A friend was talking about flashing their C.H.I.P. firmware using Chrome, about a day after some discussion about how Chrome has been supplanting Firefox in the enterprise as the cross-platform free-enough alternative browser to whatever Microsoft's native browser is called these days.
On the one hand, it makes sense to use widely-available tools. On the other hand, flashing firmware over the Internet using a browser is sort of emblematic of the burgeoning Internet of Things approach, which prompted me to comment:
I wonder if there's a term for a "soft" dependency, that isn't, strictly speaking exclusive of other ways, but is convenient and prominent and that's how everyone seems to be doing it so all the discussion in the forums is about that and oh by the way ... why do you want to do it any other way what are you some kind of communi^W terrorist?