"A tech-savvy San Francisco resident"

Nope. Connecting your washing machine to the internet isn't the act of a tech-savvy person.

Connecting your washing machine to the internet and then observing the outgoing traffic and knowing that it is obscenely high simply IS tech-savvy as compared to the average person.

On HN or similar circles, maybe not - but that isn't Newsweek's audience.

I thought that too, but experience had proven me otherwise. At a software firm, I have many colleagues who don't mind this at all. In fact, it's the opposite: I'm the one who is too paranoid about things like connecting a washing machine to the internet, or installing an app for everything.

"No True Scotsman" fallacy detected.

Newsweek's "tech-savvy" isn't HN's "tech-savvy", in fairness.