I had this exact same reaction last week when I bought a new toothbrush.
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2026
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You had to use your mail for a toothbrush?
Please tell me that you're joking...
Some electric toothbrushes have these gimmicky features where they can map your mouth while you brush and report on your hygiene habits to tell you how effectively you're brushing, or even nag you if you don't brush enough. Guessing that's the kind they have.
So for the manufacturer, why allow the device to simply use a local account to track that information, when instead they can force you to register an account online and associate your brushing habits with all of the other shadowy telemetry data being collected about us online?
But also, these aren't hidden features. That info should be on the box. I'm not trying to defend companies demanding your email and an account to use an electric toothbrush, but also at a certain point you gotta look at the consumer and say, you bought that. Electric toothbrushes aren't exactly a monopoly out there; you can buy one that doesn't require an email.
It's pretty easy to put something on the box like this can make your phone buzz if you forget to brush your teeth, and people who worry they're sometimes forgetting to brush your teeth will see that as an advantage without necessarily realising that they need to give the manufacturer their email and the right to associate it with their brushing telemetry.
If it's not prominently displayed on the box, then it's not the consumer's fault.
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The "internet of things" sucks.
Smart local devices rock though. Its not the technology but the implementation for many IoT devices that sucks 🙂
I have this pipe dream of a noob friendly router/hypervisor/NAS combo that would trivialize the installation and running of server-side apps like nextcloud or home assistant. The reason it's also a router is to automagically forward ports so you could have remote access without ~~someone else's computer~~ the cloud.
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Flying cars was a scifi delusion that didn't consider all the problems that come with it. What would be a more rational "this was predicted and never came about" would be social constructs like safety nets and betterment of society for all, as well as improving our management and use of the Earth. That should make us mad, not that we don't have flying cars buzzing (and falling) in the sky.
It just hit me that we did for flying what we should have done for ground. Make it almost all mass transit.
Yeah, screw flying cars and parts falling off them due to disrepair.
The real sci-fi future is trains. Numerous and fast.
Flying cars was a scifi delusion that didn’t consider all the problems that come with it.
Same with living in space. Especially on space boats.
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That verifying email for everything shit is something else all together. And yes it is true. Like what the fuck man? I am glad my fridge and stove and microwaves are all low-end crap that do the one basic job they are required to do (and they do it very well mind you).
It's a scientific fact that dads become 69% hotter when they wear a dadbod T-shirt.
Source: my crotch
You sure you're not just a furry?
Absolutely fucking not. LOL. I appreciate and respect the furry community, but I want human dads with human moobs.
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To gauge internet consensus on these kinds of questions, I check if the character is on R34 and/or CivitAI.
The answer is a resounding: 'oh yes'
We really need to make people more aware of how their data gets from A to B. I think most people think you need internet access for anything connected to a network to communicate. If more people realized that if device A is on your LAN and device B is on your LAN, there's no reason traffic from A to B has to traverse the internet, they wouldn't fall for stuff like this.
And people think that your need a phone service to use GPS.
Indeed, a lot of people think it's an active satellite connection when all it is is a receiver picking up a really accurate time signal.
What's more, if the device in question is some simple thing like a thermometer, then there's no reason for it to be networked at all. Just take the temperature and get on with your life!
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I hate that anything smart needs my location to be enabled before it will work even if it's use is unrelated to location. Like my smart light bulbs. Why do they need to know a location ever
They really don't. Look into home assistant, there's no reason the network packet controlling your light bulb needs to go across the internet at all!
And stop buying from vendors that don't allow full free local control (Google, etc.)
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We do have various flying vehicles that have been described as flying cars. But it's fair to say that the Back to the Future II-style mass adoption hasn't happened.
I'm happy with those broadly staying science fiction. People already can't drive in two dimensions. It's worrying to think how awful it'll be if they're ever given a third.
There are a far fewer pedestrians and walls and lamp posts and motorcycles in the air than on the ground, though, so there's a lot more margin to be awful without endangering anyone other than your own family.
At present it takes considerable effort or lack of skill for someone to crash their car through the roof of your house. Once morons can fly, all bets are off.
Well, a car falling from the sky (car crash or ran out of gas) probably wouldn't be very safe either. I'm absolutely not trusting the average nitwit who pays more attention to Instagram than to the road to operate something akin to a mini-plane.
Yes, but there are still pedestrians and walls and lampposts and motorcycles on the ground. I would imagine accidents would be far more disastrous and dangerous than in 2D.
~Add in people in convertibles who aren’t wearing safety restraints (or a failure of said restraints) if/when the vehicle does a 180° flip (for any reason).~
Add in people in convertibles who aren’t wearing safety restraints (or a failure of said restraints) if/when the vehicle does a 180° flip (for any reason).
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TBF, flying cars in most sci-fi rely on some kind of crazy convenient anti-gravity tech that allows vehicles to hover while still somehow retaining lateral friction so they don't drift sideways when turning.
A lot of space sci-fi spaceships have basically flown as if they are in an atmosphere, with a more-or-less aerodynamic shape and turning as if there are control surfaces in an atmosphere making them move more-or-less in the direction that the spacecraft is heading.
Flying cars costs 10 times as much as a regular car, and are not that great at flying or driving. You need driving and pilot license. Needs to take off from an airport or request special permission. It's just not as practical and cheap as portrayed.
and the best is when the servers the use to send verification emails are crazy slow so you make a throwaway email (because fuck giving them your email, also handy to track who sells it and who they sell it to), go through their bullshit registration, then nothing. You checked spam even. You think you fucked up, and click resend email, still nothing. You give up and you can’t really use your new thing. Maybe you return it, if you’re smart. Then the next day you finally get the email, which indicates they clearly care about the user experience since they put so many resources into onboarding
WE HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT OUR CHAINS
Was actually looking at these probe thermometers to give as Christmas presents this year... some brands actually advertise that they connect to nothing and need no phone or account to operate.
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But we do have flying cars. They're called planes. You can get a license to fly them and everything.
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This has been the predicament for about 75 (or even 175) years... just getting worse, now not just not getting the innovations, but now getting abused and datamined by abusers.
I got two e-mails just for these type of situations.
One e-mail for the accounts I REALLY need/want/will keep (games, social media...)
While my second one is just used for accounts I'll only use once and those types of stuff.
This is the way.
What my sibling does is create a separate email (though an email service that supports it like proton) for every service. If someone sells them out to marketers, the spam will go to "patsdogfoodemail@protonmail.com" or something like that, and they'll know exactly which company was responsible, and where to block all the spam from.
And keep yet another, totally unrelated email for finances, so there's less chance it's ever hacked.
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