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Comment by rdiddly | Hacker News Reader

Well it only took until the 2nd paragraph, and the words "DJI’s remote cloud servers" for me to be forehead-slappingly disgusted again.

Obviously proper diligence wasn't followed with this product, and obviously this is going to be something we've all heard before, but why does a vacuum need to talk to a server at all?

And also, to go even further back, is there anything more leopards-ate-my-face than a compromised robo-vacuum? I have never understood the appeal of these things. Except as satire. Pushing a vacuum around takes minutes, once a month, all the more so when you live in a 3m x 3m box with 12 roommates, and is badly needed exercise for a lot of pathetic little nerd noodle-arms.

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> Pushing a vacuum around takes minutes, once a month, all the more so when you live in a 3m x 3m box with 12 roommates

That's a lot of assumptions.

I budget an hour every couple of weeks to vacuum the entire house (kitchen more frequently, but that's quick). When we had pets, which we'll probably have again in the future, this had to be done weekly.

I get the frustration, but this is how pretty much all of the connected home devices on the market work. Sure, there are local-only versions of many of these things, but that sort of design is in the minority both in number of products and in sales.

And it makes sense: most people want this stuff to just work, and be accessible when they aren't at home on their WiFi network. The only reasonable way to do that these days is to have a central server that both the devices and the control apps connect to. Very few users (and yes I am one of them) are going to set up a local control server and figure out how to securely set up remote access to it.

It's a crappy situation that leads to security incidents like this one, but that's just where we are right now.

Regarding cleaning frequency: no need to repeat what the sibling commenter said, but I will say I suspect your cleaning needs are much lower than those of the average person.

>once a month

We vacuum and mop our kitchen and dining room daily. It gets dirty, especially when you have young kids.

> Pushing a vacuum around takes minutes, once a month,

Wait, you vacuum your living space *once a month*? If that is indeed the case, I am nit surprised you do not get the appeal. But everybody I know personally has a different understanding of cleanliness. We vacuum once a week at least and ans frequency only goes up if you have kids or/and pets.

> and is badly needed exercise for a lot of pathetic little nerd noodle-arms.

I get the implication, hahaha. But in all seriousness, our Robot vacuum was the only tech purchase that I ever made based on an explicit wish of my girlfriend.

These things really make life easier for lots and lots of people.

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