I think this is a combination of various weaknesses acting in discord (rather than in concert) to create pure chaos. 1) Making the devices Internet-Must device

I think this is a combination of various weaknesses acting in discord (rather than in concert) to create pure chaos. 1) Making the devices Internet-Must devices. Not only does this mean some dumb failure modes when your connection goes down -- and it will -- but temperature adjustments might be made based on far-away weather stations, processed through layers of averages and aggregators, instead of drawing from local sensors. 2) Not thinking about security (conflicts massively with #1). Security isn't as daunting if you are not hooked up to the Internet. It can still be an issue, but opening up your attack surface to "the world" only makes things worse. 3) Proprietary, and therefore incompatible standards. If I want X, but I already have Y, I hope to hell that YCorp has an X-like offering in their works. 4) Being more about data collection (see also Samsung's SmartTVs exfiltrating data, or Amazon Walk ... or maybe now Apple is dipping their toes into that with their CSAM "won't somebody think of the children?" business) 5) The general disposablity of today's electronics. This also plays into standards because it'll just burn out so why be backwards-compatible? Just make a new standard. And you're back to #3.