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Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

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Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#191

Post by uxcolumbo »

sp0ck wrote: post #185
uxcolumbo wrote: post #148

It's a toothbrush. Why does it need all this tech and an app? It's better to think about sustainability. I had an Oral B IO electric toothbrush. The retail price is nuts and the brushes are expensive and can't really be recycled. Imagine millions of these out there slowly rotting. I gave up on the IO and bought this one instead. Simple design and battery lasts longer too. https://www.trysuri.com/

Analogue/manual toothbrush is like 1-2 Euro. Product You are promoting is 85Euro. Assuming my normal toothbrush lasts 3 months for 85 Euro I have backup for 21 YEARS. Spare ones are for ~5.6 EUR piece. I will stay with using my hand ;-)

Electric toothbrushes are more efficient at removing plaque and help to avoid gum disease.

If your immune system doesn't react so aggressively to plaque then yes manual tooth brushes are cheaper and you have many sustainable options in this space, i.e. toothbrushes with a wood handle etc.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#192

Post by charles_f »

frowin wrote: post #114
charles_f wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if you could reset the head instead of having to change it, imagine the savings

I have this brush and would highly encourage you to swap the head when the brush asks you to do so, for the sake of your dental health.

If you reset it, it's as good as new, right?

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#193

Post by tzs »

version_five wrote: post #158
Voklen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a third party brush head for my Philips Sonicare with none of the smart features and no electronics in the head (there's an air gap where they usually are) and it still works fine. This makes me wonder all the more why they put the effort in to secure the head.

Engineer gonna engineer. Someone probably just had the time and misplaced passion for security, and when they explained at the weekly standup that they'd added lockout after three attempts, everybody just nodded and moved on.

This has long been a temptation for engineers. 40 years ago the textbook in the digital electronics class I took at Caltech had a chapter called "The Engineer as Dope Pusher" that talked about it.

It gave as an example clothes dryers. The way most home clothes dryers working back then was you put the clothes in, you turn a dial on a timer to the number of minutes you want the dryer to run, and you press start.

The mechanical timers were very reliable. There hadn't been any substantial improvement in their design in decades because there really wasn't anything to improve. There had been improvement in the materials used, and in the cost, but fundamentally mechanical timers was a solved problem.

If the mechanical timer ever broke the repairperson would have replacements in their van. Even if they didn't have the specific one for your dryer it didn't matter because they all worked pretty much the same. They could just put in another one. Maybe the mounting holes wouldn't be in the right place, but they could easily improvise some way to mount it in your dryer.

The book went on to say that somewhere there is an engineer designing a new clothes dryer, and instead of a mechanical timer that engineer is putting in a digital timer. It has a microprocessor, 7 segment LED digit displays for the time, some buttons for interacting with it (such as setting the time and correcting mistakes), and a power supply. And let's not forget that it has software.

That digital timer has no advantage to the user over a mechanical timer. But it has disadvantages. The interface will be worse. It will cost more. It won't be more reliable and possibly will be less reliable, and if it does need repair the repairperson probable won't have the parts. If they have another brand's digital timer on hand they probably won't be able to adapt it to your dryer.

So why is that engineer designing the new dryer with a digital timer?

Because mechanical timers are boring. Digital electronics was at the cutting edge of consumer engineering then, and so by using a digital timer the engineer got to play with exciting new technology.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#195

Post by JohnFen »

beefield wrote: post #126
arrowsmith wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long's it going to be before "smart" toothbrushes become the only option? Should I start stockpiling "dumb" toothbrushes now while I still can? The other day I was trying to buy a pair of bathroom scales and it took me far too long to find one that just, you know, weighed things without also demanding I connect it to the Wi-Fi and download a smartphone app. How is this an improvement?

My pet peeve with bathroom scales is that it is impossible to find one that actually does what it claims and has accuracy of +-0.1kg. They do show the measurement to 0.1, but just shifting your weight differently can cause a difference of hundreds of grams. Does anyone knlw a scale that actually measures at 0.1kg accuracy?

People confuse precision with accuracy all the time. It's one of my geekier pet peeves.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#196

Post by JohnFen »

jackvalentine wrote: post #135
rjh29 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the first results on Amazon UK...

I don’t know what compels someone to lie like that. It’s just bizarre.

That's a strange conclusion to jump to.

Perhaps the commenter wasn't shopping online, took a while to find such a scale in the stores, and so wasn't lying.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#197

Post by JohnFen »

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #117
charles_f wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but if you could reset the head instead of having to change it, imagine the savings

I would question your priorities if you're trying to save on $4 heads for a $90 toothbrush.

I would question your priorities if you're paying more than a couple of bucks on a toothbrush in the first place.

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#198

Post by JohnFen »

josephcsible wrote: post #20
mikestew wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this kind of thing legal? For starters, my experience says that, unlike an HP printer, your toothbrush still works just fine[0] if you ignore anything that tells you to replace the head. [0] At least as fine as a toothbrush with a worn-out head is going to work.

I don't really mean about the toothbrush. I mean, why is it legal for NXP to make chips that permanently brick instead of just factory resetting when too many wrong passwords are tried?

Why should it not be legal to make such chips?

Re: Hacking my “smart” toothbrush

#200

Post by JohnFen »

josephcsible wrote: post #26
mikestew wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a feature customers ask for? What laws do you want written? How "secure" am I allowed to make my product before the Feds come a-knockin'? And what does a "factory reset" accomplish? The hacker trying to get company IP (or whatever the password is protecting) gets three more attempts at it after the reset? Finally, and I'm not saying this makes it okay, but e-fuses are common as dirt these days. I don't k…

> Because it's a feature customers ask for? Aren't switches to temporarily bypass emissions controls in cars illegal, despite being a feature customers ask for? > What laws do you want written? I want all e-fuses to be banned, as well as any other means for manufacturers to permanently reduce, restrict, or remove functionality from products after they've been sold. > How "secure" am I allowed to make my product befor…

> I want all e-fuses to be banned, as well as any other means for manufacturers to permanently reduce, restrict, or remove functionality from products after they've been sold.

I am in opposition to this stance. What you're (rightfully) concerned about is when companies do bad things with these mechanisms. But the mechanisms themselves not only have no ethical/moral problems, but are also really useful for all sorts of things that entirely unobjectionable.

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