Macenstein

When future historians look back on the series of events that led to the machine uprising and humanity’s eventual move to underground caves (assuming there even will BE jobs such as historian in that post-apocalyptic cavern-dwelling civilization, instead of everyone being relegated to jobs such as “guano gatherer” and “lichen farmer”), I think they may point to Wiithings’ U-Scan as the moment the machines said “Enough is enough!”

Billed as “The first hands-free connected home urine lab”, the U-Scan is a small Wi-Fi enabled device you can pee on everyday, and in exchange for that humiliation, the U-Scan will tell you whether you’re ovulating, or, if you’re a man, if you’re eating too much asparagus.

Now, obviously this device isn’t quite as stupid as I am making it seem, as you can indeed find out quite a bit about your over-all health from your urine. That’s why doctors love making you pee in cups. Although the idea that you would want to test your urine monthly, let alone daily is a bit of a stretch, given Withings itself admits urinalysis “is typically performed only once a year”.

I’m sure there’s a few people on the planet who might benefit from this much information, with Withings seemingly banking hard on menstrual-cycle-having people. In fact they almost insultingly insinuate that tracking their menstrual cycles (something that women have been doing OK with for a while) might require too much thinking (ie, numbers and stuff). From the U-Scan site: “Personalized insights will help a woman build a cycle-adapted health routine without the mental load that accompanies most menstrual tracking.” .

If you feel you may have a medical condition that would benefit from such a device, or you just want to pee on a robot while humans still have the upper hand, head over to the U-Scan site for more information.