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iRobot’s cheapest Roombas add a self-emptying option starting at $400

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iRobot’s cheapest Roombas add a self-emptying option starting at $400

The Combo 2 is now the most expensive option in iRobot’s Essential line and slightly pricier than the $400 DreameBot D10 Plus, our current choice for the best budget robot vacuum and mop. The Vac 2 is available via “select retailers” in North America (including Target and Best Buy, so far) and has the same features as the Combo except for the mopping capabilities, which contributes to its lower price.

Both vacuums have a self-emptying dock, up to 120 minutes of battery life, and the ability to perform cleaning routines that can run automatically or start manually from a button on the robot, in the mobile app, or by voice command to Alexa, Siri, or Google Assistant-capable smart device.

The Roomba Combo 2 Essential is a 2-in-1 robovac with basic mopping capabilities.
Image: iRobot

When a cleaning routine is complete (or when its battery is close to dying), the Combo 2 will automatically return to its included AutoEmpty dock, where the contents of its dust bin will be sucked into a bag that iRobot says is large enough to hold 60 days’ worth of dirt. The bag is also self-sealing, making the process of replacing and throwing it away a little cleaner.

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The Combo 2’s mopping capabilities require a little more maintenance. The charging dock can’t automatically refill the tank used to moisten the robovac’s reusable microfiber mop pad, and rugs will need to be manually moved out of the way during a cleaning routine that involves water, as the Combo 2 can’t retract its mop pad when transitioning from hard floors to carpeting.

iRobot says the new Combo 2 features “100 percent stronger suction compared to the Roomba Combo Essential” while cleaning for up to 120 minutes on a single charge. But the company doesn’t specify which of the four levels of suction power will yield a two hour runtime. At maximum power, you can potentially expect a cleaning routine to last less than two hours.

Also, the Combo 2’s navigation isn’t as advanced as what you’ll find on more expensive Roomba models. This robovac relies on “specialized sensors” and an “enhanced bumper” to avoid obstacles as it simply crisscrosses a room. Although it can display a visual representation of where it’s traveled through the iRobot app, the Combo 2 can’t generate 3D maps of a room to know where it has and hasn’t cleaned.

The Roomba Vac 2 Essential is the vacuum-only version of the Roomba Combo 2 Essential robovac.
Image: iRobot
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Technology

Netflix has closed its AAA gaming studio

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October 22, 2024

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Netflix has closed its AAA gaming studio

Netflix’s gaming arm is best known for its indie and mobile titles, but the company recently made a push into AAA by hiring execs from high-profile franchises like Halo, Overwatch and God of War. That strategy may be coming to an end, though, as Netflix is shutting down its AAA studio known as Team Blue, the company confirmed to Game File.

In 2022, Netflix brought on former Overwatch boss Chacko Sonny to head up a new SoCal-based AAA studio. A year later, former Halo exec Joseph Staten was hired on as Creative Director, followed by God of War art director Rafael Grassetti. At the time, both Staten said he was working on a multi-platform AAA game with all-new IP.

Those executives are no longer with the company and Netflix confirmed to Game File that Team Blue has been shut down. Engadget reached out to Staten and Grassetti for comment.

Netflix got into gaming in 2017 with its retro-inspired Stranger Things mobile game. In the following years, its strategy was primarily centered around obtaining mobile publishing rights to respected indie titles like Into the Breach and Terra Nil. It also built a number of mobile games in-house. In 2023, Netflix had nearly 90 such titles in development with in-house and partner studios.

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Those can be accessed through Netflix’s app and played directly on your device, so they fit in pretty well with its overall streaming strategy. The Team Blue studio venture didn’t quite line up as neatly with that model, though, which made it a bit of a surprise. As Engadget’s Igor Bonifacic noted at the time, “funding the development of a multiplatform AAA game is significantly more ambitious and, it should be noted, risky.”

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Science & Environment

Crude oil prices today: WTI, Brent extend gains

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October 22, 2024

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Crude oil prices today: WTI, Brent extend gains


The Phillips 66 Carson refinery is shown after the company said it will shut its large Los Angeles-area oil refinery late next year, delivering a blow to California’s fuel supply, in Carson, California, U.S., October 17, 2024. 

Mike Blake | Reuters

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U.S. crude oil futures extended gains on Tuesday, after rising nearly 2% in the previous session.

Oil prices have bounced back somewhat after selling off steeply last week. Traders increasingly view a supply disruption in the Middle East due to Israel-Iran tensions as unlikely.

Weak demand in China has also weighed on prices recently. Beijing cuts its benchmark lending rates on Monday, lending some support to the futures market.

Here are Tuesday’s energy prices:

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  • West Texas Intermediate November contract: $71.22 per barrel, up 66 cents, or 0.94%. Year to date, U.S. crude oil has fallen slightly.
  • Brent December contract: $74.85 per barrel, up 56 cents, or 0.75%. Year to date, the global benchmark has declined nearly 3%.
  • RBOB Gasoline November contract: $2.0342 per gallon, up 0.97%. Year to date, gasoline has pulled back about 3%.
  • Natural Gas November contract: $2.318 per thousand cubic feet, up 0.26%. Year to date, gas has fallen nearly 8%.

Don’t miss these energy insights from CNBC PRO:



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AI video startup Genmo launches Mochi 1, an open source rival to Runway, Kling, and others

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25 mins ago

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October 22, 2024

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Screenshot of AI video close-up of Caucasian elderly woman with brown eyes smiling

Screenshot of AI video close-up of Caucasian elderly woman with brown eyes smiling

Available under the permissive Apache 2.0 license, Mochi 1 offers users free access to cutting-edge video generation capabilities…Read More

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Technology

CrewAI uses third-party models to automate business tasks

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October 22, 2024

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Woman coding an application on a laptop with large dual monitor next to it.

Back in 2022, João Moura was directing AI engineering efforts at Clearbit, a startup creating a unified hub for business intelligence tools. There, Moura was responsible for leading the development of AI integrations, as well as defining Clearbit’s AI product roadmap.

After a year, HubSpot acquired Clearbit, and Moura had the itch to go it alone. He’d founded startups before, including Urdog, which sold a smart collar for pets. But this go-around, Moura had a more technically ambitious concept in mind.

Moura’s newest company, CrewAI, aims to automate repetitive, back-office tasks like summarizing reports and onboarding employees. Customers can build workflow automations using CrewAI’s platform, then deploy and track them from a dashboard.

CrewAI doesn’t train AI models itself. Rather, the company taps models from vendors such as OpenAI and Anthropic to drive automations. Companies can build workflows on top of the apps they already use to automate things like enriching marketing databases, analyzing customer feedback, and forecasting trends.

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Moura pitches CrewAI as an alternative to robotic process automation, or RPA. RPA drives workflow automation. But it’s a much more rigid form based on “if-then” preset rules.

“We have made it easy for teams to build groups of AI ‘agents’ to perform tasks using any model, integrate with more than a thousand different applications, and to do so in a way that protects their data privacy,” Moura said. “We encourage our customers to try multiple models and pick the models that provide the best results for specific business use cases.”

CrewAI
Creating automations using CrewAI’s tooling. Image Credits:CrewAI

RPA is indeed brittle — and error-prone. A 2022 survey from Robocorp, an RPA vendor, found that of the organizations that said they’d adopted RPA, 69% experienced broken workflows at least once weekly. Entire businesses have been made out of helping enterprises manage their RPA installations and prevent them from breaking.

Of course, AI can break, too — or rather, hallucinate and suffer from the effects of bias. Still, Moura argues that it’s a far more resilient tech than RPA.

Investors seem to agree. CrewAI has raised $18 million across seed and Series A rounds from backers including Boldstart Ventures, Craft Ventures, Earl Grey Capital, and Insight Partners. Coursera co-founder and AI enterpreneur Andrew Ng has also invested, as has Dharmesh Shah, the co-founder and CTO of HubSpot.

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CrewAI has competition in spades. Orby, Bardeen (which also has funding from HubSpot), Tektonic, 11x.ai, Twin Labs, and Emergence are all developing similar AI-powered, business-focused workflow automation products. Traditional RPA vendors like Automation Anywhere and UiPath, meanwhile, are working to incorporate more AI tech into their tools in an effort to stay relevant.

To its credit, CrewAI, which is currently valued at around $100 million, has managed to attract a sizeable number of customers — 150 — in its first year. (CrewAI launched in January.) And it’s angling to land more with Enterprise Cloud, a new managed subscription plan.

Built on top of open source components CrewAI has released over the past year, Enterprise Cloud provides additional access controls and analytics to help secure and audit automations. Subscribers also get “VIP” support and templates for workflows.

“We are seeing 100,000 groups of multi-AI executions per day across hundreds of different use cases,” Moura said. “Given our current pipeline, we could be cash-flow-positive by next summer.”

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CrewAI, which is based in San Francisco and Brazil, plans to use the cash it has raised so far to grow its 16-person workforce and expand its core automation products.

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Celebrity jet-tracking accounts disappear from Threads and Instagram

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October 22, 2024

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Threads can now show you when people in your feed are online

Jack Sweeney, who gained notoriety for his @ElonJet account on X and maintained many of the suspended accounts, said on Threads that the development is “reminiscent of all my accounts getting suspended on Twitter.” The shuttered accounts, which used publicly available data to show the flight paths of private jets, initially displayed a message on Monday that read, “The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed.”

Meta provided no direct warning or explanation for the suspensions, according to Sweeney, who says the accounts appear “blacked out with no options to interact or receive information.” In a statement to TechCrunch, however, an unnamed Meta spokesperson said “Given the risk of physical harm to individuals, and in keeping with the independent Oversight Board’s recommendation, we’ve disabled these accounts for violating our privacy policy.”

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Finally, Europe can use ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode without a VPN

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October 22, 2024

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ChatGPT on an smartphone.

ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice mode is now available in Europe, months after coming to the US and the UK.

OpenAI revealed the update with a casual tweet on X.com as a reply to user Sophie Escrivant, who enquired, “Any update for us in Europe?”

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