I have stopped using it, because the skill atrophy kicked in and I don’t want to turn into someone chatting with a bot every day.

To quote myself:

I work as a software developer and over the last months, I slipped into a habit of letting ChatGPT write more and more code for me. It’s just so easy to do! Write a function here, do some documentation there, do all of the boilerplate for me, set up some pre-commit hooks, …

Two weeks ago I deleted my OpenAI account and forced myself to write all code without LLMs, just as I did before. Because there is one very real problem of excessive AI useage in software development: Skill atrophy.

I was actively losing knowledge. Sometimes I had to look up the easiest things (like builtin Javascript functions) I was definitely able to work with off the top of my head just a year ago. I turned away from being an actual developer to someone chatting with a machine. I slowly lost the fun in coding, because I outsourced the problem solving aspects that gave me a dopamine boost to the AI. I basically became a glorified copypaster.

I really hope so, but for that to happen, hardware prices have to go down again and that might take a while.

The skill erosion is real, and I could see it on myself just after a week of trying out Claude

While it took me a few months to really notice it, that still shocked me. Using AI extensively makes you depend on it - and that’s exactly what the big players want. A customer paying a recurring subscription just to do their job.

Since I am not forced to use it, I deleted my OpenAI account and started to code without LLM assistance again. It’s much more fun to solve problems by myself (and get a dopamine kick out of that) anyway - and when the bubble inevitably pops, I can still go on as I did before.

Unless, perhaps, AI five years from now understands that too.

LLMs have already hit a ceiling, the improvements between new model releases are pretty much negligible. They had to come up with very expensive agents checking the output to reduce hallucinations. The best example for that is GPT-5 from OpenAI, which was extremely underwhelming.

I have a job and no one forces me to use AI. Feels like an absolute dream right now.

I bought a netbook (GPD Win Max 2) with 64GB of RAM last year. It was really expensive, by 2025 standards.

But now I feel like I have the power of the universe in my jacket pocket. Best irresponsible buying decision I ever made.

OpenAI is discontinuing

Should’ve ended it right here.

It’s pretty heavy which was weird for the first few days, but I got used to it. At first, it was a bit hard to hold that heavy brick in my hands and reach the keyboard on the bottom without losing my balance, but now I don’t have a problem with it anymore. And I notice now that I can start typing blindly more and more, which is super cool.

The OLED screen on the back is a gimmick I rarely use. But I really like that the device sits flat on a surface if you put it into the official case. There’s no camera bump tilting it at an angle, like so many modern smartphones do.

Be aware that they use old BlackBerry screens, which have been sitting in a warehouse for years. They have great resolution, but some of them started to delaminate at the edges and that looks like stains on your screen. I got lucky and my screen is pretty good, but other people got really messed up screens. Unihertz is not handling those issues well, it seems, only offering a free case or very low discounts.

And for now, there has only been one small software update. No security updates at all. They released initial software for early reviewers, then one update for the Kickstarter backers and a bugfix. That’s it.

They have promised one more major Android release, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’ll be their final update, to be honest.

I don’t think it’ll be shit, but they don’t talk about RAM at all while revealing all other specs. Given current RAM pricing it seems like they’re still trying to make a good deal on that, which will ultimately decide how much RAM customers get. It probably won’t be a lot.

Unihertz put in 12GB into the Titan 2, good luck trying to match that now.

I got the Unihertz Titan 2 in December and I absolutely love it. 12GB of RAM are amazing. The camera isn’t good, I hope they’ll improve that with the next model.

Clicks is very quiet about the amount of RAM in their device, it seems like they haven’t finalized that yet. Given current RAM pricing, I fear a 6GB model coming… :(

At least we still have very powerful netbooks. GPD makes some.

I am really grateful that Microsoft removed Windows Mixed Reality from Windows 11 and turned a lot of good headsets into trash for a while. Got an HP Reverb G2 for 120 bucks and now that works better than ever thanks to the Oasis driver that came out a few months ago.

It’s 2160p per eye and I played Half-Life: Alyx on it, which is an absolute masterpiece. And I got Virtual Home Theater and watched all of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies in full 3D SBS. Better quality than my local cinema.

The Steam frame is supposed to have the same resolution and might be 600+. I’m not paying that much for VR.

And the Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro joystick. Came out in 1998 and people still build USB adapters today to make it work in modern racing games and flight simulators.

Using light sensors was wild back then, the successor didn’t use them anymore because they cheaped out.

I wish we’d still use them. Typing this on a Unihertz Titan 2.

I do admit that I run Win10 IOT in VirtualBox for a few small programs that won’t run under Wine.

I work in an ad agency and I have to use it, too, sometimes. Mainly for Adobe XD and Illustrator. I export their shitty proprietary formats to PDF and SVG, shut down the VM and continue working with native Linux tools.

This guy assassinates.

I like having to put “site:reddit.com” at the end of my search query before I can even begin to scratch the surface of the issue.

kagi.com solved this problem for me.

Ungrouped buttons with titles is very efficient for me, too. I grew up with Windows 95 (that was the default behaviour back then) and my brain can handle this really well. I despise grouped buttons I have to hover over to see the actual windows and the icons only mode makes the clickable area too small and annoying to navigate to.

I’m the IT admin, so I can run whatever I want. As long as the work gets done, I could even run TempleOS on my machine. 😀

The story was excellent, the combat was a slog. Still finished it and overall enjoyed it, but it felt like they were being limited by the DnD system a lot, ultimately worsening the experience.