It's never been easier and more accessible to be an enthusiast hacking various stuff together though, from hardware to software. You don't have to rely on subscription services. Open-source software has never been better (see Blender, Kicad, Photopea). You can easily create custom software for your one-off needs using LLMs, and you don't have to rely on a bigco subscription either - pay API prices for open source models, or self-host. Run your own private cloud for your vacuum robot, reverse engineer your smart TV, deploy your own camera firmware...

You don't even need to rely on a single centralised corporate search engine for all your information look-up. 10 years ago, it would have been unimaginable that you could self-host something that could actually replace or be better than Google.