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
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Snotnose on Sunday July 31 2016, @12:57AM
First off, I enjoy feeding my cat. She wraps herself around my legs while I open the can, wash out her dish, dump tasty goodness into the now clean dish, and gives a heartwarming meow when I put the dish on the floor.
The only time I would use this kind of service is when I went on a trip. Face it, finding someone to care for your cat for a few days is a pain. Let the litter box go 3-4 days? Probably ok. Water for 3-4 days? Use a nice big bowl and leave the toilet seat up. Dry food? Iffy. There are 2 kinds of cats. One will eat what it needs and walk away. The other will eat what it can, then sleep by the food bowl, repeat until 3 days of food is gone in 3 hours. Wet food? After 30 minutes the cat won't touch it.
If I used this overpriced device, went away for 3 days, came home to a starving cat due to 3 days of no food I not only would toss the thing into the dumpster, I'd sue the fuckers that made my cat suffer due to their sheer incompetence.
Bad decisions, great stories
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Francis on Sunday July 31 2016, @02:07AM
I always think it's funny the amount of money that people will spend to avoid their pets. They'll pay somebody to walk the dog, pay somebody to feed the dog and then pay for the dog to be put up when they're on vacation. Which makes me wonder why they even have a dog in the first place if they're literally the only ones not having any involvement with "their" dog.