How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):

[dabeaz@mastodon.social]

@Oggie @cstross My dog made two poops on one walk the other day.

[jaseg@chaos.social]

@cstross @ben You might be confusing the two because a while ago adafruit was posting about some changes to arduino’s privacy policy after the qualcomm takeover. Not long after, the partner of adafruit’s founder had a nuclear-scale crash out on fedi and other platforms going after a few unrelated people who did nothing wrong. The guy seems to be a real creep.

[jaseg@chaos.social]

@cstross @adafruit For context, at least the symbol shown on screen does not look like something I’d accept quality wise for a library symbol. It has inconsistent pin spacing, the power pins should be on the top/bottom edges, for this kind of part the EP and GND pins should be stacked, the GND pin should be on grid, and the I2C pins should be on the left side of the symbol to preserve reading direction.

[jaseg@chaos.social]

@cstross @adafruit I tried some ECAD-specific AI tools at work last week, and they perform really poorly. They can’t even do symbols right, and realistically the hard and time-consuming part is the footprint anyway, not the symbol.

[pa27@mastodon.social]

@cstross "We've been using LLMs for software and firmware for years..." - that's a good trick, as llms that can create code are pretty recent, and still crap at it... But thanks for the warning to avoid your code, Adafruit!
The "Ada" in their name would be appalled...

[driusan@doomscroller.social]

@cstross@wandering.shop

Electricians: "look at this wiring.. thing.. gen AI showed me it's got so many things wrong if you even look at it you will die guaranteed."
Adafruit: "good news we used gen AI to design a piece of electronics you can buy from us and play with!"

[npars01@mstdn.social]

@cstross

The fossil fuel money funding AI initiatives are looking for something that wastes energy like cryptocurrency wastes it.

By design, repeated queries are required because the answers are unpredictable & with a high error rate.

It's genius level fraud created by an industry bent on keeping its addicts.

Like any drug dealer, the fossil fuel industry is manufacturing a pool of addicts (captive consumers) with a dependency to something only they can supply.

The Dark Side of AI Companions: The Quiet Rise of Emotional Dependency in a Digital Age

How Digital Companions Quietly Redefine Intimacy—and Blur the Line Between Comfort and Dependency

Futurism (vocal.media)

[raymaccarthy@mastodon.ie]

@cstross @ben
Yes, though Adafruit seems to have lost the plot some time ago.

[cstross@wandering.shop]

@driusan See also:

[josch@floss.social]

@jaseg @cstross @adafruit And lets not forget: even if the LLM were able to "do it right", the price al of us pay for it is still too damn high (society, ethics, climate, water...).

[affekt@hachyderm.io]

@jaseg @cstross @adafruit yeah, this doesn't even meet my own low standards for personal projects, let alone something I wouldn't reject if the part librarian at work tried to pass it off to me.

[ronjeffries@mastodon.social]

@cstross
This makes me sad. It's not the only thing that does, but it is one.

[adafruit@fosstodon.org]

@cstross posts something wrong, does not edit or correct, gets a ton of people to pile on for showing what a new tool can and can't do... adafruit did not "sell out to Qualcomm" either. we are vc-free, loan-free, NYC, usa manufacturer, open-source... Charles why is wrong for a woman to experiment & use a tool to make her job easier? My company is Adafruit, not Arduino btw - Limor

[cazabon@mindly.social]

@adafruit @cstross

Clearly a mixup with the Arduino situation. Undoubtedly he'll correct it, but timezones may preclude it today.

[adafruit@fosstodon.org]

@cazabon @cstross too late, he did it about 8 hours ago and kept going, any way - he caused a giant pile-on, we updated our post ... in the "UPDATE – Men on Mastodon" section ... https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/14/heres-our-first-gemini-deep-think-llm-assisted-hardware-design/

[piggo@piggo.space]

@adafruit @cstross > decided to target Limor since she shared it
i wonder how he would have known who shared it or that you are a woman. seems like overreaction and bad spirit both ways

[sablebadger@dice.camp]

@adafruit @cazabon @cstross I gotta say I'm disappointed in @cstross for this. I mean it's one thing to be against AI, it's another to sabotage a small industry business like this.

[dec23k@mastodon.ie]

@dabeaz @Oggie @cstross
My dog dropped an almost perfect 3D print of the poop emoji a couple of years ago. I took a few photos (obviously) but never posted them online at the time.

[maaneeack@noc.social]

@adafruit @cstross I saw the adafruit post, and the people telling you to get out because of using llm's before the bad post from cstross. In his thread someone pointed out he confused Arduino & Adafruit, and he confirmed but hasn't updated the main post. Using an llm and getting push-back on it was all you though. #noai

[cazabon@mindly.social]

@Sablebadger @adafruit @cstross

It's not "sabotage", it's a simple mistake/confusion that literally anyone could make. "Small electronics company popular with hobbyists that starts with 'A' which sold out to Qualcomm and started bragging about ``AI''" is pretty easy to mix up with "*Other* small electronics company popular with hobbyists that starts with 'A' which started bragging about ``AI''" . Hell, I could have made that mistake myself.

So ya, he confused one company's actions with another similarly-named, same-industry company's actions. He didn't torpedo your zeppelin.

And if Adafruit wants to start using "AI" (LLM), then that's fine. But a lot of us electronics hobbyists will want to have absolutely nothing to do with you from that point on.