It's interesting that Rod Brooks has been erased from the history of Roomba. He's not even mentioned in the Wikipedia article.
I see him (Rodney) in both the Roomba and iRobot articles.
The Roomba is not in the Rodney Brooks article.
Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
81–90 of 213 posts
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Thing is, if you slash research And if you dump your defence contracts you may have trouble paying for research.
I'd be interested in learning about how the US military uses Roombas (assuming it's not classified)
In the article it's mentioned. They have built robotic stuff to clear rubble for example.
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#83Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#84To 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.
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.
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#85To 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.
I had an ancient-ish Roomba (620, 11 years ago). The repairability was amazing. This was from back when there was little competition, but just 2 years ago I could still get every part replaced. Only screws, nothing else. It was beautiful. I got a new vacuum/mop now, vastly better functionality, in exchange for the cloud, but I'm glad my old one lives one at my parents.
I've read it's way worse nowadays, but if they stayed at their quality from back then, I'd have probably paid more for an offline workable repairable vacuum.
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
The stocks are inflated because Wall Street believes current $$$$$ capital investments will create massive long-term value!!
> Wall Street believes current $$$$$ capital investments will create massive long-term value Clearly not. The stock market has a correction at least every few years. So Wall Street only believes they can sell the stock for higher within a few years. Not very long term is it?
> So Wall Street only believes they can sell the stock for higher within a few years.
Or they think the returns from holding the stock will be higher.
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Typically we don't say that someone with cancer is slowly committing suicide. Technically correct, perhaps, but it needlessly applies central autonomy where it doesn't really exist.
Wall Street actors almost universally love to describe the market as a singular entity, so they can hardly complain righteously.
Apparently it's not just "Wall Street" but "the market" which is a singular entity, which ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan and which can hardly complain about being described as a singular entity since it describes itself as such.
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#88To be honest the Roomba sucked and got eaten alive by better chinese competitors. I bought a top of the line expensive Roomba years ago and ended up switching to neato a year later, because I would just come home and it would be stuck on something.
Sucked not the ideal pejorative for a vacuum
Growing up, local morning radio shows were no longer allowed to say "that sucked" so they all switched to "that vacuumed". The ridiculousness of being offended by idioms like this amuses me
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The stocks are inflated because Wall Street believes current $$$$$ capital investments will create massive long-term value!!
> Wall Street believes current $$$$$ capital investments will create massive long-term value Clearly not. The stock market has a correction at least every few years. So Wall Street only believes they can sell the stock for higher within a few years. Not very long term is it?
If you could predict a stock market correction before it happens, you'd be very, very rich. The fact that corrections sometimes happen does not negate the existence of market-wide expectations for any given stock.
Re: Wall Street ruined the Roomba and then blamed Lina Khan
#90The 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 FTC decisions must then be seen in this light. Therefore, the case made by this article is made in the context that a dominant player in an industry has made decisions that slowly but surely doom them and seeing the imminent doom, they have found an acquirer who might be able to rescue them.
The FTC is operating in a universe conditional on iRobot already having done what they've done. Consequently, even if you can blame iRobot for getting into the situation, you must also blame the FTC for closing off their escape route and de-facto enforcing the sell-off to the Chinese.
As for the other thing about neither the FTC nor the EU actually bringing any proceedings against Amazon or iRobot and simply requesting information: this seems either naïve or a misrepresentation of how governments act to end deals. It's not that convincing to me that organizations that have expressly indicated that they want to break up the big companies are "just asking for information".
One thing I find interesting about Western governments is that they're very similar to the Indian governments that I am familiar with. They employ the same tactics. Every immigrant knows to be rightfully fearful of the white, pink, blue, and yellow slips and the RFE notices they receive. A simple "Request For Evidence". A common strategy back home in India, too.
I suppose the reason those in the West are less aware of these things is that the standard bureaucracy mostly works if you're a domestic W-2 employee. Interactions with the government are few and generally functional. So they come to believe that the government is a highly honest machine: if it asks for X, it does not indicate anything more than a request for X. Those interacting with the more politicised parts of Western government find that they strategically employ the usual tactics that Indian bureaucracies wield routinely at the lowest level.
Overall, therefore, I don't find this convincing. Looking at the other things that Matt Stoller writes, I also suspect there is a partisan slant to this.
0: Businesses are hard. You operate in the fog of war. We could easily be telling a different tale if the bet paid off.