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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

#161

Post by concinds »

jibal wrote: post #156
arjie wrote: 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…

> I also suspect there is a partisan slant to this. IOW, he doesn't share your partisan views.

Matt Stoller is one of those "left MAGA" grifters who is only trusted by the most ignorant and gullible fraction of either side (left or MAGA). No one with a clue has anything but contempt for his "intellectual" output.

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

#162

Post by dyauspitr »

star-glider wrote: post #137

This is literally what's happening to Apple right now. Instead of focusing on innovation and research, they're just skimming their 30%. Works out great for the share price until something like LLMs come along, and oops you have no innovation muscle left.

Apple is innovating plenty.

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

#163

Post by twoodfin »

aidenn0 wrote: post #152
arjie wrote: 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…

If we look just at 2022, then allowing the Chinese to foreclose on iRobot vs Amazon buying it is basically just a question of who owns the name "Roomba"; there were zero companies making robot vacuums in the US, and the result is still zero companies doing so.

That’s unhelpfully reductive: There are zero companies making smartphones in the US, too.

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

#165

Post by stephenitis »

bhaney wrote: post #84
dpc_01234 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did your Roombas also yelled in the middle of the night "PLEASE CHARGE ROOMBA!!!" every few minutes with no way to disable that behavior? I now have 2x $150 iLifes and couldn't be happier. They're also imperfect, but they are affordable and simple.

One of the first things I did with my robot vacuum cleaner was open it up and yank out its speaker.

Genius! Why I didn’t think of this!

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

#166

Post by stephenitis »

drob518 wrote: post #65
echelon wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roombas have always been terrible. I bought a top-of-line Dreame, Roborock, and Eufy recently for our place - we have lots of pets. The Dreame is easily 10,000x better than Roomba ever was. It never makes mistakes. I'd advocate for Dreame for anyone in the market for a robot vacuum. The app is annoying, but everything else about it is sublime. Eufy would be better if they'd fix their roller brush design and didn't le…

Which does best with pets? We have a German shepherd that sheds like crazy. We vacuum every week and it will often fill a Dyson canister vac. We empty it every time we vacuum. We had a Roomba back in 2002 or so, but it was little more than a novelty (just wasn’t great vacuum and got hung up on too much stuff).

Regular brushing at least once weekly. Husky owner here. 2 roombas 2 dysons

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

#167

Post by trinsic2 »

Here is where the pressure needs to be placed:

>To reverse this strategy, a more assertive antitrust regime is necessary, but it’s not enough. We also have to reduce the many other public levers of support for elevated returns on capital. Only then will it make sense for companies like iRobot to invest in robots instead of share buybacks.

Call your state senators and let them know that enforcing anti-trust legislation and undoing citizens united need to be the primary focus

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

#168

Post by randerson »

twoodfin wrote: post #60
randerson wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how many people are getting rich from the inflated stock prices of every AI-adjacent company right now, including the ones with no obvious path to profitability, I could make the argument that they're already in a short term extraction phase. (I'm also not sure if putting a significant % of the population out of work will create long term value to society.)

The stocks are inflated because Wall Street believes current $$$$$ capital investments will create massive long-term value!!

As a lowly retail investor, I'm only investing in AI because everyone else is investing in AI. I hope for a greater fool to dump my AI stocks on before the music stops. I am sure plenty of Wall Street sees it the same way.

We're certainly seeing short term value at companies who grew profits by replacing workers with cheap AI tools. But the true cost of those AI tools is still being paid by investors, not customers. (Not to mention the indirect costs being paid by society, from the rising cost of RAM & electricity to global warming.)

In the long term these AI companies will need to raise their prices substantially if they're to break even. Will the value still be there for their customers when its no longer cheap?

And if AI puts enough people permanently out of work, the GDP will drop, leading to demand for any product made with AI dropping too. It is an industry that could eventually eat itself.

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

#169

Post by jibal »

jibal wrote: post #156
arjie wrote: 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…

> I also suspect there is a partisan slant to this. IOW, he doesn't share your partisan views.

Nothing in the response to my comment is remotely true ... it's all obvious projection.

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

#170

Post by johnsmith1840 »

throw-qqqqq wrote: post #102
daft_pink wrote: post #5

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…

Same. I bought a roomba in covid and it's still kicking. No repairs at all just new brushes and filters when they get dirty.

Felt bad they went under as I would likely have purchased more of them forever. But maybe that's why they died? Kinda like appliances that last forever the company doesn't have financial incentives to make them last longer or are outcompeted by less reliable ones selling more often.

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