Found my rumba vacuum in unexpected place in my house, then saw the news 0_o.
Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
601–610 of 839 posts
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well now I’m sold
Dont be. Source: tried roborock and dream. They are both useless because you spend so much time troubleshooting it dealing with stuck issues you may as well get the cheap vac out.
Datapoint: I've used my Roborock s7 max ultra in three different households (2 houses, 1 apartment) and have had zero issues with this.
It actually was night and day compared to the $1000 equivalent roomba I had at the time. lidar is the game changer in this space, and roomba was complacent with their technology.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#603One more proof that you need real industrial policy, not just 'let the market handle it'. Otherwise you end up as a consumer of products designed and manufactured somewhere else. The good thing is that China has proven that there is a way to turn not-industrial country into industrial one. So there is a blueprint for that.
Industrial policy was what stopped Amazon from buying Roomba.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#604Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder why nobody has tried to beat the Chinese companies at their own game. The whole schtick is: take a product that people like, vertically integrate and drive down costs. This is like the purest form of capitalism.
E.g. Tesla: * built a lithium refinery * produces its own battery cells * makes its own motors and drivetrains * makes its own car seats * owns and operates a fast-charging network * sells direct, bypassing dealerships * offers insurance integrated with vehicle data * develops its own autopilot AI
Great point, and to drive it home -- TSLA is the only competitive non-Chinese company in the EV space. You could make the argument that it's one of very few successful U.S. manufacturing company winning on purely technical/capitalist terms, considering the whole U.S.-Taiwan stranglehold on chip mfg
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#605Guess who has the largest dataset on the inside of American homes?
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#606The chinese robots are gonna love this !
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#607Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
US companies can’t beat Chinese companies completely subsidized by their national government.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#608Earlier 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!
Why not? Unless you are a Chinese citizen, it arguably makes more sense to grant access to the Chinese government rather than the US government. The PRC generally shows little interest in non-citizens while the US government frequently goes after people beyond its borders (e.g. Meng Wanzhou, Changpeng Zhao, Sam Bankman-Fried, Julian Assange, Kim Dotcom, etc.).
> Why not? Unless you are a Chinese citizen, it arguably makes more sense to grant access to the Chinese government rather than the US government.
You're making zero sense:
1. I predict there will be no change in the US government's access as a result of this.
2. I don't think Americans are so indifferent to their own country that they'd prefer a situation where an adversary country gets handed an intelligence asset. I mean, hypothetically, would an American prefer US trade policy be set that in a way that disadvantages American workers, because some politician got blackmailed because of something his Roomba recorded?
> The PRC generally shows little interest in non-citizens while the US government frequently goes after people beyond its borders
3. The Chinese government has been going after people in the US. They've long been engaged in industrial espionage, but there's also their "overseas police stations" (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65305415). It's worth noting that US citizens can have a Chinese origin, and I doubt the Chinese government would suddenly become uninterested in a dissident once he got naturalized.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#609Is there a good, alternative robotic vacuum to the Roomba that is not cloud connected?
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#610I bought a Roomba around 2006. It died within a month. Never bought again. Today I'd need to assume it would serve as a surveillance tool by the Chinese gov, or other bad actors, and so would also never buy one.
All of IoT is a security anti-pattern now.