I can’t see drones being a useful delivery mechanism. On the other hand, I’ve seen the video of the Lego factory, and how it manages to deliver all the parts into the bags and then into boxes for all the different kits, almost entirely by machine.
How would the refrigerator know that my wife didn’t just leave me and I never ate eggs? Or that I actually need to stock up because my kid and his family are visiting for a week? Right now, my frig is pretty stupid, it doesn’t even know the ice machine isn’t actually hooked up.
I am actually too old. I am still amazed that Amazon can make money shipping me a TV for free to my door. Especially when it breaks and I have to pay $90 to ship it back to the company for warranty repair.
Drones are useful.
http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/delivery-drones-already-exist/
Are far as networked appliances go you just have to have vision, its all coming. No doubt about it.
Staying ahead of cyber criminals? Well, that would require a lot of work which I have invested. My machines are free of maleware and are scanned twice daily. Botnets were around before Bitcoin. You know, you get that email that your friend is on vacation and got hit over the head.... send money! And it comes from your friends email account! I call the friend and he answers the phone “ No, I didn’t get hit over the head.” He is getting calls from everyone in his email address book concerned about his well being.
I also have a dedicated machine that never goes on the internet, no wifi, no blue tooth , a self contained, safe environment run with an alternative operating system running on RAM only. Every time I reboot the machine, the memory is wiped. This all requires work, it doesn’t happen by accident.