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Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

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Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#771

Post by palmotea »

thesuitonym wrote: post #767
palmotea wrote: post #766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure how useful of an intelligence asset a map of my house is, or pictures of me in my boxers on a saturday morning. Seriously, who cares about you or your house? Why do you think your personal example is the one to reason from? iRobot sold 50 million robots, lets conservatively say 10% of those are internet connected and still in service. That's 5 million households. There's probably quite a few people in…

Again, I don't know why you think China wasn't already buying that information from iRobot before it went bankrupt.

> Again, I don't know why you think China wasn't already buying that information from iRobot before it went bankrupt.

Come on, do really you think iRobot they sold data like that to third parties? Like user-identified floor plans? Camera images from inside people's homes?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#772

Post by fahhem »

kqr wrote: post #289
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…

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!

They were so proud of how they were one of the early ones to move their entire manufacturing process to China. Sorry, they always (could have) had a camera in your home

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#773

Post by Tangurena2 »

mkagenius wrote: post #297
kqr wrote: post #289

Earlier 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!

Since this can be a significant security issue for the state, why doesn't the government sponsor a security audit of the software. Does it upload the data or everything is done on the device? (Also, will have to keep up with the updates)

The NSA has a bad historical reputation for this sort of thing - intentionally weakening crypto standards to make things easier for themselves to break, while keeping them "strong enough" that other agencies outside of NSA/GCHQ/GRU can't. The Crypto AG scandal [0] was pretty bad, with Clipper/Skipjack & Dual_EC_DRBG [1] being more recent ones. The NSA could do what you are asking to do, but they probably won't let us know what the really bad holes are because they want to keep using them.

Notes:

0 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-...

1 - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nsa-nist-encrypti..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_EC_DRBG

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#774

Post by Tangurena2 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #496
mkagenius wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since this can be a significant security issue for the state, why doesn't the government sponsor a security audit of the software. Does it upload the data or everything is done on the device? (Also, will have to keep up with the updates)

"Why doesn't the state protect everyone from ___?" is a naive question. Almost anything can be a significant security issue for the state. They have to carefully choose where they are going to spend effort & money. And they pick whatever will keep them safely in power... which never ever includes "strict regulation of vacuum cleaners".

We don't regulate/protect the SCADA systems that run utilities like water treatment plants and the power transmission system.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#775

Post by AndrewKemendo »

osiris970 wrote: post #658
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been in court multiple times in my life including last month. I assure you there’s nothing free about them. The US has the largest prison population. China has plenty of problems but no country matches the depravity of the US “justice” system. Oh and that’s just the “formal” system, go to the south and you’ll see what it is.

No county matches the depravity of the U.S justice system? Other countries (china for example) have reeducation and labor camps. The us has its problems, and we should make things better! But it's incomparable, china actively imprisons political enemies, puts Muslims in "reeducation" camps, and has an iron fist on free expression.

The U.S. never made internment camps or had rampant government enforced slavery? Cmon

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#776

Post by coldpie »

stogot wrote: post #756
coldpie wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See downthread comment[1], and please keep in mind the context of this conversation is specifically, " Amazon does more harm and is a larger threat to Americans than China is ". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46277647

Chinese doctrine explicitly has labeled America as the enemy for 10-20 years, with a goal of taking a democracy by force (after crushing dissent in HK and taking it over earlier than promised), and steals the West’s IP, and manipulates American businesses, and is actively committing a genocide for the past decade.

That's all pretty hand wavey and abstract, not very convincing (for example, I'm pretty sure China is not committing a genocide in the US, and Western IP law is arguably not worth much respect anyway). I'm not saying China is without problems, I'm just saying they're less harmful to Americans than Amazon is.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#777

Post by ch4s3 »

coldpie wrote: post #504
ch4s3 wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Chinese market consolidation a healthier market outcome here?

Opposing one purchaser does not imply supporting another purchaser. I don't know the details of this specific transaction, but I would guess the Chinese buyer does not have the same market power that Amazon does, so isn't running afoul of antitrust law. It's also possible Warren is opposed to this purchase, too, but no longer has the influence to stop it.

> Opposing one purchaser does not imply supporting another purchaser

Opposing the merger in this case necessarily meant embracing iRobot going out of business. Their financial position was clear, and no one else was in that business vertical but iRobot and Chinese companies. So either iRobot folds and the market is owned by Chiense companies, or iRobot folds and its IP is bought by Chinese companies.

> but I would guess the Chinese buyer does not have the same market power that Amazon does

In home robotics? They own the whole market.

> Warren is opposed to this purchase, too, but no longer has the influence to stop it.

Warren is too blindly ideological and frankly stupid to have pieced this together.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#778

Post by femiagbabiaka »

ang_cire wrote: post #699
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> You could make the argument that it's one of very few successful U.S. manufacturing company winning on purely technical/capitalist terms Except it's not winning on that at all. It's "winning" because Chinese EV brands are barred from selling in the US. You can't buy an Avatr if you want. It's in fact protectionist regulations that allowed Tesla to retain EV dominance in the US, in the face of Chinese competition.

Tesla was very popular in the Chinese market and globally, including in markets where Chinese EVs aren't banned, until literally this year, which I'd argue is due in part to the trade war.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#779

Post by stogot »

coldpie wrote: post #776
stogot wrote: post #756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese doctrine explicitly has labeled America as the enemy for 10-20 years, with a goal of taking a democracy by force (after crushing dissent in HK and taking it over earlier than promised), and steals the West’s IP, and manipulates American businesses, and is actively committing a genocide for the past decade.

That's all pretty hand wavey and abstract, not very convincing (for example, I'm pretty sure China is not committing a genocide in the US, and Western IP law is arguably not worth much respect anyway). I'm not saying China is without problems, I'm just saying they're less harmful to Americans than Amazon is.

You’re claiming that documented and active IP theft and anti-democracy and enemy-action doctrine is handwavy and better than a tax paying business that supports democracy and that is not trying to undermine the west? You’re wrong

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#780

Post by AndrewKemendo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #710
knowitnone3 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how hard is this to understand. you have a roving camera/microphone in your house and you think that is OK?

Yes? You also have several cameras and microphones in your pocket, and probably wearing more microphones on your head at various times of the day. And so does everyone around you. GP is correct. "Roving camera/microphone" -> ??? -> "harm". What is "???" and what is "harm" specifically , and how the former leads to the latter, in specific steps ?

Why are all us HN old timers in here arguing about this

I thought this was settled

People are walking around with self spy devices and putting them everywhere and giving all their private data to corpos.

That’s not new, we know it happens, we know companies use “anonymized” data for advertising. Its in public records for large companies balance sheets and there are thousands of data brokers who live exclusively on this data.

There are multiple compelling and popular documentaries about this.

What’s the push back here?

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