Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

news.bloomberglaw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 839 posts

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#261

Post by uxp100 »

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…

Nope, not all of them are connected to the internet and not all of them have cameras.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#262

Post by LunaSea »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #242
mlrtime wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the Chinese end up stealing any actual IP that may get the US company ahead by being there. Also, is it still difficult to bring profits back to the US? Damn'd if you do, dam'd if you don't.

Why do American companies have to rely on artificial protections like IP in order to compete? Don't forget it's only "stealing" if you're culturally inclined to see IP as actual property, whereas in China the idea has long been that ideas are common good, even predating Marxism.

So stealing trade secrets is legal in China?

Or do they publish all their IP on a government site for all to see?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#263

Post by komali2 »

jhanschoo wrote: post #222
cluckindan wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government is heavily subsidizing 3D printers by granting tax deductions up to 200%. https://www.josefprusa.com/articles/open-hardware-in-3d-prin...

So why would 3D printer companies in China bother innovating rather than sit back and cash the government check?

Because the owners want to get rich, not live as pensioners.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#264

Post by isodev »

rgovostes wrote: post #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 t…

You’re looking at this from a point where the only piece of information about you out there is the data collected by the roomba. In reality, every sensible data broker would just add that signal to your already verbose profile and feed it to a model to determine the stuff you’re likely to buy… or would trigger you to generate engagement or whatever is needed.

The privacy danger here is not the one data point, it’s the unknown amount of other parties who will mix and match it with more data.

With GDPR, I’ve been requesting copies of my telemetry from various corps and it’s amazing the kind of stuff they collect. Did you know kindle records very time you tap on the screen (even outside buttons), in addition to what you read and highlight and pages you spend time on? Now add to that your smart tv’s insights about you and your robot vacuum cleaner … you see now this all grows out of control.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#265

Post by cs702 »

uxp100 wrote: post #261
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…

Nope, not all of them are connected to the internet and not all of them have cameras.

Thanks. That's true. I edited my comment to reflect as much.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#266

Post by ErneX »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #243
tim333 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's definitely much more advanced that it was twenty years ago. The science, design etc. was much worse than the west, now it's on par or sometimes ahead.

New Chinese phones and cars are incredible.

Agree. I visited China recently and every time we ordered a Didi (equivalent to Uber there) we were surprised with their vehicles, we used to order “deluxe” ones and boy we got some fancy electric vehicles.

Their bullet trains are also excellent.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#267

Post by stavros »

djmips wrote: post #259
stavros wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. Still, DRM.

DRM feels like conjecture. You admitted to working on it, it's also possible you broke it / didn't hook it up correctly?

Maybe, but I also know how to measure voltages, and everything was fine.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#268

Post by ErneX »

mlrtime wrote: post #206
p0pularopinion wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally think both attitudes are a too simplistic look. Basically, the most common pattern with „commodity“ tech seems to be like this. Western companies go ahead and expend a lot of R&D to establish a new market or validate a market need. Chinese companies go ahead and flood the market with slighly worse but significantly cheaper versions of said product (often forcing the „inventor“ company to take a significan…

That makes sense, are there any expamples of the Chinese leading in a market + R&D yet?

DJI for consumer drones could be one? They make really good products, including vlogging and action cameras too.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#269

Post by tim333 »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #243
tim333 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China's definitely much more advanced that it was twenty years ago. The science, design etc. was much worse than the west, now it's on par or sometimes ahead.

New Chinese phones and cars are incredible.

Yeah, I was just comparing BYD twenty years ago and now.

2005 you had the BYD F3 which was like a bad Corolla rip off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_F3

And now you have them getting the record for fastest production car https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/yangwang-u9-xtreme...

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#270

Post by xienze »

moooo99 wrote: post #189
dmantis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me it's so weird nobody makes a thing you can trust. I would happily overpay 3-4x for the good vacuum without the cloud and the need to do some hacking with valetudo, with an official service and support for the device. Yet nobody is willing to take the money. They'd rather go bankrupt..

> I would happily overpay 3-4x for the good vacuum without the cloud and the need to do some hacking with valetudo, with an official service and support for the device. Yet nobody is willing to take the money. They'd rather go bankrupt.. I feel like you are over estimating market demand based on your own preferences. Been there, done that. Most techies under estimate how little normal folks care about privacy, cybers…

> Most techies under estimate how little normal folks care about privacy, cybersecurity and stuff like that.

Exactly. Everyone I’ve talked to about my own robot vacuum (which is using Valetudo, so not phoning home to China) just kind of shrugs and says “who cares if audio and video inside my house are being piped to China, I don’t do anything interesting, what use would they have for it?” This also applies to other consumer electronics that do similar things.

They just can’t conceptualize that _in aggregate_ all this mundane information can be wielded by bad actors for their own gains. Which is funny, because they certainly have strong opinions about how Facebook et al are being used to push misinformation.

Post reply on HN