Poor reliability is a theme in IoT, self-driving cars, and here. We are all accustomed to the fact that computers are flakey. Our computers and phones sometime

Poor reliability is a theme in IoT, self-driving cars, and here. We are all accustomed to the fact that computers are flakey. Our computers and phones sometimes need rebooting to fix weird behavior. My printer just forgot how to connect to WiFi for no apparent reason. Everyone has stories like these. What's tolerable for many popular products is not tolerable for others, though. Leaving aside whether having a gun actually protects you, people own guns for that reason. If your gun won't fire when your life is in danger, or if your car won't swerve when a truck is in the road, or if your thermostat won't turn on when it's bitterly cold, that's unacceptable. Clearly there exists highly reliable technology: plane and spaceship controls, for example. My understanding is that an extreme focus and expenditure on reliability is required to achieve that. I think that some of these consumer product categories where it's critical that the thing actually work will require the same kind of rigor before people can trust them.