Actually, this may have a use.
How do you KNOW what you're drinking is what you're drinking? If it's as precise as it claims, it could perhaps be used to identify a spiked, dilute, or otherwise improper drink.
Are you a Silicon Valley man-child, too distracted by the ethereal beauty of your last thousand lines of code, or too dependent on others to bring you stuff, to ever notice what you're actually drinking? Fear not. Rather than have to lift your head or sully your senses with the mundane world, you can now rely on the Internet of …
This is only the beginning. A cup that could set off an alarm if you drink something your allergic to? Plates/forks/spoons with the same abilities? That gets into the real of saving lives.
Will this particular device be that good? Oh, I doubt it. But it's a 1.0. 10 years from now, I fully expect that trips to the hospital due to some poor child eating nuts where he wasn't supposed to being down to "virtually nonexistent" in first world nations.
But hey, for 90% of the world, it's all a great joke. Internet of Things! Ha-ha! What could electricity horseless carriages moving pictures sensors ever do for the common man?
Given the severity of food allergies, I think this is nothing to make too much fun of. Having an anaphylactic reaction is not funny at all. It's a very miserable way to go. In severe cases, it is enough to eat something that just contains traces of something you are allergic against. Personally I would be quite happy, if someone would invent a sensor to check for allergens in food or drinks.
You do realise that most food intolerance is minor, right?
Peanuts are the most major (in the USA, & somewhat in the UK) but that has now been cured by actually eating peanuts. (As a therapy, don't just knock a few back)
As for the idea? I'll believe this 'super sensor' when I see it. Odds are high this is a made-up thing. If it takes 20,000 biological receptors to do the job, one silicon sensor probably won't cut the mustard.
@YetAnotherLocksmith
food intolerances are a very tricky thing. You usually need several factors to come together, to trigger an attack, but when it happens you are in deep trouble. I once had one triggered by a fruit cocktail that was served for new year in the canteen. Took just ten minutes or so, until I (luckily) puked out most of it. It felt, like someone gave me a good beating in the stomach.
There might be some people who can be healed by applying allergen doses over time (desensitization), but that doesn't work in 100% of all cases. It certainly didn't work for me.
Anyway - I think there is a huge market for allergen testers. The cup in this article might just be a useless toy, but at least the technology is making progress.
It could be a good use for the device/concept, but it doesn't need an internet connection to do that does it? OK so you may need to plug it into a PC initially to set it up (so it knows what to try and detect), but aside from that no further need for talking to anyone except whoever is holding it.
OK there may be an argument for an alert system too, but that's probably overkill (no pun intended). Isn't the only person who really needs to know the one who's actually holding the thing, as it's them that would be affected (presuming we don't go mug-sharing).
Yeah, snark aside, sign me up. "Don't remember if that's your 18th cup or your 8th?" Yep, that's me. Clinically diagnosable ADHD, right here. Also, I work a lot. Also, I have many jobs. Also...when at parties, it's be cool to have a widget that kept track of how many drinks I've had, because I'm the first to admit that I'm not good at remembering.
In addition, I have a lovely genetic mutation where I don't actually feel thirst. It might sound stupid to those not born with it, but I actually do not feel thirsty. When others would feel thirst, I feel a desire to consume carbohydrates. You can't just "think yourself better" from that; it's genetic, and it's a Very Bad Thing.
I usually have little reminders go off every so often to remind me to drink water. Combined with putting a cooler at my desk, I can mostly stay hydrated. But hey, how much of what do I drink? Coffee? Alcohol? Water? Gatorade? Gathering empirical evidence and then being able to tailor my alerting system to optimize my hydration (and caffination!) might bump my productivity up a few notches. Especially since dehydration = distracted = lost revenue to opportunity cost.
We aren't all perfect specimens of human normalcy. As a representative of the "damaged" members of species, I welcome this tool that is so casually dismissed as a mere vanity item.
Interesting. MDMA also supresses the thirst signal. People would take it, then dance all night, and not realise they were dangerously dehydrated. Leah Betts took MDMA and because she "knew" that you had to drink lots of water when taking it, died of water intoxication. So I can definitely see why people who don't feel thirst could use this
So this is another IoT for a data slurp as well as a nice drink? With all the various articles and commentaries about privacy and surveillance is this what everyone really needs or wants? Unless you're a prole and it's forced on you, of course.
Ok..maybe Trevor needs the info on himself...
Hey, IoT where the data goes into "the cloud" for the yanks to sell? Bad. IoT where I get info to make my life better? Good!
Why does it all have to be "bad" just because the yanks making it want your privacy? Wait for some nice Nordic folk to come out with some IoT stuff. It won't try to sell you and your family for a bent pittance, and it'll have all the benefits. :)
The problem is that those most likely to need it - the ill, elderly and infirm - will have trouble peeing in the cup. Make a toilet that can do this and you'll sell millions. Make something that can retrofit an existing toilet with this capability and you'll sell hundreds of millions.
Since it seems extremely popular in parts of the world where it's too hot to really enjoy robust brew. All they want is something refreshing with just enough flavor that it doesn't take like metal. Something must be going right if they're selling like crazy, and before you say we don't know better, people can enjoy craft beer if they want, but many don't want to. And it's multicultural, as Hispanics have similar tastes, given the popularity for Mexican lagers.
It's jake. He's too busy sipping his homebrewed beer made of the fermented tears of his enemies. All while he flies to work in his mahogany helicopter, from the deep-forest acreage that he build with his own two hands, out of the spare zeros and ones he saved by coding a Big Data financials database that makes trillions of dollars per second. Naturally he coded it on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum made out of things being better in the past.
Whatever you do, jake does better. Whatever you like, jake likes something better. Whatever you drink, eat, say, shit, piss, or breathe, jake does it better. And in the past, when men were men and women flew the choppers, everyone was better...but jake's all that's left, here to tell us all about how amazing he is.
...but he still doesn't get "humour". That's for lesser beings.
"... as a last stage check that your monkey butler has done a good job. They're good but sometimes they get confused."
I usually just increase the setting on their bowler hats a little, but not TOO much...
Surely the end-game is much more obvious than mere poison detectors or allergy avoiders. It's one small step from this ...
"... we developed a sensor that could instantly analyse the nutritional content of what’s inside a beverage … on a molecular level"
... to this ...
"When the 'Drink' button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism, and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centres of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received. ... However, no-one knows quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
Share and Enjoy!
Same reason someone can patent a design. Because it's the TECHNIQUE that's the key, NOT the implementation (and since there's more than one way to perform a technique, copyright can't protect you--that's how IBM lost control of the PC market when Compaq introduced the clone BIOS).