This title is dumb. Companies are not selling all of their products at a loss just to harvest your data[1] and privacy is not significantly more expensive. Don’t let capitalism fool you into believing we’re suffering from anything but the natural progression of “infinite growth”.
We’re so far into dystopia, and used to every company double/triple/quadruple dipping, that the entire concept of a company simply building a quality product, that lasts as long as possible, without ads, or extracting and selling your data, planned obsolescence, or price gouging is insanity… which is itself, batshit insane. This is not an efficient system. It’s a runaway freight train of greed and narcissism that is parasitically killing our host spaceship.
[1] they might be with Alexa hubs and other select data harvesting multipliers, but they’re probably selling them at cost or a tiny loss.
I disagree with that being the reason. Products without lots of bullshit do fine but Instant Pot purchased other companies and tried to expand into basically every kitchen role in like 5 years.
Look at Vitamix for instance and even with making composters? they seem to manage without bullshit.
I mean it’s partially true, do you remember Juicero? The entire goal was to get you integrated into the subscription model. It was well built, but they still priced it in a way that would make people want to buy the service needed to actually use it. Most companies either want subscriptions, or willingly lower build quality just to be able to sell you a new version within a shorter timeframe
The idea you need to buy a “juice pack” rather than literally buying a bag of good frozen fruit and just letting it melt into juice is insane. I hate how companies have everyone convinced they can offer you something and act like its super hard and only they can do it sucks.
I had this realization about computer apps. You can replicate almost any function or code, but it does makes sense often in that domain to simply buy the app if its for keeps and that is maintained.
It was a badly thought out product, I agree. It also failed quite spectacularly because of it. I just brought it up because it was actually a really good deal based on the device quality itself. Sadly the entire press can’t even use normal burlap pouches with fruit inside, it doesn’t produce the pressure. It might have been a turd, but by god, they put as much gold on it as they could.
I think juicers themselves can be a good product, but not with an idiotic business model behind it too. Oh and they should not require WiFi access for DRM verification of the juice packets and device.
One of the lessons I have learned as an engineer is that device quality doesn’t matter if you do not need a high quality device. There are times when you need a high quality press. Squeezing juice out of a pouch is not one of them. All of that extra quality you bought is doing nothing, because all you are using it for is squeezing juice out of a pouch.
Fair. Although it is nice seeing needlessly well built products when they do pop up (as long as you don’t need to pay for that extra build quality, of course)
Again, you can just like buy frozen fruit and let it melt into juice. Not sure how that would work with apples/oranges (never see them as frozen fruit) but I don’t care for the mentioned since they’re so high in sugar baseline but my tip here def works.
Just do it. Go buy a bag of frozen strawberries or whatever frozen fruit you would like to turn into a smoothie and just let it defrost until you’ve got a Juicero-style juice pack
Edit: if you don’t cut the top and its still like hermetically sealed, you basically and literally have the same thing—juice pack.
It may have been well built, but was still completely idiotic. Who, in his right mind, would buy a proprietary bag of fruit pieces instead of normal fruit that has to be at least half the price.
It wasn’t even a bag of fruit pieces, it was already pre juiced and the machine just put it into your cup (which you could do by manually squeezing it too)
Depends on the business model. Take Apple and Amazon. Apple makes most of its cash off hardware sales. As such, Apple will never sell you a $50 Mac hoping to make the money back thru services or ad revenue of any kind. And why their HomePods cost 3x more than any smart speaker.
On the other hand, Amazon doesn’t make money off hardware. They routinely blow out Fire products at insane discounts. A 10th of what Apple charges for a comparable product. Because they make their cash of sales and services. Products are just a conduit to more lucrative services.
You can’t lump every company into the same money making MO. Every company tends to have their own unique angle.
Damn that bag must be super small to only last a week. My s7 ultra dock bag lasts around 6 months. Before I started living with a cat I was still using the original bag that had been going on a year and still wasn’t full, vacuuming daily.
Edit: For context, my roborock dock’s bag is 3 liters, so think the volume of 1 and a half 2 liter soda bottles, and the apartment it lasted a year in was ~500 sq ft. The matic’s bag needs to fit inside the robot and looks to be close to the size of the palm of your hand. You can see it at 0:37 in the video on their site.
Doesn’t the bag lasting longer suggest it picks up less dirt? My vacuum cleaner needs emptying every one or two times around the house, if it didn’t I would be concerned it wasn’t actually cleaning the floor.
Maybe, but only if literally everything else is the same. Otherwise it could just mean that one place is cleaner than another, or that one vacuum has a big bag and needs to be emptied less frequently despite picking up the same amount.
Roborock bag size is 3L (6"x6"x5"), so think 1 and a half 2L soda bottles, since it doesn’t need to fit inside a handheld vacuum or a moving robot it can be this large. Comparatively, the Matic bag which you can see in the video looks super tiny.
My apt is ~500 sq feet, so “1 time around the house” isn’t very much
How many dirtying factors apply to your house?
Pets going in and out track in extra dirt, our cat is indoor only and only sheds some fur (I didn’t have the cat when the dock bag lasted a year so we’ll see how that impacts it)
Allowing shoes to be worn inside tracks in a lot of dirt - so we don’t allow shoes past the entrance shoe rack
Going in and out more times allows more dirt to be tracked in - I work from home so I don’t need to go out every day which greatly reduces the amount of dirt tracked in
Living with more people multiplies those many times over, for me it’s just me and my partner
Ground floor apartment or elevated - another factor since going up flights of stairs lessens the amount of dirt tracked in. Our apartment is up 3 flights of stairs, so by the time we get to our front door, most mud and dirt has fallen off our shoes. If you live on the ground floor, it’s more likely that dirt and mud can hitch a ride in the treads of your shoes
So it really makes sense that my dock’s bag doesn’t fill up quickly. I can be absolutely sure it works because it produces gray mopping water every time it’s run, and there’s not a speck of dust or cat hair on the floor after it runs. I can check the bin on the robovac after a run and see it 1/3 full of fur and dust, but the bin on the robovac itself is on the small side so once it empties into the dock it seems to barely add much volume - and I suspect that the dock’s vaccum is powerful enough to compact fur and dust into the bag somewhat so it takes up less volume. And that makes sense because the S7 has some of the best pickup performance as rated by vacuum wars on youtube, but I can really stretch the dust bag in the dock both because it’s a whopping 3L bag, because I do everything I can to prevent dirt from being tracked in in the first place, and also because some of the dust is mopped and flushed down the laundry room drain without ever seeing the bag.
Yeah the ultra dock is amazing, I got the mop dryer and water change kit addons, so it auto refills the clean water tank from my washing machine water line, and auto empties the dirty mop water out a tube I stuck down the washing machine drain. I used to have to refill/empty those water bins every week but now the most frequent maintenance is rinsing out the water filter every 2-3 weeks. Everything else seems to be only required monthly.
You collect them stirckly yourself? No carbon-consuming tech involved?
I do not want to descend into some kind of “but there is always some carbon” point, I just want to point out that a robot powered by, say, solar electricity can be more green than a human-powered broom, production costs included.
Neither of the two is perfectly green, but a solar-powered robot is more efficient in leveraging solar power than human growing and eating plants.
I think that if we’re talking about human slave responsible only for swiping the floors that I feed vegetables and keep alive solely for the purpose of operating the broom you can be right.
If we’re taking about the amount of calories I use while swiping and compare it with a robot that someone had to manufacture, transport and than charge using electricity it will be a clear win for the broom. Maybe if the robot lasted 50 years and I controlled my diet to the point that I was able to eat 3% of a carrot daily less because I’m not swiping any more the robot could win but it’s an absurd scenario.
It is not at all obvious to me why it is a win for the broom. Humans are a lot larger than a robot and there is a lot of wasteful body movement. Production costs are a factor, but why 50 years and 5? Or 1? We agree at least that production costs excluded, solar powered robot is more green than a human broom? If so, what remains is this time to offset production.
If you stop brooming you will either gain weight or reduce carrot consumption, no need for custom control. Or you can do something else with time and energy previously reserved for brooming, maybe even something that results in an overall more green world?
I think you hugely overestimate the amount of energy used for brooming. It’s not like it’s a crossfit workout. I don’t eat more on the days I clean. My diet with and without a broom will stay the same so brooming is basically free when it comes to energy. People don’t use vacuums because they save money on food this way. They use them for their convenience. Vacuums let you save time, not energy. So yes, if you spend the time you save planting trees it’s great but we’re getting pretty far away from the broom vs. vacuum discussion and we’re starting to talk about imaginary people and their imaginary lives.
I think we did not really estimate here, there is just intuition. I made these estimates before for electric bikes vs human powered, and found that, somewhat counterintuitively, electric bikes may quickly become less carbon-consuming.
I do not accept the idea that brooming comes for free. If you add 15 min moderate activity of brooming per day, you may spend, say, 100kcal. If you add it to your daily routine, you need to compensate with food or loose weight. Energy balance in humans is tricky, which is one of the reasons people find it hard to control their weight. But things like replacing a 15min couch sitting with brooming make a difference for weight. Because they consume energy. Or do you continue to propose that replacing the couch sitting with brooming has zero energy and diet difference activity, is “basically free”? To be clear.
Vacuums help to save time. Carbon impact of vacuums and replacing human-powered activities with solar-electricity-powered ones is not especially studied. Which is why I think intuitive understanding here is lacking. Someone should develop it, maybe write a blog post or a paper.
This is not imaginary, growing replacement of human work at scale has a real impact on carbon consumption. My point is that in some cases, e.g. with electric bikes or vacuum cleaners, human power, even plant-supported, can be more vastful.
Sure, it’s also just my intuition but trying to lose weight myself and watching friends try to lose weight and 15 minutes of light activity per day does nothing to your energy balance. To actually use weight I have to cycle hours spending like 2000kcal couple times a week. The 100kcal is 5% of your average daily intake. If you’re very active it will even less. Depending on your diet you can excrete more calories then that. Your body will just compensate by adjusting metabolism and you will not have to eat more not to lose weight. With electric bike it’s definitely possible to get in the range when you will have to adjust your diet but I don’t think it’s the case with brooming. Average person will be able to swipe couple days a week without actually eating more, that’s why I think it’s ‘free’. But maybe we have to do some experiments. Do you have a broom?
My weight goes up and down by some 10% every couple of years, I cycle and run (ultramaraphons) and climb and more, and I track and analyse both food and spending with common tools and myself. Which is why I am acutely aware of how at least my body behaves in this respect. And I see people around me who do similar things.
Your point seems to be based on the idea that if it is 5%, it is the same as zero, because metabolism compensates (?). I do not know if this is the case at all or if this is relevant enough to change this 5% number. If this is the case, it is a factor, but it is something peculiar.
Instead, I find, that while a single 10hr trail run spends days worth energy of usual activities, several 5% factors each day, which grow from habits like brooming or taking a walk instead of taking a bus, quickly exceed, or at least strongly contribute to, extreme individual spendings. Also while a long event seems to cause immediate weight loss, it is almost entirely water. So it is a bit hard for me to believe these small spendings are zero. In fact, I find that people often underestimate how simple habits change weekly calorie spending. At least for me, these things make much of a difference in the weight change.
And yes, I have some brooms, and I broom for some 15min a day probably, plus maybe 1h per week.
So now you’re taking about ‘several 5% factors each day’ which is completely different than 5% per day. Of course that if you keep adding those 5% activities up and get to 20-30% more calories burned daily you will start noticing it. But single 5% activity? I highly doubt it. Metabolic adjustments is a real thing: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15044180/ You can excrete as much as 20% of the calories you consume. Burning 5% calories more can just mean you will shit less often or you will sleep better and use less calories during the night. I really think that the idea that 15 minutes of swiping daily will cause to eat more or lose weight is just silly.
I am talking about the fact that 5% add up, both over a single day and over multiple days, which cannot be neglected since it makes a significant impact over enough time. You seem to be saying that there is a threshold of spending below which the spending is equal to zero and does not accumulate, right? That would mean that MR adjustment is exactly compensating small increases in energy spending.
Thanks for the link! I read the paper to the best of my ability, I am not a biological kind of scientist, but I do not find an indication in it for this kind of adjustment you are talking about. The main conclusion seems to be that MR adjusts after major weight loss. Even after this adjustment, I would deduce, adding 5% would help to limit weight loss.
Do you have a reference which would support your idea that there is a threshold (I guess you are saying it is somewhere between 5% and 20%?) below which energy spending is exactly compensated by MR and hence does not accumulate? Seriously, maybe it exists, I just never heard of it.
My statement is based on energy conservation, which is also a clear assumption in the article. The net effect on the intake-spending balance can be modified by MR adjustment, but it just does not seem to work the way you propose it does.
So all I’m saying it’s not just energy conservation. Human body is not a machine where input=output. Some of the food you eat is excreted unprocessed and your metabolism can just slow down. So if you’re just using 5% more energy per day your body can speed up digestion a bit and get more colaries out of the same food or it can slow down more during the night and you will get a better sleep. There’s a limit to it of course but your body will deal with 5% change without using it’s energy stores.
I hear you, but scientists specifically study how metabolism adapts, for example the study you quote. And, as far as I see so far, they find that the adaptation just does not work like you think it does. You may choose to insist on your intuition despite empirical evidence against it. But I hope you realise this can lead to your expectations, based on this intuition, clashing with reality.
How does it work then? As I understand it depriving body of calories causes it to be more efficient with the calories it gets. What I’m missing? Maybe what you are still missing is that this effect will change depending on amount of calories we’re talking about? I doubt there are studies measuring the effect of 100 calories deficit because it would be negligible. Of course if we get into real diet/moderate exercise the effects will change. Is this why you think the effect is different overall?
Sorry for the long silence. The adaptation works in reaction to large persistent changes, not small 100 restriction as you are proposing. This also makes sense intuitively, large changes cause reaction while “slow and steady” achieves long term goals.
There are, apparently, discussions referencing just the 100 reduction effect:
Maybe you’re right, maybe the metabolism changes will not kick in with 100 calories reduction.
Stil, even if all this is true (I mean, no need to get into the paywalled details) we’re taking 4kg over 3 years which in many cases will be totally insignificant. Many people will not start eating more because they lost 4kg. But even if they will then, as this article says, eating 100 calories more doesn’t require actually eating ‘more’ food, just a different one. Get a potato instead of a salad, get different type of bread, or a normal butter instead of ‘diet’ one. Figuring out if those changes are carbon negative or positive would be incredible difficult as they would depend on the specific products you’re changing, where do you buy it and so on but my bet is they will be close to 0. I still think it would take way more than that to offset the carbon footprint of a Rumba.
I think 4kg over 3years is a huge difference for many people. Not for morbidly obese maybe. Anyway, here it matters that difference exists.
There are many ways to make this difference in energy balance, by changing the kind of food eaten, while keeping the same intake volume, by changing the intake volume, or by adding an additional activity, like brooming.
Reducing intake by 100kcal by changing volume while maintaining composition is always going to be carbon wasteful. Do we agree on this?
There are many advisable ways to reduce the carbon effect. By changing the kind of food eaten, for sure. But also, but replacing manual brooming with less carbon-consuming process. One way does not cancel the other, does it?
By the way, we should be clear that instead of brooming one should not go for a run on something. Conversely, replacing some of the health-motivated physical activity with brooming is not a bad idea at all, that’s a large part of the reason I still do it. Still, both sport and manual brooming are somehow wasteful.
Reducing intake by 100kcal by changing volume while maintaining composition is always going to be carbon wasteful. Do we agree on this?
Yes but I think it will be difficult to calculate and will still depend on the exact thing you’re eating. I think at this point you’re focusing on psychics while ignoring all the practical aspects of the issue.
Yes, we can agree that brooming daily for years while eating exactly the same things will over many years result in reduced weight which for some individuals might be problematic and result in increase of the volume of food consumed and increased carbon footprint.
Is the increase in carbon footprint greater than the energy used by roomba? Depends on the energy source and food source. It’s possible that in some specific scenarios the extra food consumed will have bigger carbon footprint than energy used by roomba. Is it greater than the carbon footprint of manufacturing a roomba? Definitely not.
Your arguments are getting so specific that soon we will conclude that any physical activity is bad for the environment and we should just lay down as much as possible and avoid any excess movements.
Ok, so I’ve checked. If you want to get 100 kcal from food, for beef it would be 4kg of CO2, for chicken 400g of CO2, rice 400g of CO2. potatoes 50g of CO2.
To charge a Roomba in US you need 800g of CO2, in Spain 400g, in France 160g, in Australia 1kg, in Poland 1.2kg.
So as you see, it really depends on what you eat and where you live. In extreme cases yes, just don’t move and let robots do everything, it will produce less CO2. If you live in Poland, broom your apartment, eat one potato more and you’re saving shitload of CO2.
Carbon footprint of a roomba is around 400kg of CO2. Again, in extreme cases it’s possible to offset that during it’s lifetime.In some cases you’re not offsetting it at all or it will take more than roomba will last. In other cases you’re just adding to it.
This is cool but it would have to be like a third that price before anyone could take the leap. If anything someone should find some way to hack and replace the spyware in a Roomba or something
I hooked mine up to wifi and the app. I thought it was pretty sweet it maps out your house and shows you that map on the app. Will it work without the wifi or the app? I don’t really know. I’m not paranoid and want to use all the features on my 300 dollar robot vacuum.
That’s nice do you, but this is a privacy community. I don’t think it’s weird to think it’s weird that a robot that connects to wifi maps out my house. Don’t like it, don’t want it.
What is your perspective on Hegel’s dialectic of Master and Slave and the inference that these asymmetric recognitive relations are metaphysically defective, and does this apply to your relationship with the roborock q5?
Who is the master and who is the slave in this particular relationship? Can authority exist without responsibility and vice versa, or does it necessitate reciprocity?
Id like to know is it worth to get valetudo. I see some dissasembly and soldering required (warranty void) and not sure do I lose any functions. Maybe there is something betterfor s7?
Some/Many robot vacuums can be flashed with custom firmware and then only communicate locally.
Unfortunately it seems the software isnt as polished or well as cleaning, but i guess some less efficient cleaning vs phone-home crap is a good counter.
Another solution that guarantees no data is sold is to just buy a regular corded vacuum. It may not be as convenient, but it’ll save you having to worry about your vacuum stealing data. At least until they start forcing newer models to require an app.
It just shouldn’t need to be the case that I sacrifice privacy for convenience.
Years ago shopkeepers asked you what you wanted and then they went and got it and packaged it for you. Then it became the better option to let you choose your own items and we’d just deal with the shopkeep to pay. This way more people were served simultaneously and everything went quicker. Imagine if you had to tell the shopkeeper the last time you cranked yourself or what size your living room is in order to progress to this more efficient process.
Valetudo isn’t firmware. I’ve got iRobot devices (because I’m an idiot and didn’t know they come with cameras connected to AWS) and the firmware is the buggiest shit I’ve ever used.
Yeah it’s nice not to depend on AWS but I also don’t want shit firmware on the damn things.
I know you can’t put a true price on privacy, but I can clearly state that this goes beyond reasonable pricing for me. $1800, plus $180/year in fees for bags/membership subscription. That’s a $3600 + battery and parts replacement investment over 10 years, and who’s to say the app/device firmware will be supported that whole time? The extended warranty is for two years. There doesn’t appear to be information on repairs outside of the warranty, which requires the subscription for 2 years for the extended warranty. This sounds like a disaster of a product from an ecological standpoint.
The price is way too high. I’m still rocking my dumb Roomba from ten years ago. It’s a few parts away from the Roomba of Theseus at this point, but it still works. Without an Internet connection.
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