It's certainly a possible solution to the last mile problem, and one I've considered using myself, but the issue is what do you do with your transport once you arrive at your destination?
If your destination is a home or office, you can just take it inside, but what about a bar or restaurant? Leaving a bicycle outside is an invitation for theft and it's certainly too large to bring inside. Even a longboard isn't exactly simple to tuck under the bar or lean on your table.
This is exactly what several electric "bicycles" do now. They have a road mode which conforms to the federal 750W/20MPH limit, and an offroad mode that allows something like several kilowatts and perhaps 40MPH.
I doubt they're taking a loss, and I'd be surprised if they're not making a decent profit. What are the components? A 1080p cell phone screen, some cabling, custom plastic enclosure and straps, an IR webcam, and the PCB+components. That's not much, cost wise.
I think this very much oversimplifies the costs. From a hardware standpoint this is probably mostly correct, but the problem is the sheer amount of research and talent behind it is not remotely inexpensive. I recall Carmack saying, about a year after he joined Oculus, that he thought getting the latency down would be straightforward (sorry - I can't find a source), but it turned out to be a much harder problem than he expected. And, when Carmack is stuck, I cannot but believe there are intricacies that I could not hope to understand at play. The fact that they have been unable to ship a consumer version after all this time, I think, corroborates that this is a much more difficult problem than just throwing some hardware together and calling it a day.
Duopoly? A large number of major cities and their suburbs only have 1 true highspeed option (cable) and slow wireless or DSL. FIOS deployment is sadly limited.
I also backed the Hexbright. You're remembering that you'd have it by last Christmas because that was the original shipping date. I think the FAQ was changed once the delays were announced. I agree, it looks like we'll be getting a great light, but it took entirely too long, imo. The creator had a video with a functional light during the backing phase, so I assumed it was nearly complete, but sadly it wasn't the actual light we were backing in the video and development took a year longer than expected. The creator has been perfectly upstanding and handled things quite reasonably, it just took far longer than expected to design and manufacture the thing, sadly.
I think this is one of those cases where he got so overwhelmed with the support he decided to do something completely different and better than what he was originally asking for backing to do, and it looks like it's turning into a full-fledged company. I'm pleased--I just want my programmable flashlight. :)
This, a million times this. My understanding also is that the ODB port on many/most vehicles goes straight into the CAN bus controlling everything in the car. It's entirely possible you could gain control over any microcontroller in the car, send false messages, drown the bus, etc. through a device like this. It's a TERRIBLE idea from a security perspective.
My thoughts exactly. This is just complexity for complexity's sake. Useful as an exercise, but the -h flag already does this is an even more readable manner.
If your destination is a home or office, you can just take it inside, but what about a bar or restaurant? Leaving a bicycle outside is an invitation for theft and it's certainly too large to bring inside. Even a longboard isn't exactly simple to tuck under the bar or lean on your table.