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Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

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Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#411

Post by doctorpangloss »

array_key_first wrote: post #389
cs702 wrote: post #254

According to the Financial Times, Roomba has sold more than 40 million robotic devices, most of them robotic vacuum cleaners.[a] Many of those vacuum cleaners have cameras, can move around on their own, and are connected to the Internet. If they're taken offline, they stop working. Many have microphones too. The new Chinese owner will get control of a network of tens of millions Internet-connected, autonomously mobil…

I don't understand how you can sell 40 million units and go bankrupt.

what is in between a disc shaped robot vacuum and an android walking around with a broom? there's no obvious path between those two designs. the answer is all the growth iRoomba needed and another $10b.

the problem with disc shaped vacuums is adapting your whole home to make their labor saving make sense. not maps or china or all this other bs.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#412

Post by echelon »

fny wrote: post #365

I'm all for antitrust, but it's a shame the Amazon acquisition was blocked.[0] iRobot was in a distressed state then, and immediately laid of 1/3 of staff when the deal fell through. I knew a survivor of that mess. Now this. 0: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/29/24034201/amazon-irobot-ac... 0: https://archive.is/rBn7z

I was so angry at this.

I want Amazon and Google to be broken up, but not in this category or along with these lines. This wasn't going to create some household appliance monopoly. Amazon has plenty of competition, and Roomba was already behind the curve.

Now America is out of this market category. A category we invented. This felt like our last toehold in consumer robotics.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#413

Post by kleiba »

lionkor wrote: post #253
kleiba wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are there any good robo-vacuum cleaners that will still clean your floor if the internet is down? What do you mean? Why would you need an internet connection for a vacuum cleaner? (Sorry for asking, I've never owned a robot one, plus I am old.)

Lots of modern appliances connect to the Internet, have multiple computers inside that need updates, maintenance, maybe subscription payments, and that need to phone home everything they see, hear and do.

Huh, why is that? Admittedly, I only own older appliances, but somehow they don't require updates.

Subscription payments? For household devices you own?

I suspect "phoning home" is a good incentive for manufacturers, but why would anyone buy such a device then?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#414

Post by rzzzt »

cout wrote: post #128
nine_k wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody who played Doom, or Quake, or Counterstrike knows: if you are not moving, you are dead. And if you try to show a counterexample, and say: "Look, I'm not moving, and I'm alive all right", it's an illusion, because the rockets, grenades, nails, and plasma charges that will slay you are already in flight, you are just failing to see them.

Camping is a viable strategy in many Quake levels, and it is problematic to the point that many servers will kill you if you stay in one place for too long.

Some of the sharks will also do just fine sitting still: https://www.britannica.com/story/do-sharks-really-die-if-the...

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#415

Post by btown »

olalonde wrote: post #404
kqr wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our household (and I suspect many with us) bought a Roomba specifically to not give the Chinese government a roving camera in our home. Ouch!

Why not? Unless you are a Chinese citizen, it arguably makes more sense to grant access to the Chinese government rather than the US government. The PRC generally shows little interest in non-citizens while the US government frequently goes after people beyond its borders (e.g. Meng Wanzhou, Changpeng Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried, Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom, etc.).

The general thing about state actors is that they have every incentive to have a dossier of compromising information on every foreign national regardless of current relevance, for potential use in the future. You could, for instance, someday be in a position where you have privileged access to data that becomes relevant to them, and thus your history becomes useful.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#416

Post by secondcoming »

snapcaster wrote: post #326
secondcoming wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

R&D is very expensive and you want some protection for having borne that cost. If a competitor can just swoop in and clone your tech then they’re at an immediate, unfair advantage.

Yet china's economy where IP isn't respected seems to contradict your point. Why doesn't that counterexample make you change your mind on this?

You’re asking why Chinese companies aren’t stealing from each other?

How do you know they’re not?

Nothing happens in China without State approval so maybe the penalties for encroaching on a State backed entity are quite severe?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#417

Post by tetha »

snapcaster wrote: post #320
georgeecollins wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worry a lot about privacy in general but its hard for me to figure out the danger posed by my roborock. I suppose it has the floor plans of my house and knows we vacuum on Saturdays. It doesn't seem to know if the object passing by is me or my cat. Yes its on my wifi but so are half a dozen other foreign made gadgets. What is the concern?

I think this is the wrong mental model (attempt to articulate threats from a specific information leakage). The problem I have with this approach is that it ignores "sensor fusion" by treating each leak as independent and defining threats as "things i can picture happening". I think the correct mental model for this is "leaking bits". Leaking bits is bad, it doesn't take many bits to uniquely identify you and you're…

One of the more tractable examples here is the information what cell towers your cell phone is connected to. On it's own, it doesn't tell you that much.

But if you have this from 2-3 people, you can start inferring if they are meeting sporadically, meet a lot, possibly live together.

Or, if you add information about the services in the vicinity of cell towers, you can start deducing changes in a persons life. Suddenly the phone is moving more, to places with a doctor nearby, a gynecologist nearby, clothing stores, furniture stores, ... eventually a hospital. Start mixing in information about the websites they visit...

This incremental discovery of information about a person is surprisingly powerful depending on the data you have and hard to predict.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#419

Post by ErneX »

clan wrote: post #360
p0pularopinion wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BEVs most certainly aren‘t. Chinese EVs are strongly competing on price. Based on my own experience with them (n=4). They are very good as a EV, solid as a rolling smartphone, but not leading as being a car. Given the choice, I still would prefer a BMW EV any day. However, batteries as a commodity are a good example where china is leading as volume and R&D leader

Try a larger n. They are more than capable. I have just looked at what BMW, Mercedes and Audi have on offer. Then compare what Zeekr and Xpeng has on offer (7X, G9). Quality wise they feel the same or even better. While I agree as a "complete car" the full package might not quite be there yet. But that is from a European perspective as they mostly are focused on their home markets. But this is changing. This is then…

or Yangwang, BYD luxury brand.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#420

Post by secondcoming »

adrian_b wrote: post #338
secondcoming wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

R&D is very expensive and you want some protection for having borne that cost. If a competitor can just swoop in and clone your tech then they’re at an immediate, unfair advantage.

There is a huge difference between "some protection" and blocking the competition for many decades, because an incompetent patent office has approved many exaggerated claims, either about things that are obvious and well known by anyone in the field, but nobody was shameless enough to claim them in a patent before, or else about things that the patent filer is completely unable to do in the present, but they are clai…

Patents aren’t the only means of copying something. I would imagine China has a very sophisticated reverse engineering skill set. Made even easier since pretty much everything is made there so if you want the specs of some component you can just call someone up.
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