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Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

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Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#151
One of the privacy fears stoked about iRobot years ago was about them "selling maps of your home to the highest bidder" for advertising purposes. E.g., https://gizmodo.com/roombas-next-big-step-is-selling-maps-of...

The premise still strikes me as a ridiculous one: Am I possibly a more affluent customer because there is a high pile rug under the coffee table? How much would Charmin pay to know I have two rooms with tiled floors?

What iRobot actually suggested was more mundane: that there could hypothetically exist a protocol for smart devices to share a spatial understanding of the home, and that their existing robot was in a favorable position to provide the map. The CEO talking about it like a business opportunity rather than a feature invited the negative reception.

It didn't help that a few years later, photos collected by development units in paid testers' homes for ML training purposes were leaked by Scale AI annotators (akin to Mechanical Turk workers). This again became "Roomba is filming you in the bathroom" in the mind of the public.

The privacy risk seemed entirely hypothetical—there was no actual consumer harm, only vague speculation about what the harm could be, and to my knowledge the relevant features never even existed. And yet the fear of Alexa having a floorplan of your home could have been great enough to play a role in torpedoing the Amazon acquisition.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out valetudo.

Second this if you are willing to do some mild hardware hacking. I've been running valetudo on two Dreame L10 vacuums for three years without issue. Keeps a lot of the smart features, for use over lan instead of a cloud connection.

I have bought a Dreame L10 Ultra with Valetudo in mind, but I discovered that if you skip connecting it to the internet during the setup process, you can still use it normally. I don’t care about any of the smart features and simply start a full cleaning or a spot cleaning by pressing a hardware button on the robot itself.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#153
post #41

My brother has a house that is pretty much custom-made for a robo-vacuum. One level, no transitions, they have pets. And they like it well enough (not an iRobot)--and it still gets tangled up in stuff from time to time. I have a 2-level house. Even after some house work, one room that probably still has too high a transition. A lot of different surfaces (And I'm not religious with cords and the like.) I'm guessing th…

> custom-made for a robo-vacuum

If I was going to custom build a house around vacuuming, I'd get a central vacuum system, not a robotic one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_vacuum_cleaner

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#154

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.

That seems to be a problem with many companies. Chinese companies are innovating aggressively while others don’t. You see that with 3d printers where Bambu is kicking ass. I remember when GoPro did a drone and it simply wasn’t good. Or American carmakers are trying to turn back the clock on electric instead of embracing it.

Like Japan 40-50 years ago.,

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#155
post #127
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.

> sits for hours playing a video game > if you are not moving, you are dead. I understand the point you're trying to make, but there is some irony here.

Dying in your chair so your game character can live!

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#157
post #136

Are there any good robo-vacuum cleaners that will still clean your floor if the internet is down? I've had my Miele vacuum cleaner for 15 years now, and I bought it second hand. I can still buy bags and filters for it, and when the floor roller piece broke (something heavy fell on it) I was able to buy a replacement one for cheap. I see no reason why it can't go another 10 years. It feels like a very low probability…

I used Valetudo on my early Roborock model and it worked great for many years. Unfortunately, the battery gave out and it's somehow DRMed, so even though everything else works fine, the vacuum refuses to work because it doesn't like the new battery.

It's the worst kind of e-waste, it's only waste because someone decided I should buy a whole new vacuum when the battery dies, but Valetudo is otherwise good. Just never try to look for support at all.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#158
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Camping is like.. regulatory capture? Stretching the analogy thin here.

Regulatory capture or sitting on an immovable network effect.

Antitrust is like anti camping mods for the server.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#159

One of the privacy fears stoked about iRobot years ago was about them "selling maps of your home to the highest bidder" for advertising purposes. E.g., https://gizmodo.com/roombas-next-big-step-is-selling-maps-of... The premise still strikes me as a ridiculous one: Am I possibly a more affluent customer because there is a high pile rug under the coffee table? How much would Charmin pay to know I have two rooms with t…

> The premise still strikes me as a ridiculous one: Am I possibly a more affluent customer because there is a high pile rug under the coffee table?

I've no idea about rug pile depth, but I'd have thought a simple link between square footage and location would be a reasonable proxy for that affluency.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#160
post #136

Are there any good robo-vacuum cleaners that will still clean your floor if the internet is down? I've had my Miele vacuum cleaner for 15 years now, and I bought it second hand. I can still buy bags and filters for it, and when the floor roller piece broke (something heavy fell on it) I was able to buy a replacement one for cheap. I see no reason why it can't go another 10 years. It feels like a very low probability…

I used Valetudo on my early Roborock model and it worked great for many years. Unfortunately, the battery gave out and it's somehow DRMed, so even though everything else works fine, the vacuum refuses to work because it doesn't like the new battery. It's the worst kind of e-waste, it's only waste because someone decided I should buy a whole new vacuum when the battery dies, but Valetudo is otherwise good. Just never…

This stuff should flat-out be illegal.
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