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Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

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Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#571

Post by Zambyte »

cyp0633 wrote: post #550
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…

US-designed iPhones have at least 2 cameras, some microphones, and biometric sensors. From this point, everyone outside the US should stop using iPhones to prevent surveillance from the American empire. From another angle, the iPhones are primarily made in China AND India via third-party factories, so no one should ever use iPhones any more. You have the right to concern about privacy, but that's not how it works.

> You have the right to concern about privacy, but that's not how it works.

You had all the right reasoning but came to the wrong conclusion. That is exactly how it works, and people should not use iPhones.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#572

Post by lynx97 »

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…

How many users does TikTok have again? Talking about internet-connected, autonomously mobile, camera/microphone-equipped robots...

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#573

Post by bitexploder »

mzhaase wrote: post #146
simonjgreen wrote: post #81

This is the cost of complacency. They were ahead for so long then the likes of Roborock just left them in the dirt. I remember the first time I tried one of the Roborock devices, and until then I have been a long time Roomba user (like, 20 years). I just couldn’t believe how much better it was. And iRobot just stubbornly refused to iterate on their fundamental products.

There is also another thing where quality Chinese products are very cheap compared to western products. Since Chinese engineers are cheaper, they can live with lower margins on their products. A roomba was twice as much as a roborock that was better. Prusa MK4S is 720 EUR, the arguably better Bambu Lab A1 is 260 EUR.

You can probably maintain your Prusa forever. The Bambu... not so much. It is a philosophy choice here and the 3D printer space is vastly more complex and nuanced for many users than an appliance that has one simple job. Yes if you /just/ want to print stuff and treat it like an appliance as a curious consumer dabbling in the space the Bambu is great. That was never Prusa's target. I don't think the comparison is very strong.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#574

Post by jjcc »

expedition32 wrote: post #225
aurareturn wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is complacency or is China just accelerating? It's not surprising that China wins in these things. Just go to Shenzhen. Hardware designers, parts, machines that make the parts, factories, etc. are all within driving distance. You can't compete unless you also have offices there, hire Chinese workers, compete in China. American companies need to start designing in China, not just made in China. Ford themselves said…

It's funny that we are running into the same problem that the British had with China in the 19th century: China doesn't need or want anything from the West, they do not trust the West and they certainly do not want to rely on the West. The last time the British came up with the ingenuous opium plan. But that backfired into the communist takeover in 1949.

>But that backfired into the communist takeover in 1949.

This is very insightful. But it's more profound than what's observed on surface. There was a chain of reactions along with many coincident events.

If we consider a collection of human bounded by different glues, i.e. tribes, culture, religions, ethnicities , political beliefs, cooperate, LLCs, etc., as a new form of creature superior to nature animals, then Chinese as a new creature is very special one. Maybe next to Jews.

The failure of Opium war and consequential changes caused a humiliation that created a special stress on this creature, resulted in a strong response which also drove many revolves inside China. Chinese elites seeking different solutions as reaction to those changes.

One big revolt lead by revolutionaries , the predecessor of the Nationalists who fled to Taiwan in 1949, overthrew the last dynasty of China. However it didn't address the issue of humiliation. The elites continue to seeking solutions while tried to reunite China. CPP was one of them.

After WWII, only 2 contesters survived. Another 4 years of civil war later, the Nationalist lost and Republic of China migrated to Taiwan. In 1971, ROC lost the seat in UN, CPP took over as the representative of China.

Both CPP and the Nationalists are nationalists , among others who lost in the history. The majority of early members of CPP, even strongly believe in the Marxist ideology, deep in their heart they are the same as the other nationalists even they hate and kill each other.

Marxism is a tool which is very effective proved by history, used by the unique creature called China to restore its honor and dignity, without the user of the tool even realizing it. Today it is called "Socialism with Chinese character", a heavily modified and unrecognizable version of Marxist ideology.

That's a little long version of

>that backfired into the communist takeover in 1949

I wish I have time to write a book about it as real long version after some time, maybe 10 years.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#575

Post by georgeecollins »

tetha wrote: post #417
snapcaster wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Suddenl…

I agree with this completely. I feel like my phone is leaking so much sensitive information about me in so many ways. And it has access to my location, my communications, my finances. And it is hard to turn off. I can turn off my vacuum cleaner for months if I want. I can't turn off my phone or the computer in my car.

I guess that's why the vacuum doesn't worry me. The phone really does.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#576

Post by coldpie »

qwerpy wrote: post #569
coldpie wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She should be, honestly. To me as an American, China has a better reputation than Amazon. Of those two choices, I'm happier with this outcome than giving even more stuff to Amazon.

As an American with a strong personal interest (kids) in keeping the country strong and competitive in the future, it seems bizarre to cheer for our largest adversary to gain advantages over us.

I also would have preferred to keep it in the country, but the fact is that Amazon does more harm and is a larger threat to Americans and your children than China is. Hence "Of those two choices... I pick China."

I would love for there to have been more than those two options, but this is where we ended up after decades of not enforcing anti-trust law, thanks in no small part to Amazon.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#577

Post by CamperBob2 »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #535
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…

Isn't that basically the reason patents exist? If you're really the first, you should be able to get about a 20 year head start.

Coasting on their patents is exactly why iRobot went bankrupt. If they had a proper incentive to continue innovating, they might be around today. Instead, the patent system incentivized them to erect a tollgate and snooze away in the booth next to it.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#578

Post by SoftTalker »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #305
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!

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…

They could improve the design and get people to replace their machines with the improved ones, repeat and repeat.

Or they could sell the broken design and people would just buy more as they broke. They don't care if Costco was eating the cost with their in-house warranty.

The fundamental problem though is the same with all "household gadget" products. They look cool, and appear to solve a problem, but that is actually all a perception based on novelty. They actually don't work very well, they are not built very well, and they don't last very long. There's no point in improving them because the concept is fundamentally something people don't need in the first place.

Just buy a good canister vacuum and you're set for a decade or more. It will cost more than the latest gadget from Shark or Dyson or iRobot but it won't frustrate you and it will just reliably do what it is supposed to do without uploading anything to an IP address.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#579

Post by Waterluvian »

After a long time of being skeptical that a $1300 robot will work well enough, I bought the Eufy X10 for $500 CAD. It's insane to me that this thing sells for so little and yet it works incredibly well and has all the features I'd want. The UX is also really, really good (my full-time job is real-time map UI for robot fleets). What impresses me the most is the maintainance section that has "X hours left" for a dozen things you maintain on the robot. Tap one and it shows you a visual step-by-step for how to perform maintainance on that component. It feels like China will be very hard to compete with.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#580

Post by SoftTalker »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #535
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…

Isn't that basically the reason patents exist? If you're really the first, you should be able to get about a 20 year head start.

No-name chinese cloners selling on Amazon don't care about patents.
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