After Prolonged Service Outage, Petnet Shuts Down, Citing Coronavirus (arstechnica.com) 66
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Cloud-connected, "smart" automated pet-feeder system Petnet has had a rough spring. The service not only went offline in February, but all its customer service vanished, too, leaving users in the dark until the company apologized and pushed a patch more than a week later. The service briefly returned for some users but fell off again in March. Now, after weeks of silence, the company is blaming COVID-19 for driving it offline for good -- even though its problems started weeks or months before the novel coronavirus became a significant concern.
Several Petnet customers began reaching out to Ars during the second and third weeks of April to report that, once again, not only were their feeders not working, but also they couldn't reach anyone at Petnet about it. Everyone's feeders didn't go offline at the same time but seemed to fail in slow sequence over the period between March 26 and April 13. The company emailed its customers on March 26, blaming the novel coronavirus for outages and delays. The message to customers listed the same email (support@petnet.io) and Twitter (@petnetiosupport) handles the company has always used, but every reader who wrote to Ars said they were unable to receive support through either.
Several Petnet customers began reaching out to Ars during the second and third weeks of April to report that, once again, not only were their feeders not working, but also they couldn't reach anyone at Petnet about it. Everyone's feeders didn't go offline at the same time but seemed to fail in slow sequence over the period between March 26 and April 13. The company emailed its customers on March 26, blaming the novel coronavirus for outages and delays. The message to customers listed the same email (support@petnet.io) and Twitter (@petnetiosupport) handles the company has always used, but every reader who wrote to Ars said they were unable to receive support through either.
Aren't pets supposed to be companions? (Score:5, Informative)
If you feed your pet via cloud server then you're doing it wrong.
Well... (Score:2)
If you feed your pet via cloud server then you're doing it wrong.
If your "companion" insists on getting food at 5am every morning, you too will quickly desire to find some way to feed them that does not require you to be awake.
Myself, I solved that with a dirt-simple physical timer box that opens when a timer runs down.
When we travel we hire a cat sitter to come by a few times a day to feed the cats, but I can see where someone could maybe not afford that and if they were going to be gone longer than a day
Cats need exercise too (Score:1)
You can't be serious. A few times a day? Your cats must be pretty fat.
Yes, I am serious, and the reasons the cats are not fat is because we play with them several times a day, as does the cat sitter when they come by.
Cats are supposedly aloof creates but all of the ones I've ever had need contact as much as any other animal to reman happy and healthy.
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The real problem with his statement is that he has someone else doing it for him. If he can't be bothered to take care of his own cats, then he obviously doesn't give a shit about them and should not have them in the first place.
Wait, so you are telling me that when you go on vacation, you come home a couple times a day to feed them yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it? Doesn't seem like much of a vacation.
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Cans of food? Purina dry food gives them all the nutrition they need and doesn't tempt them to grossly overeat. As long as the bowl was high enough the beagle couldn't get to it we never had to feed more than once a day.
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If you're feeding your pet Purina Anything, you're a right cunt. Stick a fucking crowbar in your wallet and buy them some quality food. No shit your pets aren't overweight.. You don't pig out on food that tastes like shit.
My grandfather started feeding his kennel of beagles Purina dog chow in the 1950s, our entire family has fed only dog chow and we've never had any reason to complain. Our oldest dog is 16,our beagle reached 18, one of my sister's dogs made it to 19. We've never had a dog turn up it's nose at it, face it, dogs eat cat poop and drunk's vomit. Frequently we cook up slops from leftovers, fats and bones, some rice or corn, and toss a scoop of it in with their food, but they eat their dog chow just as enthusia
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Dogs aren't cats.
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Our cat ate only Purina Cat Chow and an occasional piece of cheese or some tuna oil. He was 17 when we finally had him put to sleep.
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Depends on the dry food. We fed ours Purina for 17 years without any issue. Fill the bowl in the morning, make sure it's not close enough to the edge of the counter that the beagle could get to it, and that's all it took.
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Agreed, good quality cat food (wet or dry) is very high meat content and not padded with carbs.
Although I don't get the whole 5am feeding thing. Mine were rapidly and easily trained to wait until I got out of bed before they got fed, and sitting on me only helps with that if I'm pondering whether to get up at 10am.
Re:Well...get the right dry food (Score:1)
Look at the analysis and skip anything below 1% like vitamins etc.
add up the numbers and subtract from 100, the remainder is CARBS
My cat likes the cheap crap but eventually eats the good stuff.
Currently Crave with 76% stuff so 25% carb.
If I remember Blue Wilderness [more expensive] is 12% Carb.
The local grocery store brand is like above 50% Carb.
She is 14 year old Maine Coon.
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Myself, I solved that with a dirt-simple physical timer box that opens when a timer runs down.
I think (hope) that that was what the OP was saying, not "don't feed your pet via automation" but "don't rely on a cloud-based service to feed your pet". WTF do you need cloud access for to feed a pet when you're out? Sure, use it as an optional extra so you can monitor when your pet has been fed, but there's absolutely no reason whatsoever that a box with a timer and an electromagnetically-activated catch needs an Internet connection, let alone being entirely dependent on it in order to function.
Cat feeding is easy (Score:2)
Cats are not idiots like dogs and will self regulate their food. We have a gravity feeder for our cats, it just constantly has good dropping, the thing is loaded with enough food for 1.5-2 weeks. I hardly ever have to load it. When we leave for the long weekend, we leave out a few large bowls of water and forget about it. Our cats can be alone 3-4 days easily.
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you could companion train them to not ask food at 5 am.
but yea you could have a cat sitter. thing is you have to have that anyways even if you had a cloud connected thing. and then you need a video feed anyways.
our older cats are happy enough to eat from the perpetually filling thing for a day at a time anyway (no they're not fat).
they just ran out of money I guess. why they would need to blame covid for that I dunno though.
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There are too many services the needlessly need the cloud.
Many “smart” systems can be smart on very cheap hardware without going online to send data.
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Many “smart” systems can be smart on very cheap hardware without going online to send data.
Ahh yes the original IoT. Surely that wasn't popularised by misconfigured devices punching nothing but endless holes in networks via UPnP and then proceeding to have their data gobbled up by any script kiddy who is bored.
The "Cloud" is actually a dramatic improvement over any smart consumer toy of the past. You just have your rose coloured glasses on, either that or you've forgotten that we live in a world that no long has end to end connectivity on the internet, that CGNAT is a thing that prevents people a
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If you feed your pet via cloud server then you're doing it wrong.
They are great companions when you're home with them. Not so fun to take on a holiday.
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If you do anything via cloud server then you're doing it wrong.
FTFY.
I've got a toaster (Score:2, Funny)
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If only it could tell me what type of bread you used an how dark you like your toast.. It would really help my marketing data earn more.
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I've got a toilet that sends a tweet every time I take a dump.
Well, not really a tweet, more like a prolonged "braaarrrpp!!!!" than a tweet. If you have a smell-o-vision attachment you can experience it even if you're deaf.
of course (Score:1)
They are still for sale on Amazon with no warning. And you can't warn others, as reviews are limited to purchasers.
The Internet of Things (That Fail) (Score:2)
Right To Repair is an critical component in not only making branded e-crap that can never be used again without its Brand Masters, but our own survival. In a crisis, DRM could be the death of us all.
Re: The Internet of Things (That Fail) (Score:1)
Best comment in the thread!
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I've long compared The Cloud to nuclear power. Statistically it's probably safer than most alternatives (as typically managed), but the failures happen in spikes such that they make they news. People dying of smog-related asthma don't. I'm sure the alternative owner-away feeding techniques, such as mechanical, also run into problems. But the failures are spread out over time.
It's not that I think Cloud is reliable, it's that most local servers are in shops managed by PHB's.
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I'm wondering about the viability of picking up the now-abandoned customers. I assume they were paying a monthly/yearly fee for the service, and there can't be much traffic to/from the device. If it's just built of COTS hardware drivers should be available. It's beyond my capabilities, but I wouldn't be surprised to see someone do this soon. Of course then Petnet would probably sue them, so never mind.
not when run by cheap mr burns who has a homers (Score:2)
not when run by cheap mr burns who has an pack of low paid homers running the plant.
Internet of Dead Things (Score:2)
Time for a remake of Old Yeller?
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Or "There Will Come Soft Rains". Your call.
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Or "There Will Come Soft Rains".
Try and find the 1980s Uzbekfilm version of that if you can. It's even more depressing than the story.
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Can we finally agree that cloud services are BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you rely on a service that is not under your control and you have no SLA that basically ensures you will get continued service, what exactly is my incentive to give you continued service after you have paid?
I get reminded of those "lifetime membership" porn sites of the 1990 where I always wondered what lifetime they meant, because they probably didn't mean mine.
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I get reminded of those "lifetime membership" porn sites of the 1990 where I always wondered what lifetime they meant, because they probably didn't mean mine.
How did your brain get beyond "This is the internet, why the hell would I pay for porn?" to begin with?
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Beats me, I just saw the ads when watching my free porn. Why they'd advertise for-pay porn on free porn sites is beyond me.
The point of cloud service is recurring revenue (Score:5, Interesting)
There's no end to rent seeking. It's why you would see laws about it. If you don't legislate it (either directly or indirectly) sooner or later somebody just buys everything up and skims 20-30% off everything you do.
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You can't collecting recurring revenue if you stop running the service.
Not every rent seeking scheme works (Score:2)
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There's no end to rent seeking.
Providing a service to a customer is not rent seeking and doesn't even remotely fall under the laws banning rent seeking. Many people are happy to outsource their pain for a few dollars.
Hell I suggest you buy a smart but non cloud connected pet feeder and then talk your parents through setting up a secure forwarded port through their NAT, along with DynDNS because their IP keeps changing all so they can monitor that the pet cat is actually eating those 5 days while they are on holiday. By about 1/3rd of the
There are no laws banning rent seeking (Score:2)
This Pet thing is an extreme and silly example, but it's still part of a broader trend away from ownership and towards rent.
Internet Of Toys (Score:2)
These connected toys should not be relied on for anything important and it's not Luddite to point that out.
I understand people really want them to work but part of leading a resilient lifestyle is not seeking additional dependencies.
battery running down will fail it! (Score:2)
battery running down will fail it!
Yeah... the cloud... (Score:1)
COVID-19 Excuses (Score:5, Funny)
Remember when 9/11 was used as a lame excuse [ucomics.com]? Well, now we can blame all sorts of stuff on the virus!
* "Sorry officer, I guess COVID-19 caused me to drive while intoxicated!"
* "I didn't know COVID-19 could get me pregnant!"
* "One of our third party vendors has notified us that due to COVID-19 their operations are experiencing an adverse effect."
COVID-19 – The Swiss Army Knife® of excuses! Use it often!
Never trust "the cloud" (Score:2)
There's no reason in the world a device should need the cloud in order to dispense pet food at a pre-determined time. And there's no reason the device should need the cloud in order to support configuration, there are plenty of inexpensive embedded SOCs supporting WiFi that are quite capable of hosting a mini web server for that locally.
The only reason these things could need the cloud would be they wanted tto grab some sort of data from their sucjers^Wcustomers or they're drooling idiots with a whiz-bang d
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There's no reason in the world a device should need the cloud in order to dispense pet food at a pre-determined time. And there's no reason the device should need the cloud in order to support configuration, there are plenty of inexpensive embedded SOCs supporting WiFi that are quite capable of hosting a mini web server for that locally.
Why limit it to 'locally'? There's no reason your home server couldn't be accessed remotely anywhere there's an Internet connection. ISP's don't like people running their own servers; but if there's enough pushback I can see them allowing it, especially with outbound data and speed caps to prevent people running their own music, movie, or porn servers.
I think there's a market for IOT appliances which DON'T rely on transient subscription services that can turn expensive hardware into paperweights on a whim.
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I meant locally as in local to the device rather than cloud hosted. Accessibility outside the local LAN is an individual decision controlled by the firewall/router.
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You can build a pet feeder with a Raspberry Pi Zero, servos, buckets and some python code.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Absolutely, though a Pi is overkill for that application.
Misread the title. (Score:2)
I thought it said:
After Prolonged Service Outage, Planet Shuts Down, Citing Coronavirus.
The meowing is worse than the alarm clock (Score:1)
I need an meat slicer to feed the cat under the door.
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I need an meat slicer to feed the cat under the door.
Install a pet door instead - no need to feed the poor creature under the door, and no slicing required. Just make sure the pet door doesn't rely on a Cloud service...
Re: The meowing is worse than the alarm clock (Score:3)
But how do you get the cat to stay in the meat slicer without it scratching you all up? And you must use a pretty thin setting to get the cat pieces small enough to fit under the door, does that take a while?
Same thing happened with "Feed and Go" feeder (Score:1)
Same story (minus covid-19 angle) with the Feed and Go feeder. They suddenly shut down the cloud server that the app needed for scheduling.