Well, I'm sure that was an excuse, but seriously. Do you honestly think the kind of geeks that'd do this are really that important to a company like Netflix these days? Maybe at the beginning...

If I had to attribute anything, it's more of a recruiting move. They want clever hacker geeks working for them. Maybe they are moving into home automation and this will be an interview question? I dunno how effective that is, though. I think someone just said, yeah, screw it, let's do it!