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A team of Stanford University scientists announced they have designed a "smart toilet" that identifies the user by the shape of their backside and monitors the health of their waste. Lead researcher Sanjiv Gambhir said he and his team developed the Precision Health smart toilet to recognize users and use algorithms to analyze the health of their urination and bowel movements. Gambhir said the toilet uses cameras and motion sensors to identify "a range of disease markers in stool and urine," including warning signs of various types of cancer. The researchers said the toilet identifies users by reading their fingerprints...

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul brought to light a $6.9 million provision for a “smart toilet” that was part of his annual federal government waste report that tabulated $54.7 billion in government waste in the past year.

In his latest report on federal government waste, a project he completes every year, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) highlights $54.7 billion in government spending that he deems wasteful. Among the items noted this year is the creation of a $6.9 million “smart toilet,” which operates with three cameras, one of which can identify a user’s “analprint.” As explained in The Festivus Report 2020, researchers at Stanford University used $6,973,057 in funds granted through the National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a so-called “smart toilet.” The purpose of the toilet is to...

Security experts are warning us all over the place. The digital life used to be a cubicle and workstation. Now it's well, life. Everything is connected, and Internet is everywhere. That means criminal intruders along with pranksters can also broaden their reach from computer malware to home connections such as smart appliances and meters. Last week, there was one more proof that this was so: According to a warning by the information security firm Trustwave, a Satis-brand toilet by the Japan-based company Lixil can be controlled remotely by an Android app. According to Daniel Crowley a managing consultant with information...

Slowly but steadily I am being left behind by modern consumer technology. With perseverance and trial and error I can work a TV remote, but I am at a total loss when confronted with a whole tray full of them on the coffee table in front of the big-screen TV and its assorted little electronic friends. In spite of the fact that I could manage only minimal functions on my old cell phone -- make calls and, with a little luck, sometimes answer them, and once I took a photo but I don't remember how -- the family decided I...