Book cover of "Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions" by Sabine Hossenfelder. The design features a butterfly made entirely of scattered dots in a gradient from warm reds and oranges on the left wing to cool blues on the right, set against a white background. Small colorful dots float above the butterfly. The title is set in large black serif type, with the subtitle in smaller gray text above it.

The universe doesn’t care about your feelings

Existential Physics: A Scientist’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions (2022) by Sabine Hossenfelder opens with a warning that it might damage your mental health...

The California Assembly Bill 2047 document, tilted at a jaunty angle over the California Republic flag, conveniently blocking the bear... which is probably also on a state watchlist for having claws capable of subtractive manufacturing.

California's New Bill Requires DOJ-Approved 3D Printers That Report on Themselves

Your 3D printer needs to be on a DOJ-approved list or it can't be sold in California. Disabling the surveillance software? That's a misdemeanor. 🐻

blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/19/c...

OpenClaw vs. a 475-page datasheet: let the robot do the transcribing 🦞🤖 YouTube video by Adafruit Industries

OpenClaw vs. a 475-page datasheet: let the robot do the transcribing 🦞🤖
youtu.be/fdidNp5IHHI

a macro photograph of ice chunks melting on a dark reflective surface, with one small clear cube in sharp focus at left and larger translucent masses blurring into the background... the meltwater beneath acts as a mirror, catching the ice mid-transition between solid and liquid.

Humans and Machines, a Phase Transition... The Ice Is Deciding What to Become
blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/18/h...

a lot of this today ....

good night, and good luck printing
blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/09/g...

"Claude is writing Adafruit libraries, testing on real hardware, trained on Adafruit repos ... this is the most beautiful ouroboros in open source AI"

7) an exemption for limor and i personally if we hack all these things and publish it. hahaha, maybe.

6) add a real technical feasibility off-ramp. the pause clause is good but weak sauce. require a public, independent technical assessment before standards take effect. if feasibility isn’t proven, the mandate sunsets.

add guardrails to the working group. the group will define compliance, so that is a lot of power! require seats for educators, small hardware vendors, and open-source maintainers. otherwise standards will default to large vendors with cloud infrastructure.

4) limit liability for sellers and educators. up to $10k per unit creates strict liability for retailers, schools, and libraries with no control over use. add a safe harbor for sellers and educators who don’t modify equipment or participate in unlawful manufacture.

3) exempt open-source and offline toolchains. volunteer firmware, slicers, and research tools have no realistic compliance path as written. open-source licensed software and fully offline tools are not subject to blocking requirements.

2) drop mandatory file scanning or blocking. requiring blueprint-scanning software is the core technical failure. it doesn’t work with open-source, offline, or custom workflows and will be bypassed anyway.

1) narrow the scope to intent, not the tool. the bill regulates general-purpose tools instead of unlawful behavior. fix by tying enforcement to knowing, intentional illegal manufacture, not the sale or possession of printers, cnc machines, or software.

i think this is fixable with targeted amendments that preserve the public-safety goal without breaking education, open hardware, or small manufacturers.

thank you paul, got in contact with policy folks that are talking about this TODAY... i compared the ny budget language (s.9005 / a.10005) to what’s happening in washington state (i am glad i did an article on that now... blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/25/w... ).

vintage radioshack advertisement for “the amazing eliza,” showing a trs-80 computer with cassette recorder beside a silhouette profile labeled with question marks, promoting “hours of stimulating conversation at your fingertips,” and describing eliza as a friendly, curious computerized counselor that asks questions, talks about feelings, and simulates conversation in english.

radioshack instruction manual cover from 1979 for eliza, titled “the amazing artificial intelligence simulation,” showing a black silhouette of a woman’s head with the text “how do you do? my name is eliza. what is your problem?” marketed for the trs-80, illustrating how a simple chatbot was sold as consumer “artificial intelligence” decades before modern ai assistants.

RadioShack Sold You an “AI” Therapist in 1979

RadioShack Sold You an “AI” Therapist in 1979 🤖🛍️ Before ChatGPT, before Siri, even before Clippy, there was ELIZA on the TRS-80. Mall kiosks were doing "AI" first.

blog.adafruit.com/2026/02/01/r...

#retro #retrocomputing #ai

chris, if you want, i can explain how this escalates when it is not stopped. while you can discuss things, that guy cannot, and it always ends the same way or worse. if i post what these dudes have done, are doing, i get ToS’d /reported since it's graphic/gross ... email any time pt @ adafruit com

vintage radio shack instruction manual cover titled “radio shack presents eliza.” cream-colored background with a black silhouette profile of a woman’s head at center. inside the silhouette, white text reads “how do you do? my name is eliza. what is your problem?” large red text below says “the amazing artificial intelligence simulation.” smaller text notes it is for use with trs-80 microcomputer systems. overall look is 1970s–1980s consumer computing design, earnest and slightly uncanny.

gm rise and grind, since 1979... WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM

all set - we did that as well, we'll see if they at least warn him? really any movement towards "hey, this is not ok" would be better than nothing.

Screenshot of the JLCPCB Instagram profile showing a mix of content styles: AI-generated presenter reels alongside videos featuring real human presenters and factory staff. The grid includes an AI avatar giving SMT assembly tips, close-ups of PCBs, and human presenters in factory and outdoor settings, illustrating JLCPCB experimenting with both AI-generated and human-led video content on the same account.

Maker Business: We Are Allowed to Look at Things - JLCPCB’s (AI-generated) Presenter

JLCPCB has an AI-generated presenter for SMT assembly tips. We looked at it, and wrote about marketing in the electronics industry. 🤖🔍

blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/31/m...

Read past the headline dude.

the dude takes screenshots when we blocked him, tries to get others to pile on limor ‪‪@cpm5280.bsky.social‬ ... his outrage about limor and adafruit (and now me), same posts, on multiple platforms for years, he calls himself "unhinged", "deluded", "incoherent", "sick jerk" - totally normal.

hi hi @safety.bsky.app limor and i are trying to get this dude to move on, is there anything you can do? we have reported it, documented it, it's been 2 years of this and more on the other platforms he does this on.

enjoy @symbo1ics.bsky.social (block limor, block adafruit, and block me) there is no reason to force yourself to watch us as we live our lives and share experimenting with these tools, run an open-source vc-free, woman-owned usa manufacturing company in brooklyn, ny and raise our kids #creep

Technical illustration of an LRAD unit on a tripod, with callouts labeling the flat panel acoustic emitter, hexagonal speaker grid, and mounting yoke. The image focuses on the physical design that enables highly directional, high-intensity sound projection.

Semi-circular technical diagram showing the directional sound output of an LRAD. A narrow red zone marks the direct beam where hearing damage risk is highest, flanked by yellow off-axis risk zones and wider green areas labeled as relatively safer. Distance markers and angle measurements illustrate how sound intensity drops with distance and lateral movement.

Screenshot of the NIOSH Sound Level Meter App information page. The page explains that the app measures workplace noise exposure and combines features of professional sound level meters and noise dosimeters. At right, two smartphones display live decibel readings in the mid-70 dB range, demonstrating real-time sound level monitoring.

Illustrated checklist of recommended personal protective equipment for loud environments: foam earplugs, passive over-ear earmuffs, safety glasses, and a glossy poster board used as a stiff sound reflector. A warning label highlights “do not use electronic noise-canceling headphones,” reinforcing guidance specific to LRAD exposure.

What Is an LRAD, and Why People Are Asking Us About It … 🔊 👂
adafruit.com/LRAD

#lrad

That delay is due to the Linux kernel + systemd + containers (including App Lab) and other cloud-y tooling stacked on top."

Grab a coffee first ☕🐢

blog.adafruit.com/2026/01/29/q...

blue promo image asking “why so slow?” because apparently your led needs linux, docker, and a small committee meeting before it’s allowed to blink.

Qualcomm Arduino Q - Blink...eventually (When ‘Embedded’ Means Waiting 46 Seconds)

..."the Qualcomm Arduino Q takes at least 43 seconds before the assistant-MCU runs and 46 seconds before user code starts.

backyard buried under fresh snow, showing a patio table, chair, umbrella, and a small playground structure nearly swallowed by a smooth white layer, captured in stark black and white as snowfall continues. approximately 4.5–6 inches on the ground as of 11:30 hours, furniture officially promoted to landscape.

a bundled-up figure on a brooklyn rooftop during a heavy snow squall, wearing a hooded parka, goggles, and face covering as snow blows sideways into the camera, with flat rooftops, vents, and bare winter trees fading into the background. part of a storm dropping roughly 4.5–6 inches as of 11:30 hours, visibility optional.

the (s)now - brooklyn 4.5-6 inches (as of 1130 hours)

WA State is turning your 3D printer into a cop. not RoboCop. not RoboDuck. Paperwork and risk ahead. If you teach, learn, build, or sell with 3D printers or CNCs, this hurts you directly.

@eff.org @oshwassociation.bsky.social

#3dprinting

Experimental results demonstrate that SHARP delivers robust zero-shot generalization across datasets. It sets a new state of the art on multiple datasets, reducing LPIPS by 25–34% and DISTS by 21–43% versus the best prior model, while lowering the synthesis time by three orders of magnitude."