Someday, that’s what we’ll be sold as “The Singularity”. Some company like Apple or Google will offer us ascendance into the cloud, but we’ll actually just become digital slave labor.

It drives me nuts that my state has “deregulated” natural gas. All natural gas in the region is supplied to every home by a single company (the same one as before deregulation). I pay at least $35 a month all year just for the privilege of being connected to it.

BUT, I don’t actually do business with that company. I get to pick from a dozen companies that all provide front-end billing for my natural gas. They advertise how much they will charge per therm used (plus an admin fee), but that price is on top of what I pay to the company actually providing gas. If I have an issue with the gas, the supplier comes out to deal with it, not the company I pay every month. And, I have to change companies every 6-24 months to maintain the advertised rates, otherwise they increase my cost after the new customer price expires. Its fake competition that added an extra step to the process and increases prices compared to the regulated version that used to exist.

The free version is nice and easy to use, but I think you need the paid version to do custom programs. Luckily, they have a reasonably priced lifetime subscription price, unlike a lot of the apps owned by major companies.

There’s a bit of a learning curve for setting up complicated progression programs, but that’s because it has a huge amount of flexibility. For example, you can build a 4 week progression plan with heavy days and light days where the weights are all calculated on a custom scale and it will provide some recommendations, but you still have to pick all the options you want.

My preferred app (Fit Notes) is Android only and doesn’t have any of the fancy features you mention.

My second favorite app (Personal Training Coach) does appear to be on Apple and has lots more features. You can pick between many popular lifting programs or setup your own. Programs can be built with progression plans and timers and can increase weight after a successful session, hold weights if you are unable to complete a progression, or reduce weight after multiple failed attempts.

• Holistic
• Double Click
• Table Stakes
• Jump Ball
• Blocking & Tackling

I like my Allet Original, which I’ve had for 10 years and is in excellent condition. The price has almost doubled since then, (from $35 to $65), but if I needed a new wallet today, I’d get another one.

I’m in the process of (very slowly) migrating my household from Windows to Linux and am currently testing Nextcloud as a replacement for OneDrive. In my case, I set it up using pikapods.com because I want offsite storage. The server part of the setup was incredibly easy because the host did all the work.

Getting my Linux client setup was kind of a pain (especially compared to the Android and Windows clients), but everything seems to work ok so far. Of course, I’m only backing up a small amount of data so far, so I can’t comment on the efficiency or speed for a major backup.