This was my guess
Agreed
A product which is a bit more serious than chinese vacuum cleaners::
Chinese cars.
Here is an army which has totally banned all Chinese-made cars from all military bases, due to fear of spying.
Targeted weapons are getting better and better. They don’t want to accidentally hit the cats.
I hear people raving out how much more advanced Chinese BEVs are because they greet the owner and frequent passengers identified through facial and voice recognition, have learn what their driving habits and frequent destinations are, et cetera, and all I can think is this is basically a perfect surveillance device masquerading as a vehicle.
Stranger
Uhh… yeah! That’s what happened to me. That’s why I don’t vacuum! Honest!
He seems surprised by some of the things he found, and I’m not sure why. Yes, of course there’s a computer inside of his vacuum-cleaner robot, and of course it’s running 3D mapping software. How could a robot vacuum not have those?
I don’t see anything in the blog post that suggests that he was surprised about mapping abilities, and he was certainly aware that there was a microcontroller with sensors and an embedded OS because he is clearly familiar with these systems. His big revelations is that it was “constantly communicating with its manufacturer, transmitting logs and telemetry that I had never consented to share,” and that when he blocked “its data logging IP address” (not sure if it has a separate MAC address specifically for sending the data stream or if he actually just blocked a specific port) but when he did so the device became nonfunctional, and in further investigation he found that, “The device came with rtty software installed by default. This small piece of software allows remote root access to the device, enabling the manufacturer to run any command or install any script remotely without the customer’s knowledge.”
Stranger
This:
seems pretty surprised, to me. As does
This almost certainly means he blocked the IP address of the of the system that receives the data logs. It is not terribly difficult figure out what IP addresses the vacuum is connecting to, and a bit of sniffing will show which ones are receiving the most data. That address can then be blocked by a variety of means, but the easiest is to just put a DROP ALL rule in your router’s firewall.
I interpreted the surprise as being how powerful of a computer and software it was using, not that it was using any computer and software at all. The original Roomba did all this with the systems that were available 25 years ago, and drew the map based on randomly bumping into things.
This vacuum is using something roughly equivalent to what you’d find in a budget Android smart phone and drawing maps with LASERS(!) and sophisticated mapping software.
The old Neato vacuum I had was similarly equipped with LIDAR, but it let me view the maps in the phone app. I don’t know what software it used to draw them. It was clearly the interior of my house, but distorted like when looking at 16th century maps.
Fortunately for any current Neato owners, now that the company is gone and their servers turned off, the vacuum worked fine without any internet connection, and using only the buttons on the top of the vacuum.
There comes a point with electronics where it’s cheaper to use the more powerful system, just because it’s current and therefore off the shelf. Sure, you could do it with a lesser computer… if you could find one.
Exactly
Have I not mentioned the OG iRobot I had once? It did not have any cameras or computers or mapping software; what it had was bumpers and an algorithm that caused it, among other things, to bounce off obstacles at a random angle. Such a dynamical system is ergodic, and it will therefore clean the whole room. It might take thrice as long as doing it yourself with a manual vacuum, but the point is, it works automatically.
My grand-daughter has a crab toy that I think was built from old roomba electronics. It moves around the room playing a fun little tune, and turns back and forth when an “eye” senses and object approaching and wobbles changing its direction so it moves about the room.
Did I tell you about my haunted Furby?
Beckdawreck, I can tell you from experience that ALL Furbys(ies) are haunted.