Internet-Connected Pet Feeders Go Down, Leaving Kitties Hungry

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It feels like an impossible task these days to purchase a “dumb” appliance that doesn’t need a constant internet connection and a slew of over-the-air updates — not to mention a completely unnecessary infusion of “AI.”

And while most of the time the consequences of a broken update or server downtime are trivial, the stakes are considerably higher when it comes to feeding our pets.

As The Verge reports, cat owners were horrified when they realized that their expensive smart pet feeders from the company Petlibro started missing feeding schedules due to an outage that started on August 11.

“Feeder still offline, scheduled feedings do NOT work despite company claims,” one disgruntled Reddit user wrote in an August 12 post after Petlibro claimed that service had been “restored.”

It’s a particularly precarious issue for owners who aren’t home when the feeders dispense food — a core demographic for the tech.

“I am on vacation and cannot tell if my cats are being fed or not,” another user wrote. “One device will be online while the other is not and vice versa.”

In a statement to The Verge, Petlibro CEO York Wu argued that scheduled feedings “are programmed directly onto the device and should continue to run as scheduled without an internet command.”

However, he admitted that the company was “aware of reports from some customers whose devices did not behave as expected.”

In an August 15 update, Wu addressed the company’s disgruntled customers directly, arguing that Petlibro will “continue to hold ourselves to a high standard and are committed to learning from this situation.”

Wu said that the company was investigating “primary” and “secondary issues” that were caused by the outage” while promising to scale up its customer support team.

But users weren’t exactly impressed, accusing the company of trying to downplay the severity of the situation.

“Nothing about moving schedules offline and locally,” one Reddit user responded. “Just a bunch of PR speak.”

“No where have I seen Petlibro state that this incident was unacceptable to pet owners,” another wrote. “Just an inconvenience. They are really understating the severity of the trouble they caused to their users.”

The incident certainly highlights the many pain points of forcing internet connection-dependent services on consumers often against their will. It’s a frustrating aspect of living in a society where even ovens and washing machines apparently need to be Wi-Fi connected for some reason.

“So frustrating, I could’ve been away for the day and my cat wouldn’t have any food because of this,” one disgruntled cat owner wrote. “Now I need to put up a camera or something to make sure this doesn’t happen again. They won’t even send us an email telling us about the outage, I have to come to Reddit every time.”

More on internet connected devices: Everything Is Smart In The Future, Even The Freakin’ Walls

The post Internet-Connected Pet Feeders Go Down, Leaving Kitties Hungry appeared first on Futurism.

IN the summer of 2019, I was seated in the wine cellar of a walled Medieval town high above the Dordogne Valley of France, not far from Sarlat-la-Canéda, making phone calls, writing reports. I have given this story in other places and it appears as though you’re about to hear it again. Rob Skiba is a name you that you might be familiar with. Though he had made a name for himself as a Nephilim researcher, more recently Rob had taken a dive into the deep end of the pool via flat earth research. The recorded interviews I conducted between he and Rick Hummer, a fellow flat earth investigator and close friend of his, was published while still occupying that very wine cellar. Read all about it. Chicago Is Not a Mirage.

Word quickly spread. Within a few short weeks, dozens of flat earth researchers began accepting my invite for a private interview, if not a series of interviews. From a 17th-century tower built by King Louis XIV, and with a stunning view of the Alps, I sat down with Robbie Davidson, founder of the Flat Earth International Conferences, conducting multiple sessions. While staying in Dumfries, Scotland, David Weiss agreed to take part in the interviews, as did Bob Knodel of Globebusters. There were others. But when I asked the interviewees to discuss the moments that shaped their lives, among the many PSYOPs, false flag attacks, and hoaxes that were discussed, only these men committed commentary to the false 9/11 narrative.

The resulting recordings ballooned into The Unexpected Cosmology, a book which became a website and was even intended as an anthology. And of course, the following discourse was originally a chapter. It was Walt Disney who stated, “Disneyland will never be completed. It will continue to grow as long as there is imagination left in the world.” Those sentiments remain applicable here as well. American Sensationalism: The 9/11 Interviews was always intended to be expanded upon with the inclusion of new researchers. So I’m sorry to say the project became stagnant during the Covid-19 psychodrama. I took a break to tackle other projects. We lost Rob Skiba. Rob offered hours of private conversation regarding his life but we never got around to the big one. 9/11. It was in the cards. Sadly, Bob Knodel died soon afterwards. Voices are being squeezed from an entire generation. Gnosis passes with them.

In the aftermath, the FE community became fractured. People began going their separate ways. Robbie Davidson, among a noted few others who were interviewed for the project, got up and left the movement altogether. It is not my intent to erase his or the contributions of others if only brief. They came, they went, their testimonies remain.

The original vision may have hit roadblocks but it is not forgotten. I expanded this paper a few years later to include testimony from author Pauly Hart, a dear friend of mine. I had wanted to continue that trend every year thereafter but you know how it goes. For the 25th anniversary of the attack I have redirected my efforts to its first large scale expansion, including Andrew Hoy and Darrin Geisinger into the mix. Perhaps others will lend their experiences to the recorder in time.

The following is their report.

Read the 9/11 Interviews

Watch the Interviews