Archive for December 4th, 2025

“Toilets, toilets, toilets.”©

Thursday, December 4th, 2025

© Steve Ballmer, 2024.

One of my cow orkers sent me a link to a TechCrunch story (by way of Slashdot). I don’t think the actual TechCruch story is all that interesting: does the Kohler Dekoda actually use end-to-end encryption or not? The story is based on this blog post by Simon Fondrie-Teitler, a security researcher, and the answer seems to be “no”, at least in the way end-to-end encryption is defined:

However, responses from the company make it clear that—contrary to common understanding of the term—Kohler is able to access data collected by the device and associated application. Additionally, the company states that the data collected by the device and app may be used to train AI models.

What I think is more interesting is what the Kohler Dekoda actually is. Kohler, as you know, Bob, is a large plumbing and fixtures company.

The Kohler Dekoda is a camera.

It attaches to your toilet.

Dekoda uses science now available for the first time at home to analyze your urine. It evaluates hydration levels and alerts you to changes in real time.

Dekoda’s advanced sensors analyze your waste. It passively tracks the frequency, consistency, and shape, then decodes that data into practical insights you can use to create habits for a healthy gut.

Yeah. So what it’s doing is taking pictures of your bodily waste, “analyzing” them, and sending you reports on your health.

“01. Download the Kohler Health app

Install the Kohler Health app. Then create your profile where your scores, health & wellness data, and trends are updated after every bathroom visit.”

Of course it needs an app.

02. Install Dekoda

Attach the Dekoda to the inner rim of your toilet. Dekoda is designed to fit most toilet bowls thanks to its innovative clamp. No tools required.

03. Use the bathroom

Visit the bathroom as you would normally. Dekoda uses advanced sensors to passively analyze your waste in the background.

Thank God I can use the bathroom normally!

How much would you pay for a camera on your toilet that tracks your bodily wastes and sends you reports? $50? $100? Or would someone have to pay you?

The Kohler Dekoda sells for $600. But wait, there’s more! And I bet you already know what that “more” is!

Yes, it also requires a subscription. $7 a month ($70 a year) for a single user, or $13 a month ($130 a year) for a “family plan” that’s good for up to five users.

So if you have an average 2 1/2 bath home, and want to make sure you have coverage everywhere you “go”, you’d need to spend $1,800 on the hardware. It isn’t clear to me if the subscription covers multiple cameras, or if you need one subscription for every camera. It also isn’t clear to me how the camera would be able to distinguish between various users (husband/wife), or if you have to tell that app each time that you’re the one on the throne.

I get that there are some people with health conditions that might find this useful, though I question whether it would be $600 plus an ongoing $70 a year useful. I also get that “gut health” seems to be the next big health advance, though it seems to me that “gut health” has been a thing for a while, and what do we have to show for it?

As for hydration, you can print this and hang it above every toilet in your house for a couple of pennies worth of ink.

And if Kohler is using anonymized data to train AI models, I say: awesome! Because the last thing in the world I want is humans (outside of a specific medical context) analyzing bodily wastes, even if they are getting paid for it.

Posted in Geek, Urine | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: December 4, 2025.

Thursday, December 4th, 2025

Several people sent me obits for Steve Cropper, of Booker T. and the MG’s, and the Blues Brothers.

As a member of Booker T. & the MG’s, the house rhythm section at Stax, Mr. Cropper played the snarling Fender Telecaster lick on “Green Onions,” the funky hit instrumental by the MG’s from 1962. He also contributed the ringing guitar figure that opened Sam & Dave’s gospel-steeped “Soul Man,” the 1966 single on which the singer Sam Moore shouted, “Play it, Steve!” to cue Mr. Cropper’s stinging single-string solo on the chorus. Both records were Top 10 pop hits and reached No. 1 on the R&B chart.

…

Mr. Cropper achieved further acclaim in the late 1970s for his work with the Blues Brothers, the musical side project of the “Saturday Night Live” co-stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. By then, Stax had closed, having fallen into insolvency in 1975, and Mr. Cropper had begun immersing himself in freelance session and production work with artists like Art Garfunkel and Ringo Starr.
“Briefcase Full of Blues,” the Blues Brothers’ first album, included a remake of “Soul Man,” complete with a reprise of the shout “Play it, Steve!” from Mr. Belushi on the chorus. The single reached No. 14 on the pop chart in 1979, anticipating the release of the 1980 movie “The Blues Brothers,” starring Mr. Belushi and Mr. Aykroyd and featuring Mr. Cropper as Steve “the Colonel” Cropper, who plays in a band called Murph and the Magic Tones. (Born of Mr. Cropper’s tendency to take charge of situations, the Colonel was a childhood nickname that stuck with him even after he established himself as a musician.)

Here’s a blast from the past for you: Eugene Hasenfus.

“Eugene who?”

Yeah, that’s what Ronald Reagan said.

Mr. Hasenfus emerged out of obscurity on Oct. 5, 1986, when a missile fired by troops fighting for Nicaragua’s leftist government downed his plane while it was on a run to drop arms to right-wing rebel forces, known as contras, who were seeking to overthrow the country’s leaders.
The pilot, co-pilot and radio operator of the plane — a twin-engine turboprop of 1950s vintage — died in its fiery crash in a patch of jungle in southern Nicaragua. Mr. Hasenfus, who had been responsible for packing and dropping the arms, was the lone survivor.
An experienced skydiver and the only crewman with a parachute, he had leaped from the cargo compartment, which had been blasted open by the missile, as the aircraft began plummeting to earth.

He was captured and put on trial.

While awaiting his trial, Mr. Hasenfus told the CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace for a segment of “60 Minutes” that when he joined the mission, he believed that he was working for the C.I.A. Asked what an average American would think about the shoot-down, he replied, “He’s going to make that the government is backing this 100 percent, and that’s what I believe, too.”
President Ronald Reagan’s administration initially denied any American involvement in the flight. Those denials began unraveling when it was reported that the cargo plane belonged to Southern Air Transport, a charter carrier based in Miami that was formerly owned by the C.I.A.
Mr. Hasenfus’s capture led to investigations by Congress and by an independent counsel, Lawrence E. Walsh, and ultimately to revelations that the administration, defying Congress, had illegally sold arms to Iran and used some of the proceeds to secretly support the contras. The scandal shadowed the Reagan administration and later the presidency of George H.W. Bush, who was Mr. Reagan’s vice president before succeeding him in 1989.

…

He was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison but was freed in December 1986 in what Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader who is now the country’s autocratic president, called an act of good will toward the United States.

Posted in History, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#63 in a series)

Thursday, December 4th, 2025

Actual headline in the NYPost:

Art Basel show by Beeple has realistic Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg robot dogs pooping NFTs

“Realistic”. As Mike the Musicologist put it to me:

Famed artist Beeple’s…

Who?

Famed artist Beeple’s latest spectacle, “Regular Animals,” has billionaire-tech-titan robot dogs pooping out NFTs, and stopping onlookers at Art Basel Miami Beach in their tracks at the fair’s VIP preview.
The animatronic canines sport nightmarishly realistic masks of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg — plus famed artists Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol, plus two Beeple (aka Mike Winkelmann) lookalikes — all crafted by famed mask-maker Landon Meier.
As the robo-mutts trot around, they continuously snap photos, squatting to take a digital dump of an art print in accordance with its corresponding style.
Zuckerberg’s for example, looks like the Metaverse, Musk’s is a black and white robot take, while Picasso is cubist and Warhol is pop art.

“Beeple” has some sort of incoherent point about how Musk and Zuckerberg influence “how we see the world” “because they control these very powerful algorithms”.

We hear all of the robot dogs have already been snapped up by private collectors — for $100,000 each — but the owners have let them “go on tour.”
However, fairgoers still have a chance to take home a piece of the chaos: The dogs will “eliminate” 1,028 prints, each stamped “Excrement Sample,” along with a warning label noting that the item may be “disgusting to most patrons of the arts,” and could cause, “uncontrollable erections in degenerate art collectors.”

Of those prints, 256 include a “scan to claim” barcode in the corner, marking them as actual NFTs.

This is the part that bothers me the most:

Given that Beeple’s blockbuster NFT, “Everydays: The First 5,000 Days,” sold for $69.3 million at Christie’s in 2021, the latest drops might end up as yet another gold mine.

That was 2021. I wonder what his NFT would go for in today’s market. If it went up for auction, I would bid a batch of homemade Chex Mix. If I needed to up my bid, I’d throw in a batch of homemade onion dip. Beyond that, I’d have to pass, much like the robot dogs do.

(Thank you. I’ll be here all week.)

Posted in Art | Comments Closed