Tuesday evening, a little-known company called 1x Technologies dropped a nearly 10-minute video announcing the launch of Neo, “the home robot.” It was one of those videos that the company surely thought would break the internet by showcasing something groundbreaking, and it inserted some Super 8-style footage to make it appear as though Neo, a fabric-wrapped robot, is just another member of the family.

It may have achieved the “break the internet” part of its goal, as the launch video racked up nearly 30 million views (though that is by X’s notoriously unreliable count ). But it didn’t take long for the seemingly tightly wound threads that give the bot its sock monkey exterior to start to come apart, beginning with the Wall Street Journal’s hands-on review of Neo.

First, the major

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