skateboarding can be a crime

No, Microsoft's domination is down to pure luck.

If Compaq hadn't cloned the PC BIOS, or the IBM PC been a flop, Microsoft would have been just a page in history now along with Lotus, Ashton-Tate and various other software houses that got borged by IBM and other large companies. With no IBM PC, MS-DOS would never have sold much, and would never have been the "Microsoft tax" that bankrolled the first versions Windows and Microsoft Office. Even Intel might be a secondary player today, it may have been Zilog who became Chipzilla as they became the preferred supplier for CP/M machines and their 16 bit (and later 32 bit) follow ons, with companies like NEC or SGS or possibly Mostek being where AMD is now as they were Zilog second sources. And Digital Research (CP/M vendor) would be the big bad monopolist instead of Microsoft.

The size and construction of the head probably makes quite a lot of difference. I have an old Dallas D banjo ukulele (a George Formby branded one, no less) and the head had an inner hoop in it which makes the effective area of the head a bit smaller than the entire diameter. As such the overtones are softer and it sounds less "banjoey" (but still very different from a standard ukulele). The other consequence of the banjo uke head is that if you play a chord like F# where one string is not strummed, you need to mute the string that's not played otherwise the head will cause the string to vibrate and make the chord sound awful.

You can buy hardware from a factory a la carte. I've done it. There are quite a few companies doing prototyping services where you can do this for easily affordable sums of money.

I've had a small run (100 units) of an ethernet board I designed made in a factory. The board was a 100mm x 60mm 4 layer PCB. I supplied the gerbers and a BOM and a month later I had 100 boards back (I did put on the through hole parts myself). It cost me a couple of grand to do, they could do it cheaper than I could if I had ordered the parts off Farnell and soldered them onto the boards myself. Hardware is much easier to do today on a shoestring budget than it was even 5 years ago.

Now it's different if you're needing an ASIC - then you're looking into spending a couple of million. But off the shelf BTLE SoCs already exist.

The thing I find implausible about this Kickstarter is that they are attempting to break the laws of physics, not that you can't make a pretty decent sized prototype run on the funding they had.

They say their device requires an average of 36 microamps. Even if the chip they use only runs on 1 volt, that would be 36 microwatts (it's going to be more than that, I expect their chip is more like 1.8v). They claim the tag will just run on the typical ambient signal from things like WiFi access points. Their antenna at most is going to be half an inch on each side, and the most they can possibly harvest will be less than 1 microwatt even with 100% efficiency.

The antenna won't be much use for getting power off broadcast radio signals. It's far too tiny. Don't forget a crystal set requires not only a very long antenna suitable for the AM radio band, but a good connection to ground, too, so that it can make enough current to run the crystal radio. This thing doesn't have a ground connection.

no problemo. they will just buy the self-same info from facebook or amazon and it's "affiliates" (anyone with money).

To the extent that this fig leaf is accepted in place of having real security via the simple expedient of a secondary e-mail address for password recents means this is getting baked into the system and hard to unwind later.

to see what I mean look at the silly "application specific password" kludge Google introduced to let you collect e-mail bypassing two-factor ID, and password storage vulnerabilities. nuts.

it should be baked in that all sites that use 2-factor also allow (or require) a 2nd address for all password resets.

currently the paradigm is if someone has control of your cell phone your two factor ID becomes zero factor ID. This is because nearly all cell phones can collect e-mail, allowing a password reset to be performed. Likewise cell phones display text messages with the second factor. So you are hosed. Even if you have a screen lock on your phone, have you ever lent your phone to a stranger to "make a call" or take a photo?

The workaround for this is to have a second e-mail address that you don't have associated with your phone's e-mail program. Then you can send all your finanical accounts to the e-mail address. But that's not really very convenient (e.g. amazon and google wallet would be awkward to use that way).

What needs to be done is to have financial companies send all non-critical e-mails (e.g. paypay receipts and notices) to your general e-mail, but require a second e-mail address for all critical transactions where money is movable.

or even better, they could simply require that all password resets go to a secondary e-mail address. this would be even more convenient.

until then two factor ID using cell phones is just a very vulnerable layer of the security onion.

They plan to power a dogtag sized Bluetooth device by harvesting typical WiFi signal power.

The antenna will be at most about half an inch on each side (0.0125 meters, for a total area of 0.00015625 square meters.
Near a wireless network station used in homes and offices, the field intensity is typically below 0.5 mW per square meter.
Further upthread, someone posted the power required by a modern, low power Bluetooth chip, in its lowest powered sleep mode it requires a current of 900nA and 1mA when idle. Let's say it operates on 1 volt (it's probably 1.2v) so we will actually underestimate its power requirements by saying in its lowest powered sleep mode it requires only 900nW (that's 0.0000009 watts).
At 0.5mW (or 0.005 watts) per sq. m, the maximum energy a dogtag sized device, assuming 100% efficiency (not possible) will be able to harvest is 0.005 * 0.00015625 watts of power. This will work out to about 780nW.
780nW is less than 900nW. QED.

And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt (100% power efficiency, and a lower working voltage for the Bluetooth chip that it probably uses, and only considering the chip being in sleep mode, its lowest possible power mode, and not considering at all any other circuits the device will need - it will need more than just a bluetooth module, it'll need at least a minimal microcontroller of some sort).

How little stuff has actually changed.

The image of the very first Computerworld, the first page has a story about a patent lawsuit.

It's a Hardley Rideable, not a bike!

You'd not want a hub motor because it increases unsprung weight which has an adverse effect on handling. Same with electric cars - Tesla for instance doesn't use hub motors but the traction motor for the Model S is attached to the structure of the body.

Then again, we are talking about a Hardly Rideable rather than a motorcycle...

Well, if anything organized enough to convey information implies that an intelligence was behind it, who created God? Who created the creator of God? Who created the creator of the creator of God? And the creator of the creator of the creator?

Other humans and living creatures have given me far more comfort after losing a loved one than a mythical being ever can.