No Connection, No Flush

"Ok, so what you can see in the logs?"

"Sweetcorn."

Didn't ingest any, but it's still there somehow
♪♪ Sweetcorn is the only thing that makes it through my rear... ♪♪
Must be a kernel issue

Don’t put the gun within reach of the printer, come on
- I keep it in a voice activated safe plugged into the 110
- 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.
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…
- 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’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.
Tell me you’re a NRA fan without telling me you’re a NRA fan.
I think of this often
https://github.com/dylanaraps

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.

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.

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.

The difference between an IT person and a tech enthusiast

- Laughs nervously in self-hosted
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.
- 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.

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

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.
- 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.
Oh we're the idiots. Never saw that coming
Yeah, strong Doubt (X) on this one

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.

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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
Friends hate this one simple trick!
Reminder: never go have pancakes at wise_pancake's house.
- You’ll miss out on some primo maple syrup
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?

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.

Well, shit.

Well put.

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.”

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.

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?

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.

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.
Right? If I can't flush my toilet with nothing more than a bucket of water, if necessary, then I don't want to shit in it.

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.
- Yeah I think the meaning of the above comment boils down to "If it doesn't have a simple fallback, it can't be trusted".
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?
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???
My new eFirepit is causing my family to die of hypothermia.

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.

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.
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 ?

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?

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
Hands 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

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!

But what if the valve was actuated electronically with no manual access?
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!

At least the tech director believes enough on their product to actually use it.

- Still better than a merchant that won't even use what they sell.

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.

Star Trek (at least from TNG onwards) is a dystopia who's inhabitants have convinced themselves is a utopia.

And this is why KNX and Home Assistant are a good idea.

This is a great time for the engineer to exert leverage.
"Yes, I can fix it in hours. Here are my demands:
$200,000
I'll also push a firmware update to all your devices that allows setting any address for the server and exposes all functionality in a Home Assistant API, and you won't ever disable this in current or future devices
You'll offer a free locally-connected button/knob device to any customer owning an affected product, or a free service to upgrade the products with on-device controls
In any social media posts, press releases, customer communication or interviews regarding today's outage, you have to say that plumbing that requires a server connection is a bad idea

Terminally online, even for #2

Because most people are not online while pooping, right?
Right?

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 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
I'm not a Luddite, shit just has to be reliable and actually useful without violating my privacy. Wait a minute...

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 ~~bright~~ brown 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.

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.
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.
a little bit like this?
Why not just have a small aliquot of each stool deposit diverted into an HPLC/UPLC with AI checking the chromatogram?
- Same reason Tesla lost LIDAR and went vision only - ~~its good enough~~ cost.
Brown is rhe Pantone colour of the year.
this reminds me of a joke whose punchline revolves around the meaning of the acronym ATR.

"oNe dAy wE wiLL aLL livE iN a sMaRt hOmE. tEcHnOLoGy aLwAyS iMpRoVeS"

"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.

What's "Skynet" mode, lol?

Footage from a robot in skynet mode:
!it's from the movie Runaway 1984!<
They have knives, and you didn't put them there
- Flag Admiral Stabby earned that knife.

Home assistant everything is a yaml away

they can always ask chatgpt how to fix the problem

The only thing smart I want is a faucet that activates with button OR the knee / foot sensor, and gives water always with a precise programmed temperature and flow.

That and a temperature and timer controlled frying pan.

Well an incinerating toilet that just dries burns my shit using a 340W solar panel would be cool too.

For that last one, why not shit in your microwave and set it to 340W. That would easily allow you to test the system without buying any new appliance, except for a microwave if you don't have one.
- Imagine cleaning the splatter after all the corn boils and pops in there
Well an incinerating toilet that just dries burns my shit using a 340W solar panel would be cool too.
Gonna smell real bad
- Nah you'd have a chimney. The main reason I want a "separating drying toilet" is that it would have a fan and wouldn't smell at all in your bathroom. And you'd probably also have a separating toilet as first step, then dehydration which can be closed cycle, and then either burning or compositing. And with that and biodegradable soap and detergents, sanitation becomes much less infrastructure intensive.

Someone actually invented Tony the Toilet Buddy

rofl. this is great.

spinning up new tech startup: nah forget it. you don't even have to watch videos

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. :|