exactly! well said

I have a dumb autofeeder. It works because of gravity. It was $5. I would only consider a "smart" one if it could also fill the container with food on its own like a replicator.

I see a fair few people here getting pissed at the pet owners for using a "smart" feeder, and I kind of get some of the sentiment, but the issue here is not purely with their use of a device to do a task. A washing machine has a timer, a dishwasher has a timer, and a smart feeder has a timer. These are all valid things to have timers on and even to schedule operation to make them automatic. Automated feeding ensures that your pets get food even if you have a bad day and end up forgetting. I have severe ADHD and the only reason my cat ends up fed and I end up taking my meds is using systems.

The issue here is the structure of the system. If the smart feeder had a local copy of the instructions and its own clock and then it dispensed food according to that schedule unless the plan was updated we would never had heard about this issue and nobody would be judging anyone. But what we have here is a system that puts all the control in the hands of a company over a device in your home. If you could update the feeding schedule via a Bluetooth connection or use Home Assistant to manage it then it would just be another modern convenience. The problem is the closed source application which actually has control over the feeder and nothing you do can control it directly.

Also, from an engineering perspective, come on, this is a simple failure state. Internet connection go down. DNS fails. Servers go down. If something like that happens the feeder should continue without intervention. To do otherwise is intentionally bad design. If you don't code for your failure states you are guaranteeing their consequences. I would rather have a machine that can connect to an app for config but can also be configured by a simple web portal or via Bluetooth.

Ffs no one needs a "smart" pet feeder.

The sooner the AI obsession ends, the better.

Have a small child and make them stay home with the cat, use gravity feed for the child. Problem solved.

Just a built-in timer was too complicated huh. Have to put it in the cloud somehow.

Some cats can't control themselves around food and will try to eat as much as possible in one go, that will have a very negative effect on them, of course. But trying gravity feeder includes checking if your cat is compatible with the concept, I guess

You can just use a cheap gravity feeder and free feed for a few days, they'll be fine. Attach them to a piece of plywood so they can't knock them over. Test it for a few days before you leave so they get used to it.

"“I’ve lost trust and don’t have time to find a new solution for upcoming travel. I have someone coming for check-ins, but they can’t come in 5 times every day to give food,” a Reddit user [said]"

They shouldn't have pets if they can't figure out how to take care of the pet without a smart device. Are you too dumb to own a pet? Check. That also makes you too dumb to have kids.

It really seems this problem is largely solvable by people simply stop paying for an ephemeral license. So long as people willingly pay for the convenience and willingly accept loss of access, this problem won't go away.

I stopped playing games years ago because of this. I refuse to give my money for shit I'm not going to truly own.

I have a single streaming service today, and am steadily building my home library of stuff I consider worth keeping.

Well, at least the link names it: Aliens Fireteam Elite on Nintendo Switch

I guess, it doesn't sound as menacing when you're not vague, so clicks no be clicking

This is why stop killing games is a thing. But gamers have no solidarity when it comes to buying games. We could maintain a list of games that are safe to buy and gamers would still buy the unsafe ones.

they own you if you use cloud services.

That suggests that this is an accident. It was done deliberately.

We're already there tbh.

We are hurtling down the road to a surveillance state.

When digital illiterates decide what's good for digital security......

I can't update my vehicle because it's from 2015 and they were using physical discs. I took it into my chevy dealership and they told me they didn't keep the discs anymore lol

There was a GPS time turnover in 2019 and my vehicle's clock has been messed up since. I can set the clock correctly and set the car to not update based on GPS, but it does it anyway.

. If my job were to think up ways to prevent something i would also try to think of the easiest ways to defeat my proposal just to make sure it’s not a stupid or useless rule

Even easier than that. Simply make "kid mode" that won't display a single image resulting in a text only phone that is fully in compliance with the demand. "Adult mode" would behave exactly as phones do today. Five minutes after a parent buys the phone and the kid figures out there are no pictures, the parent would enable "adult mode" and never look back.

I present you: the fully compliant phone.

So they put this in to every camera and phone and the kids just swap to video. If my job were to think up ways to prevent something i would also try to think of the easiest ways to defeat my proposal just to make sure it’s not a stupid or useless rule.

But let’s be honest, this isn’t about kids. This is about control and spying on your citizens.

This is what happens when one party has total control. Please stop being freaks Republicans!

This is not about guns. This is about the increasing use of 3D printers in right to repair and printing parts.

What they want is to block you from making a $30 flimsy plastic part better for $0.60. So they will use AI to check your STLs and block you from printing anything that you can buy.

The gun issue is stupid. If they really cared about that, they would block gun manufacturers from selling gun parts no questions asked, because no one can actually 3D print and working gun out of plastic without actual gun parts of metal.

From the research I did awhile back it seemed you could trace this lobbying straight back to gun manufacturers. This is NOT about public safety and it is about keeping disruptive competition out of the market.

Also, not every gun is lethal. It is perfectly acceptable to make nerf guns. The law in Canada for example is it just needs to have below a certain muzzle velocity.

This is more a US gun culture issue than a 3D printer issue, and they're just trying to scapegoat things.

Even this is too polite.

"Google adds series of hoops to jump through, for what was previously a button."