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Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

news.bloomberglaw.com

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Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#521

Post by lenerdenator »

DevX101 wrote: post #472
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’m glad it was blocked. Amazon gives law enforcement and ICE access to Ring camera footage. I have no doubt they’d eventually be letting cops spy inside our homes with these vacuum cleaners.

Well, were they handed a valid warrant asking for that footage?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#522

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

dylan604 wrote: post #515
gosub100 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blackmail for one: "I'll wage a campaign to flood the Internet with pics of your half dressed wife unless you....". That will work on some people, discovering extramarital affairs, or proving you know intimate details about the inside of someone's house, along with threat of physical violence will work on others. You just need to be sufficiently creative. You can parlay the successes from one target to the next: "I c…

Maybe I'm just not paranoid enough, but when people are having sexy time, they are not really likely to be running the roomba. Having that thing running is the opposite of sexy. When the thing is parked on the base station, it is facing the wall. So exactly how frequently do people think a roomba is running to be capturing all of this explicit footage? To be clear, I'm not saying footage can't be captured, but some o…

> they are not really likely to be running the roomba.

You seem to assume that they have somehow physically disabled access to any kind of remote activation. That seems extremely unlikely given the overall selling points of the roomba.

The roomba doesn't have to "run" in order to be using its microphone, which as noted is likely the more valuable data acquisition source here.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#523

Post by ses1984 »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #514
jasonkester wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than taking their lead and improving the product, they just sat there with the exact same product for like 10+ years. It was outrageous. I think that this is actually the only viable strategy for a hardware product company in the current world. As soon as your product is successful, it will be cloned by dozens of Chinese companies and dumped on the market everywhere. Any update you make from there on out will…

Idk if I’d hold GoPro as an example of a company launching amazing things anymore…

That's the point.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#524

Post by AndrewKemendo »

ryandrake wrote: post #492
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing how people live moment to moment is how you can know how to extract money from them

Ok, keep going. Clearly draw the line from “X has access to vacuum cleaner cameras” to “X is extracting money from them.”

You already know this Ryan

https://blog.avast.com/what-do-security-cameras-know-about-y...

Data brokers love this data, dont play with me I know you better than that

https://www.cloaked.com/post/the-data-broker-economy-will-hi...

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#525

Post by lenerdenator »

It really is amazing that we keep letting our main geopolitical rival buy up our companies.

The "shareholder value == societal benefit" mind virus is easily the worst thing to come out of higher American academia in the last hundred years, and that's saying something.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#526

Post by n8cpdx »

tzs wrote: post #57

People are mentioning alternatives, but do any of them have the repairability of a Roomba? The maker was famous for keeping parts readily available for even the oldest models, and making it so replacing parts was easy (although I've heard that in mid-2024 they started on some model making wheels, chassis, and motors an integrated unit that the user cannot easily service). If you were happy with your Roomba you could…

I’ve repaired a eufy vacuum without issue, pretty easy to find repair parts as others have mentioned. I replaced a wheel assembly that wasn’t working quite right.

Repair shops will refuse to look at them outright; pretty frustrating they wouldn’t take my money and I had to do it myself. But I think that was categorical for all robot vacuums.

In general though, robot vacuums as a category are improving so quickly I doubt repair is the right options many times. A 10-year-old (or even 3-year-old, because they were always so behind) Roomba is almost like running a 10 year old Intel Mac in 2025.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#527

Post by daveguy »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #453
anymouse123456 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! I was a very early customer of Roomba and loved them when they came out. I had pets at the time, and the machine would consistently fail in about 14 months. I finally figured out that I needed to buy them from Costco, so that I could get them replaced. Rather than taking their lead and improving the product, they just sat there with the exact same product for like 10+ years. It was outrageous. I guess Rodney Br…

Is there a connection between Tim Ferriss and Roomba, or is this just a joke about Brooks having a 4-hour workweek?

They were saying that whoever was running things at Roomba must have been duped by the 4 hour work week bs because nothing was getting done. Specifically whoever took over operations, planning, and product improvements from Brooks.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#528

Post by IAmBroom »

mlrtime wrote: post #210
jack_tripper wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>can they clean hard to reach spots behind doors Robovacs aren't a drop-in replacement for a maid, they aren't a fire and forget cleaning solution for a house that's already dirty and messy or have constant spills and stuff left on the floor, but more for regular maintenance of an orderly place that still gets cleaned or maintained in the tough to reach places every now and then. But if your place resembles a crack h…

The newest ones have arms to pick up objects on the floor. Your comment is still valid, but it may pick up that crack vile ;)

"vial".

Certainly "vile", but that's not a noun.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#529

Post by square_usual »

ecshafer wrote: post #511
DevX101 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m glad it was blocked. Amazon gives law enforcement and ICE access to Ring camera footage. I have no doubt they’d eventually be letting cops spy inside our homes with these vacuum cleaners.

[flagged]

Yes, citizen! What do you have to hide? You are not a criminal, are you?
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