Amazon's acquisition of the Roomba is dangerous

Protip: Don't connect it to an isolated network, it will deplete its batteries calling home in a super tight loop if its getting rejected. Just leave it off the wireless entirely.

I ended up in that config because I let it go online once when I first got it to update the firmware (there is no offline firmware update and you have to wait up to 24 hours for it to be pushed to you, wtf). ... but then when that was done I just firewalled it off and for a long time couldn't figure out why it was frequently dying before it made its way back to the base.

Killed the network it was connecting to and it was back to its original performance.

Doesn't sound like a great security strategy. What happens the day some neighbor makes their Wi-Fi public?

The older models had physical beacons which you'd use to tell the robot not to vacuum certain areas. The newer models instead require you to log into an app and mark parts of your house you don't want vacuumed.

I wouldn't be surprised if more and more features require wifi to function.