[theamk]

What do you mean? Things like those still happen, and probably will for a long time. They did end up being slightly nicer looking though, cheap 3D printers and CNC machines really increased a baseline of what hobbyist in the garage can do.

Go to website like https://hackaday.com and there will be plenty of projects like those. (Although this one is more complex than usual, so you might have to lookover a few months' worth of history to find something on that level)

[shermantanktop]

My neighborhood had a guy in his twenties, a hippie burnout, who attached a chainsaw motor to his banana board skateboard with a throttle cable going to a handheld lever.

Did people appreciate the amazing hack? See him as a cool maker? DIY wizard? No, he was seen as a freak who hadn’t grown up. And this was Seattle, a university town with professional engineers at Boeing.

This was the 1970s but it was about the same world as Freaks & Geeks. The nerds were not cool, they were pariahs who hung out with each other because nobody else would have them. People doing this stuff were not finding Hackaday fans.