

You don’t need an Internet connection to have a control system keep temperature around a setpoint, though. That’s usually handled by a lower level circuit that will continue to operate in the case that the high level interface is not responding.
Observability is nice, but you don’t need to expose controls to do this, you could just have a Prometheus endpoint.
I suspect it’s because the manufacturer is trying to sell RaaS (refrigeration as a service) and to ensure they get their monthly dues, they “offer remote maintenance and monitoring” or something.

Hm, yeah I don’t see any way of arguing that Microsoft wasn’t wildly negligent in this case. They’re the ones that positioned themselves as the vanguard of secure boot and they made it clear during the windows 11 TPM fiasco that they’re fine leaving hardware behind, so how are they not in control of vending and checking their own certs?