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Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

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Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much difference was made by the Chinese competitors being able to use whatever IP they wanted, and Roomba being constrained by law and licensing, and not being able to enforce their own IP? What were the consequences of having to engage with China for manufacturing, effectively giving them the capability to clone any R&D on the fly, without having to figure things out themselves? How much did regulation and taxat…

what law and licensing prevented iRobot to adopt Lidar? Given Lidar is used everywhere already.

It's not any particular feature - it's the licensing and royalties paid on tech patented and owned by other parties in the US, or by parties the US recognizes. Since that's not reciprocal, it's a drag on any US company, or company that respects US jurisdiction.

Put enough sticky notes on a Tour De France rider and you'll eventually guarantee their loss. That's the one-sided policy problem with the US, internally. Now if other riders are doping and using secret electric motors, but the stickied up rider can't cheat in the same way, then you just guarantee their loss, even if it's only a little degrading.

We need a better, more accountable, and more transparent international trade framework. Something that shuts out bad faith players that use slave labor, child labor, exploitative wages, things like that, and appropriately scales tariffs and other mechanisms to penalize the violations appropriately.

I'd much rather the playing field be entirely fair and even than do the current US thing of "well, we're going to impose a lot of moralistic and patronizing rules on ourselves, but allow anyone anywhere else to ignore those rules, because it makes for good political theater back home, and it makes shareholders happy."

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#102

To be honest the Roomba sucked and got eaten alive by better chinese competitors. I bought a top of the line expensive Roomba years ago and ended up switching to neato a year later, because I would just come home and it would be stuck on something.

> To be honest the Roomba sucked

I have an old Roomba (980 perhaps?) and laud it as one of my best appliances. It’s a work horse!

We’re had it for five-six years and it still works great. Nowadays it sometimes needs to charge twice to finish, but I only notice if I’m home - and I could just replace the battery. Parts are so easy to replace, that my wife has replaced most, and she isn’t a tinkerer.

Maybe I just don’t know what I’m missing - I’ve never had others - but I love my Roomba.

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#103
post #79

Not every story needs to have a bad guy. In many cases (I suspect this is one of them) there is room for multiple bad guys. Why couldn't the FTC, Roomba Management, Wall Street, China, etc. all be at fault? Seems like it fits the evidence nicely.

One thing I keep repeating is that Roomba subreddit was managed by the company and would ban people for life is they were to share any bad experiences or anything negative about the product.

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#104
post #92
post #49

This is such a bad faith, and frankly dishonest take on the situation. As you know, Khan’s FTC worried it wouldn’t be able to prevent Amazon’s acquisition of iRobot in court, so instead it dragged out approval, which it never granted, while continuously threatening to block. Simultaneously, her FTC openly worked with the EU to convince the EU to use its more expansive antitrust regime to get the EU to block the deal.…

The point is that "sold to Amazon" or "sold to chinese competitors" being the only options is a false narrative. There was also the "do a good job" option which is being conveniently omitted by people who want to blame the FTC.

That's only an option if the FTC can rewind time. Can they?

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#106
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see him (Rodney) in both the Roomba and iRobot articles.

The Roomba is not in the Rodney Brooks article.

With Wikipedia, most things are less erasure and more incompleteness. I looked at the Rodney Brooks article and couldn't find an easy way to introduce the Roomba into it without sounding stilted[0] since I don't know how involved he was in the creation of the device and I don't know enough about the company to make an educated guess. If you know how he was involved perhaps you could share some links to news and so on that says so. I don't mind fixing the Wikipedia article to appropriately link.

0: The best effort I could make would be to edit "He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot" to say "He is a founder and former Chief Technical Officer of iRobot (manufacturer of the Roomba)"

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#107
post #105

"We are pleased that Amazon and iRobot have abandoned their proposed transaction." https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/...

We know the FTC blocked the deal. What is this quote supposed to be showing us?

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#108
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that "sold to Amazon" or "sold to chinese competitors" being the only options is a false narrative. There was also the "do a good job" option which is being conveniently omitted by people who want to blame the FTC.

That's only an option if the FTC can rewind time. Can they?

er? No we are talking about the attribution of blame. If you're saying "what a shame that iRobot is being sold to Chinese competitors" and then you "...because of the FTC" you're essentially lying; it's because of incompetence and capitalism and then also maybe a little bit the FTC (although I'm very skeptical of that as well, because in this whole narrative the FTC is the only party that can be even claimed to be acting prosocially).

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#109
post #105

"We are pleased that Amazon and iRobot have abandoned their proposed transaction." https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/...

We know the FTC blocked the deal. What is this quote supposed to be showing us?

The 'we' is doing a lot of work there. 'You' might know, but many do not and explicitly have different views. An example thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46330028

Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan

#110
post #90

The article makes the case that iRobot mismanaged their business at the behest of investors. Suppose one grants that this mismanagement occurred[0]. Then years into the mismanagement, Amazon offers to buy them. At this point, whatever path the company has been doomed to by mismanagement has already been taken. In 2022, one cannot go back to the 2010s and repair whatever bad business decisions have been made. So the F…

> closing off their escape route and de-facto enforcing the sell-off to the Chinese.

There was only one escape route? And it happened to be the one they selected themselves? That seems dubious.

> organizations that have expressly indicated that they want to break up the big companies

We literally have laws which _require_ them to do this. This isn't ideological targeting it's the consequence of the "due care clause" of the constitution. You should ask why previous iterations of the FTC have ignored this responsibility not why the one in question actually tried to live up to it.

> A simple "Request For Evidence".

These are publicly traded corporations not hapless individuals.

> I also suspect there is a partisan slant to this.

You've tried to obscure yours but I suspect the same thing of you.

> You operate in the fog of war.

This is goalpost shifting to the level of propaganda. You operate in a market. If you fail your assets will be auctioned off. The death of a corporation is a natural consequence of the system we've developed. It's required. It caries none of the weight of the death of an individual or of war.

> We could easily be telling a different tale if the bet paid off.

> In 2022, one cannot go back to the 2010s and repair whatever bad business decisions have been made.

This seems contradictory. We could easily be telling a different tale if the 2010s played out differently; however, as you say, one cannot go back.

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