A friend sent me a news item from a site called “Tom’s Hardware” that seems to be selling computer stuff while keeping readers up to date on important tech news.   According to this article, which came from the internet and therefore must be gospel truth, is that a guy named Sammy Adoufa l was attempting to control his robot vacuum from his PlayStation game console.  He used something called Claude Code AI, which I know nothing about, to find the protocol to control his DJI Romo robot vacuum. I don’t know anything about DJI Romo vacuums, but assume they are cheap knock-offs of Roombas. And who hasn’t looked at their robot vacuum and thought, “Man, would I like to control that from my PlayStation.” I guess he was able to drive it all over the house, chasing the cats or whatever.  But a funny thing happened on his way to tormenting the cats. He ended up controlling not only his own vacuum, but gained full control over about 6,700 other Romo vacuums scattered all around the world. He had access to the vacuums’ cameras and microphones (which begs the question why does a vacuum need either a camera or microphone?).  The bottom line is that he was able to check the quality of the housekeeping in 6,700 other homes, peeking under their couches and I suppose listening in on conversations between the residents and their vacuums, and maybe with each other.  Yes, that is very creepy. The idea of the vacuum spying on me is not comforting. Unless it calls an ambulance if needed. I had a robot vacuum for a while. Actually, I had a string of them because they seem to have a life expectancy just seconds longer than that of the houseflies they are supposed to be cleaning up.  After the third one died, they wanted to send another replacement and I got a refund instead. So no robot vacuum is sending secret photos of the dust bunnies and clumps of dog hair under my bed to anybody. Or cleaning them up, either. Sammy Adoufal seems to be an honorable guy who just wanted to drive his vacuum with his PlayStation. He called the vacuum people and reported the incident. It’s unclear how he suddenly knew his PlayStation was making vacuums chase the cats in 6,700 other homes, but I suppose the people whose vacuums were running amok tried to get them back under control.  The problem has apparently been fixed, like all computer problems, with no loss of privacy (wink, wink), and the world is secure once again. But that could explain a lot. It’s no secret that Deer Valley’s new lifts have been something less than reliable. They haven’t had to do any rope evacuations (yet), but the new gondola stops frequently, and for long enough periods that savvy locals carry a trucker jug with them just in case. The Pinyon chair is also not running smoothly. All the new lifts are very complicated and use the latest and greatest technology. They are all run by computers that control everything from when the doors open to making sure the heated seats don’t actually come on.  The lift mechanics have spent weeks on them. Now I suspect the problem is that they are all being controlled by a 13-year old kid with a PlayStation who mistakenly downloaded the Doppelmayr app from the App Store.  The lift operators and mechanics on site think they have it all under control and running as intended, and somebody half way around the world thinks he’s controlling his neighbor’s Roomba in the next apartment but is causing the gondola to stop, or the bubbles on the Pinyon lift to refuse to open.  It’s either that, or the lifts are possessed by demons, in which case an exorcism is in order. Can’t hurt. Funny as the story about taking global control of Romo vacuums is, the notion that things in our homes, or things in our power grid, water systems, traffic lights, train switching, and so on are all subject to similar hacking by people with something more sophisticated than a PlayStation is alarming.   Seems somebody using the Claude Code AI could just as easily have come up with a way to take control of the power grid or cause subway trains to run in reverse. Dropping bombs is dramatic, but also very expensive. Hacking into the banking system isn’t as photogenic, but can be just as destructive. And a PlayStation is about $750.    I’d like to think we are on top of that, but deep down, I know that there are critical systems protected by the password “Password1234,” and that the interface between the computer nerds and the guys with the wrenches is not completely functional. So really, the Amish seem to have been right about a lot of stuff. Saved from the spying vacuum, the next technological hurdle I have to conquer is changing the clocks for Daylight Saving Time. The Subaru does it by itself. The Ford pickup, being 15 years old, requires a sequence of unrelated buttons to be pushed in precisely the right order before tooting the horn twice.  I’m not sure what the Doppelmayr software does with the time change, but I’m not riding the gondola on Sunday. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. The post More Dogs on Main: Filthy dirty, spying robot vacuums appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less