Yesterday I found myself sitting at 40,000 feet over...

Yesterday I found myself sitting at 40,000 feet over the middle of the Pacific, miles from any civilization, when my phone popped up a notification that one of my cats had used the litter box.

This is a level of technology I could never have dreamed of. Or necessarily wanted to.

Like 28 March at 23:45 | Open on discuss.systems

14 comments

Dan Cross

...and how did that make you FEEL, @dan ?

28 March at 23:46 | Open on discuss.systems

Greg Parker

@dan pics or it didn't happen

29 March at 0:35 | Open on discuss.systems

Andy K

@dan Imagine the distress of the cat! Never get any privacy anymore.

29 March at 0:36 | Open on mastodon.social

Lorin Hochstein :verified:

@dan What a time to be alive!

29 March at 1:43 | Open on hachyderm.io

Dad Bat 3000

@dan don't let them replace your cat with AI!

29 March at 1:54 | Open on kolektiva.social

Whiskers

@dan Dan, we should have told you this earlier, but it's not only the litter box 😬

29 March at 4:56 | Open on aus.social

Rob Ricci

@dan I strongly recommend using this experience to explain networking. What networks, datacenters, clouds (literal and figurative), satellites, etc did that poop notification traverse?

29 March at 5:22 | Open on discuss.systems

Dan Ports

@ricci It would have been even better back in the days of Boeing’s first satellite WiFi system when each plane was its own AS and advertised routes via BGP, meaning that every router in the internet would know where it was at any given moment.

29 March at 5:32 | Open on discuss.systems

David J. Atkinson #🟦

@ricci @dan The cats will be uninterested in these details.

29 March at 7:49 | Open on c.im

apemantus

@ricci @dan …and how much energy was wasted by all these megafactories of worthless information and what was the carbon footprint of this high-tech poop.

29 March at 9:09 | Open on ieji.de

David J. Atkinson #🟦

@dan It is the great transparency of life. Think of the planetary wealth required to get that urgent message to you. I wonder if your cat would be self conscious about bouncing signals off satellites in orbit to get this information to you within a few seconds of it happening, or would it be overwhelmed and hide in a cardboard box until your return? I suspect cats, if they knew, would hack their litter box and spam you for ransom treats.