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.”
