"It could have been worse," one owner incredibly concluded.

Perhaps the best part of this anecdote was Swenson’s incredulous conclusion that the situation “could have been worse.” But he’s right that it was nice of the hacker to let him know his vacuum was hacked instead of spying on him indefinitely.

The most common issue people have with so-called “smart” home devices is that they often require a software subscription to access core functionality, and if the manufacturer goes under or stops supporting the device, it simply becomes a paperweight.

  • DoiDoi [comrade/them, he/him]English
    23•9 months ago

    The more premium models just sense a black person and follows them around saying “are you sure you’re in the right house? I’m going to need some proof that you live here. I know everyone in this neighborhood and I’ve never seen you around before”

  • LigOleTiberal [he/him]English
    9•9 months ago

    too bad it wasn’t based commies who hacked them, and made them start reading the communist manifesto out loud. that would be amazing. imagine.

    • UlyssesT [he/him]English
      11•9 months ago

      That would have been the “could have been worse” mentioned in the article. porky-scared

  • Angel [any]English
    35•9 months ago

    You ever see a post title that gets you to check if it was submitted to c/fakenews? Yeah…

  • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]English
    18•9 months ago

    My only “IoT” device is a Roomba, not whatever brand this was but it’s not like the Roomba brand is somehow immune to this kind of thing.

    I love this machine, having 2 cats and a very furry dog it’s a life changer. A vacuum that runs every day on its own with me just having to empty the bin? Fucking amazing. Can’t recommend it enough.

    I wish so badly that it wasn’t connected to the internet. Why do you need that? Can’t we just have some buttons to set a schedule? Did I really need an app?

    Robot vacuums that have no internet connection do exist, but they’re worse. Like, they will literally just do a worse job of vacuuming your floor. The dumb ones just bump around randomly until it notices there’s no more dirt. The internet connected ones map the room and can put straight lines on the floor and make sure they don’t miss spots.

    But they don’t actually need the internet for any of that aside from starting it. If the internet goes down it keeps the same schedule and map. Which means they could do all of it with no reason to connect to the internet.

    • FunkyStuff [he/him]English
      10•9 months ago

      Does it use some kind of cloud service to get the map initially? It’s a lot harder to commercialize a solution without the IoT buzzwords and management loves that garbage sadly. But it might be nontrivial to take the existing product and make it work seamlessly without ever connecting to that cloud service.

  • Dickey_Butts [none/use name]English
    14•9 months ago

    Damn imagine waking up in a delirious state to your vacuum shouting gamer words at you like you woke up in a Counterstrike lobby

  • kristina [she/her]English
    39•9 months ago

    why would you ever let a thing with a camera on it roam around your house connected to the wider internet? thats lan only shit

      • Chronicon [they/them]English
        8•9 months ago

        the only tiny saving grace of those pieces of shit is that they got rubes to put up battery powered cameras which are trivially easy to disable and often not active regardless due to a dead battery. I moved into a shared house with some. The batteries were charged like twice in 2 years and I put duct tape over the camera on the one facing the street