Roomba Goes Bankrupt, But It Doesn’t Totally Suck - DTNS 5165

0:04This is the Daily Tech News for Monday, December 15th. the Ides of December 2025. We tell you what you need to know, give you the context, and help each other understand. Today Roomba files for bankruptcy, but the vacuum robots will keep rolling. You know what Rob, that sucks. Get it? Yeah, pun intended. I'm Tom Merritt. And I'm Rob Dunwood. Let's start with what you need to know with the big story.

0:35Roomba maker iRobot has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States. And as part of its restructuring plan, it intends to transfer all of its shares. So you're going to get wiped out. Your shares are going to get bought or likely lose value as part of this and become property of China's PICEA robotics, P-I-C-E-A, which is Roomba's primary parts supplier right now and has lent it money to keep it going. If you recall, Amazon tried to acquire iRobot starting back in 2022, but ended up dropping the attempt in January 2024 when it became clear that the EU was not going to approve the acquisition.

1:18iRobot owes Picea about$161.5 million for manufacturing services, and Picea acquired 191 million of iRobot's other debts last month. So it owns pretty much all of iRobot's debts and then will be able to forgive itself once it owns iRobot. A press release Sunday said the restructuring will let iRobot continue operating in the ordinary course with no anticipated disruption to its app functionality, its customer programs, its global partners, its supply chain relationships, or ongoing product support. So if you're doing business with iRobot, you'll keep doing business with it. It'll be a subsidiary eventually of Paisia.

1:58If you have an iRobot, you should still be able to use it, still get app updates and all of that. But it is kind of the end of an era. iRobot was founded in 1990 by MIT roboticist Rodney Brooks and his former students Colin Engel and Helen Greiner. Brooks was the founding director of CSAIL, MIT's computer science and artificial intelligence lab. And they introduced the first Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner in 2002 and then IPO'd in 2005. And it looked like in 2022, they were going to have that fairytale exit of selling to a big company until that all fell apart. This is far from a fairytale ending for that enterprise.

2:40Rob, do you have a favorite Roomba memory? I wouldn't say that it tore up rugs for me because I've had like Roombas that probably went over carpet that it shouldn't have gone over, but it tore the Roomba up. So, um, you know, that's my story. I still do. I have one, but it's not in, you know, it's not one of the Roombas. I can't even remember what company makes it. My wife just bought it. But, um, I will say this. I did not think that iRobots were long for this world when that deal did not go through almost two years ago. It was pretty much from pressure. Uh, it wasn't pressure. It was basically the UK saying that we're, you know, Europe saying we're not going to approve this.

3:24And that's when I was like, eh, I don't know if I'd be buying one of these going forward. Now, at least, at least according to what we're seeing here, this will continue to be supported by the company that has been supporting them for the, you know, for the last several years, actually. But I don't know that I would be the one to buy an iRobot today. Yeah, it's a little shaky today. It sounds like it's better than it could have been. And iRobot would like you, and I'm sure Paisiya would like you to continue to consider buying Roombas. I think that they are basically selling to the competitors that drove them to bankruptcy.

4:07Paisiya makes these kinds of devices itself, as well as supplying the parts to iRobot. So it's going to get the brand is what it's going to get. It's going to be able to put its moniker on that and maybe market it better and have better parts supplying and all of that sort of thing. Roomba is the generic word for these, you know, so there's brand equity value there. But these are going to be Chinese-based. This is going to be a Chinese-based company from now on, even if it keeps the subsidiary and the U.S. operations going. Yeah, I looked it up. So, you know, iRobot, you know, these things were initially right out of Massachusetts.

4:45And I honestly had no clue. I thought that it was just a company that probably was based in China for, you know, for last decade or so since I've, you know, been hearing about them. So it'll be interesting. I think that if anyone could come out of this and still be okay, this company could because the thing here, as you said, the company that is bringing them or that is going to acquire them in bankruptcy is the company that has basically been making the parts, has been doing the service, has been doing all the things. So that part doesn't necessarily have to change. And as you said, may actually get a little better.

5:21So we'll see. But still, that being said, bankruptcy and companies that make computer stuff just does not sit well with me. So I don't know that I'd be willing to buy a robot today. Yeah, I totally hear what you're saying. And there are a lot. And one of the reasons that Roomba is in this situation or iRobot is in this situation is because there are so many good competitors to this that have cropped up. And if you go look at Wirecutter and the Spruce in place, they will often not recommend Roombas when you're talking about buying a robotic vacuum cleaner. I had the first generation Roomba. It was given to us as a wedding present.

6:02We got married in 2003 and somebody got us a Roomba. It was awful. It didn't work very well. It would just bump into stuff. It didn't pick up that much dust. I know they're a lot better now, but they're not always from iRobot. And I'm still somebody who's like, you know what? I just don't know if that's going to work for me. So I guess I'm down on the space, so I'm not going to try to buy one of these at all, whether it's from iRobot or somebody else. But clearly I'm an outlier because a lot of people are buying these from other makers. And like I said, I still have one. I had an iRobot. It broke.

6:42We've gotten another one. I couldn't tell you if you paid me money to tell you what the name of it is. And it actually does what it does. Not so great on carpet. We have a lot of hardwood floors and a lot of tile and stuff like that. And it is very good for keeping the dust off of those type of floors. So I generally like the devices. The prices on them have come way down since, you know, your original one was not an inexpensive device. They have come way down since then. Yeah, they're a couple hundred dollars now. Roborock seems to be the one that's well-reviewed. I don't know if that's the one that I have.

7:15Is that the one you got? That's the one I have. But yeah, I'm looking at Wirecutter right now and a few others like PCMag also backup, Roborock. Topo is another one, T-A-P-O out there. But yeah, iRobot's not going to go away. It's not going to be like Blockbuster Video, but it's going to be like BlackBerry, right? You can still find phones called BlackBerry. They're just not made by RIM. I guess it's less like that because they will still be made by iRobot. It's just that iRobot won't be an independent company. Yeah. At the end of the day, this is basically an acquisition through bankruptcy. That's what it's looking like.

7:55And we'll see. If they're really pushing stuff hard at CES in 2027, then maybe they could get back on the table for them. When the one that I have now breaks, I could get one. At some point, there might be iRobot again. Yeah, maybe they can rejuvenate the brand and bring some innovation back to it and bring it back to the fore. We'll find out. DTNest is made possible by you, the listener. Thanks to Larry Bailey, Michelle Sergiu, and Kirk Stevenson. Yeah, we cannot do it without you all. Thanks, y 'all.

8:29There's more we need to know today. Let's get to the briefs. On recent LG TVs, the new version of WebOS adds a co-pilot app to everyone's home dashboard. LG announced this was coming at CES this past January. The new icon takes you to the web version of Copilot. Users can hide it but cannot uninstall it. A post on Reddit about it has received about 35 ,000 upvotes, with most reactions pretty negative. I would have never guessed that, Tom. Yeah, I'm not surprised. I'm not going to lie. However, I have to remind people that this is exactly the way that operating systems work. They add features when they do updates and those features just show up, right?

9:11This is exactly the way Gemini and Fire OS work. When they added their assistants, it just showed up. You didn't get to choose to add it. Maybe you can't even hide it. At least you can hide it with WebOS. I think it's just the fact that it's co-pilot and then it's AI that's caused a lot of people to get upset. Yeah, folks aren't upset that AI has been added. They're upset that the AI that they love hasn't been added. Yeah, maybe that's it. There's probably a few people who are like, I really like CoPilot, so this is not problematic for me. But I would imagine that most people probably want ChatGPT on there or Claude or even Gemini.

9:46So just CoPilot is not the one. I think CoPilot is the biggest corporation-filling LLM that is out there because it's Microsoft. And that's probably where a lot of the people are upset. It's like, you're putting Microsoft on my stuff, and that's not what they want. And the thing is, Microsoft is still the biggest software company in the world. So it's kind of interesting that so many people are upset about that. It doesn't help that it doesn't seem to work very well yet either. It just goes to the web version. And therat.com was showing like ours just spins. It never actually loads. So I think that might be contributing to some of the reaction to it as well.

10:26Financial Times reports that the UK home office plans to encourage, and I'll repeat that, encourage, not require, tech companies to block explicit images on phones and computers by default at the operating system level and then require users to prove they're an adult with either a biometric or official ID check in order to access such content. So again, encourage, but still the recommendation is at the operating system level, stop any nude pictures or other things in the category showing up on your phone unless you prove that you are 18 years or older. Now, sources told Financial Times that this will be part of an announcement of a wider strategy to deter violence against women to be introduced later this week.

11:12But the plan, as I said, will not push to make the controls mandatory. Encourage is an interesting word because when I hear encouraged, to me, that doesn't sound like anyone's going to do this unless they feel like there is threat of a fine coming or a regulation. The law says that we have to do this. And courage doesn't necessarily make companies move that often. It does sometimes. And this may be the area that would actually make a company move. But I don't know that you will see great adoption with this, at least not initially. The UK just recently rolled out age verification for access to certain sites that didn't go as smoothly as maybe they would have wanted.

11:56So I think they're a little cautious about issuing another, we're going to require you. I think possibly their strategy is to say, let's put this in a more sympathetic announcement. Most people are going to want to help stop violence against women, especially underage women, especially girls, children. And so maybe they can get the public sentiment to push the operating system makers to implement something like this. Because if they did require it and backed it with fines, you would see Apple and Google lobbying very strenuously against it and possibly even threatening to remove themselves from the market.

12:39Right. Google has a few updates for location services in Gemini. Instead of text, the result will now start with Google Maps at the top with emoji style pins related to what you're looking at, like coffee for coffee shops, for example. And instead of a wall of text, what follows first are cards for each noted location that include a photo, star rating, and summary of reviews. The feature is available first in English on the mobile and desktop. Yeah, this is good. This is a better way to do it. The way Gemini was doing it before was okay, but the map was really small, and now it's more useful. It's more like using Google Maps.

13:17It's as much using Gemini inside Google Maps in a way as it is using Maps inside Gemini. It's just that you're in the Gemini app when you see this kind of interface. I have to hand it to Google. I know this horse race is far from over, and we're going to see a lot of jockeying for position. But I feel like Gemini is leading right now, at least for the moment. Yeah, this to me feels like the beginning of the LLM, or in this case, Gemini, becoming the super app to where you don't think about going to Maps. You don't think about going to Gmail. you know, Gmail, you don't think about going to, you know, to, to docs, you just go to Gemini and tell Gemini what you want.

13:58And it's smart enough to know here is how I should express it to you based off of all of these applications that are under our umbrella. But we're going to, we're going to basically remove those lines of delineation from you. We're going to just put this information in front of you in the best way that we feel that you will, you know, you would want it. And I think that you're going to see more of this from Gemini. I think you're going to see more of this from other LLM makers. It's kind of the way that I think these things are supposed to work. You just ask your bot a question and it gives you the answer in the best possible way.

14:30Yeah. And this is a big advantage. This is Google using one of its big advantages. I'd say even five years ago when I would look up things on Google Maps, it was simply for directions. And maybe to find out what's nearby me, but I didn't use it for recommendations very often. and just through sheer perseverance, Google Maps has become the place people go to for recommendations. It used to be when I would work with like a real estate agent or have a nice meal and it was very complimentary at a restaurant or doctor's office, they'd ask you to review them on Yelp. More often than not, it's either Yelp and Google Maps or sometimes just Google Maps.

15:12And I feel like Google knows that and is like, we can use that to our advantage in Gemini. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It really does. And I see this as the beginning of when you don't go to purpose-built apps, you go to the bot and the bot gives you the interface from those purpose-built apps, but you don't know that that's what it's doing. Yeah, you're just asking questions, right? Right. Bloomberg reported last week that a forthcoming meta large language model codenamed avocado might be launched as a closed model meta's llama models have been launched as open weight models this is often called open source because there's a lot of open source characteristics about it users can access and modify it for research and commercial purposes and all of that it is not truly open source since there are still licensing restrictions on it.

16:06But if they were to go to closed, that would leave a hole in the market. And NVIDIA is emphasizing the transparency around the release of its third generation of open-weight Nematron models. Those are also issued under NVIDIA's open model license agreement, so not exactly open source either. Nematron 3 has three models, a 30 billion parameter nano, a 100 billion parameter super and a 500 billion parameter ultra model. The nano model of Nemetron three is available now on hugging face, the super version coming in January and ultra is due in March or April. This is a, this is meta. I think letting folks know that this is the game that they are absolutely playing.

16:54It's like, I'm thinking about this. Why would they change the way that the model of how they released this? Could it be that they have something that they think is good and they want to be able to monetize the heck out of it? Yeah, I mean, Llama has been sinking in the ratings lately, and maybe they're looking at improving it in a way or maybe hiding how it works or something. Meanwhile, NVIDIA, not particularly highly rated in these benchmarks, but willing to take advantage of Meta. Meta hasn't even said it's going to be closed. It's just a Bloomberg report, right? So, but NVIDIA jumping on that and said, hey, if you want to play around with something, why not play around with ours?

17:36Because the upside of that is you get feedback from the people who use your open weight models, which helps you improve them. Amazon has added a chatbot to its Kindle app on iOS that lets you ask questions about the book you're reading. The Ask This Book feature lets you highlight a section of a book and then get answers to questions about plot, characters, and themes based on what you read so far without spoilers. It's available on iOS for English language books in the US to start. We'll come to Kindle devices and Android next year. Yeah, a lot of people might be put off by this. I think Amazon tried to do as much as possible to explain it is only available to a paying customer of the book or somebody who's been lent the book within the terms of the system that's agreed to by publishers and everybody.

18:21It's not going to give you a spoiler, although we'll see. These things do tend to hallucinate sometimes. But if it's really only being targeted and filtered on a particular work, it's easier to keep it from doing those kinds of hallucinations. So I like this. I've often had situations where I wanted to remember something earlier in the book and I have to search in a Kindle app for it. And that works okay, but it might be faster to just be able to ask the question I was looking for. I don't mind this either because the way I read it is not uncommon for me to start reading a book today and not pick it up for six or seven months.

18:59I can't remember what I've already read. So I often will find myself just not remembering that I've read it and reread the stuff. And it's like, this sounds familiar. And it always happens that I get to the same spot in the book. And that's kind of where things kind of dip off. So if I could say, hey, I think I've read this. Can you tell me what has gone on so far? It'll jog my memory. It's like, oh, yeah, here's where I need to go back and pick up. So I kind of like this. This is AI in a very, very useful situation for me. Yeah, I think it's another example of those very narrow uses that these models can be really good at.

19:32All right, finally, some quick headlines that are just good to know if you want to understand the news as you go along throughout your day. Tesla is testing its robo-taxi service in Austin without safety drivers, a critical step toward offering autonomous taxi service. And I'll be honest with you, I didn't think this was going to happen this year, but it looks like it is. Yeah, just under the gun, right? Right before the end of the year. Insider Gaming Weekly's podcast says a source told it that the long-anticipated Half-Life 3 will launch with the Steam machine this spring. Again, source saying this.

20:03Don't have an official announcement. But that would be a coup for the Steam machine because that thing's going to be expensive given the RAM. Right. GeekTime has spotted Waze showing some users' traffic lights on the route map the way Google Maps does. It seems like a small thing, but man, that's helpful. That's helpful, especially when Waze is trying to make you turn left across 12 lanes of traffic. A bug in the iOS Photos app makes some photos brought over from Android devices appear to have a red filter applied. If you run into this, you can edit the photo and choose revert, and it will go away.

20:39But nobody has yet figured out why that's happening. Interesting. Yeah. MIT Technology Review has an article about the creation of the Professional Reasoning Benchmark, which found that the best performing large language models scored 37 % on difficult legal problems, showing they are not ready yet to replace human lawyers. Yeah. A lot of stuff in there says they can help the lawyers with stuff, but they are just not quite up to snuff. So lawyers are safe for now. Oh, good. Hey, folks, if any of you are headed to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. we should meet up. I'm going to be there.

21:14Rob's going to be there. Amos is going to be there. Our producer, Katie Data, is going to be there. You should join us Wednesday, January 7th, 6.30 p.m. at the Resorts World Food Court. We'll have some stickers to give away. We'll have lots of good convos about the tech we're seeing at CES. So come on out and join us. If you're at CES or you're just in Las Vegas during that time, Wednesday, January 7th, 6.30 p.m. at the Resorts World Food Court. We will see you there, right? See you there, everybody. I cannot wait.

21:49We end every episode of DT Nestle with some shared perspectives. Today, Mark just signed up to have Google Home and his phone upgraded to the Gemini-based assistant, and then something odd happened. Yeah, this is interesting. Mark wrote, I have my Philips Hue lights set through the Hue app to turn on certain lights in the morning on weekdays to incentivize me to get out of bed and get going. This morning, a Saturday, I woke up at 10 a.m. and my lights were on like they would have been at 6 a.m. on weekdays. So I panicked a little and asked, hey, what day is today? The reply was, today is Friday, December 13th, 2025.

22:27I quickly checked the day on my phone calendar to make sure I wasn't missing work, LOL, when I confirmed that it was Saturday, December 13th, 2025. I asked Google again. This time, it said it was Saturday. What? The AI got the date right, but still thought it was Friday? I guess that's why I turned on my lights. So it actually took over the task from the Hue app, hallucinated the day of the week, and turned on my lights? It got me thinking that I might be the one hallucinating. I wonder if anyone else is reporting these sorts of things. So I think Tom, this might actually be a feature called fully retired baby boomer mode because my father will regularly call me, son, what day is it?

23:11Cause it's like, he doesn't have to care. The only days he's got something he's absolutely got to do are Sunday and Wednesdays. If it's not one of those two days of the week, he has no clue what day it is. He's lucky if he knows if it's daytime or night, if he's, if he's in the basement. So you're saying Gemini might be a retired baby boomer. Very well could be. Very well could be. Certainly acting like one in this case. Yeah, if you've had something like this happen, let us know. It probably was just a weird glitch, but it is definitely the kind of thing that these LLMs get wrong sometimes where they're like, yeah, it's Friday the 13th.

23:43And you're like, no, it's Saturday the 13th. Totally different Friday. You know, Friday the 13th is also playing a part of this. Really interesting. But big thanks to Mark for sending that along. Definitely big thanks. And this is just one of those things where you have to understand that these things are not necessarily 100 % accurate. You just can't assume that they are. Something as trivial as the day of the week, it messed it up. So think of things that are way more important that it could also mess up. You've got to be really careful with this. Folks, what are you thinking about? If you've got some insights into a story, please, please, please share it with us at feedback at dailytechnewsshow.com.

24:23Yes, be like Mark. Mark, thank you, Mark, for contributing to today's show. Thank you for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You keep us in business, folks. Thanks for being a patron. And if you're not yet, you can join up right now. You get all kinds of good stuff as well as get rid of the ads. Patreon.com slash DTNS. The DTNS family of podcasts. Helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.