6d ago

FlushMe app - Bizarro

Far more than c/mildlyinfuriating

Mildly Infuriating @lemmy.world

This app requires access to your contacts

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196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone

This app requires access to your contacts

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This is not my Life @lemm.ee

This app requires access to your contacts

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102 comments

And you need to buy a subscription or watch an ad before you can flush.
- Only for a year or so. Then you'll need premium+ to skip ads. The free tier is also downgraded to 1 flush per day.
  
  Worse: the company decides to cancel the service and no longer support these toilets. You have to purchase a new toilet to continue service.
  
  At first I thought that this would be a great opportunity to pit the water companies who own water meters against the smart-toilet companies who accidentally reduce water usage, eating into water company profits, but then I realised that that battle would inevitably result in them working together to make smart toilets that full flush every 30 minutes unless expressly told not to.
- I have the own where I give the app camera access and take a picture of my poop and it calculates the proper flush volume.
  
  And you just know they're sending copies of all your poop data to China, too, for some reason. Probably something to do with "improving targeted advertising," but we know better.
- And you fecal data is shared with health insurance companies, so you can get personalized ~~price hikes~~ recommendations
- You gotta give it biometrics. For your fingerprint, WHAT IF SOMBODY BROKE INTO YOUR HOUSE AND SHAT ON YOUR TOILET!!! We need to verify its you! see there keeping you safe from those shitty bastards!! So just uhh give us all permissions
  If your wondering there will be a preroll ad for the app and every 20minutes it will turn off your lights to your bathroom. And prompt you on your cellular device "are you still shitting?" And recommend poo docters in your local area using target ads
  
  I wish I was kidding when I say there exist asshole recognition tech already. They'll just attach that to your advertiser ID so their worldwide network of 'smart toilets' can deliver targeted ads to every stall and urinal you visit.
  
  So, if I let a guest shat on my toilet, I have to join and gave my fingerprint permission to flush their shit? Nice.
  If an ad starts, the ultimate arkward silence will be better. "Oh look it's an ad for Iron-meds, your shit looks like you need them."

More pixels

An app full of spyware and you still need to allow it to access your gallery, precise location, contacts, microphone,camera
- And when the company starts struggling, they'll start charging or requiring you to watch an ad to flush.
  Before they go out of business and brick your toilet.
  
  Big whoop I brick my toilet at least once a day 😎

you jest but I recently bought a stove that breaks some UX functions unless you use their fucking app.
I refuse to. fuck em. it does 100% of what I need but that extra 15% would have made it the best ever.
now it gets 2 stars and a bad review for paywalled features.
- How sophisticated can a stove be it needs an app?
  Also, how did you not catch that before buying?
  
  I wouldn't even have thought to look. So unless it was prominent in the description, I wouldn't notice.
  
  I have a stove with optional app support, but I tolerate it because the app doesn't add anything. The local controls can do everything. If you use the app, you have to hit a button on the local controls anyway to confirm you are physically there anyway before it listens to the app for most things.
  The only thing that was somewhat convenient was phone notification when timed cooking was done, because the stoves own chime wasn't that loud. However ultimately I stopped bothering and just set a phone timer when I set cook timer, because keeping the oven on the network was an active maintenance activity that wasn't worth it.
  
  there's imperfections in the UI on the stove. like for example there's no number pad. just up and down arrows. this means I can't input a timer for 17 minutes, I can go to 15 or 20.
  others features like using the air fry broiler will only work with the app, but the regular broil setting works fine. the difference is the fan runs 100% of the time on air fry mode vs intermittently on regular convection mode.
  designed inconveniences are the rage for product development now.

You have already flushed 3 times today. Wait 22 hours, or upgrade to FlushApp premium to enjoy unlimited flushing experience.
- Upgrade to premium+ for AI features
  
  "I have analyzed your fecal output and determined that you consumed an excessive amount of beer and hot wings within the last 36 hours."
- Upgrade to FlushApp Premium Super Plus to remove advertisements prior to flushing.

And when the company stops wanting to pay the webservice hosting costs, you have to pay the plumber to come back and throw your useless toilet in the trash.
Worked for a company that made a kitchen appliance that had zero buttons. Needed an app. If you unplugged it without shutting it down in the app, it'd send you an alert notification. The app took at least three taps to fucking turn it off.
And the company was paying something like $1MM/yr to AWS to keep this thing running.

slap some AI on that mf
- Our toilets should be smart enough to take a gulp when their mouth is full
  
  Brb, gonna go bleach my eyes
- I just thought of a brand new completely different and revolutionary product. A toilet that flushes automatically when you get off the toilet using my patented technology Aii, Artificial Intelligence Infared. I'll call it the iToilet AI^2. I'm going to be rich.

Fun tip, you can dump a bucket of water to flush the toilet. Useful if you're ever working on your water supply after taco night.
- No the Flushmate Throne Pro would definitely not have an S bend, it would have a proprietary in-house designed mascerator pump.
- I have made the shit demons mad, what the fuck do I do now?!

"there's an APP for THAT!"
(wow is that dystopian.)

Ok, sure, why not, but wait, hear me out:
A.I.-powered toilet, on the blockchain, and call it Shitcoin!
- CrypooCoin

My last ISP demanded I use an Eero router that had no web interface, it was only accesible via an app.
- My grandma has a mesh wifi thing provided by her ISP and I couldn't find a web interface on it either. I wonder if that's why.
- Ours is only accessible via the ISPs app, and is only manageable online.

I now only buy offline or local-only software and products. If it doesn't exist, I hack it.
- An offline flushing app is not much better in this case.

Once that frustrates me greatly is eight sleep. My wife had been trying various products and unfortunately eight sleep was the best executed one. But they are openly hostile to local controls.
From the time they have released people have been complaining over and over about zero local controls, suggesting buttons on the base, a remote, or even local wifi or Bluetooth controls and their people keep coming online and patronizing by claiming their engineers are working on it, but it's hard. Truth is they are passing a fucking subscription plan to use your damn bed.
Finally they came out with their local control "solution". No, buttons should not be on the base, that would be inconvenient. No, a remote control would be too easy to lose. So they implemented super dodgy earbud type controls, two taps for a tick colder, three taps for a tick warmer. Ok, janky as hell, but finally, local controls. So you get things going and do the tap and long buzz meaning "reject" the request. Turns out the taps will only process if the cloud server says it's ok, and the bed will usually be "off" and not receptive to taps unless you turn it on via Internet app or you have an Internet arranged schedule that has it on at the time you want to adjust it.
It's a shame since they otherwise had fantastic execution, but their monetization through an app strategy is maddening. So my home has one cloud based device and it pisses me off.
- Now I want to take an eight sleep apart and see if I can lobotomize it.....
  
  What a world when you have to mod chip your bed.
- I’ve never heard of eight sleep and I went to their web site, and immediately the site is super fucking annoying
- my opinion, I would have returned it for that reason. Having a bed that doesn't work if I lose power or have an internet outage is a hard no for me. Especially concidering the price range a lot of those start at 2k+ USD. The lack of an ability to use it without an app is a deal breaker, the lack of an ability to use it locally is almost as bad
  edit: holy cow the more I read the site the more red flags I see, $2,500 minimum for a bed that doesn't even have a warranty unless you have an active subscription that hasn't expired since you bought the bed, the extended warranty is a 5-year warranty that is of course an additional amount of money with the same conditions. I've never seen a bed that didn't have an at least 10 year warranty on it out of the box, most offer a 15 to 20 year warranty.
  
  Well, even a locally controlled bed would have "not worked" (well, it's still a bed obviously, just not heating/cooling) in a power outage.
  Note our household got it when it was significantly cheaper (still expensive-ish, but not nearly as bad as now) and grandfathered into being able to use it without a monthly subscription. In a bit of bad/good luck, because replacements kept leaking, we got warranty-upgraded to the current offering. So get to know how the new stuff is without having had to pay as much or maintain a monthly subscription. When we bought it, at least, they had good warranty coverage for leaks.
  So I get to see how good the hardware design fundamentally is while also knowing how anti-consumer the business and software side is going.
  Ultimately when/if I lose sane access to the capabilities, I'll probably start poking around to see about hacking at least the heating and cooling, since we did struggle to find a good comfortable design for such a thing before getting here. They really did at least nail the mattress pad part, and the heating/cooling is pretty good without being obtrusive. The vibration and sensors might be nice, but ultimately I don't care too much about that.

Subscribe and we reserve the right to throttle flush speed/volume after 6pm.
Standard app doesn't cover diarrhea or menstruation - those are luxury secretions for our plus members

So accurate

As long as it has a built in camera and automatically shares to Facebook, I have no problem with this.
- 3d scanner that generates a 3d printing file that automatically creates one in your friends' inboxes. It's just plastic for now but they're working on adding new materials and artificial scents to really capture the whole experience.
  
  Why not just print it with poop?
- Facebook? This person isn't aware of poopmaps!

It doesn't count as satire if it's literally the situation word for word, you have to exaggerate it at least a little. smh
- smh
  "shitting my hands"

Ok but like today I literally discovered someone HACKED THEIR TOOTHBRUSH TO BE A RICKROLL
Technology has gone too far.
- Full-dive VR is the only difference between this reality & a cyberpunk dystopia.
- Is it one of those that plays music through bone conductivity? Cause that'd honestly be a pretty hilarious prank.
  
  I think it would be even funnier if it just buzzed in time to the song, so it would take whoever was being pranked time to figure out what the hell was going on.

I found a "smart" Wi-Fi bulb in the trash and used a throwaway phone to pair it through its app. It was adjustable white and RGB, so I put it in the bathroom and thought I'd trigger it to be dim red (cicardian rhythm, you know) whenever it was night (using a built-in RTC, NTP or light sensor, whatever it was capable of). Well, nope! It only connects to Wi-Fi when powered on (understandable) and only takes orders from an external server god-knows-where, with limited local functionality (party-light cycling, WB matching, optionally remembering the last setting). It does not notify the server when its power turns on (only when switched via app or smart button) so it cannot be configured as a "smart event". The closest I could do would be to create a time event every minute:
22:00 turn on 25% red
22:01 turn on 25% red
22:02 turn on 25% red
•••
04:29 turn on 25% red
04:30 turn on 100% warm white
04:31 turn on 100% warm white
•••
21:59 turn on 100% warm white
I'm pretty sure there is a limit to timed actions so I can't just do it this way. I guess I know why it got trashed while still working as intended.
I'll be looking into Home ~~Automation~~ *Assistant and see if there is a compatible firmware to flash on this piece of shit. Or I'll just use my electrical engineering skills to combine red and orange LEDs into another bulb and give it a separate switch. *(Edit)
- Maybe that’s why it was in the trash..
- Homeassistant? Check !selfhosted@lemmy.world
  
  Yup, that's what it's called
- This may help. (I wrote it)
  
  Thanks but it will take a while before I get my hands on a Raspberry Pi or another computer to install HA on. The bulb may have been fully reverse-engineered or not at all, I have no idea yet. It's a Tapo device from TP-Link.

https://smarthome.steviep.xyz/
- I love little adventure/Twine-style games like this, thanks for sharing! Very lovely.
  
  This was such a surprise when I saw it posted to HN. Could not get phone calls to work though...

Guess I'm not flushing. Enjoy.
- In your own home? Seems like it's only you that reeks the benefits (pun intended)

Ok, now, who has found all 4 of the hidden figures in the comic? It's the special feature of Bizarro.
- I found three... what's the fourth one?
  
  Pipe. pie. crown, upside down bird.

I can't even piss without logging a ticket with IT...

Who wants to bet that one day this will be real? If not already.
- I'd rather shit in a hole
  And if it is a public toilet, guess I'll leave it full.
- I mean I prefer the motion sensor things when I'm public, but I can't see how it could ever be smart to get rid of the button. I would be fine with having a motion sensor at home.
  
  The motion sensor on public toilets is fine... and yes, that little backup button is also critical. Getting rid of the button would be beyond stupid... this is because sometimes the motion sensor malfunctions.
  As for the stuff at home I am content with the 100% mechanical flush mechanism that I have. Sure it means I need to clean the handle every once in a while, but that is no great inconvenience.

if this happened i would shit in a bucket.
- AKA a composting toilet.
  
  all natural.

Bull****

I'm having to replace my bathroom speaker controller because something about my new Pixel phone doesn't like them. The app won't run under modern android, and doesn't even connect via Bluetooth.

Toilets are one of the easiest things to install. Why would you hire a plumber for that?
- You should try your own electrical wiring too.
  
  There's a huge difference between wiring a house and plopping a new toilet over the existing hole in your floor.
  Your comment makes me think you've never installed a toilet before. They're incredibly simple.

You can always install a normal toilet it's not that hard
- Yeah, you just need to buy a non internet connected toilet from alibaba because all the reputable places only sell digital ones, model an Adapter of this propiatory connector that you cant find on the Internet because all tutorials get DMCAd and sued into oblivion, and then you have to somehow install it yourself.
  
  Don't they sell toilets were you live?

102 comments