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The newly announced i.Con "smart condom" is the odds-on heavyweight contender for terrible idea of the calendar week. It is not smart, and it is not a condom, and those are just two of the many facepalm-inducing problems with this production. You lot can just loosely call it a product, anyway, because it's so early in development that they aren't even taking money for preorders — just collecting email addresses to "register one's interest."

For a thing presenting itself as a data-enabled smart condom and having the box fine art information technology's got, they sure are taking poetic liberties in calling it a condom in the first place. It'southward not a safety. The i.Con is a synthetic rubber "condom ring" that's meant to sit exterior of and atop a prophylactic, in order to utilize its "Nano-Chip Technology" to perform feats of techno-sexual sophistication. And you still have to buy condoms anyhow.

The device is supposed to log "calories burnt, duration of intercourse, how many thrusts (averaged), girth measurements, and various other pieces of data." And so you'll accept the option of sharing your results with "friends, or, indeed the globe. You will be able to anonymously access stats that you can compare with i.Con users worldwide."

"Accept you lot ever wondered how many calories y'all're burning during intercourse?" British Condoms wants to know. Their curiosity is burning. "How many thrusts? Speed of your thrusts? The elapsing of your sessions? Frequency? How many different positions you apply in the menstruum of a calendar week, month or year? Ever wondered how you stack up to other people from around the world?"

No, British Condoms, I never had. I would have made it to 30 without always having visited upon me the specter of paying someone for the privilege of crowdsourcing my sexual insecurity and/or narcissism. I was doing fine without having sent that data, presumably in plain text, to your server somewhere in the deject from where it volition no dubiousness be immediately sold to your "trusted partners."

But what everyone wants: a device capable of compromising your telephone and leaking enough data to triangulate your present location, social security number, and, now, penis size. It'south like buzzwords accept achieved sentience and are at present mocking us. Can you fifty-fifty imagine the advertisement herpes that's going to event from this? Will information technology take a little Bluetooth briefing with your smart fridge and smart toaster over some common protocol, so they can all collude to warn you via SMS that you'll need to pick up eggs for breakfast the morning after? What happens when your tech-savvy ex hacks your smart rubber? How will this data factor into next-gen credit scores?

But that's not all they desire to do. No no. In that location'southward more than.

Lead engineer and spokesperson Adam Leverson said in a statement that the device will feature "congenital-in indicators to warning the users to any potential STI's nowadays." Simply await. Doesn't that brand it a article of clothing medical device?

Naturally, the company hasn't so much as hinted at the actual device specs, other than proverb it has an adjustable carbon fiber band, considering I guess carbon fiber is high-tech and that should balance out the squick cistron of "synthetic rubber." You can guess information technology'd take to include an accelerometer, and they probably hateful to include a six-axis [the jokes are writing themselves at this indicate -Ed]because otherwise it'll be tough to tell what positions you've been in. But how exactly are you supposed to sanitize something with a micro-USB port? Do you have to buy a new one for every new partner? What microfluidics wizardry (ahem) are they intending to employ to make this theorized STI indicator refillable or reusable? What database security are they going to apply to ensure their STI results aren't leaked to the public? How are they going to become this device past the British version of the FDA?

Ane of two things is going to happen, and we're going to discover out which soon. Either this is somebody'southward cute hoax or concept design, in which case neat for them, or this product is going to be canceled before it always hits the shelves.