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“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
deleted by creator
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
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.
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.
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
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
Why would I get a laser printer? I don’t want a printer.
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?
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?
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.
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.
Remember, the “s” in IoT stands for “security”.
And the ‘p’ for privacy.
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.
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.
It’s not easy to make it any simpler. You’ve got to control those devices somehow.
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.
I’ve got smart shutters that open and close automatically based on time, smart awnings which lower or raise based on the sun, to allow air flow when the shade isn’t needed, smart lights that can be turned off all together with a button near my door when I leave, movement sensors in a few rooms that turn on the light but only at certain times of the day (essentially I don’t want my corridor light to flash me when I go to the bathroom during the night), energy meters and smart plugs that allow me to optimize my electricity costs.
It’s not for everyone but it’s quite useful.
I’ve got this set up in home assistant, with smart bulbs that don’t access the internet at all. Its really nice, goes from an orange red in the morning to full white back to orange red. Eventually will get all of the bulbs in my house set up with it but for now I have it only in my room
Automation: https://github.com/basnijholt/adaptive-lighting Bulbs: https://kaufha.com/blf10/
I think of this often
Tell me you’re a NRA fan without telling me you’re a NRA fan.
I can consider acceptable for the kettles to be connected to the internet if, and only if, they answer always with a 418 status code.
But… Teapot!
There’s nearly as much reason for those to be internet-connected.
I’m perfectly fine with enabling a connection, just not requiring one.
For example - my lights are automated. They have a switch though. If they went offline (or my server does), I can press the entirely local switch and have light.
As a reminder though, 418 is supposed to be the response for requests of the teapot to brew coffee.
I can press the entirely local switch and have light.
Are you sure about that? Is it a local connected smart switch (still fancy electronics, just local) or a plain old power switch?
If it’s a power switch, and If you turned your lights off by app over the internet, and then the internet went out, then your lights’ ability to come back on when you flick the physical switch depends on somebody having thought about this need and programmed a “oh, the switch was flicked so I better ignore the internet settings” mode.
And if they did that, it also probably means your lights all turn on after a power outage since the light can’t tell the difference between power outage and light switch flipped off.
Any smart lights I’ve seen always turn on when going from no power to power. It’s a little annoying when the power blinks and half the house lights up, but it means physical switches always work.
Smart lights should be used rarely because they have a failure state. Smart switches are the answer here for most lighting. These are light switches that also have radios in them to connect to zigbee/zwave/matter/whatever to control the switch if the connection is available.
Lutreon sells high quality, but somewhat expensive ones that work flawlessly.
I like the color temperature and brightness of my lights responding to the time of day too much in order to go with smart switches over smart lights
For most people, the thought of replacing an outlet or switch is daunting to say the least. My IKEA smart bulbs are going on 7 years old and still working great.
I did replace every single outlet and switch in my house when I moved in, but that was before I knew about ZigBee or Zwave, and well before matter existed.
I don’t feel the need to replace most of my switches and half of my outlets again.
Feels like you don’t even understand why people use smart bulbs.
Are you sure about that?
Lol yes. Its a relay with a secondary control via mqtt with intermittent status reporting.
it also probably means your lights all turn on after a power outage since the light can’t tell the difference between power outage and light switch flipped off.
Not how that works.
If it doesn’t work well without the Internet, it’s a bad investment. Features that require the Internet degrading a bit is one thing, but if a toilet or toaster can’t do its basic job offline, it was ewaste the second it rolled off the factory line.
Same goes for games BTW
Fuck online requirements
Except if the game is designed to be multiplayer-only, but even then we should be able to set up our own servers. If the original Half Life could do it in 1998 then why can’t we do it now?
If a multiplayer-only game turns down official servers, and you can’t self-host within the game, they should owe players a separate server binary they can run, or a partial refund for breaking the game. It should not be hard, especially if it’s a known constraint when they develop the game.
How TF you expect that to work with MMO style games that may have significantly complex server infrastructure & deployment environments?
The one MMO I’ve meaningfully played, RuneScape, has open source replicas of its server from different points in time, that the community has made. I’m not gonna pretend it’s zero work, but a developer with the source code absolutely could do these things. It also doesn’t need to be perfectly compatible with the original one, you can replace a complex DB backend with something standard and less performant. Only runs on Linux, or MS Server 2k8? The community of people who care will figure it out.
Maybe a source code release would be preferable in this kind of option. EA just did this with a few Command and Conquer games.
Source Code release could be complicated, especially for games that aren’t 30 years old because the devs don’t start over from scratch every time so there would still be an enormous amount of proprietary code in it.
Itd be cool (and as impractical as it is, I believe all code should be open sources) but not really feasible
Yeah that’s basically why I didn’t pull it out as an option in the first place, it’s not always practical. A lot of your proprietary code is going to be external dependencies linked/built against, or your own IP reused from the last project. But not all of it, and I can definitely see that smaller chunk causing a lot of problems.
You need a team that does a lot of dependency management and similar things well while building it, that don’t actually help them get the game out faster, to keep the problem manageable. Or a team who specialize in open sourcing games like this, which could become a thing if this was more commonplace.
that’s the company’s problem. They made it too complicated.
No it isn’t this is a crazy ignorant comment that just hand waves the problem I presented away because it’s not convenient enough for your stance.
If you’re going to comment don’t comment in bad faith, that’s not the kind of discussions we need on lemmy.
The problem begets the solution. And damn near every modern MMO has a significant set of challenges that they have built technological solutions for which drive more complicated infrastructure.
it’s a bit of a straw man from your side to act like the discussion is about multiplayer when we are discussing about single player campaign based RPGs or about multiplayer when the company deliberately shuts it down in favour of a new version that just milks players for more money; or about toasters that definitely don’t need internet connection to function.
Recently noticed how many of my “offline single player” games did not actually work offline, after moving and being without internet for a while.
To anyone reading this, try unplugging your PC and check what your options actually are. I was really disappointed about not being “allowed” to play Red Dead.
And yet we will still fail the target for stopkillinggames.com People just don’t care.
Yeah I posted about that shit a long time ago, I knew people weren’t gonna respond, we all saw the numbers. It had the momentum of fucking syrup.
They deserve to get their games deleted. I hope they get real fucking mad about it. Impotent rage, just completely red faced, making little comments and posts here and there pleading and wilding out, writing nasty shit, getting a fucking aneurysm.
Then giving up and moving on, accepting how powerless they are, despite not really being powerless at all. That’s the real tragedy of it.
Curiously, the pirate version works fine offline.
It’s almost as if being online is not an actual technical requirement…
Or use them on your Steam Deck or equivalent in the train.
or toaster can’t do its basic job offline
pats my 1962 Sunbeam Radiant Toaster
Obligatory Red Dwarf toaster scene
The way Salima found out that Boulangism had gone bankrupt: her toaster wouldn’t accept her bread. She held the slice in front of it and waited for the screen to show her a thumbs-up emoji, but instead, it showed her the head-scratching face and made a soft brrt. She waved the bread again. Brrt.
“Come on.” Brrt.
She turned the toaster off and on. Then she unplugged it, counted to ten, and plugged it in. Then she menued through the screens until she found RESET TO FACTORY DEFAULT, waited three minutes, and punched her Wi-Fi password in again.
Brrt.
Long before she got to that point, she’d grown certain that it was a lost cause. But these were the steps that you took when the electronics stopped working, so you could call the 800 number and say, “I’ve turned it off and on, I’ve unplugged it, I’ve reset it to factory defaults and…”
There was a touchscreen option on the toaster to call support, but that wasn’t working, so she used the fridge to look up the number and call it. It rang seventeen times and disconnected. She heaved a sigh. Another one bites the dust.
The toaster wasn’t the first appliance to go (that honor went to the dishwasher, which stopped being able to validate third-party dishes the week before when Disher went under), but it was the last straw. She could wash dishes in the sink but how the hell was she supposed to make toast—over a candle?
Just to be sure, she asked the fridge for headlines about Boulangism, and there it was, their cloud had burst in the night. Socials crawling with people furious about their daily bread. She prodded a headline and learned that Boulangism had been a ghost ship for at least six months because that’s how long security researchers had been contacting the company to tell it that all its user data—passwords, log-ins, ordering and billing details—had been hanging out there on the public internet with no password or encryption. There were ransom notes in the database, records inserted by hackers demanding cryptocurrency payouts in exchange for keeping the dirty secret of Boulangism’s shitty data handling. No one had even seen them.
Boulangism’s share price had declined by 98 percent over the past year. There might not even be a Boulangism anymore. When Salima had pictured Boulangism, she’d imagined the French bakery that was on the toaster’s idle-screen, dusted with flour, woodblock tables with serried ranks of crusty loaves. She’d pictured a rickety staircase leading up from the bakery to a suite of cramped offices overlooking a cobbled road. She’d pictured gas lamps.
The article had a street-view shot of Boulangism’s headquarters, a four-story office block in Pune, near Mumbai, walled in with an unattended guard booth at the street entrance.
The Boulangism cloud had burst and that meant that there was no one answering Salima’s toaster when it asked if the bread she was about to toast had come from an authorized Boulangism baker, which it had. In the absence of a reply, the paranoid little gadget would assume that Salima was in that class of nefarious fraudsters who bought a discounted Boulangism toaster and then tried to renege on her end of the bargain by inserting unauthorized bread, which had consequences ranging from kitchen fires to suboptimal toast (Boulangism was able to adjust its toasting routine in realtime to adjust for relative kitchen humidity and the age of the bread, and of course it would refuse to toast bread that had become unsalvageably stale), to say nothing of the loss of profits for the company and its shareholders. Without those profits, there’d be no surplus capital to divert to R&D, creating the continuous improvement that meant that hardly a day went by without Salima and millions of other Boulangism stakeholders (never just “customers”) waking up with exciting new firmware for their beloved toasters.
And what of the Boulangism baker-partners? They’d done the right thing, signing up for a Boulangism license, subjecting their process to inspections and quality assurance that meant that their bread had exactly the right composition to toast perfectly in Boulangism’s precision-engineered appliances, with crumb and porosity in perfect balance to absorb butter and other spreads. These valued partners deserved to have their commitment to excellence honored, not cast aside by bargain-hunting cheaters who wanted to recklessly toast any old bread.
Salima knew these arguments, even before her stupid toaster played her the video explaining them, which it did after three unsuccessful bread-authorization attempts, playing without a pause or mute button as a combination of punishment and reeducation campaign.
She tried to search her fridge for “boulangism hacks” and “boulangism unlock codes” but appliances stuck together. KitchenAid’s network filters gobbled up her queries and spat back snarky “no results” screens even though Salima knew perfectly well that there was a whole underground economy devoted to unauthorized bread.
She had to leave for work in half an hour, and she hadn’t even showered yet, but goddamnit, first the dishwasher and now the toaster. She found her laptop, used when she’d gotten it, now barely functional. Its battery was long dead and she had to unplug her toothbrush to free up a charger cable, but after she had booted it and let it run its dozens of software updates, she was able to run the darknet browser she still had kicking around and do some judicious googling.
She was forty-five minutes late to work that day, but she had toast for breakfast. Goddamnit.
The dishwasher was next. Once Salima had found the right forum, it would have been crazy not to unlock the thing. After all, she………… 😉
Unauthorized Bread: Real rebellions involve jailbreaking IoT toasters
Cory Doctorow’s book, Radicalized, is up for a CBC award. To celebrate, here’s an excerpt.
Thank you!
I believe I am hooked and will have to get this now. Dammit. I already have a back log and swore off getting anymore, and this just waltzes in front of my face.
She could wash dishes in the sink but how the hell was she supposed to make toast—over a candle?
Oven refusing to work too? Broil that bread, and put two bullets in the toaster for insubordination and dereliction of duty.
This is great though, gonna have to read the whole thing and/or other book!
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.
Edit: Not the fault of OpenWRT, but how stupidly locked down everything is manufactured by design anymore.
You can get a glinet router. They have a WiFi 7 device coming out shortly as well.
Thanks for the heads up! I’ll check them out! :D
I’m starting to get nervous with this aging Netgear stuff that’s not getting updated anymore.
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.
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.
In-person TTRPG games (instance checks out, yes)
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.
Making “smart” devices that can’t do routine mundane things without an active internet connection is completely fucking stupid.
My sister’s new apartment’s front door has a “smart lock”, hooked up to Ring, naturally. No keyhole, you open it with your phone. It also runs on batteries.
Do I really need to say any more? We were baffled.
EDIT: Correction - there IS a keyhole but the actual tenants don’t have access to it. Only the property management. Creepy. :|
I have one too but it has an emergency physical “master key”. Also there’s a port to provide power to it through a battery bank, in case you really run out of juice though it’s potentially another point of failure. No internet connection
I have a Nuki this one still works with a normal key, since you install it on top of your existing double cylinder (you should only install it on one that can have two keys inserted at the same time or with a turn knob on one side). The Nuki just turns the key or thumb turn of the cylinder. Also means you can’t see that a smart lock is installed from the outside. Battery is not a problem since they last for about 5 months. And you get a warning when it reaches 20%.
I got a Proteus IV system. Now I’m dead and my wife is knocked up.
“Hello amazon I’m a police, I need you to unlock this door at 123 Rainy St, Arlen TX 76043”
“Ok Mr. Police right away!”
Sounds great!
I’ve seen landlords put these things on doors, too, and use them to allow entrance to anyone they think has a reason to be inside, whether the resident knows and consents or not.
Yeah fuck that.
Actually that is illegal (at least in my area), they’re required to give at least 24hr notice for maintenance or the landlord themselves coming by, etc. Exception is cops, they can always let in cops (and EMS and Fire I think).
I think that’s been the law everywhere I’ve lived, too, but not always followed…
Actually, yeah, I edited above but it did have a little keyhole: Except the management office said it was for themselves alone.
That’s just…eegh…
LOL relevant meme attached:
Arlen TX
Weird coincidence seeing this right after finishing an episode of King of the Hill. LOL
“Yo man dang’ol smartlock open up man left my daggum phone in there tell ya what.”
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?”
Oh my god that’s hilarious, I hope that really worked!
As to KOTH:
“Unlock my door or I’ll kick your digital ass!”
*crying* “My door won’t let me in, Hank! Everyone leaves me, Lenoire left and now even my house left me!”
Dale however never got one, his house is still secured by Daletech. Shishishaaaaa!
This was too perfect LOL. Nice job! XD
It was one of the jailbreaks, LLMs are just too eager to help.
I have a smart deadbolt that is keypad operated. It’s awful.
Never used the smart features, and there isn’t a bypass to unlock the door when the batteries die — which happens a lot, especially in the winter. I tried using rechargeable batteries in it, but they last less than half the time of normal batteries.
There is nothing more frustrating than punching in the key code and hearing the death of HAL9000 voice before the deadbolt fully unlocks. Luckily I have a back door that isn’t smart.
I’m replacing the lockset soon and this won’t be a problem anymore, but holy shit is it frustrating and wasteful.
Kwikset keypad works great for me. There’s a keyhole, a real button keypad, and the batteries last a while with quite a bit of warning before they’re actually dead.
What if there was no internet connection? Would they be able to get in their house?
I was watching a friend’s dogs while she was on vacation when the batteries in her door lock died. I had to climb in a back window to get inside and feed them. Luckily, there was a back door with a dumb lock, but I had to get inside first and borrow her keys for that to help.
What’s the brand?
Honestly I’m not sure, I only got a look at it when I was helping her move.
It’s tied to a wall panel on the other side that controls the whole unit’s lighting and thermostat and such though, and shows a doorbell cam.
Educated guess that it’s all tied to Amazon. Blegh.
Allegedly they’re just supposed to rely on maintenance to change the batteries so they’re not locked out of their home. Crazy.
SmartOne uses Schlage locks with some ecobee thermostats and sometimes a doorbell cam. Latch locks suck and I don’t know what panel is used there.
I’m in Toronto, I do high-rise construction. Post a picture I’ll tell you what it is.
Time for her to learn lockpicking I’d say.
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.
Has nobody else pointed out this is clearly not real?
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.
Oh we’re the idiots. Never saw that coming
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.
I’ve put a few smart lights/switches/sensors/power points in at home. Definitely helps mum as we can have wireless switches for the lights, and motion sensors to turn the hallway lights on automatically as well.
For ALL of them, I make sure there is a manual control that will work as a backup regardless. Even if a smart light is “off” due to the motion sensor not detecting movement, all you need to do is turn the old regular light switch off then back on and the light will default to being back on.
Removed by mod
Ye. I have all Ikea smart stuff, by default everything is running a local mesh network with physical remotes and that light switch backup.
You don’t even need to connect any of it to the net, buying a hub to get app & google home/alexa/etc control is entirely optional with the exception of a few sensors, like the moisture/water leak one. And even then, the app & hub work on local wifi with no internet anyway.
Anything in my house smarter than the IKEA remote control light switch gets crushed with a hammer.
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)_/¯
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.
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
The pullcord kind used to be pretty common, I think. This is just that with a pedal.
It is in campers, lol.
Huh, so they do exist then.
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.
and public washrooms often use the touchless sensor types.
Now. I’m guessing you only have to go back to 2000 for that to be a futuristic new thing, though, while the history of the modern flush toilet goes back to the Victorian era.
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.
Oh shit, I guess that’s true, yeah. Wheelchair bathrooms are there own thing but not every place has them, at least where I live.
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
Can you not go from the toilet to the sink without your phone?
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)?
How do you know?
Let’s just say this happens a lot in my house.
A little display or indicator light somewhere on the toilet itself would be better than connecting it to some IOT app
Oh, absolutely. I was responding only to “If it’s clogged, you’d know beforehand when you look in the bowl.”
An app for a toilet is a stupid idea, full stop.
- 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.
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.
The privacy issues are nasty, but a smart toilet could actually be an incredibly useful device.
Can you imagine if every time you went to the bathroom, your toilet could do some of the basic stool / urine tests you get at the doctor’s office? Certain diseases could be caught extremely early, and you wouldn’t have to do anything different.
And then there are bidet functions. Forget smearing poop all over your ass with paper, wash the poop off with nice warm water every time.
I wouldn’t want to have to use a smartphone app for that, but there’s no reason you couldn’t have a simple set of buttons on the toilet itself. You could keep the manual flush lever and only use that if you preferred, but if you wanted an even better experience and a better clean, that option would be available.
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.
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.
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.
You sent this message by manually sending radio messages, I presume?
No, it’s one of the few use cases of emacs.
How’s your family doing?
They were bonked with a hammer until they were below the proper “smart” threshold.
Yeah, they’re about pakled intelligence now.
Friends hate this one simple trick!
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?
Hell, no. ifixit products are quality and not over-engineered! I just have one of their basic kits, though…
Can you play DOOM on the light switch?
Reminder: never go have pancakes at wise_pancake’s house.
You’ll miss out on some primo maple syrup
This has the same energy as buying But Light to shoot.
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)
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.
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
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.
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.
“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!
I think it was voice activated.
Well it is sound activated, it flushes when it detects the “aaaaaaaaaah” sound of relief after refuse vacation has completed.
If there is no such sound, obviously your work is not done, and there is no need to flush.
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.
Well, shit.
Well put.
I don’t think any of these people know what “smart” is supposed to mean cause these must be the dumbest ideas for any product I’ve heard so far.
‘Smart’ means it can send your lifestyle data to the company, and make you dependent on their services.
You want to change your toilet provider? Best of luck holding your poo in for three days while the transfer is processed.
Mostly to be more efficient and save water, though I couldn’t fathom how that would work with a toilet. Perhaps it’s part of a system to monitor your water usage to help you reduce your use? Maybe the app suggests to let it mellow when it’s yellow?
