

This article just screams rage-bait. Not that I am against making people aware of this kind of privacy invasion, but the authors did not bother to do any fact checking.
Firstly, they mention that the vacuum was “transmitting logs and telemetry that [the guy] had never consented to share”. If you set up an app with the robot vacuum company, I’m pretty sure you’ll get a rather long terms and services document that you just skip past, because who bothers reading that?
Secondly, the ADB part is rather weird. The person probably tried to install Valetudo on it? Otherwise, I have no clue what they tried to say with “reprinting the devices’ circuit boards”. I doubt that this guy was able to reverse engineer an entire circuit board, but was surprised when seeing that ADB is enabled? This is what makes some devices rather straight forward to install custom firmware that block all the cloud shenanigans, so I’m not sure why they’re painting this as a horrifying thing. Of course, you’re broadcasting your map data to the manufacturer so that you can use their shitty app.
The part saying that it had full root access and a kill-switch is a bit worse, but still… It doesn’t have to be like this. Shout-out to the people working on the Valetudo project. If you’re interested in getting a privacy-friendly robot vacuum, have a look at their website. It requires some know-how, but once it’s done, you know for sure you don’t need to worry about a 3rd party spying on you.






All great on paper, but why would EU leaders fight against Trump? They’re all fragmented, trying to hold on to their countries’ benefit. Given the most recent decision to cripple the 2035 ban on ICE cars due to pressure from Germany and Italy, I really doubt the leaders here are capable of punishing Trump.
Even if von der Leyen pushed for this (which I doubt, see her behaviour in the first USA EU Deal), the EU would have to act unanimously to do it, and we already know that it is not possible. Given recent polls, it might be possible that Hungary will keep Orban as PM, and other countries will soon vote in their own MAGA-like leaders. See Romania, Bulgaria, and quite a few others in Eastern Europe where corruption is rampant. They’d sell their own mother if it got them a second villa.
I wish to be as hopeful as the author, but the EU leaders keep proving the opposite. In order to survive, the EU should have focused on separating from the US during the Bush era, or even as late as Trump’s first mandate. As it is, the EU will probably just wait for Trump’s term to be over, and then return to business as usual. I am afraid we won’t be seeing any big disturbances to the current world order for a while, unless the AI bubble bursts (which will probably be due to other factors, not EU intervention).