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Maybe I'm paranoid, but my concern with these things has always been that Facebook (or Google or some other personal data aggregator) would buy the company and suddenly my toilet would be calling home to their servers (à la Occulus Rift). I'm sure they'll find a way to make it need an internet connection.

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That's why you need an open source toilet that runs Linux.

2016 is the year of linux on the toilet

Do these toilets seriously not function without internet access? I guess I could see the toilet being essentially a sensor array with some networking hardware; the decision-making about your fecal content would then be done in a datacenter.

As long as the stupid thing still flushes without internet access; I have never been more concerned about an IoT version of an existing appliance not doing its job. That is, I could stand an oven or blender not functioning; a toilet simply must work or the bathroom itself becomes nigh useless. "Honey, our toilet won't flush; are we still being DDoSed?"

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