this drawback.

  Parent