<story><title>All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2015/06/united-flights-grounded-mysterious-problem/?mbid=social_twitter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>theandrewbailey</author><text>This is the Achilles heel of the entire Internet of Things and smart appliance trend, and I think this will bite everyone bad. After 50+% of these vendors go out of business in the next decade, their products won&amp;#x27;t get updated, and people will wonder why their &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; TV can&amp;#x27;t watch movies from whatever replaced Netflix&amp;#x2F;new whizbang video service. They won&amp;#x27;t be as likely to buy any &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; thing again.</text></item><item><author>krschultz</author><text>I was flying from Dublin to Newark on Saturday on a United flight. At some point during our flight the entertainment system needed to be rebooted. When it came back up, the splash screen hit me with a huge amount of nostalgia. It was RedBoot with a kernel build date from 2004.&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is the entertainment system and not something more critical, but it&amp;#x27;s telling. There is a huge cadence mismatch between software cycles and capital good replacement cycles. Airplanes, factories, HVAC systems, even home appliances last for decades. Software on these systems needs to get upgraded, I can&amp;#x27;t even imagine the number of security patches that have gone into the Linux kernel in the last 11 years.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rcraft</author><text>This is exactly why I prefer buying &amp;quot;dumb&amp;quot; tvs and simply adding chromecast&amp;#x2F;appletv&amp;#x2F;firetv, etc.  Much better experience.</text></comment>
<story><title>All United Flights Grounded Due to Mysterious Problem</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2015/06/united-flights-grounded-mysterious-problem/?mbid=social_twitter</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>theandrewbailey</author><text>This is the Achilles heel of the entire Internet of Things and smart appliance trend, and I think this will bite everyone bad. After 50+% of these vendors go out of business in the next decade, their products won&amp;#x27;t get updated, and people will wonder why their &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; TV can&amp;#x27;t watch movies from whatever replaced Netflix&amp;#x2F;new whizbang video service. They won&amp;#x27;t be as likely to buy any &amp;quot;smart&amp;quot; thing again.</text></item><item><author>krschultz</author><text>I was flying from Dublin to Newark on Saturday on a United flight. At some point during our flight the entertainment system needed to be rebooted. When it came back up, the splash screen hit me with a huge amount of nostalgia. It was RedBoot with a kernel build date from 2004.&lt;p&gt;Obviously this is the entertainment system and not something more critical, but it&amp;#x27;s telling. There is a huge cadence mismatch between software cycles and capital good replacement cycles. Airplanes, factories, HVAC systems, even home appliances last for decades. Software on these systems needs to get upgraded, I can&amp;#x27;t even imagine the number of security patches that have gone into the Linux kernel in the last 11 years.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jkestner</author><text>That will only matter if companies don&amp;#x27;t train customers to expect frequent upgrade cycles. It&amp;#x27;s worked for consumer electronics, but there will be strain in previously &amp;quot;came with the house&amp;quot; objects. You&amp;#x27;ll need to sidestep people&amp;#x27;s habits, in the way that the microwave did, perhaps.&lt;p&gt;And we&amp;#x27;re only worried about vendors going out of business because it&amp;#x27;s the early days and it&amp;#x27;s largely startups pushing the trend. With a Samsung or Apple, it&amp;#x27;s more that they&amp;#x27;ll quickly (by home equipment standards) stop supporting whatever doesn&amp;#x27;t stick to the wall.&lt;p&gt;There is a case to be made for self-contained objects that don&amp;#x27;t derive most of their value from an ecosystem, but work normally with no network. Work up from a toaster, not down from a computer.</text></comment>