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Comment by TomJansen | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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

>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.

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)

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

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"

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