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Microsoft's New Smart Bra Could Stop You From Over Eating
walterbyrd writes "A team of engineers at Microsoft Research have developed a high-tech bra that's intended to monitor women's stress levels and dissuade them from emotional over-eating. The undergarment has sensors that track the user's heart rate, respiration, skin conductance and movement — all of which can indicate the type of stressful emotions that lead to over-eating, according to Microsoft researchers. The data is sent to a smartphone app, which then alerts users about their mood."
Time to reboob.
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
Many of us guys that visit Slashdot could use a bra. Too bad it doesn't run Linux.
I'm actually pretty amused by the sensor rigged bra - heck, I wear a bra to run in anyway, way better than a separate heart rate monitor. Though no proprietary MS crap for me ;-) (Can't imagine they provide decent support, y'know?)
But it seems horribly tone deaf to decide to put their sensors in a bra, and then make the whole thing be about dieting. Please folks, try not to be assholes.
I'm hungry!
Hi, I'm your bra assistant. It looks like you are hungry. Would you like some diet advice?
(o) Yes (o) no.
At least that'd explain Clippy's pervert-on-the-playground look...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Damn it to hell.
Fat shreds memory and cognitive function, in often imperceptible ways but the effects do build over time. It increases an individual's chances of acquiring diabetes, heart disease and a number of other maladies. It is responsible for increased fatigue and reduces the efficacy of the immune system. People suffering from obesity, and that term applies much sooner than most would like it to, tend to be less productive, cost their family and employers more, and die sooner.
No, it is not appropriate to attempt shame someone over it. No, it is not justifiable to treat the individual as less than any other. This I am most decidedly against. However, fat is not something to be "accepted" as if it were a lifestyle choice; even if the war is never won, the individual should always fight. Regardless of the origin, be it stress, overeating, hormone imbalance, etc. Fat is something to fight. It is a medical condition and infinitely treatable.
It's one thing when a man, or woman, is bound to a wheelchair for life due to a condition one cannot correct from birth or from an injury or from disease. It would be quite another if that man, or woman, is bound to a wheelchair because they refused to do the physical therapy. I mean, we would all give the person their space after whatever event brought them to that point. We would all give them time. But at some point, you would lose respect for them, wouldn't you? Their apathy would be off-putting. Now imagine they wanted you to "just accept it".
The individual who is fighting deserves all the respect the individual who has won should receive. I would never grant the individual who refuses to fight that and nor should you. As for the fight, this bra is simply a tool to aid, in however limited way it may, that battle. It is not fat shaming. They're trying to help; they're not being assholes.
I say this as someone who has spent a lifetime fighting, and my war rages on.
Scientific paper referenced is here.
Along with a table and chart of the increases.
Apple will introduce an iBra that you can automatically unclip with an expensive iPhone app only.
Microsoft will then introduce a Windows Bra that is functional but unexciting, and be slightly irritating to operate.
An open source Linux powered bra will subsequently be developed, but it will take so long to fiddle with until you achieve the desired result that you end up forgetting what your goal was in the first place.
Nipple.Navigation(tm)
I can imagine the headline now:
"Apple sues Microsoft over smart bra. Claims rounded bra corners and white color violate design patents."