This thing has been an absolute nightmare since it was released 18 months ago. I've had a few people contact me (note: https://buttplug.io (NSFW) is my project, I get contacted about stuff like this all the time, someday I will write a book about various support stories) with their hardware stuck on.
There have been multiple security issues reported, and the company really seems to have no clue how to deal with the tech. Not only that, they're doubling down on their production of unsafe equipment, including their newest toy (Link NSFW): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001341771957.html
Smart consumers won't buy a $10 memory card on Ali because it's likely to be a destructive fake, but people will buy Internet-controlled electronics for their favorite nether regions of their bodies. Amazing. I guess that's part of the thrill.
It's more about a lack of available reputational signals. There's little brand awareness and few people are willing to review such intimate products. With electronics you can go by manufacturer if nothing else, intimate products often don't even have branding.
The internet of things doesn't have any of the stigma that this has; and I still wouldn't trust it to run lightbulb.
With something that attaches to your body 24/7, it sounds like you would want something on the order of medical grade assurances because, if something goes wrong, it has the potential to cause medical problems.
On top of this, people don't usually shop around much for the best product when it comes to intimate devices. A lot of it is even specifically marketed toward impulse buys.
And even some of the more reputable brands have a distinct hint of skeeziness to their branding. “Fun Factory” and “The Pleasure Chest” both sound super sketch, despite both being well respected companies with a good track record.
For as cheesy as 90's sci-fi was, Demolition Man was surprisingly prescient about little things like this. Physical coitus becomes a disgusting act akin to taking a shit, so it becomes a virtual shared experience that creates the feelings between two relative strangers without the various risks.
My only experience with Aliexpress was that I ordered $30 rubber feet replacements for my laptop, and they sent me a postcard with an advertisement for a fitness band written in German. When I complained with them, they told me to check the mailbox again and went silent. Got a refund eventually, but I can imagine fraud is a standard operating procedure there.
I think you lucked out or maybe didn't pay enough attention to the seller reputation. I probably ordered three dozen items from AE, ranging from cents to 600 euros, only thing not making it was a 10 dollar cable during the peak of the Spring covid wave in Europe, when logistics was seriously disrupted. Got my money back. I suspect it was lost, as tracking showed it strolling across the Far East back and forth.
And items were not up to spec sometimes, but also got my money back or the seller sent a replacement.
A friend I know tells me that they ordered a cheap knock off magic wand vibrator off eBay and after 3 months it never showed so they went to a sex shop and paid 200$ for the real deal. The fake one finally arrives couple weeks later but comparing them the fake one is just as strong but also has added features like different pulsations and more speed control. The 184$ difference will easily sway people to buy such products.
Even without electricity, there's plenty of horror stories about sex toys--particularly dildos--made with unsafe materials. Some materials can cause allergic reactions, others are carcinogenic.
Being aware of specific marketplace corruption isn't the same as being smart, and vice versa. And there's no reason to believe that the set of people buying these devices is the same as the set of people not buying memory cards.
Wow that product looks extremely dangerous! Sharp corners, pinch points, and a lock? Extremely irresponsible to manufacture that. I’m not sure if y’all appreciate how fragile that area is and the potential for serious injury from something like this.
This is a case where the right TLD makes all the difference. If it were .biz, no one in their right mind is going to click that. Org must have already been taken.
Now now, we are surely spoiled for choice these days [1]. A savvy operator could easily have snagged buttplug.holdings. Or even my personal favorite -- buttplug.fishing.
buttplug.zone/games/cam/online/tech/work/app - Going to point to various parts of my Intiface product line at some point. Games should probably be pointed at https://intiface.com/ghr for now.
aliexpress does that for anything on mobile that it thinks is sex related, which is occasionally annoying when it gets something wrong, but is definitely not wrong in this situation.
I’m in Berlin. The spinny billboards arrive here advertise brothels, the fly posters say “Bleib Ruhig und Dildos benutzen” and “There is no I in anal”, and one of the largest hotels has a neon sculpture of Leda and the Swan, at least two stories tall, out front.
A german thing that made our papers was when the prostitute equivalent of the IEEE announced their new industry-wide covid safety measures, and invited local politicians to "check them out personally."
(Germans, on the other hand, marvel that our sex shows habitually offer discounts for students and seniors.)
Not sure if I understand you correctly. Do you mean that you can't access the link either and that living in a more prude country therefore is not a relevant factor here?
Yes I understood that. I am asking what he's trying to say by mentioning that. If I were to read between the lines it'd mean that a more prude culture is not a factor because he's in Germany and he gets a warning or can't access the link on mobile. He didn't specifically write that however and I'm therefore trying to clear up the ambiguity.
A previous poster had suggested he lived in a prudish country where sexual content is censored on the internet. He said he was in Germany, and gave examples of the lack of prudishness there (in case someone didn't know what Germany is like).
The implication is that Germany is an unlikely place for that kind of censorship.
Right, thanks. Sometimes the HN format isn't exactly conducive to easily see who wrote what in reply to who if there is not a direct relationship. My original assertion regarding the prudishness of the culture being a driving factor was not correct.
I am in Czechia, the country with second most pornstars per 10 million inhabitants. Park your car on a street near the city centre and a prostitute will approach within a few minutes. There are huge and well known strip clubs and sex hotels. And there definitely are not any laws that would force Aliexpress to this.
You don't hear this much because people don't want to admit it but its almost always possible to remove these things with a bit of effort and maybe some lube.
I didn't see what type of battery it has, but imagine having a non-solid state lithium based battery locked to a part of your body - anywhere. That type of device failing in an epic way with flames and no way to remove it in time - just seems like that's a latent headline just awaiting. Even worse - most people would panic and chuck water upon it. Wondering what is the safest thing to put upon a lithium based fire household McGyver wise and more go to would be flour (layer coating to starve oxygen and non conductive), or some aerosol can I can turn upside down and blast with cold non flammable gas.
Though like most as a rule of thumb - I try not to get that attached to my gadget addiction.
Almost all aerosol cans use a flammable gas (they are cheap, have a high expansion ratio, and are low pressure liquids). Flour, sugar and other powders found in the kitchen can actually be explosive if they are mixed with air correctly (eg: when tossed onto a flame).
Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) is probably the only improvised item in the kitchen that you should use to put out fires. A kitchen should have a fire extinguisher that is BC or ABC that would be best for the first attempt at putting out the fire.
Even though water is not ideal, if you have a large source of it (eg: Pool, lake, firehose, etc), it will be your best option as it can cool faster than a small battery can generate heat. A garden hose or bathtub faucet might be able to supply enough water if the battery is relatively small.
Really, a kitchen should also have a type K fire extinguisher which isolates burning oil from air to prevent reignition (burning oil extinguished with an ABC dry chemical fire extinguisher is likely to reignite on its own). Unfortunately they seem rare in home kitchens, likely just due to a lack of awareness as they really aren't that expensive at the home improvement store.
Glass fiber blankets are also a good choice for kitchen fires but once again not very common in homes.
Fire extinguishers require regular inspections/refills that, I fear, many home users won’t do.
Because of that, I think the blanket, combined with a fire alarm (also requires inspections/maintenance, but will annoy you so much that you will replace the battery regularly) is the best option for kitchens.
> Fire extinguishers require regular inspections/refills that, I fear, many home users won’t do.
One of my habits is to put inspection dates for things like fire extinguishers, fire alarm batteries, emergency water, etc. into my calendar.
It's basically a quick check every quarter, with a full-on inspection during spring cleaning. Doesn't take much time, and gives me a lot of peace-of-mind that my emergency stuff is actually going to work when I need it.
On that note, something that I also don't see people doing, is making sure they know how to use their equipment for its intended task. I made it a point to try an extinguisher on a tiny fire in a safe setting, just to make sure I understood how it worked.
Ditto for always taking the stairs down whenever I leave a new hotel room. I get a little more exercise, and if there's a fire, I've already "escaped" once.
Pro tip: do not attempt to apply this advice while flying. They don't even let you keep the slide!
For (low voltage) lithium-ion batteries, water is the correct extinguishing agent. The amount of metallic lithium contained inside is minimal.
Water is easily available, safe, and most importantly, it cools the battery (important if it has multiple cells). Powder could insulate it, causing the other cells to get overheated from the burning one and join the party.
A small solid state rocket engine that is physically activated by thermal failure of the battery could be a safety feature - "In case of fire point posterior to building exterior".
smothering lithium ion battery fires doesn't work: the reaction is self-sustaining and will continue to generate heat even without oxygen (I've seen this happen: the effect is similar to trick birthday cake candles where the flames may die down but reignite again). Water is actually one of the better options, because it removes heat from the system.
While the headline certainly is having a device like this needing to be ground open the other privacy concerns are quite possibly worse.
Being able to track both the name of who bought it and the location of someone using a device like this has got to be a near classic example of private information that hurts no one but could severely damage a person if it got out.
The headline is about them getting locked on, because that's funny, but the buried lead is actually this:
> The security researchers said they discovered a way to fool the server into disclosing the registered name of each device owner, among other personal details, as well as the co-ordinates of every location from where the app had been used.
That's some really sensitive info, with the potential to destroy some lives, or be used as blackmail material.
I wish society were more sex-positive, stopped considering matters of sexuality or sexual activity to be so controversial, and stopped responding to them with such moral outrage to the point that your personal sexual activity could be considered something blackmail-worthy!
(I think this is a bigger problem in America than Europe.)
In either case, indeed, we need privacy (because other countries have terrible persecution around matters of mere sexuality) and as much maturity as we can muster when discussing it. I'm so proud of how mature this comment section is. Not a single giggling sexual joke in sight - at least here up at the top. Other sites would be riddled with it, with nothing serious discussed.
>The cage wirelessly connects to a smartphone via a Bluetooth signal, which is used to trigger the device's lock-and-clamp mechanism.
>But to achieve this, the software relies on sending commands to a computer server used by the manufacturer.
Wow...huh...as far as security holes go, that's not even an open back door, you might as well not even have a wall....
>Pen Test Partners believe about 40,000 devices have been sold based on the number of IDs that have been granted by its Guangdong-based creator.
So ~40000 people are having commands for their Bluetooth powered chastity belt sent to and from a server in China..
I personally can't think of any company I'd feel comfortable having something like that being handled remotely, let alone some mystery company in China...
If this actually worked well and was designed by a very security and privacy respecting company than it would actually be pretty neat. Long distance sex toys are popular for a reason.
What am I supposed to tell my kids when I wake them up laughing at this? Where do I even start? I'd have to put the movie on and hope they fell asleep.
So looking at it it's 2 parts that get locked together. A ring part that you place the shaft and balls through. Then the container that when placed over the shaft and locked to the ring leaves a gap the balls can no longer get through. Thus it is attached until the lock is released and the ring and container are separated again.
It's a chastity device so the point is that when it's on you can't actually do anything sexual with the contained bits (or maybe it's painful if aroused and some get off on that). The secondary sexual goals are any emotional arousal from fear/trust/control/submission/etc.
Your first paragraph is exactly correct, on the second one, its not meant to be painful. A decent approximation of what it feels like is if you squeeze your thumb with your other hand. It doesn't actually hurt your thumb but you feel the pressure.
I must admit I'd far rather people get their restraint jollies with devices like this than by electing politicians to provide fear/trust/control/submission for all.
Yes. It's a form of sexual submission. It also plays strongly on the aspect of delayed gratification. Instead of orgasming and the chemical 'release' effect that entails, you are kept 'on edge' and, well, horny. The eventual (extreme lifestyle practitioners of this fetish excluded) orgasm tends to be much, much more intense.
Internet of Dongs (Teledildonics security site, probably NSFW) has an article [0] detailing their interaction with reporting vulnerabilities to the company.
There's another aspect that bothers me: given how many IoT manufacturers tend to shut down their servers after a while, what's going to happen the day the app cannot communicate with the gizmo in question?
Given the name, I thought this was being used on prisoners. These devices terrify me, from a security perspective, and from a physical safety perspective. Kudos to whoever is brave enough to use one I suppose.
We'll inevitably see similar headlines about internet-connected, autonomous-capable automobiles.
It's only a matter of time given the trajectory we seem to be on, and I fear the consequences will be a whole lot worse than some embarrassing fire department visits involving bolt cutters.
Someone once told me that these cock cage devices are more dangerous than they seem.
Some of these fetishists wear them for weeks or months so that they arent able to get a full erection for a long period of time. It's all fun and games until they finally take it off and realize it's not the same. It turns out if you don't use it, you lose it.
That sounds fairly urban legendy, though it can depend on the user and their anatomy, of course.
I know many people who've used or worked with these devices for years and that has not been the case for them.
That said, due to the types of cage mechanics, weight and makeup of different cage materials, etc, there is definitely the possibility of some physical issues, including some nerve issues. It usually just things like skin irritations and discomfort though.
These days, there are a LOT of knockoffs of the major brands (like the Holy Trainer series) that are made with seriously questionable materials that don't have temperature tolerance/reforming, are missing edge filleting, etc. So if you do decide to engage in this sort of play, do your homework, read reviews, talk to communities, and don't order some random cheap thing off AliExpress.
The penis also lacks muscles (which do atrophy with lack of use). The more reputable reports from long-term wearers suggest that the plumbing still works even with near constant wear, provided that care is taken to ejaculate once in a while (e.g., monthly).
Because the purpose of male chastity devices is to prevent erections and orgasms, long-term wearers (who are a minority compared to the amount of folk who use such as device as a form of (prolonged) foreplay or as part of an erotic roleplaying scenario) may achieve such an ejaculation by means of a prostate massage (i.e., 'milking' him). The health goal here is mainly to keep the prostate healthy though.
Chafing, pinching, skin irritations; those are common health related issues though.
> and don't order some random cheap thing off AliExpress.
Or do, just to explore the different models cheaply, but treat them as novelty items. And yes, do read up on reviews, or ask in online communities. This is, quite emphatically, not a one-size-fits-all item.
You stick your dick and balls in to it and join the ring with the shaft part which then locks using a servo motor and can't (easily) be removed without the app sending the unlock command.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
I mean, this chastity thing is weird to me too, but "serves them right?" Assuming consent, I feel the answer to badly implemented sex gear should be well-implemented sex gear, not no sex gear at all.
"What have we come to as a species" is an expression of shock better saved for things like our species' propensity to torture and kill unwilling victims. That's fucked up.
>Your fitness is literally measured by your ability to reproduce...
Choosing to use this device for sexual pleasure does not mean that they are incapable of reproducing. It also doesn't mean that they don't want to reproduce at all. These types of toys are also not necessarily limited to single, childless people - couples with children almost certainly employ these devices as well.
>... intended for somebody else to control (weird)...
Just because something is someone's kink, but it's not your kink, doesn't make it weird. People are into what they're into. Someone controlling someone else in the bedroom is actually an incredibly common scenario, and chastity for both genders is found quite often in the BDSM scene especially in dom/sub play.
Your lack of understanding on this subject - which is OK - is coming off as kink-shaming. Just keep that in mind when you ask yourself why you're being downvoted.
that's a bad metric. If our ancient ancestors sat on a rock staring at a flickering rectangle for 8 hours a day they'd be eaten by tigers, but we're doing OK.
Though, even in the being-eaten-by-a-tiger era, we apparently had sex toys; examples of dildos from 30,000 years ago, and maybe longer, have been found.
Far enough that while people with an active sex life can use all sort of weird tools to engage in their fetishes, other [people] can try to justify their knee-jerk reactions by wanking about their evolutionary fitness.
I'll admit, this specific device has some safety concerns, but there are plenty of safe chastity devices out there that couples use regularly spice up their sex life.
Your comments here reflect some substantial sexual repression on your part. The issue here isn't that people are playing with sex toys. The issue here is that the sex toys have safety failings.
There have been multiple security issues reported, and the company really seems to have no clue how to deal with the tech. Not only that, they're doubling down on their production of unsafe equipment, including their newest toy (Link NSFW): https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001341771957.html