…and nothing of value was lost.

I honestly haven’t noticed a difference.

Me too. I have a Brother printer. When I first set it up, Windows printed everything in inverse black and white until I hunted down the correct driver. Windows also never figured out how to wake it up, so I always had to manually wake it up. And it simply never worked with the scanner.

Linux got everything right without me having to fuss with anything.

I installed Graphene OS. Loving it so far.

I think LLM’s are incredibly useful in limited circumstances. But it needs to be on-demand, NOT omnipresent.

For example, I’m learning a bit of C#. I was following a tutorial a few weeks ago that had some code I didn’t understand. I spent an hour googling and reading documentation, but found nothing. I headed to ChatGPT and asked it what it meant. It gave a clear, easy to understand explanation.

Unfortunately, the industry is going about this all wrong. Google wants to force Gemini on my Pixel. So I nuked Android. Microsoft silently installed Copilot on my laptop without consent. That laptop is now happily running Linux.

Forcing these tools on people will just alienate people like me. In a way, I’m glad it happened. I’m much more satisfied now that these companies are minimized in my life.

Consider grabbing a bar normally. You’d probably have 4 fingers on one side, and your thumb on the other. Now move the thumb so it’s on the same side of the bar as your fingers. That’s a thumbless grip. Not really thumbless, but your thumb is doing much less than it normally would.

The grip is popular for the low bar squat because it puts your wrists in a better position. It’s also a popular bench press grip for folks who want a caved-in face.

I’ve been using Graphene for a few weeks now. I’m really happy with it. That said, I’m a pretty minimal smartphone user. I don’t use NFC or any AI or Assistant features.

My only hiccup was my banking app didn’t work at first. Luckily their documentation is informative and easy to read. This is a common problem with a simple solution… You just need to change a toggle in the app control setting.

Installation is super easy if you use their web installer - just read through the procedure first, follow it exactly, and be patient. There are a few places where you think it’s done, but if you interrupt it, the install can go sideways.

It’s also easy to revert back to stock if you want to. And it doesn’t void your warranty - I just RMAd my pixel 8 after it developed the pink stripe syndrome.

This was the push I needed to switch to Graphene. The Gemini offer popped up for me a couple of weeks ago. The only options were something like ‘Yes’ or ‘Not now’. No option to say never, which of course means they would bug me again and again.

So I reported it as Spam and made the jump.

Exercise. Exactly how is not important. What matters is just being consistent. Eventually it becomes a habit that will grow with you.

If it’s difficult or frustrating, you’re probably trying too hard. Ease up next time. If it feels like a chore, you’re not doing the right activity for you. It should be enjoyable.