If one day there is only smart toilets, I will go shit in the woods and start to live like an animal. Clearly humanity was a mistake and we should return to monke
The problem isn’t necessarily smart toilets. The problem is companies attempting to have complete control over the product and ensuring that their products do not function without dependency on their infrastructure.
There is no functional reason to have a toilet connect to an outside server. There are no functional reasons to have many of these smart devices require outside dependencies. But their profits and their subscription models definitely benefit from being able to remotely disable features.
Technology is garbage not because we’ve gone too far with Technology. Technology is garbage because of capitalism.
There is no functional reason to have a toilet connect to an outside server
So that all the toilets you poop in can share data on your poops and get a complete picture of your bowel health.
“Being unable to take a shit is a small price to pay for the almighty poop-scanner”
Correlates poops to your Uber eats from chipotle, serves you up Pepto ads preemptively.
Sounds like an anxiety inducing app. And I thought sleep tracking was anxiety inducing. Imagine getting a notification that you might have ass cancer.
I will go shit in the woods
Then can you compete with the bear?
Or the Pope?
Introducing the Smart Catholic. Track your Hail Marys from the convenience of your phone, and add more with a simple tap. Subscribe to one of our new pergatory plans today, 3 months half price when you buy your Smart Catholic!
Sounds like the beginning of the Cory Doctorow novella “Unauthorized Bread.” Cloud service goes down and the main character’s toaster won’t work without them.
Baps? Bagels? Baguettes?
The fact that everything is controlled through “The Cloud” and some godforsaken subscription service is so terribly sad, funny, and horrifying at the same time. We’ve literally found every conceivable way to gather and sell people’s data while simultaneously milking them out of every last cent with the whole FOMO mentality driven through every piece of hardware and software now sold. It is just absolutely fucking preposterous. We’re living in a virtual hellscape that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.
People have other options, but the easiest option is always going to be to let someone else do it. Their price is, almost always, your private data and a subscription.
Or, you can DIY and self-host. Home Assistant is free and supports many different standards so you can use just about any hardware. It runs on your own hardware and doesn’t report to anyone unless you tell it to. It requires more effort than swiping a credit card and installing an app, however.
Why would you ever get a toilet that requires anything but the laws of physics to operate?
I mean… Electronics and the Internet are also following the laws of physics. But I get what you mean, levers should be the only activation, and gravity should be the only requirement.
That being said, electronics in our devices do tend to reduce the amount of water and power that appliances use. Dumb devices are extremely inefficient, even though there are fewer points of failure.
It sucks that a 1950’s fridge can still function just fine today, but it also is a bigger strain on the power grid, and a leak in the refrigerant would destroy the ozone.
> That being said, electronics in our devices do tend to reduce the amount of water and power that appliances use. Dumb devices are extremely inefficient, even though there are fewer points of failure.
I fail to see how electronics in these (unpowered) devices in any way reduce the amount of power that they use.
I think that was just a general statement regarding old devices, since they brought up a 1950s refrigerator as an example of a powered “dumb” device
In theory you could have a system that monitors input and then uses a precise amount of water to vacate the bowl.
Oh sick, a toilet with bowl cameras
I figure a scale would probably work better.
Uh, a bidet?
You’re already @ the mf toilet too, or the sink. what is even the purported purpose of remotely activating something you have to stand there to use?
My new eFirepit is causing my family to die of hypothermia.
I can see some purpose in having a ‘smart’ toilet for monitoring health. Your pee and poo can have some value in seeing if there anything that needs to be dealt with medically. But even that is difficult to do. For one thing, it must still function ad a toilet first before anything. Meaning it uses the simple mechanical flushing and refilling and stopping when it is sufficiently full.
However for this the analysis and storage of data must be 100% at the user’s control. If they want it gone. It is gone. Irrecoverable. Any update must be done via USB or other connection. No wifi or internet.
And even then the analysis can be off for obvious reasons. People need to scrub their toilets and some keep it clean by having one of those pucks in the tank that sanitize the water. All of these can interfere with any results out of a medical setting.
Yeah but if they let users control the data then how are they supposed to sell it to insurance companies to boost their value to VCs???
Has nobody else pointed out this is clearly not real?
I honestly could not tell. It’s completely believable that something this stupid would exist. Like I didn’t necessarily believe it was but I wasn’t confident in either direction.
Oh we’re the idiots. Never saw that coming
Yeah first thing I did was search the web for more information. Zero results…
I bet most of these other commenters also complain about boomers eating up fake news.
I have become the red shirt from my favorite SMBC comic
However, my feelings regarding smart devices remain intact
Just searching around got me their link: https://t.me/ctobtch , and their channel posted this post a few days ago.
Telegram messages won’t show up search results, but sure we may expect some news article about it. The message is here
deleted by creator
Tell me you’re a NRA fan without telling me you’re a NRA fan.
Don’t put the gun within reach of the printer, come on
Recipe for disaster
I keep it in a voice activated safe plugged into the 110
I’m sure Canon has snuck in code that can replay your voice…
Hey now, don’t bring a gun into a Canon fight!
The more I hear from big tech companies the more I want to reject it. I don’t even own a printer.
Go for older laser printers. They’re bulletproof, cheap on toner, free of DRM, and even if they only come with an LPT port you can always build your own print server that gives you all the bells and whistles like AirPrint.
Can confirm. I’m a tech worker. No smart devices. Laser printer. Very close to going back to a flip phone.
I am looking at some smart locks, but they’re able to be used as dumb locks with PIN code and physical key also. And they have a usb power port on the outside you could plug a battery into.
I’ve gone down the smart home route a decade ago and only did non-cloud integrated devices with physical controls also. But it’s a part time hobby to maintain it.
usb power port on the outside you could plug a battery into.
Until someone with a flipper figures out that port transfers data too, lmao.
Ha yeah. I would absolutely confirm there is no data connection
flip phone
Almost all such phones are actually smart phones in a flip phone Edgar Suit. Especially if it has maps or YouTube or any kind of an App Store. I see a crapton of flip phones that run Android, which has all sorts of Google spyware piggybacking along.
I think there may be only two or three dumb flip phones or feature flip phones left on the market, and IIRC two are locked to specific networks.
If you want a bona-fide dumb phone, you might be limited to something like the rotary un-smartphone.
I had a Sharp SH-03L for a while, it’s a business version of one of their flip phones that didn’t even have a camera.
The OS was actually android 8.0 but really stripped down to basically only do the whatever apps a flip phone has.
I was able to sideload apks through ADB, but ironically, I actually wanted the google stuff to work since a lot of the apps required it to log in and other things.
The thing was pretty cheap though, paid like $15 for it
Go check in Aliexpress: there are tons of non-smart phones, especially the stuff marked as “senior phone”, and they’re pretty cheap too (like $15 for a mobile phone that just does calls and SMS).
If you want the stuff that’s not glitzy and heavy on marketing you need to get it from where the factories are, not were the brands are - basic mobile phone tech is a thoroughly solved problem and highly integrated nowadays and well within range for even smallish electronics manufacturers to design themselves.
Also check HMD, the Finnish mobile maker who bought Nokia’s mobile business, who also have several non-smart models (including old Nokia models).
Edit:
No idea if any are flip-phones though.Here’s an example flip phone
build your own print server that gives you all the bells and whistles like AirPrint.
…why? CUPS is print server. You don’t need anything else.
He’s talking about the hardware and you’re talking about the software.
Why would I get a laser printer? I don’t want a printer.
literally so you can leave it unplugged in a box, and drag it out once a year to print a tax form or something. Toner should be shelf stable.
You guys have to print out tax forms?
I have a 70+ year old friend that paper files. She doesn’t trust the free file places available here (USA). I don’t blame her.
Ysk - You can order the forms for free on the IRS (& state) websites.
I print things for her on my 1999 laser jet if she needs something printed.
Many years I paper filed just to inconvenience them slightly for not offering free file.
I am British, most people don’t need to even think about taxes here as its all automatic. Only really something you might need to look at if you are self employed or its your job to deal with it.
No, printed just to keep a hard copy
What is the point of that?
Because it shoots lasers
Because they are like two fifty on the flea market and will run on one cartridge for 10 years. I print all my tickets everytime, I’m that old
How else will I print out MapQuest directions?
Bulletproof? Sounds dangerous. What do I do if it makes a weird noise?
Keep a cannon by the canon.
That printer is a 2000’s HP LaserJet
FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS
I will bulk purchase grey-market bootleg toner from shady overseas websites before I go back to a inkjet…
If you’re lucky it might be cut with something cheaper like pure cocaine
It’s fine, you only ever need to replace it like once a decade or so
Is there a community for those of us with late 90s early 2000 HP laserjets? Somewhere we can discuss maintenance, feeding, and overall care?
There used to be but the moderators forgot to sign up for HP Smart® Instant Ink™ and used non-authorized ink (first party ink ordered directly from HPs website) so it got shut down 😔
There’s one guy in my department who does all the smart home shit, but I absolutely don’t see the point in it. Didn’t even connect the washing machine to the wi-fi as you can’t set it going without having loaded it first anyway.
I could see having lights on a somewhat sophisticated timer. Like having bedroom lighting that simulates dawn, fades on etc. Maybe making a thermostat a little bit more sophisticated. I’d like to live in a world where I could trust the power company to tell me when electricity is abundant and scarce but we’re gonna have to win Civil War 2 before we get that. My toilet and faucets do not need any digital technology at all.
About 3-4 years ago I took a bit of a dive into the firmware of IoT devices. The utter lack of security and the amount of information being hoovered up to the mothership made me swear to never build anything “smart” into the renovations of my current home. Sure, there will be automation. There will be CCTV. There will be solar with battery backup for essentials. There will be conveniences of all kinds. But virtually all will be air gapped, incapable of remote rooting, and under my full control.
Hell, even my laser printers are HP models over two decades old - an HP 4050DTN and an HP 5000DTN - that are totally devoid of any DRM or “smart features” and can trivially take generic overstuffed cartridges that can do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage.
I worked for Cisco during the time IoT was being pushed into everything. You don’t want to know how bad it is. If I was malicious I could have easily written several backdoors into their products without anyone knowing. I wrote kernel code in their IOS operating system. There are no checks on that shit and the entire switching team does next to zero peer review on kernel security.
Yes, there products that (at the time) touched upwards of 95% of all packets sent over the Internet.
The only upside to this state of things is that it keeps alive my fantasies of one day being a Watchdogs-style techno-sorcerer that can wirelessly hack anything that runs on electrons and a WiFi signal.
… Although the nightmare is that people far more evil can probably already do that.
Remember, the “s” in IoT stands for “security”.
And the ‘p’ for privacy.
ZigBee and Z-wave create their own network not connected to the internet, pair that with Home Assistant 🇪🇺 and done, sane smart home implementation.
Will have to look into that, thanks.
One of my key implementation requirements, however, will be resiliency, which means simplicity will be a core feature. The more “moving parts”, the easier it will be to break.
And this is why KNX and Home Assistant are a good idea.
Anything in my house smarter than the IKEA remote control light switch gets crushed with a hammer.
Reminder: never go have pancakes at wise_pancake’s house.
I mean, you could just use smarter stuff that’s open source and has local API, or do what I do and build your own devices where you can ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Stuff like openWRT routers get a pass.
If it has a local host API I would use it because it never has to connect to the internet.
People also just need to be more selective about where and how they automate.
For example, I wanted my coffee to automatically start in the morning. So instead of buying a “smart” coffee maker, I bought the dumbest possible one and a smart switch. Now, no matter what happens with that switch, the worst that can happen is I have to manually hit a button to get coffee.
I wish I was this smart. We really want to do a smart light show using Xlights but every time I try to learn it I feel so frankly dumb.
Even there though, what is the actual point of a phone app controlled smart toilet, even if you open sourced the whole thing? Unlocking one’s phone and tapping the app icon, and then presumably a button on the app, is going to take more time than one press of a lever that one is right next to anyway, and the latter doesn’t present as many points of failure.
Well if you read the product description it was to allow AI Bidet control. However they had not received funding for AI so it was outsourced to a team of laborers in India using cameras and joysticks.
It also logged the consistency, frequency and matter samples from all BMs so you could make informed dedication opinions.
Spoiler
/s
informed dedication opinions.
Hmmmmm
Damn was supposed to be defecation autocorrect got me.
Oooohhhhh, that makes sense.
I heard they sold a license for the camera feed and controls access to EA for their next pay-to-play iOS game. The shareholders are really excited for this synergy.
I asked for AI Biden control smh
I have no interest in one, but playing devil’s advocate, some might consider it more sanitary since you don’t have to touch the toilet to flush and have the choice of not being near it, hopefully avoiding any spray.
Also, if your guests use the restroom, you can startle them at any time.
Yeah, wouldn’t want to get bacteria on your hands a few seconds before washing your hands.
Yeah I’d much rather spread poo particles all over my smartphone instead
How do the guests flush the toilet without the app? They have to ask you?
That occurred to me while writing my comment, as well, and I don’t like the implications.
I would imagine they have to ask you, yes. If the toilet can be flushed without authentication, they’d probably still have to ask you how.
Of course. My roof, my water, my rules! /s
more sanitary
Foot pedal flush really needs to become a thing.
Wait, why isn’t it? There’s been so many weird flush designs over the years.
Probably just the extra cost of linkage and maybe risk of tripping over it
I assume lack of demand. In your own home, you’d be keeping the handle clean, and public washrooms often use the touchless sensor types.
It is in campers, lol.
Designing foot-operated things tends to fly in the face of modern accessibility standards. Wheelchair users already have enough problems using public toilets.
They can still have both. A foot pedal for those who want it, a standard handle for those who don’t or can’t. In fact, retrofitting existing handle-flush toilets to add foot pedals could make a lot of sense.
Ok maybe the flushing part is a bit overkill and mostly a joke, but a toilet that can deliver notifications like if it’s clogged for example before you use it and make it worse would have fantastic utility IMO
This makes zero sense. If it’s clogged, you’d know beforehand when you look in the bowl. Why the would anyone need a notification for that?
The ONLY utility that I could see here is if the notification logged who did the clogging so you could give them shit.
One word.
Toddlers
But in this scenario don’t the toddlers need phones? Wait do toddlers all have phones now?
Toilets can appear to have flushed fully, but still have…material…stuck in the U-bend that hasn’t completely evacuated the toilet. A subsequent flush won’t work, even though the water in the bowl is clean.
Ask me how I know.
That said, this could almost certainly be better-solved in other ways. Maybe by preventing the tank from refilling if there’s still something in the u-bend (then you’d know it needed attention because there’d be no water in it)?
- We don’t know that the toilet has this sensing capability.
- If it does, the actual fix is the same as if it were a regular toilet.
This just isn’t an issue that needs technology as a solution.
125% agreed. I was responding only to “If it’s clogged, you’d know beforehand when you look in the bowl.” I think there’s potentially an engineering solution–a fluid dynamics engineering solution–but definitely not an app.
How do you know?
A little display or indicator light somewhere on the toilet itself would be better than connecting it to some IOT app
I guess, but I’ve never heard of a toilet clogging before it’s used.
There’s other better examples, though. Smart thermostats get plenty of use from the people I know with them. A fridge that tracks how long stuff has been inside would be dope. Smart lights have uses.
Toilets can appear to have flushed fully, but still have…material…stuck in the U-bend that hasn’t completely evacuated the toilet. A subsequent flush won’t work, even though the water in the bowl is clean.
Ask me how I know.
Well, I suppose it is the kind of system where a lot of weird non-deterministic things can happen.
What kind of sensor are we thinking of here? Optical? I know it’s a real issue to find something that doesn’t foul or misread even in the simpler application of an RV septic tank.
I wonder if you could just put a window in the U-bend for manual inspection. It’s supposed to be full of “clean” water most of the time anyway.
Yeah, not to mention, adding any sort of electronic components to the thing would be dicey at best. A lot of bathrooms don’t even have power outlets anywhere near the toilet.
I’d prefer some sort of pressure-activated valve or something, but this is an engineering challenge that’s beyond my meager skills.
Yes, I don’t hate the idea of smart-ish devices, if they’re not cloud-dependent in any way and have some kind of manual override.
It’s kind of painful to have a kitchen full of devices each implementing their own half-assed OSs separately, or even more than once in one device.
I have a wifi-enabled garage door opener whose manufacturer discontinued the Google Home connection for so that you have to use their app and see their Amazon or Walmart ads. I also have a wifi-enabled alarm system whose manufacturer apparently doesn’t care about Matter integration or whatever. So leaving the house in my car requires the use of two different apps (three if I also need to turn off lights).
In actuality I just use the physical buttons. But there was a time that I had a beautiful dream of getting a smart lock and setting my house up to lock the doors, close the garage door, and arm the alarm when I pushed a button in the car–and, more importantly, undo all of those things in reverse when I got home.
with Home Assistant it doesn’t matter if your device adds a Google Home connection, Alexa, Apple Home, etc. Exactly what ‘smart homes’ should be.
I need to get on that, I guess.
How’s your family doing?
They were bonked with a hammer until they were below the proper “smart” threshold.
Friends hate this one simple trick!
Same, the only thing talkings to the internet are my reverse proxy and the security cameras (only when viewing them from outside the local network, quite like what reolink does there)
You sent this message by manually sending radio messages, I presume?
No, it’s one of the few use cases of emacs.
Have you tried our new Hammr and associated app? The smart tool that can analyze your work! Become more efficient! Compete with friends! Earn achievements! Track your heart rate! Now with several different modes…
Is that the new ifixit one?
Can you play DOOM on the light switch?
Home assistant everything is a yaml away
How the fuck can a faucet be smart? It’s a valve! It turns one way, or it turns the other way! It is only slightly less dumb than the counter top!
Yeah but what if you could make it worse? What if you could add the garbage motion sensor that takes ten hand waves to get working? Or add a touch screen that showed you visually how hot or cold the water was and could also show you ads?
No, we sell water usage data to water companies, so they know when to put water in the pipes!
Depending on your location relative to your water utility, it might take several seconds for the pressure wave from turning on your faucet to propagate backwards to them at its measly 1.5km/s. With our new ultra-low-latency smart faucet technology, that delay is reduced to tens of milliseconds! It could be faster, but we have to route all traffic through our cloud servers for analytics purposes.
And who to increase prices for, and how to sell good-sounding scam deals.
But what if the valve was actuated electronically with no manual access?
“Dumb” is the new “smart”.
And yet I hear dumbshits bragging all time about how alexa controls my (insert thing that definitely does not need automation here).
These sort of people never think beyond tomorrow and it shows.
Okay, I get the idea of smart AC for example - be elsewhere, turn it on remotely so that it’s comfortable when you get home. Fine. But a toilet? You are physically present there, you can push a button to flush. Or are you telling me that you’re shitting remotely now too?
Hans free means you don’t have to touch the handle with dirty hands, but you can do that with a motion sensor too.
We’ve been ready for pedal activated toilets for decades now
Personally I would much rather touch my phone with my dirty hands than a toilet handle
you’re shitting remotely now too?
Do we tell them about the remote shit technology that just landed from Uranus?
It’s not that great anyway. Your local toilet will surreptitiously grab and analyze your poop, dispose of it so you don’t need to flush, and have the remote toilet extrude an identical copy someone else has to flush.
Wait, so you’re not subscribed to shitme™? For a low monthly subscription they send you a sealed, self-addressed and postage-paid container to deposit your feces in, it gets sent to a sorting facility and distributed via drones or delivery drivers directly to your home toilet, where the feces are flushed in the privacy and safety of your own home! The peace-of-mind alone is worth the $39.98 a month. Up until now, the only challenge has been flushing the toilet while you’re still at the office, this way you NEVER have to go home!
Shit like a world leader
It’s like the forcefields in the brig on Star Trek. Extremely stupid to not also have bars as a backup in case they fail.
I don’t understand the idiots who insist on unredundant designs. Especially when it comes to handles. They’ve literally killed people with that decision.
Star Trek (at least from TNG onwards) is a dystopia who’s inhabitants have convinced themselves is a utopia.
Khan wrote this
“It’s easy to be a saint in paradise.”
Explain yourself
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair.
Douglas Adams
Adams’s law.
Douglas Adams was a huge fan of Apple.
