The smart toilet era is here! Ready to share your analprint with big tech?

[rcjordan]

 
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/sep/23/the-smart-toilet-era-is-here-are-you-ready-to-share-your-analprint-with-big-tech

[Brad]

No.  Just no.

[ergophobe]

I would say that as with everything, it's a cost/benefit question.

I do not use Siri or Cortana or Alexa because I don't want to send my conversations and queries to HQ.I have not done 23 And Me because the only disease markers they have that I worry about are things for which there is no medical treatment anyway. I do not wear a Fitbit or any similar item, because I do not see any significant health benefits from sharing my data.

If my toilet were just the poop equivalent of a Fitbit, then no. Definitely no.

On the other hand, if it, say actually delivered on more like the poop equivalent of Theranos (minus the fraud), it might be worth it. Let's say it could detect colon polyps without a colonoscopy. Or nutritional deficiencies.

At a certain point, I think these various wearable and poop-ready and swallowable sensors will get to the point where the benefits will be very high.

[rcjordan]

Years of development, millions of lines of code, and Android can't even run a toilet • The Register

https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/29/bork/

[ergophobe]

See, that just proves my point about sometimes it's worth it. Ever since I was a child I would go to public urinals and think, "If only this urinal had precisely targeted advertising that knew everything about me." And now, my wishes have been answered.

[rcjordan]

>If only this urinal had precisely targeted advertising

Have the new tv-ish gas pumps hit your area yet?   Worst. Invention. Ever.

[ergophobe]

The ones at the nearby casino have them and they are 100% advertising the casino. None of the other ones have them yet.

Funny thing... some years ago at Pubcon, Webwork and I were bored with all the Pubcon sessions and walked next door to a conference that looked to be about 10X the size of Pubcon. We flipped our badges over so they weren't readable, acted like we were deeply engaged in conversation and walked right by the guards (this is before they scanned badges). It turned out to be the national conference for gas station and convenience store owners. There was an area about the size of where Pubcon has the meals + keynote devoted to the latest technology in gas pump. Several brands (who knew?) of gleaming gas pumps with TVs. So we saw some of the first ones on offer.

The whole conference floor was massive. I think it took us a couple of hours to walk the whole thing. And though most convenience store food is awful, we did not leave hungry :-)

[rcjordan]

/r has dozens of threads saying that the pumps can be muted by pressing one of the unmarked buttons along the side of the screen.  I've tried it. No joy.

>casino

Around here, the 'media' company is Cheddar TV.  Most of the content is cheesy^(pun) Lifestyle News --not ads.  This may move the adoption of home-charging EVs forward pretty quickly.

[rcjordan]

The Internet of Shittiest Things: ExtremeTech's All-Time Hall of Shame

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/338040-the-internet-of-shittiest-things-extremetechs-all-time-hall-of-shame

[ergophobe]

>>Shittiest

"companies used to literally compete on how rare your future contact with them would be."

That should probably go in the Quotes that Hit Home thread. That's exactly right. "It just works" used to be a selling point.

[rcjordan]

Kohler Announces Alexa-Equipped 'Intelligent Toilet,' Yours for Just $11,500 - ExtremeTech

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/341712-kohler-announces-alexa-equipped-intelligent-toilet-yours-for-just-11500

[rcjordan]

Test your pee where you pee with this oversized toilet clip-on | Engadget

https://www.engadget.com/vivoo-smart-toilet-clip-on-device-urine-test-190518742.html?src=rss

[rcjordan]

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/5/24022366/kohler-purewash-e930-bidet-atmo-anthem-ces-2024

Enjoy talking to your new voice-controlled smart bidet

[Brad]

>talk

It would have been better if you had to sing to it, loudly and off key.

[ergophobe]

>> smart bidet

I would call this Kohler a remote control toilet and not a smart toilet. There's a difference. Most of what marketers call "smart" is really just remote control.  If the "smart" features can be replicated by two switches and a dial, how is that "smart" in the sense that the original post in this thread used that word (capable of running biomarker analysis on your poop).

Unfortunately, they are adding the features that are easy, not ones that are useful. I guess there's a market.

Back to my original sentiment, I still don't use any of the things mentioned due to privacy concerns, but it's getting to the point where the cost/benefit is starting to look more attractive.

The world of wearables is expanding fast. Most of these are still at a level in terms of cost, convenience and benefit that they are just for people with significant clinical issues (e.g. full-blown diabetes), elite athletes, true believers and the curious rich. But I think the time is coming when we will see more and more people using various devices to monitor health.

- constant glucose monitors are the "in" thing and we're seeing people interested in longevity and elite athletes use them. I'm not there, but if I test positive for two copies of the APOE4 gene, it might be something I would do for a month if possible just to find out what spikes my glucose.

- constant lactate monitors are coming. I expect that if they are not banned, you'll see Tour de France with CGMs and CLMs that constantly wire back to the coach. CGM + CLM might have applications in cancer treatment as well.

- Just in the last few months Calibre released it's O2/CO2 mask that can measure inspired and expired O2 and CO2 from which you can calculate in real time VO2Max, FatMax, lactate threshold and so forth. Again, sort of a toy right now, but as they scale up and get more user data, the accuracy will improve (I found out about it from a scholarly paper that measured it and 5-6 others against the gold standard and found a few of them, including the Calibre to be fairly close and Calibre was the cheapest by far at $600 and $30/mo... of course there is a subscription).

Anyway, all that to say that the original promise of a toilet that would measure biomarkers in your poop is actually kind of promising. A big increase in fat in your poo, for example, might indicate a big decline in pancreatic function, which might allow you to detect pancreatic cancer before Stage 4 (it rarely gets detected before stage 4, which is why it is so deadly).

I'm sort of bullish on the smart toilet as outlined in the first post. It could be an excellent investment if it could measure just a few things in your poop like blood, fat and maybe a couple of nutrients that would be markers of trouble. I suspect if it measured a half dozen things reasonably accurately, rolling them out at a few thousand dollars each could result in an overall savings up money through early detection.