> it demonstrates an extremely important point: the "Internet of Things" will never become mainstream so long as every appliance is a walled garden. I would sa

> it demonstrates an extremely important point: the "Internet of Things" will never become mainstream so long as every appliance is a walled garden. I would say the point is "it is absolutely moronic to put a computer in a tea kettle." I mean, seriously. What benefit can you possibly get from doing that? "Oh, I can turn the kettle on from anywhere." Wonderful. For that benefit I would maybe pay $1. It's not like it's going to actually make the tea and bring it to me. But how much would I pay for the assurance of absolutely perfect, air-gapped security from having hackers burn my house down by boiling my kettle dry, PLUS absolutely perfect assurance that I won't spend a second updating firmware or WiFi configurations or antivirus software on my kettle, PLUS absolutely perfect assurance that nobody is building a dataset about my life based on my kettle usage, PLUS absolutely perfect assurance that my kettle won't stop working because some service shut down or because some programmer mishandled memory... What, you say? Those features are impossible if a kettle is connected to the internet? People keep using this word "Smart". I don't think it means what they think it means.