I’ve spent decades testing, reviewing, and (most importantly) using different to-do list applications. It’s a career, yes, but it’s also a bit of an obsession.

And I think we can all admit that most of these apps are way too complicated. A to-do list is just a list. Humans have been making lists for thousands of years, long before computers existed. Paper works well, but so does a stone slate if that’s what you’ve got handy.

It’s possible that you, a modern human, absolutely need a to-do list application with bells and whistles—due dates, recurring tasks, sharing features, and maybe even an AI integration. But there’s a good chance all you need is the digital equivalent of a piece of paper: A simple list of things that need to get done.

And that’s what Tasks.txt, a totally free Mac app, offers. From Ukrainian programmer Yevhen Kharkivskyi, this tool is based on the todo.txt system developed by Gina Trapani. It’s a complete alternative to a to-do list app that is based on a single text file.

The important thing here, though, is that it offers more than just a text file. This is a well-executed app. Open Tasks.txt and you’ll see a simple list broken down into three categories: Done, Next, and Backlog.

Screenshot: Justin Pot

The general idea is to use “Next” for the tasks you want to accomplish today and “Backlog” for the things you want to do later. The “Done” section is populated as you check things off, then cleared out at the beginning of every day.

It’s possible to use this application using only the keyboard, which I love. Open the window and you can just start typing tasks—your cursor is already active in the text box at the bottom. Hit Enter and your task will be added either to Backlog or Next, depending on what you choose in the drop-down menu to the right of your text box. Press the Tab key to switch from the text box to your task list. You can use the arrows to change which task is currently selected. Pressing the Enter key adds a note below the name of a task, and Cmd+Enter marks a task complete. You can also move tasks up and down the list using Cmd+Up/Down.

There are no unnecessary controls or interface elements in your way. You can open this application, decide what you need to do, then get to it. And you aren’t stuck using keyboard shortcuts—using the mouse is just as intuitive, if that’s what you prefer.

Smart feeders have become one of the most crowded categories in pet tech, with companies racing to add AI cameras and health tracking to devices that used to just dispense food on a schedule. I enjoyed testing Petlibro’s wet food dispenser a couple of years ago, so this time I wanted to try something from the company’s newest automatic feeder lineup: the Granary 2 series, designed specifically for dry food.

I was not disappointed. Building on the brand’s Granary line, the Granary 2 series lineup is designed to give cat parents a clearer picture of what their pets are actually eating, from how much food they consume to how long they spend eating and whether their habits change over time. 

The series includes four models, priced from $129.99 to $249.99. The Granary 2 is the entry-level option, offering app-controlled feeding, precise portioning, and intake tracking. The $189.99 Granary 2 Vision, which is the one I tested, adds an AI-powered camera capable of recognizing up to 10 cats and tracking each pet’s individual eating habits. 

The $199.99 Vision Duo is aimed at multi-pet households, with two separate dispensing chutes and bowls so each pet can receive its own portion, and the company says that its most expensive model, the Granary 2 X ($249.99), uses AI recognition to provide individualized portioning for pets with specific dietary needs.

The biggest upgrade across the Granary 2 series is its built-in scale. The feeder can measure food in the tray, allowing it to track not only how much food was dispensed but also how much remains in the bowl. That gives it a better way to estimate how much your pet actually ate. While a traditional automatic feeder can tell you that it released a meal at 7 p.m., it can’t necessarily tell you whether your cat ate it, how much it ate, or how long it took to finish. 

The Granary 2 tracks intake, eating duration, feeding frequency, as well as favorite eating times and eating speed. Over time, the companion app builds a picture of your pet’s normal eating patterns, with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly views, which could make it easier to notice subtle changes in appetite or routine that might otherwise go unnoticed. For pet parents who closely monitor weight, portion sizes, or eating behavior, this could be the feature that makes the Granary 2 worth considering. 

The Granary 2 offers two primary feeding modes: Smart Refill Mode and Scheduled Mode. 

Smart Refill Mode keeps the bowl supplied with smaller, fresh portions throughout the day while automatically stopping once the daily food limit you’ve set has been reached. This could be particularly useful for cats that prefer to graze rather than eat one or two larger meals. 

Scheduled Mode offers more traditional control, allowing you to set specific feeding times and portion sizes. There’s also a manual feeding button for those times when you want to dispense food outside of the normal schedule.

The version I tested adds another neat layer, with an AI-powered camera that can recognize which pet is eating and automatically associate the meal with the correct profile, which is especially useful in a multi-pet household. If one cat is on a special diet, needs to manage their weight, or has different nutritional requirements from the others, being able to track individual meals is super helpful. It will only open the feeder when the correct pet is recognized by the camera.

The 1080p camera also includes night vision, allowing you to check in on your cat while you’re away and see what’s happening around the feeder. There’s two-way audio as well, so you can communicate with your pet remotely. And if you’re the type of pet parent who likes to call your cat to dinner, you can record a short message that plays directly from the feeder.

Additionally, the feeder can send instant app alerts for issues such as low battery power, low food levels, and if food jams in the feeder. Those notifications provide some added reassurance when you’re away from home, since you don’t have to wonder whether the feeder is still working properly or whether a problem has prevented your pet from getting its meal. It also has a built-in rechargeable backup battery for when there’s a power outage. 

It’s important to note, however, that some of the Granary 2’s more advanced features are tied to Petlibro’s subscription services. Certain health tracking and monitoring features require a Petlibro Care subscription (starting at $59.99 per year), while cloud recording and playback on camera-equipped models require paying for a Video Cloud plan ($119.99 per year).

Overall, I do think this is one of the best feeders I’ve tested, but if you’re looking for a more affordable option, the closest comparison is Pawsync’s $79.99 feeder. It uses a built-in scale to ensure accurate portions, along with settings designed to help prevent both underfeeding and overfeeding.

Justin Fanelli, the Department of Navy’s chief technology officer, has spent the last three and a half years trying to make the U.S. Navy easier to do business with. When we first talked to him last year, he described a shift away from what he called “your granddaddy’s government” — a “spaghetti chart” of entry points for startups — into something closer to a funnel, where companies that show strong results get pulled into the Navy’s technology base as enterprise services.

This week, we caught up with him again on a video call, and this time, he wasn’t just looking again to further streamline the procurement process, he was sprinting, literally, to catch a flight he’d just been ordered onto with no destination shared.

“You have an hour and 15 minutes to get on a plane,” Fanelli said, recounting what he’d just been told, speaking into his phone as he walked, the sun shining behind him. “I’m like, ‘Where?’ Oh my God! And they were like, ‘We’ll figure [the logistics], we’ll tell you as you get there.’ And I’m like, ‘For more than overnight?’ And they were like, ‘Yes.’” As he was walking to his car, he was still unsure what he’d packed for or where he was headed. “I will figure that out in the next 20 minutes,” he said, sounding excited about the adventure ahead.

Fanelli reached out because the “demand signal” he sent to investors last year had only grown, and it was making an impact, he said. When the Navy first published its longer-term technology priorities, investors told him it changed how they thought about the Navy’s buying plans, which is part of why he’s doing it again — sharing a fresh list of what the Navy wants to buy in the next several years, this time vetted by a handful of (unnamed) venture investors before release.

How much money the Navy actually puts to work each year depends on what counts as spending, Fanelli said. “We spend in the $150 billion range every year,” he said, though he was careful to separate that number — total Navy purchasing — from something narrower, like direct equity investment. 

Indeed, while most of that spending still flows through traditional channels, Fanelli said the Navy is trying to inch further toward what he calls co-investment — putting money behind companies alongside private capital rather than writing a check to an established prime contractor. Taking an equity stake, he said, is the most aggressive version of that and remains rare. More often, co-investment means the Navy waits for companies to mature a product on their own before buying it, rather than funding early research itself.

The stage of company the Navy buys from has shifted, too. “We mostly buy Series D through F type companies,” Fanelli said, adding that the Navy used to fund its own early-stage research to cover the seed-through-Series-B gap. It’s trying to hand that job to commercial investors instead, which is part of why the priorities document exists at all. “The cost of that, or the responsibility, is for us, if we’re not going to do it ourselves, to cast a cleaner signal,” he said.

As for recent purchases, Fanelli — a former Air Force cadet whose career has spanned roles across defense, intelligence, DARPA, and open source initiatives — rattled off a handful. A contract worth $562 million was awarded this month for the MQ-25 Stingray, an autonomous refueling drone that extends the range of manned fighter jets flying off carriers.

The Navy has also been buying edge compute hardware from Armada, described loosely as shipping containers packed with servers meant for ship or remote deployment. It brought in Gecko Robotics to handle inspection work that used to be done manually and dangerously; Fanelli said the move drew little pushback because almost nobody wanted that job in the first place. Domino Data Lab is now running the Navy’s machine learning pipeline.

And in a case Fanelli seemed to particularly enjoy sharing, the Navy swapped a defense contractor’s years-delayed shipboard camera system for commercial cameras paired with software from Applied Intuition, cutting roughly four years off the timeline and expanding to more ships than expected.

Given the Strait of Hormuz has been a flashpoint this year — tanker strikes, a seized vessel, ceasefires that have broken down over shipping-route disputes — it seemed worth asking whether any of that commercial technology is showing up there now. Fanelli was cautious. “I often don’t know what’s classified and unclassified because I’m normally talking to people with clearances,” he said, adding that he’d have to check. (We’ll let you know if he gets back to us.)

Interestingly, not many people sign off on a purchase like that, according to Fanelli. Buying decisions run through what he called a source selection committee, a small group rather than the sprawling review process outsiders might picture. He described the goal as keeping the process merit-based rather than adding layers of approval.

He didn’t get into why technologies typically fail once they’re inside the Navy — he’d arrived at his car and needed to figure out next steps for travel. But when we talked last year, Fanelli explained that the most common reason promising technologies fail isn’t technical, but rather budgetary. The Navy runs on long planning cycles, and a new tool only sticks around if it replaces or “turns off” something the Navy is already paying for.

Either way, before we parted ways, Fanelli shared an updated internal list of the technology areas the Navy is prioritizing, jointly issued by his office and the Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Mission Systems. It breaks down into five broad categories, for those of you either developing or funding defense tech.

The first is applied AI, covering machine learning and increasingly agentic software meant to turn raw data into decisions — sensor fusion, targeting support, autonomous behavior, and cyber operations built on software rather than hardware. 

Quantum information science comes second, focused less on owning quantum hardware and more on applying quantum or quantum-adjacent techniques to navigation, secure communication, and cryptography. 

Advanced networking is third, aimed at moving data securely across environments where connections are degraded or intermittent, whether that’s a ship at sea or a coalition partner’s network. 

Fourth is electromagnetic spectrum operations, technology that senses and manages the spectrum itself, built to adapt in contested conditions rather than rely on fixed configurations. 

The fifth category, digital engineering and interoperability, covers the plumbing: open APIs, model-based systems engineering, and zero-trust architecture meant to let different Navy systems talk to each other without custom integration work every time.

None is a funding commitment, the memo notes, and none of it ranks individual programs. It also adds as a reminder that its priorities “will change based on emergent, near-term, and long-term needs.” In short, don’t take it as gospel. Instead, it’s meant to be read the way Fanelli talked about last year’s list — as a roadmap that companies and investors can plan around, so that decisions made now about where to put money have somewhere to go inside the Navy in a couple of years.

Watch Warriors vs Knights in the second NRL 2026 semi-final of the weekend, as the Wahs of New Zealand seek a third win of the season over the Newcastle side with a place in the preliminary finals the prize for Sunday’s victors.

It’s probably fair to say that the Warriors didn’t expect that they’d be in this predicament when the regular season came to its close. Their sensational season ended with a second-place finish on the ladder, finishing level on points with minor premiers Penrith. But Andrew Webster’s men were well beaten by the Dolphins in their qualifying final in Auckland, with a long list of injuries finally taking their toll.