I also have a cargo bike I use to get all sorts of things - from a full shopping cart to a large IKEA haul. Kids go in the trailer while the groceries are loaded in the cargo bike.
I live in Parisian suburbs and stores are all less than 10km away, I have never had trouble getting anything.
If I need something larger / heavier (say, cinder blocks and cement) I just rent a truck for two hours and get all the heavy shopping done in the time frame.
This only works if you live close to truly natural spaces, and where I live even forests are urban spaces. Also, would your car get you through the desert or a virgin forest?
I can get to beaches, forests, mountains by cycling or taking the train there with the right level of infrastructure to accommodate me and my family while still feeling in nature.
> can't have lidars and map your home (while I can see no reason why this has to require Internet access and can't be implemented an autonomous way).
This is a great comment. I would love smart appliances (e.g. Lidar-equipped robot vacuum cleaner) that are 100% offline. If anyone has a list of smart yet offline appliances, I’d love to shop there.
If I had enough time and money I would start a company specializing in just this: home and office hardware (from kitchen appliances to smartphones and players) designed with care and focus on offline-friendliness, autonomousness, durability, ease of repair, configurability, hackability, upgradability and privacy without compromise in features and the UX. I believe the potential market, although niche, already is big enough and the lack of competition is intriguing.
Not really. Mass-produced barely acceptable quality is enough for the majority of consumers in Western markets (especially given that something about half of the population has no meaningful cash savings), and people in developing countries can't afford anything else anyway.
On the other hand, the problem is the upfront cost. Plastic and metal molds cost a lot of money (which means you need large scale to recoup that investment), anything with software will need the entire chain from developing the hardware and software to a secure way of delivering software updates, some stuff has extensive certification requirements (anything with radio interfaces, HDMI and other licensed connectors or to be used on/in vehicles) if you want to do it legally, some things are impossible to manufacture in an "open" sense while still being usable (physical media players, due to copy protection schemes), many parts have ridiculous MOQs making small scale manufacturing impossible to extremely expensive, and then you will need some sort of logistics chain to get your product to the customer and in case of warranty claims back from the customer.
But I think, in absolute numbers, the minority already is big enough to make this profitable and is growing. Targeting the majority is not the only profitable/optimal strategy, targeting a specific group which is just big enough to sustainably cover your expenses (salaries included) and is not targeted by a lot of competitors also is great.
I would pay up to twice the price (or even more) of an any mainstream appliance for a really great (prioritizing privacy/auotonomy, repairability/durability and hackability/customizability) one. And I believe I'm not alone.
I have the same dream. But making it barely sustainable (let alone profitable) would be neigh impossible. Maybe more of an open source community organization that would salvage, use and reuse components from the existing partially broken appliances of "proper" manufacturers in new enclosures and form factors designed from the get-go mainly (exclusively?) for easy servicing/upgrade by the average user, and open/flexible enough for advanced/maker types.
This would be great - it’s such a sad state of affairs that there is a need for products that “just fo what they’re supposed to do - without acting against my best interests”
I would add to that the option to 'self-host' the smart bits. Why have 10 computers idling all the time if you can have 1 computer in use most of the time. This obviously adds complexity (you either need a compute module, or a module that connects to your PC), but it would be nice for a customer to just buy one or the other pre-packaged, and it also improves the repairability.
It's not limited to just offline products, but Mozilla makes a shopping guide every year where it rates the privacy impact of products including, it seems, robo vacuum cleaners: https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/
I can remember someone mentioned an old model (supposedly possible to find on eBay) which could be hacked to run a vendor-imitating server on itself and connect to it via localhost.
A few of the Xaiomi's and Viomi's are rootable. I have a Gen1 Xaiomi and it's brilliant. I got ssh access to the ubuntu install and installed https://github.com/Hypfer/Valetudo and run it 100% local via my home-assistant install.
One of the first steps when rooting is usually to block outgoing and incoming in iptables (it's a fairly standard ubuntu install after all) so you don't lose root at any point, so the risk is minimal. Not to mention I have a dedicated non internet routable IOT network specifically for this reason.
I'd say a great place makes all the difference. Being remote can be nice but for teamwork it can get tricky. Having a place where you can both work alone and meet in teams is a great perk.
I live in Paris and you can find highly specialized shops too. Some shops only sell about three types of fabric, some others will sell only buttons, a certain type of leather or a special type of ink.
I love getting in those shops and meeting the people who are really passionate about their visibly small yet huge niche. It always get wonderful once you start looking at the details.
FWIW, there is likely to be a button shop wherever you got enough seamstresses, tailors, dressmakers and fashion industry.
Buttons are really something you have to see and touch in person.
As a child, my mother used to take me with her to "Parker Buttons" in downtown Pittsburgh. I remember plunging my arms elbows-deep into containers of shiny black buttons. Nothing else like it in the world.
I live in Parisian suburbs and stores are all less than 10km away, I have never had trouble getting anything.
If I need something larger / heavier (say, cinder blocks and cement) I just rent a truck for two hours and get all the heavy shopping done in the time frame.