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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

"popular robot vacuum" huh? I really hate clickbait headlines. I know about the HN rule to not change the title, but I really wish there was an exception for clickbait.

It's an Ecovacs vacuum. Not an irobot, as most people were probably thinking.

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iRobot is since COVID not the market leader anymore. After Amazon did not buy them, they might disappear at some point. If you look at their products, they did not really release anything innovative recently. Based on the numbers, Ecovacs might have a bigger market share than iRobot.

Could also be a Shark or a Roborock - both brands are also pretty popular

Maybe it's just me, but when I hear "popular X" rather than a brand name or "the most popular X" I generally skip past the number one most likely option in my mind

To be fair, the sharer may have just been quoting the ABC's own words. Clickbait is their MO of late, and their app is the worst for it. The website used to be better.

EDIT: the link in the app phrases it "The world's largest home robotics company has a problem - its vacuum cleaners can be hacked from afar".

The ABC News website (the Australian one) has been doing A/B testing on headlines for years. It's super common to see two or three different versions of the headline in the first hour or so after an article's publication, and then settle onto the presumably best click thru one. It used to show up pretty obviously when the url didn't match the headline, but I'm not sure if that's still true after their recent (awful) website redesign.

iRobot had the same kind of issues with leaked camera photos. Sure, the distinction might help. But Roombas are in no way more secure/less intrusive.

There should definitely be a clickbait exception to that. Sure, "YOU WON'T BELIEVE what robot vacuum ABC hacked" might be work better if you want an unaltered title, but it's objectively worse in every way.

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