It was his kids running a Mineserver Kickstarter. If you fund a bunch of kids on Kickstarter never seeing a finished project are very high. Cringely and his kids obviously made a good faith effort.
It is OK to fail. It is not OK to continuously lye to people who have provided you with money (or anyone else for that matter).
But similar to the mineserver, I lost $65 on this thing as it went quiet in 2020. It seemed like they were moving forwards but a few dud manufacturing runs combined with Covid problems just meant the whole project just folded. But I have had like a 90% success ratio so I will take the occasional loss. I am still amazed I got my Ouya!