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.

...and how did that make you FEEL, @dan ?
@dan pics or it didn't happen
@dan Imagine the distress of the cat! Never get any privacy anymore.
@dan don't let them replace your cat with AI!
@dan Dan, we should have told you this earlier, but it's not only the litter box 😬
@dan I strongly recommend using this experience to explain networking. What networks, datacenters, clouds (literal and figurative), satellites, etc did that poop notification traverse?
@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.
@dan In related (?) news the status bar in my laptop window manager displays the AS number of the network my public IP address belongs to
@ricci @dan The cats will be uninterested in these details.
@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.
@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.
@dan Why do you have a litter box that's wired to alert you when it's used?
@dan modern technology is indeed amazing.
@dan @norootcause I’d say, “no shit,” but that may have been reported by the litter box app…
@dan No joke. It’s too much.
@dan
Damn, I can even get my cat to do a simple search on the internet. You have yours sending alerts. 😼

@dan @Callalily

Accept any sign things are working as they should.

It's so rare these days.