They are not exponents. I believe they indicate the additional numbers lost on July 4.
I have an Ergodox EZ that I use off and on. I used to use it regularly, as I mainly bought it because I was experiencing some shoulder pain.
When you bring your hands/wrists together to type on a regular keyboard, your shoulders tend to roll inward a little bit. Using the Ergodox or any split keyboard lets you open up your chest and shoulders to a more proper alignment and is much more comfortable in my opinion.
It only took me a couple days or so before I was typing at 80%+ of my normal speed on the split and ortho layout.
I haven’t used that keyboard regularly in a while since I wound up discovering that my shoulder pain was caused by my mattress (and just exacerbated by my regular keyboard). I had built out a layout that worked pretty well for me on the Ergodox, but then for the times I would travel for work I would get thrown off switching back to the normal layout of the laptop keyboard.
I’ve used AdGuard to pretty good effect on iOS devices.