‘Smart toilet’ monitors for signs of disease | Hacker News Reader

‘Smart toilet’ monitors for signs of disease

med.stanford.edu

98 pointsbreck90 comments

Open articleView on HN

Adult Swim's Smart Pipe coming to life.

https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ

I actually thought it was a cool idea when I watched that, besides the exaggerated parts for the joke.

"We can't do any of that until we modernize our ancient child pornography laws."

Brilliant! That's some HBO Silicon Valley level parody.

Atlas Shrugged @ 5:15

Start at 4:55 for the set-up. SmartPipe CEO Kirk Peckley is played by Mark Proksch, who also played Daniel Wormald (a.k.a Pryce) the H2 driving Squat Cobbler from Better Call Saul!

https://breakingbad.fandom.com/wiki/Daniel_Wormald

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Proksch

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Squat%20Cobb...

K-Strass the Zim-Zam Yo-Yo Guy Super Compilation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj9VF7LyffU

https://www.amc.com/shows/better-call-saul/talk/2016/02/bett...

>Indeed, Proksch – who says he took Gilligan and Gould’s reaction as “incredibly high praise” – says the K-Strass character isn’t much of a stretch from who he is as a person. In fact, he says there’s even a little bit of K-Strass DNA in his performance as Pryce on Better Call Saul. “Every character that I play is a variation of me,” he says. “I have yet to play an out and out asshole or a villain. It’s always kind of a pathetic guy wearing pleats. And that’s what I love. I’m so happy that I get to play these arrogant idiots.”

Haha.

"My father taught me the value of hard work and big ideas. But, he was in the union and so he grew lazy - "

zooms in on copy of Atlas Shrugged

"- and he failed to innovate. Uh, he died."

Mark Proksch is fantastic, he's been a great joy to watch in "What We Do in the Shadows".

Anyone else had the "Bugs be gone" commercial played before the actual video? I was totally confused and eventually found out that this was an ad by Ultimate Premium. This was probably the first time an ad actually worked on my in the last couple of years.

4chan rectal scan

"when you log into smartpipe..."

Smart pipe is a registered sex offender.

Have not read the article, but every time I've heard about it my thought is, "make it not connected to the internet." Basically, keep the data local, then you can choose to take to your doctor, or find a way to analyze it yourself. No need for it to be transmitted anywhere.

Of course, that would require respecting a persons privacy and not falling for the lure of "big data" "saving the world".

That defeats the entire point of this, the whole point isn’t a diagnosis but an early warning especially of it can be performed within a single bowl movement so when you are done and ready to flush you get some feedback.

If you need to go to a doctor to get any analysis you might as well bring your own stool sample.

This is intended to replace home stool testing kits which are well icky and tricky to use.

Having smart toilets in public or semi pubic places would be a good balance between privacy and utility, it can’t tie results to a given user but it can collect collective health data and alert users of potential health concerns.

I think the point of the parent is not so much that you need to take your data to a doctor as much as it’s about not uploading the data to the internet (ie keep the data local).

Or the obvious middle-ground: make it optional to upload it. I would certainly not want this unless it uploaded and analyzed the data automatically. If it can happen locally, no problem, but I guess it makes it much harder.

If they make it optional, I'd bet good money on the "Don't upload" being off by default and hidden behind five complicated menus.

It is also reset with every update, which have an ominously high frequency, like once a week. The device will of course disable it's features if an update is not applied.

Also, make it full of "useful" granularity like: "upload data on Tuesdays" or "Only upload data if the water PH is less than 7".

Or even stripped of the good features that "require" the cloud.

Can we really trust whoever runs the toilets to respect the privacy of the "user"?

Both governments and private corporations have given us ample evidence that the answer should be a hard "no!".

But then you would have to install updates constantly to have the latest models to compare your data against, vs a cloud solution where the models are always up to date.

Privacy is important, but I think the solution I want is more in the area of haveibeenpwned, where an anonymized hash is passed into the ether rather than all the personally identifiable stool information.

I totally agree.

The article states: "The smart toilet automatically sends data extracted from any sample to a secure, cloud-based system for safekeeping."

This sentence sounds like satire these days.

Stool diagnostics are the future. So much health information is flushed down the toilet. I hope this will soon be a standard in houses. Except, the problem is what happens to the data of friends that use your toilet...

They can press the privacy button which will ignore the current poop.

Sure but I’m going to carry that smart toilet to the local dump either way

Yeah but what if you can't buy a non-smart toilet any more? Like what happens with TVs now.

Haha yeah same Deal. Only dumb screens in my house. It’s all a joke ... this new shit. A joke on us

Just don't connect it to your internet.

Also, never have an open WiFi close to it. Ever. They do automatically connect to those and use them.

That might stop working with 5g

FYI, Walmart and Amazon sell dumb 4K TVs.

I'll be wafflestomping like my life fuckin depends on it.

I bought a nice samsung 4k HDR smart TV a couple of years ago in an xmas offer from argos, connected it to a linux mediaPC and never setup the network for it.

It's a dumb panel that displays video exactly as FSM intended - I don't even use the built in speakers, I use a nice set of PC spears with a sub.

I actually don't know what the smart capabilities are, I turn it on, switching to HDMI2 and never touch it again.

"our business model is delaying the opt-out process beyond the urgency window of the user"

Simple, just have an OAuth login panel at the toilet to make sure your data gets assigned correctly.

Facial recognition? I don't want a touchscreen on my toilet.

There's voice, there's radar, there's smell... all sorts of other non-contact methods of user verification.

If the tech is good enough, it could use a Fart ID system

assentication ? (fixed a typo)

>I hope this will soon be a standard in houses.

I sure as hell hope is is not. Like every other piece of convenience crapware (pun intended) we've surrounded ourselves with, it would undoubtedly come packed with data sharing agreements with ad networks / data brokers.

If this ever becomes some sort of norm, I would encourage people to start mailing boxes of their own waste directly to Google for them to enjoy analyzing, as the data would inevitably end up in their hands anyway.

It's also another way to make sure you don't get the job you're applying for.

It's the one place crapware belongs.

Darryl Cherney once organized a pee-in to protest a call by Ronald Reagan for mandatory government drug testing, convincing several hundred people to mail urine samples to the White House. When the containers were all ruptured by the sorting machinery in the Garberville post office, much of that part of the county's mail smelled like a public toilet for several days. Darryl was informed of the disaster and shrugged sheepishly. When you were saving the planet, you won a few, you lost a few.

https://books.google.nl/books?id=WDvNaVv_sX4C&pg=PA164&lpg=P...

Bob Shireman, who calls himself a "consumer advocate," created the "Piddle to the President Kit." Nw you can send President Reagan your urine in a leak-proof missive, thanks to the sterile specimen cup, the currugated mailing box addressed to "Ron and Nancy," and the set of mailing insttructions that come with each kit.

https://books.google.nl/books?id=neYDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT12&lpg=PT...

That's fascinating. Hopefully the effort can be revived should Google et al. pursue our health data.

According to Slavoj Žižek, Germans love Hermeneutic stool diagnostics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXPyCY7jbs

>Žižek on toilets. Slavoj Žižek during an architecture congress in Pamplona, Spain.

>The German toilets, the old kind -- now they are disappearing, but you still find them. It's the opposite. The hole is in front, so that when you produce excrement, they are displayed in the back, they don't disappear in water. This is the German ritual, you know? Use it every morning. Sniff, inspect your shits for traces of illness. It's high Hermeneutic. I think the original meaning of Hermeneutic may be this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics

>Hermeneutics (/ˌhɜːrməˈnjuːtɪks/)[1] is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Hermeneutics is more than interpretive principles or methods we resort to when immediate comprehension fails. Rather, hermeneutics is the art of understanding and of making oneself understood.

We, the Dutch, have such toilets too ( mine is of this type ).

And my biology teacher told us : keep an eye on your shit. Excrement I mean, pardon my English.

As someone who built a house not so long ago I can tell you that the official German words are "Tiefspüler" (the modern type) vs "Flachspüler" (the old type). The old type is recommended for elderly people who want to inspect their stool regularly for blood, maggots and jewlery.

Ok, I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain the jewelry bit.

Alright, you got me, I made that half up. But while writing I remembered a friend once told me that he had swallowed a gold tooth accidentally.

I thought you were making a Marathon Man or Schindler's List reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nG2vlX5xUP8

https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/47393/what-was-th...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Zisblatt

"By sitting here, you accept the Terms of Deuce."

Personally I think this is going to be a critical aspect of healthcare in the future. That along with other continuous monitoring like smart watches with advanced pulse rate detection etc. And I think that the health improvements in terms of disease prevention and early treatment will be like night and day. They will look back at the pre-continuous-monitoring era of healthcare as the dark ages.

However, the part that I really disagree with is the idea that it would send your data to the doctor but not make it readily available to you. I personally feel like access to and control over my own personal health data is a human right that is actually often effectively blocked by our current healthcare system.

And I know that the belief is that normal people can't interpret health information, but with AI built into these types of devices and services and online knowledgebases, that isn't completely true anymore. Sure, we absolutely need doctors before making decisions, but that does not mean we should not be able to examine our own health data and do our own computer-assisted research. Especially when so many people cannot afford the costs of routine healthcare.

I guess it’s convenient and probably would save lives by way of course early detection...

But... what about going in for an interview and unbeknownst you get idd and samples get sent. Or your employer... oh so and so is coming on with an expensive disease which requires loads of time off to recover...

There are implications that need to be adressed.

I'm not quite sure that level of concern is warranted. It is illegal to ask for a medical examination before getting hired and I imagine this would extend to that. Testing poop, even with a smart toilet, would be pretty cumbersome and a huge PR nightmare. It would be just as easy now to remove hair for covert DNA tests - but I don't think that has ever been an issue.

They say in the article that this toilet does not test the poop, it just analyzes the image.

That’s not universally true if a physical exam is required of all prospective employees with some relevance to the job.

For those objecting: www.thebalancecareers.com/pre-employment-physicals-2060485

And I’ve personally had offers rescinded because of a physical. Quite a while ago and involved some physical work but physicals can be required.

> It would be just as easy now to remove hair for covert DNA tests

Thanks to companies like 23andMe, this won't be neccessary in the future. If enough of your relatives have sent their genome to those companies, they already have the sequenced genome as well as consent from your relatives to use their DNA. Their DNA is highly similar to your DNA which means that they can extrapolate to you, without even having to resort to covert methods.

Well those people who stole your poo just performed a medical procedure upon you without your consent. That poo is 'you' I'm pretty sure... Whoever has the best lawyer wins.

Many jobs have random drug testing and they're perfectly legal.

Even worse, Uhual will not hire nicotine users: https://www.uhaul.com/Articles/About/19926/U-Haul-To-Impleme...

Is it legal to test someone without their knowledge or consent? Like if I MITM the public toilet and start drug testing random passersby... well the results would probably be skewed due to contamination... Now that I think about it, this kind of massive, drive-by poo-veillance is actually a really hard problem.

Wait I'm getting distracted. Yeah, original question: is consent needed before such testing can be done? Mileage varies by state maybe?

"You aren't what you eat - you are what you don't poop." -Wavy Gravy

The real problem is false positives. Suppose this system puts up a warning. What next? Expensive and/or invasive tests? Could be more trouble than it's worth. If it were me, I'd have to see a very high rate of accuracy before I'd trust it.

That's the common argument about almost every medical test. Prostate psa test could mean problems or not, and then prostate cancers have very different outcomes. If we scanned everyone we'd find lots of other anomalies that don't matter, but we'd find a few people with near term heart attack or stroke or early cancer. I'd personally take that risk.

Its already main stream for cats to do the same with litter. https://prettylitter.com/

Its matter of time before this becomes common.

Disclaimer: Investor in prettylitter.

I recognize this as being advertised on the podcast "Small Town Dicks" with Yeardley Smith ["Lisa" from "The Simpsons"] and two detectives "from Small Town USA" about actual true crime stuff.

Notification Again: I just listen to the podcast, I've simply just watched 'The Simpsons', and I don't have a cat.

smalltowndicks.com

"Hey buddy, you're the one with the sex toilet!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83KLxQ1jjdg

Can anyone actually build something good?

‘What’s another attack surface of a persons dignity and privacy?’ - all new products.

You’re all going the way of the dinosaurs with your ‘new’ bs

My wife has an autoimmune disease which can manifest with blood and protein spilling into urine due to impaired kidney function. To monitor this daily would be a tremendous improvement to our ability to monitor for flares.

Thats a brilliant example where we need to provide her with the device she needs.

I still dont want it as a product thats in every home

"You'll never guess what Jennifer Lopez had for dinner this month. The number 9 will blow your digestive system"

But Wow, that adult swim video nailed that in 2014

Of course If a system can scan signs of disease, to modify it to scan silently drugs would be a breeze. Would be basically like putting a policeman inside each toilet.

Blue Lives Fecal Matter!

The downsides are huge, including everyone knowing or thinking that they know your medical secrets. More or less we know what we have or risk, yet until it hits us like a ton of bricks we keep eating, sitting and drinking.

Literally "the internet of sh*t"

What types of health conditions can be detected in stools and urine?

For some conditions there are some obviously visual signs e.g. blood in urine or stools. Or the colour of stool may indicate a condition if it is persistently a very pale colour.

But what conditions can be detected in stools and urine that aren't visible by visual diagnosis? The article mentions some cancers but not much detail.

Look up urine test strips

The comments in this thread that can't see the obvious benefits and instead are focusing on far-fetched privacy issues. If we come to a point where everyone is forced to shit in a smart toilet we will have way bigger problems to deal with. Until then just let me have a smart toilet to analyze my poop.

jokes aside, testing != outcomes; many comments here make reference to testing results taken by others, and then .. what ? Who owns the data ? what is the custody chain of the data ? When it is available, to the highest bidder?

Illness is a weakness, and weakness is used by humans against other humans, everyday. Some psychology suggests that the more removed and remote the decision-making, the more likely to be unfair. Therefore, collecting intimate data on YOU with this device, especially in some kind of mandetory, unescapable way, is the stuff of nightmares for real reasons.

This invention is useful, but its application is no joke. !

there was no other method than anus scan for authentication? the fingerprint was not enough? if the anus is so reliable why bother with the fingerprint at all? how about voice authentication in lieu of all that?

I can't believe they used the anal scan. This is too much like SmartPipe to be anything other than hilarious. It's where satire and reality meet back on the other side.

This is honestly incredible. They had to have taken this out of the adult swim promo.

This comparison obviously begs the question, it it illegal to store a scan of a child's unique anal topography?

There was a gynecologist arrested a few years ago for taking related photos of (adult) patients.

Storing the photo in a visually-renderable format is probably unacceptable. Storing hashes should work though.

I'm curious then, do they have a light in the toilet to get the picture? I imagine some light must stream in depending on your body size and the toilet size but is that enough light or do they need more?

"shitbit"

Don't need 1 more thing monitoring my shit.

Toilet-cloud interface unwanted

It's more like a lock and key mechanism that employs your topographical anal handshake.

Inevitably another cloud connected device. I hope it keeps my crap secure...

I saw some kitty litter that changes color for certain conditions.

original paper https://sci-hub.tw/10.1038/s41551-020-0534-9#

There's a Japanese startup that makes smart cat litterboxes. Clever stuff.

Do they analyze the cat poop?

Cat pee.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com