this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
316 points (98.5% liked)

Technology

87598 readers
3730 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
316
Pet owners say smart pet feeder outage led to furry ones going unfed (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 week ago by new_otters_raft@piefed.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
124 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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
[–] Kintarian@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago (10 children)

What’s wrong with a ficking bowl?

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 week ago (7 children)

Cats greed-stuffing until they barf. My orange one killed a roomba that way.

[–] starlinguk@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I've had cats all my life and never had one that couldn't have a bowl of food out at all times. Throwing up doesn't mean they eat too much, just that they eat too fast, like, yanno, when they think they're going to be starving until the next meal.

[–] Snoopey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I've got 3 cats, one who wouldn't hesitate to eat the food of all 3. Very difficult to manage as the other two only nibble away slowly at their food. Solution I can't up with is 3 RFID feeders that only open for the right cat, works great. I'm trying to figure out if I can emulate the online server portion of the stack to remove the cloud requirement.

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (7 replies)