No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
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@marymessall will try to reply to some of the replyguys and more today... for this specifically, we publish everything as open source, document it, and share it under open licenses. you will not see this from all other companies that do what we do. you can ask them if they use any tools like autorouter, or CUDA, or OpenCV, or if they use any LLM... they will not say. totally up to the customer to choose. we are showing all our work in the open, and guys piling on is part of the experience for us
@marymessall @adafruit You conflated criticism of AI with misogyny. Of course you're gonna get piled on - that was, at best, an obviously stupid thing to say, trivialising actual misogyny. Although most of the "guys piling on" seem to be women, going by the replies I see here
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Not every tool is good
One of my heatguns was recalled for fire risk
I sent it in
It was a bad tool
LLMs, Gemini included, are also bad toolsIf I had to double check my cake mix for poison every single time I used it I wouldn't use that cake mix
Or eat a cake made from itYou're failing to recognize WHY people are rejecting LLMs and things made with it
They're bad tools
If a robot vacuum cleaner does a good job but has a 1% chance of eating my cat it's not allowed in my house
@Ananas @adafruit I would go as far as saying it's a gun-type tool. AI/LLMs aren't even like heatguns. They're like rifles : made to harm. In this case to harm workers, freedom, knowledge and democracy, as well as resources and life. It happens that you can use LLMs to help, just like you could hammer nails with the butt of a rifle, but their main goal and effect remain the same.
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@paulywill @adafruit @ladyada why would I learn to use the hammer that usually doesn’t work and is known to regularly cause psychosis in users?
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@FuturisticRobert ehh... Adafruit is an important creator of our community's toys. Many of us cannot afford to order from them (in my case because they insist on using UPS), and we instead order the same parts from AliExpress cheaper with free shipping. We are able to do that because adafruit open sources their designs, knowing full well that this will happen.
Mainly, Phil The Failed Goth needs to be removed from all public-facing operations of the company, and they might pull through this.
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit
it costs zero dollars to not be like this -
No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
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@adafruit Fedi is just AI-phobic and sometimes hateful a la Twitter... I really doubt this is sexism.
@golemwire @adafruit fuck yeah I’m afraid of getting AI induced psychosis, aren’t you?
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@FuturisticRobert ehh... Adafruit is an important creator of our community's toys. Many of us cannot afford to order from them (in my case because they insist on using UPS), and we instead order the same parts from AliExpress cheaper with free shipping. We are able to do that because adafruit open sources their designs, knowing full well that this will happen.
Mainly, Phil The Failed Goth needs to be removed from all public-facing operations of the company, and they might pull through this.
You're not wrong at all. I agree with you. Adafruit has very good street creds, it's just sad to see this happen. Limor Fried is an amazing person and has done so much for the DiY open-hardware community. Her heart is in the right place, that was never in question, its just her embrace of AI in this way is jarring.
For many of us, including myself, Mastodon feels like a last refuge on an internet that is increasingly hostile to authentic human communication. This is why I mute or block blatant brand advertisements and "influencer tactics." I hope Phil reads these words, maybe they need to understand that we, mastodon, are not the internet they think we are and maybe pull that stick out of wherever it is stuck and genuinely enage with us instead of hiding behind a bully pulpit.
Edit: I had unfollowed adafruit yesterday, I just refollowed because I still want to like Adafruit. To you, Adafruit specifically, do right by Mastodon, we are your allies in more ways that one.
To the real "reply-guys" out there on mastodon, go outside and touch grass. lol.
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@adafruit@fosstodon.org are we deadass comparing people being upset about AI slop to discrimination now
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit maybe the problem is setting the world on fire and boiling our oceans in the process of designing the PCB due to AI usage?
No?
Yeah sure, must be discrimination then.
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@adafruit Fedi is just AI-phobic and sometimes hateful a la Twitter... I really doubt this is sexism.
@golemwire LMAO "AI-Phobic"?? AI is the biggest waste of resources and is a theft tool used by the inept to "make" things they could never muster the effort nor the talent to make themselves. Plant a tree next time you spout nonsense to replace the oxygen you have wasted.
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@adafruit Do you and Mozilla use the same Denny's placemat PR firm?
@theorangetheme @adafruit Hahaha holy shit
Brb calling the burn unit
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit Mastodon: famous for our love of CEOs and male founders
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@adafruit Mastodon: famous for our love of CEOs and male founders
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@paulywill Know much about the Luddites? What they fought for?
You think Luddites were against technology
That seems to be the story the capitalist bros want to sell you.
Could do well with a bit reeducation. They were not against technology. They were against technology being used to oppress labor.
Being critical of big tech's grip on us is not a bad thing. Not falling for a "tool" based on theft and absurd resource usage, that doesn't even have a functioning business model because it is too dang expensive to maintain, is not equal to learning to use a hammer.
We could all learn a thing or two from the Luddites.
And claiming that being skeptical to using AI is "anti-woman" is an insult to all the woman in tech that battle real sexism every day.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-the-luddites-really-fought-against-264412/
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No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit@fosstodon.org You think that we don't know that you have used AI for your blog and doxxed someone's location on Bluesky.
You deserve the hate -
@adafruit i have been an adafruit fan for many many years and regularly recommend adafruit boards to students and colleagues. but this post (which honestly reads like something you'd find on the heritage foundation's web page), combined with the knowledge that adafruit is now regularly using unreliable technical tools for their boards and firmware(!!), has finally flipped my mental switch from "these are good folks" to "don't order from them"
@aparrish I've been watching her recent LLM work, along with the Teensy debacle, with a lot of sadness and frustration. But to be honest, the media lab (where I first knew of her work and met her while I was a student) does a terrible job of preparing people for a critical approach to technology. I got basically blacklisted for wanting to read critical and feminist STS while a student. So many of the problems of the lab can be traced to not learning these histories and theories.
I can't understand how many people still think it's okay to use Claude, even if trained on your own data, given the relationships between Anthropic and the military, not to mention its theft of dozens of my friends' writing. It's so frustrating.
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@aparrish I've been watching her recent LLM work, along with the Teensy debacle, with a lot of sadness and frustration. But to be honest, the media lab (where I first knew of her work and met her while I was a student) does a terrible job of preparing people for a critical approach to technology. I got basically blacklisted for wanting to read critical and feminist STS while a student. So many of the problems of the lab can be traced to not learning these histories and theories.
I can't understand how many people still think it's okay to use Claude, even if trained on your own data, given the relationships between Anthropic and the military, not to mention its theft of dozens of my friends' writing. It's so frustrating.
@aparrish plus, I still don't know how people have resolved for themselves the open source licensing issue with LLMs. If the model is trained, in part, on (A)GPL code, shouldn't the generated code itself be licensed similarly? It would be just so appropriate if the outcome of all of this was everything being generated by LLMs is deemed to be (A)GPL licensed.
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Not every tool is good
One of my heatguns was recalled for fire risk
I sent it in
It was a bad tool
LLMs, Gemini included, are also bad toolsIf I had to double check my cake mix for poison every single time I used it I wouldn't use that cake mix
Or eat a cake made from itYou're failing to recognize WHY people are rejecting LLMs and things made with it
They're bad tools
If a robot vacuum cleaner does a good job but has a 1% chance of eating my cat it's not allowed in my house
-
No Tools for You: A Century of Men Policing Women’s Tools
In 1925 a doctor said vacuum cleaners will make women lazy. In 2026 mastodon dudes said the same thing (and worse) about a woman engineer using a tool to make a CAD part.
https://blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/16/no-tools-for-you-a-century-of-men-policing-womens-tools/
@adafruit hey quick question if you asked limor to vacuum and she said she didn’t want to, would you tell her she’s being misogynistic against herself and better get the fuck to it or would you use some other bullshit manipulation play to make her think and do what you want her to
or do you just reserve that kind of crap for us?
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@muffa NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
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@BDSItalia nonsolodio...non solo lotte condivise da fasci o poliziotti infiltrati ma aiuti a cuba, all'ucraina e votiamo NO al referendum che vuole modificare la Costituzione antifascista
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@Yaku "Luke, io non so come dirtelo...ma ecco...sì cioè vedi...tuo padre è...è...ILMANNAGGIA"
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@eowyn @futurebird chilometraggio in Italian too if you're talking about how much distance was traveled, consumo (which would be consumption) if you're talking about distance per fuel spent
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petrecca patacca
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@ian thank you Ian! If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.
And warning: their app catalog is pretty addictive 😅
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Modena: presentazione del libro “next stop modena 2020. viaggio tra le carceri”
@anarchia
Diffondiamo 8 marzo 2026 H 19 Istituto Storico della Resistenza Sala Ulivi, Viale Ciro Menotti 137 (Modena) La preziosa testimonianza di Claudio, uno dei cinque detenuti firmatari dell’esposto alla Procura di Modena per i fatti avvenuti l’8 marzo 2020 nel...Vedi
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@liaizon I absolutely agree. I think the client-first development environment for ATProto makes this kind of work extremely emergent.
As @tsyesika said at FOSDEM in the Social Web Devroom, the ActivityPub social API ("C2S") is our equivalent to this programming interface. We need to get it kickstarted so we can build interesting social networking applications without having to build the server side, delivery, queuing, etc.
