I have a friend who set up a Dreame L10s Ultra. I helped them solder the breakout board, and was there when they flashed the new firmware. Relatively straight forward! Just follow the guide on the website and you should be good.

The robot is now accessible only on the local network, and they got it working in Home Assistant. The only feature that is missing now is direct camera view, which the original robot had. Basically, you could get a live feed of the robot’s camers at any time. Looked fun, but it was not necessary.

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.

The propaganda machine goes brr on both sides. However, the side you’re advocating for decided that the only way to resolve a diplomatic issue is to invade a country and murder its citizens. No matter how you spin it, it is still the case that the powerful are throwing away human lives for their own benefit. Isn’t .ml supposed to side with the people usually, and not the rich people controlling the world currently?

Tesla’s bang for buck is horrible. You get a shitty car made from the worst plastic possible, and on top of that they don’t even have good quality control. The only thing that differentiated Tesla from the competition previously was the battery technology, but they no longer have that edge nowadays.

The Norwegians are probably getting them because they got used to it, and probably don’t want to rely on Chinese cars. Beats me why they would select a Tesla nowadays over the European brands.

Sure, if all politicians make all their data available to the public. Their phone chat messages, photos taken, everything.

No…? Then don’t bring it up ever again. Initiatives like these will only make it look like you’re a villain if you want privacy.