How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
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@ben Ah, I confused adafruit with arduino. (Adjacent customer space.)
@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.
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RE: https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/116071513892549636
How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
@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.
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@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.
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RE: https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/116071513892549636
How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
@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... -
RE: https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/116071513892549636
How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
@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!" -
RE: https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/116071513892549636
How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
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.
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@ben Ah, I confused adafruit with arduino. (Adjacent customer space.)
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@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!"@driusan See also:
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RE: https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/116071513892549636
How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
@cstross
They don't even explain how it's better or different than their other hardware. The entire sales pitch for it is literally just that they got an LLM to generate the design and it miraculously works.Even *if* I didn't care that they involved a dehumanizing, planet-boiling technology, they've still left me absolutely no reason to care that they made this.
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@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.
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RE: https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/116071513892549636
How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
@cstross
This makes me sad. It's not the only thing that does, but it is one. -
RE: https://fosstodon.org/@adafruit/116071513892549636
How to tell a formerly respectable brand has jumped the shark (after selling out to Qualcomm, who are their own special species of shitbaggery):
@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
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@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/
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@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
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@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/
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@Sablebadger Guys like @cstross do this to women online all the time, more so to ones that do open-source or electronics (like Limor), even after being told he targeted a different company, person, etc, he let it ride and went for the shares and stars... one his most popular ones already. Check out the pile on, it's... piling.
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@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/
@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
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@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
![Dec [{(:no_ai:)}]](https://cdn.masto.host/mastodonie/accounts/avatars/109/294/420/470/083/565/original/e4aa324b482bd55c.png "Dec [{(:no_ai:)}]"){kind=avatar}