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This reminds me of a bluetooth toothbrush I just bought that requires my location to be enabled to change the settings via the oral b app which is required sinc

This reminds me of a bluetooth toothbrush I just bought that requires my location to be enabled to change the settings via the oral b app which is required since this model has less buttons than others. The reason why I bought a bluetooth toothbrush was for a wireless hardware clock, brushing timer, and ranking system which also really doesn't work correctly even with the app.

fastbeef 10y ago
Ranking system?!
- rhaps0dy 10y ago
  I suppose you can compete with other people on who brushes the teeth more regularly and for the full required time. Gamification of dental health! I think this is a good thing.
  - linker3000 10y ago
    Better than gumification.
  - algesten 10y ago
    Submit your dental hygiene score to a central site. Build score boards and have monthly competitions! BRUSHER OF THE MONTH!
troncheadle 10y ago
> The reason why I bought a bluetooth toothbrush was for a ranking system We are truly living in a modern fall of rome. We will choke on our bluetooth enabled toothbrushes, 700 dollar juicer machines, our fucking fitbits. We've ravaged the earth to adorn ourselves with decadent shackles and we will reap the consequences with fake tans and ultra clean teeth. In the past year I've gone from being an environmentalist to a big fan of the end times. We're going to eat ourselves out of a home, and a few billion years later, the Earth will still be here, not missing us at all. Fuck it, get three bluetooth toothbrushes next time.
- pokemongoaway 10y ago
  An age where "idiots are getting promoted for baseless ideas" is closer to the truth. This is why people who were traditionally more humble now have the obligation to speak out - but I often see them silenced at the tech companies they work for... These companies are often selectively listening to exactly the wrong people, who are usually in the minority in the company anyway!
  - themaninthedark 10y ago
    >These companies are often selectively listening to exactly the wrong people, who are usually in the minority in the company anyway! You don't appreciate the diversity?
    - pokemongoaway 10y ago
      You don't appreciate democracy? That's a pretty annoying way to start a discussion, if that's your intention here...
- tomjen3 10y ago
  >reap the consequences with fake tans and ultra clean teeth. Fake tans are better than cancer and ultra clean teeth sounds like it would cut down on dental issues.
  - tomsthumb 10y ago
    When you get a fake tan, how much of what chemicals is your body absorbing that all don't cause cancer? Something like 70% of Americans are vitamin-D deficient. Get some damn sunlight.
  - paperkettle 10y ago
    cancers come in all shapes and sizes
- Danihan 10y ago
  Yep, all that money should have gone into raising intelligent children, the way natural selection intended it.
coldpie 10y ago
Huh. I always wonder if there are people who buy the garbage they show off at CES. I guess there are.
mikestew 10y ago
The reason why I bought a bluetooth toothbrush... Phone apps...for a goddamn toothbrush. Were someone to ask me, "Mike, you do a lot of Bluetooth work, what if we BT-enabled our electric toothbrush...what kind of value could we add with that?" Because I'm horrible at coming up with creative ideas for new technologies, I'd come up with something lame like, say, maybe a "ranking system". I could add a "brushing timer", but a plain ol' Sonicare can do that without adding radios, so why bother? And my manager, because she's smart that way, says "meh, I guess it was a dumb idea, but never hurts to ask, right?" Except at Oral B they say, "outSTANDING, Jones! I think you're in line for a promotion!" And don't take this personally, ecomhacker. You bought such a beast for your own good reasons and need not answer to me. I'm just both astounded and horrified that such a thing even exists.
- kbenson 10y ago
  I actually don't mind a phone app for a toothbrush, but I surely do mind a proprietary phone app for just a toothbrush. Give me a generic app that allows me to discover local bluetooth and IoT devices and prevents configuration for them through an open and highly standardized configuration protocol, and we'll have shifted back a bit more to utopia from distopia, IMO.
- ecomhacker 10y ago
  Sorry for the late reply. I was hacking on some code. I got the toothbrush because I am depressed/a drug addict and usually don't brush my teeth as often as I should. I was using a tracking app, but I figured since it was bluetooth I might be able to integrate it with the app I'm using for tracking. I figured it wouldn't support this out of the box, but I'm a CS/EE and figured if I was bored, it would be one more toy to play with. TLDR, I've got money to burn and I'm spending it to avoid personal responsibility
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    Offtopic but that was an incredibly honest answer.
imgabe 10y ago
There's a version of Poe's law at work here. I legitimately can't tell if you're seriously into some sort of competitive toothbrushing or if this is satire.
kbenson 10y ago
> change the settings via the oral b app which is required since this model has less buttons than others. I find it disturbing that we're moving to an era where even simple devices require the equivalent of a sonic screwdriver to make work. I really, really wish we had a generic discovery, configuration and reporting protocol (like HTML forms but much more rigid and no styling) for configuring bluetooth devices that was open, and popular enough that companies would feel pressured to use it. Then again, I really wish we had the exact same thing for IoT devices on the local network. I swear, if it was good enough, and you marketed it to the Chinese knock-off manufacturers (who I assume would love to take some open source embedded code and not write their own), it might actually get enough momentum to force the brand names to support it as well.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  You mean like SNMP? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Network_Management_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Network_Management_Prot...
  - kbenson 10y ago
    I mean something that hasn't been overcomplicated and extended to the point that it's impossible to assume simple standard behavior. That is, SNMP might make a good underlying protocol that something that is much more constrained might sit on top of. Ideally, a simpler markup language that can compile down to SNMP. E.g. a "device" has one or more named "config-forms" (which an app might choose to represent each as a separate tab or section), with a well defined set of settings with a name, type (integer, decimal, sized string) and description. A device might have one or more "reports" which provide a consolidated view of particular variables. Very simplistic, but with simplicity comes interoperability. SNMP by itself is far too general to support this without some constraints put on top of it (as far as I know, at least. I have experience with SNMP, but not a huge amount, and not for a long time).
    - jdmichal 10y ago
      Sure. I don't think SNMP is complete in any way for this solution... For instance, it communicates in OIDs, while a user interface would want names and data constraints at a minimum. But I also agree that it would make a good base to build on top of. I mostly just wanted to avoid the xkcd standards problem [0]. I'm pretty much in the same place on SNMP... Had to do some integration with it 10 years ago. Had to even do some Google-fu to remember the name, since the only thing that would come to mind was SMTP. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
mmanfrin 10y ago
I am very surprised at the negativity in the reply to this. Of all things to gameify, brushing your teeth is a fantastic subject. It helps develop good habits for a personal and typically solitary activity.
shard 10y ago
This reminds me of the time when a mass effect toothbrush helped save my ship from being stolen by my clone...

fastbeef 10y ago

Ranking system?!

rhaps0dy 10y ago
I suppose you can compete with other people on who brushes the teeth more regularly and for the full required time. Gamification of dental health! I think this is a good thing.
- linker3000 10y ago
  Better than gumification.
- algesten 10y ago
  Submit your dental hygiene score to a central site. Build score boards and have monthly competitions! BRUSHER OF THE MONTH!

troncheadle 10y ago

> The reason why I bought a bluetooth toothbrush was for a ranking system We are truly living in a modern fall of rome. We will choke on our bluetooth enabled toothbrushes, 700 dollar juicer machines, our fucking fitbits. We've ravaged the earth to adorn ourselves with decadent shackles and we will reap the consequences with fake tans and ultra clean teeth. In the past year I've gone from being an environmentalist to a big fan of the end times. We're going to eat ourselves out of a home, and a few billion years later, the Earth will still be here, not missing us at all. Fuck it, get three bluetooth toothbrushes next time.

pokemongoaway 10y ago
An age where "idiots are getting promoted for baseless ideas" is closer to the truth. This is why people who were traditionally more humble now have the obligation to speak out - but I often see them silenced at the tech companies they work for... These companies are often selectively listening to exactly the wrong people, who are usually in the minority in the company anyway!
- themaninthedark 10y ago
  >These companies are often selectively listening to exactly the wrong people, who are usually in the minority in the company anyway! You don't appreciate the diversity?
  - pokemongoaway 10y ago
    You don't appreciate democracy? That's a pretty annoying way to start a discussion, if that's your intention here...
tomjen3 10y ago
>reap the consequences with fake tans and ultra clean teeth. Fake tans are better than cancer and ultra clean teeth sounds like it would cut down on dental issues.
- tomsthumb 10y ago
  When you get a fake tan, how much of what chemicals is your body absorbing that all don't cause cancer? Something like 70% of Americans are vitamin-D deficient. Get some damn sunlight.
- paperkettle 10y ago
  cancers come in all shapes and sizes
Danihan 10y ago
Yep, all that money should have gone into raising intelligent children, the way natural selection intended it.

coldpie 10y ago

Huh. I always wonder if there are people who buy the garbage they show off at CES. I guess there are.

mikestew 10y ago

The reason why I bought a bluetooth toothbrush... Phone apps...for a goddamn toothbrush. Were someone to ask me, "Mike, you do a lot of Bluetooth work, what if we BT-enabled our electric toothbrush...what kind of value could we add with that?" Because I'm horrible at coming up with creative ideas for new technologies, I'd come up with something lame like, say, maybe a "ranking system". I could add a "brushing timer", but a plain ol' Sonicare can do that without adding radios, so why bother? And my manager, because she's smart that way, says "meh, I guess it was a dumb idea, but never hurts to ask, right?" Except at Oral B they say, "outSTANDING, Jones! I think you're in line for a promotion!" And don't take this personally, ecomhacker. You bought such a beast for your own good reasons and need not answer to me. I'm just both astounded and horrified that such a thing even exists.

kbenson 10y ago
I actually don't mind a phone app for a toothbrush, but I surely do mind a proprietary phone app for just a toothbrush. Give me a generic app that allows me to discover local bluetooth and IoT devices and prevents configuration for them through an open and highly standardized configuration protocol, and we'll have shifted back a bit more to utopia from distopia, IMO.
ecomhacker 10y ago
Sorry for the late reply. I was hacking on some code. I got the toothbrush because I am depressed/a drug addict and usually don't brush my teeth as often as I should. I was using a tracking app, but I figured since it was bluetooth I might be able to integrate it with the app I'm using for tracking. I figured it wouldn't support this out of the box, but I'm a CS/EE and figured if I was bored, it would be one more toy to play with. TLDR, I've got money to burn and I'm spending it to avoid personal responsibility
- noir_lord 10y ago
  Offtopic but that was an incredibly honest answer.

imgabe 10y ago

There's a version of Poe's law at work here. I legitimately can't tell if you're seriously into some sort of competitive toothbrushing or if this is satire.

kbenson 10y ago

> change the settings via the oral b app which is required since this model has less buttons than others. I find it disturbing that we're moving to an era where even simple devices require the equivalent of a sonic screwdriver to make work. I really, really wish we had a generic discovery, configuration and reporting protocol (like HTML forms but much more rigid and no styling) for configuring bluetooth devices that was open, and popular enough that companies would feel pressured to use it. Then again, I really wish we had the exact same thing for IoT devices on the local network. I swear, if it was good enough, and you marketed it to the Chinese knock-off manufacturers (who I assume would love to take some open source embedded code and not write their own), it might actually get enough momentum to force the brand names to support it as well.

jdmichal 10y ago
You mean like SNMP? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Network_Management_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Network_Management_Prot...
- kbenson 10y ago
  I mean something that hasn't been overcomplicated and extended to the point that it's impossible to assume simple standard behavior. That is, SNMP might make a good underlying protocol that something that is much more constrained might sit on top of. Ideally, a simpler markup language that can compile down to SNMP. E.g. a "device" has one or more named "config-forms" (which an app might choose to represent each as a separate tab or section), with a well defined set of settings with a name, type (integer, decimal, sized string) and description. A device might have one or more "reports" which provide a consolidated view of particular variables. Very simplistic, but with simplicity comes interoperability. SNMP by itself is far too general to support this without some constraints put on top of it (as far as I know, at least. I have experience with SNMP, but not a huge amount, and not for a long time).
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    Sure. I don't think SNMP is complete in any way for this solution... For instance, it communicates in OIDs, while a user interface would want names and data constraints at a minimum. But I also agree that it would make a good base to build on top of. I mostly just wanted to avoid the xkcd standards problem [0]. I'm pretty much in the same place on SNMP... Had to do some integration with it 10 years ago. Had to even do some Google-fu to remember the name, since the only thing that would come to mind was SMTP. [0] https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

mmanfrin 10y ago

I am very surprised at the negativity in the reply to this. Of all things to gameify, brushing your teeth is a fantastic subject. It helps develop good habits for a personal and typically solitary activity.

shard 10y ago

This reminds me of the time when a mass effect toothbrush helped save my ship from being stolen by my clone...