Unrealistic. Not everyone is technically savvy enough to download firmware updates from a website just to put on a USB stick. It’s intimidating to users and takes too many steps thus making it an inconvenience to the customer. Users much rather just call up a number and have a tech fix it remotely.
Additionally, it takes time for firmware updates that contains fixes to get uploaded to a website, so it would really piss users off to have an inop device in the meantime. Much easier and faster to call up a tech and have them fix it remotely.
Also, USB sticks would require the user to get to a computer, which they may not have, and the manufacturer would have to install a USB port on the device itself. I see your point from a security standpoint, but I can’t see a manufacturer spending more on a slower, user-error prone, and in many ways outdated, tech just for the sake of security and privacy
New Yorker here. Visiting here is cool because you can go back where you came from and live in a normal neighborhood, living here, not so much. There is a lot of political and real estate corruption which has caused renting prices to skyrocket. It is a bad financial decision to actually try to live here because you’ll never own a home (minimum house costs $1.5M). Most everyone who isn’t rich or living with family, is on some form of welfare or assistance just to meet rent, whether it’s NYCHA, Section 8 or piling up 5 roommates in a 3 bedroom apartment just to have a normal rent cost. And even then, you’ll likely only be in your spot 3 maybe 5 years because the rent goes up every year until you eventually get priced out and have to leave. Healthcare workers are leaving. Professors are leaving. Everyone even the homegrown New Yorkers are leaving for other states like Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, etc.
Lots of store fronts are just abandoned because businesses have packed up and left too. There’s homeless everywhere. Drug addicts and mentally ill aimlessly roam the streets. It’s BAD. The problems here are endless all due to political corruption among the local government. The city misspends and washes tax money and has drained the city dry. The subway is literally crumbling apart still running on 1960s and older machinery. The rich have sucked this city dry along with the life and culture it once had. Rich white people and Jews are buying up all the real estate and pushing Black and Brown people out by tearing down their homes, rebuilding and then jacking up the rents very high in historic, iconic areas like Harlem, Brooklyn and now the Bronx, so the Black and Brown people can’t move back in.
Jobs you can forget it. Job fair lines are wrapped down several blocks of unemployed people looking for work and food pantries have a crowd all the time. I’ve seen a lot of people dumpster-diving as well. I could keep going on with the sad states of affairs here.
Everything is just in a horrible state right now for New Yorkers. I voted today and cast my vote for Mamdani, because I really hope he can turn this around. We are tired.