- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
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Who buys a toilet you can only flush with an app??
sometime who buys a toilet and then finds out afterwards that they were sold a toilet that only flushes with an app
This. SO many devices, especially networking stuff. It seems like they should just do their thing after plugging in and setting a few settings. “It’s so EZ!” says the box.
Nope, “scan this code to get this app, make an account, agree to all the things, register for spam…”
It’s disgusting.
What do house guests do?
“Let me know when you’re done and I can flush the toilet though the app.”
Or
“Download this app to flush the toilet once at my house.”
the host just watches them through the built in camera and the house guest thinks it flushes automatically :)
“Ok, Richard, I’m done.”
“Yeah, I got the notification actually. Heavy dinner last night?”
“What the actual fuck, Richard?”
I think it was voice activated.
The app was probably for additional stuff.
I would hope just motion activated. I really don’t want to have to yell at my toilet either.
“Oh, SHIT!”
flush
Poker night: Read 'em and weep boys, straight flush!
From the other room: *flushing noises*
I hear this in the voice of Lindsay Lohan. Though I don’t think there was a toilet flush at that point in that movie!
Yeah. I’m absolutely opposed to unnecessarily “smart” devices.
I have a strong aversion to voice activated anything. Smartphones have had voice assistant’s since forever but whenever I’ve tried it I just find it to be a clunky awkward imprecise user interface.
Why do something in a few clicks when 10 minutes of miscommunication will do?
In-house toilet facilities are more or less a solved problem. These idiots un-solved it.
Someone actually invented Tony the Toilet Buddy
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.
Why would I get a laser printer? I don’t want a printer.
Because it shoots lasers
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 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.
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.
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 phoneI 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
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.
Tell me you’re a NRA fan without telling me you’re a NRA fan.
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.
Don’t put the gun within reach of the printer, come on
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!
Recipe for disaster
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.
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.
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.
Remember, the “s” in IoT stands for “security”.
And the ‘p’ for privacy.
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.
That printer is a 2000’s HP LaserJet
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 😔
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
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?
Maybe it needs a connection cause it takes a picture of your feces and sends it to an AI analysis service. If anomalies are detected, it tells you that you should take the stool sample to a laboratory for further study, then lets you flush. Poof, smart toilet. I could see people with too much money buying this.
Edit: Thought about it some more… why stop at feces images? Why not also have a high resolution camera pointed at your anus taking crowning shots and analyzing those. Tell users if anythings wrong. The future is
brightbrown boys. The future is brown.Edit2: You could even have motion based security… alert if anyone broke in through your bathroom. Cameras in toilets people! What could go wrong?
Edit3: Hear me out. User controlled bidet mode + anus camera. Take out your phone and clean your ass in first person. Score points if you clean your whole ass and compete on an online scoreboard. Tech sure is amazing.
a little bit like this?
There is no reason it needs an always on connection for this. Even if there was a camera in the bowl taking pictures of poo (which raises so many privacy questions), the device could easily save hundreds of HD+ quality picture (assuming a toilet camera had that resolution) and send them next time connection is secure.
Always online functionality only makes sense when the function itself is an online task such as a video call or looking up information not saved locally.
Having an always online connection for a toilet suggest it’s gathering much more information passively from your home, using voice activated as a cover to always be listening and thus relaying what it records to server/data center to be filtered through for marketable or exploitable data.
Toilet’s chipset is only good for network connection and video recording. Business logic is on servers. As I said, users want to know if their shit is good before they flush so they dont lose a sample in case it is bad.
You may have stumbled on multiplayer shitting though. Conference call with random strangers on the internet, biggest splashback, fastest bowel movement… endless possibilities. Yeah I think always online is the best course of action here.
If anomalies are detected, it tells your insurance company so they can increase your rates or drop you before you actually need to go to the hospital and cost them any money.
ftfy
Sorry, Euro defaultism… my healthcare is affordable. You can always run Tolet Assistant on a raspberry pi at home and let your shit never leave the network.
Why not just have a small aliquot of each stool deposit diverted into an HPLC/UPLC with AI checking the chromatogram?
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.
And this is why KNX and Home Assistant are a good idea.
Has nobody else pointed out this is clearly not real?
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
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.
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
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!
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.
Correlates poops to your Uber eats from chipotle, serves you up Pepto ads preemptively.
“Being unable to take a shit is a small price to pay for the almighty poop-scanner”
Sounds like an anxiety inducing app. And I thought sleep tracking was anxiety inducing. Imagine getting a notification that you might have ass cancer.
Anything in my house smarter than the IKEA remote control light switch gets crushed with a hammer.
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)
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)_/¯
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.
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.
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.
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.
A little display or indicator light somewhere on the toilet itself would be better than connecting it to some IOT app
How do you know?
One word.
Toddlers
But in this scenario don’t the toddlers need phones? Wait do toddlers all have phones now?
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.
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.
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.
It is in campers, lol.
Probably just the extra cost of linkage and maybe risk of tripping over it
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.
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.
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
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
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
informed dedication opinions.
Hmmmmm
Damn was supposed to be defecation autocorrect got me.
Oooohhhhh, that makes sense.
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.
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!
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?
Day 3,801 of thanking God I was born a Luddite
Anyone who thought their toilet would be improved by having an internet connection deserves this
I’m not a Luddite, shit just has to be reliable and actually useful without violating my privacy. Wait a minute…
I’m kind of far away fyom being a luddite, senior software developer, codes for fun, builds electronic stuff with wifi etc.
My toilet was built and installed before internet was invented and will not be changed for anything smart, neither is my toaster, dish washer, stove, locks, etc. etc. Ever. Over my dead body (if you want to be disinherited).
Sure but I’m also all for innovating and watching these things fail. Isn’t there a value in letting dumb rich people with money waste their wealth on dumb ideas. It keeps them from doing things like buying Twitter
I mean, it could be. Imagine getting a push notification when it overflows. The lowest pipe in my house is a toilet. Luckily my wife was nearby but it could’ve gone worse if we didn’t see for a bit.
This is a job for water detectors, which I have no qualms about connecting to the internet. They have the added benefit of detecting leaky pipes as well
This is why I go the extra mile to keep iot out of my life. Especially in cars , which is getting hard, but I figure my future cars I’ll likely retrofit something old. Newest I’ll tolerate is 2014, with no touchscreen.
My car is probably going to die soon and I’m going to have trouble replacing it with something that actually has physical controls, doesn’t have a massive annoying touch screen, doesn’t have LED headlights set blinds everybody driving towards me or walking their dogs, isn’t a compact crossover bloated to the size of an SUV from 20 years ago, and can fit 8 ft length of raw material in it.
Or rather I’m going to have trouble replacing it with something that I like for a decent price that isn’t too old and isn’t a van. Not necessarily because vans suck, vans are great. But the good ones are expensive, even used
In complete agreement. I hate crossovers so much.
Have you looked at this wagons or Volvo wagons ? Or just a good old tacoma or tundra long box ?
Not many wagons left. Will probably end up looking at Volvos. Hopefully more reliable than Subaru, and they’re actually shaped like wagons.
Was looking at old Rangers/B2000s for a while, but it doesn’t make any sense. And I know Tacomas are out of budget lol
Right, and subaru stupidly quit making the wrx wagon in 2014, no idea why. There’s also the appeal of early 2000s gm, dirt cheap and easy to fix. Like an 03 Tahoe. Just not good on gas. You can find some of those in an I5 though which is cool.
Yea I’m not using anything that requires an app. If there’s an app I can host myself I might use it but I won’t rely on anything that can’t be controlled manually. The place I rent now has ceiling fans that are controlled by remote and I fucking hate them. It uses a shitty up/down button that has a horrendous delay or both the light and fan. It’s all the frustration of using a pull chain with no improvement. I can’t even figure out how to get it to switch directions for winter.
The difference between an IT person and a tech enthusiast
Laughs nervously in self-hosted
“Routers using OpenWRT”
Every time I research this, it seems like nothing I can reasonably acquire can run it. Especially any WiFi 6 / AX devices. It’s infuriating.
You can get a glinet router. They have a WiFi 7 device coming out shortly as well.
Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
Security technicians: takes a deep swig of whiskey I wish I had been born in the neolithic.
Im studying the security stuff. The more you think about it, the more paranoid you become until you notice that your level of paranoia is far too high and try to ignore things.
Firmwares everywhere are definitely spying on us. Or at leasty they could, and we wouldn’t really know it.
Why would a programmer own a printer? I almost never print anything and when I need to I just go to a library.
Shipping labels are about all I use mine for.
Home assistant everything is a yaml away
“Ok, so what you can see in the logs?”
“Sweetcorn.”
Didn’t ingest any, but it’s still there somehow
Must be a kernel issue
