The smart pet-feeder tweeted over the weekend that it had resolved a system outage affecting its second-generation feeders. But users and media alike are still unable to speak to the company, receiving delivery-failure notices from emails and no response on Twitter. (TechCrunch)

Talking point: According to Crunchbase, Petnet has raised a total of US$14.9 million since it was founded in 2012. Backed by Petco, iRobot (the company behind Roomba), Amazon and Major League Baseball, the company describes itself as “the world’s first intelligent pet feeder that will program itself around your life and the wellness of your pet.” The US$149 device links to a smartphone app so that, in theory, customers could rest assured that their pet was well-fed while they weren’t home. However, as one user complained, the outage meant it “took me a day to realize my cats weren’t getting fed. I’m not impressed.” A similar issue occurred with the device four years ago due to a third-party server issue, which impacted 10 per cent of users (100 per cent of whom were very good boys who just wanted their treats).