There's definitely been an uptick from my experience. I'm an EE, so I generally skim read the top 50 articles to pick out the ones that are of interest to me, and skip over anything especially "WebDev" which traditionally made up most of the HN content. I've been favouriting links much more over the last 2-3 months.
Computers originated from geeks who were interested in electronics. Now days useful electronic components can be acquired easily and cheaply. Makes the hobby much more approachable.
I have no idea. I started learning electronics as a hobby last fall and now I’m seeing the posts everywhere. I dismiss it as my personal frequency illusion.
yes the trend is that some of those outsourced EE stuff is now back from overseas, we're going to make more devices here hopefully before the last generation of EE engineers die out.
