That’s actually a pretty slick interface. It makes me wonder how many solid apps have been lost to obscurity.

I’ll see if maybe I’ve just misconstrued the over-complexity for my needs.

It depends how you are defining “over-complexity”. FreeCAD is a very capable CAD application, so, by extension, it has a vast array of features, and a single task could potentially be tackled multiple ways. That being said, it is not a difficult application to use, imo. The UI feels well designed, and it is responsive. Like many things, the level of ease of use, and productivity when using it depends a lot on one’s familiarity with the application.

Thank you for your suggestion!

Would you be able to provide some screenshots of the application? The website for the application doesn’t seem to exist anymore, and the GitHub page doesn’t have any images of the application. I must confess, however, that I’m somewhat hesitant to use an application that is no longer maintained, and isn’t popular enough to provide a large enough chance of good security due to the sheer number of people looking at the source code and using the app. Granted, the latter could be solved by me “simply” looking through the source, but I confess that this doesn’t feel entirely worth it, atm.

Speed tests, in order to be accurate, need to download a reasonable amount from each server.

How much data does Reflector download for each test?

This is why:

it takes quite a while to sort through 200 mirrors.

It could simply be that Reflector isn’t overly efficient handling back-to-back tests. Perhaps there is a substantial idle period between tests that is eating up a large chunk of the total test time. Anecdotally, I have seen activity that suggests this in my network activity monitor — there are very short spikes and a comparatively long idle period in between.

You dont need one.

If one doesn’t want to make arbitrary decisions then yes evidence would be required.

You will never notice the difference between the fastest one yesterday and the fastest one today

Lost time is still lost time. I’d prefer to saturate my connection. Anything less is an inefficiency. Small losses in time add up.

+1 for FreeCAD.

If everyone did it every day that would be a significant load

Given that I update daily, I feel that the quick connection to the server to test it’s bandwidth at boot is rather insignificant.

The mirrors speeds don’t change that often to need to worry about always being on the absolute fastest.

Have there been any credible studies that have looked at the reliability of the mirrors? The reliability would give one an idea on how often they should refresh their mirrors.

Especially if you are updating the the background anyway

You’re updating in the background on Arch Linux?

Is it normal to run reflector regularly/on boot?

It’s normal enough that it comes with the Systemd Service that runs on boot. The ArchWiki also makes mention of it.

Not sure how often you reboot

Usually every day.

maybe once a week would be sufficient?

Whether it’s sufficient is mostly dependent on how volatile the mirrors are, which I’m not entirely aware of.

What the fuck. That’s horrifying. I also though that every sensible workplace bans the use of AI.

I don’t see it as being different than any other tool. Aside from the ethical discussions, and assuming that it is being used as if it were simply a tool, if it increases productivity, then what’s the issue?

Yeah, I agree — it feels unnecessarily ambiguous.

The Higgs mechanism has been theorized to give mass to elementary particles [1]. That is not to say that the total of inertial mass of a non-elementary massive object is due to the Higgs Boson.

To make it as simple as possible

Too simple, imo. It simplifies to the point of becoming incorrect.

Higgs makes it hard to push something.

One is called inertial mass (what we feel due to the Higgs mechanism)

The Higgs mechanism has been found to give mass to elementary particles only (short of neutrinos) [3]. This is important to note, as the mass of hadrons is far larger than the sum of their constituent elementary particles [4]. The rest, and vast majority, is found in the bound energy (eg the Strong Interaction) of the elementary particles (eg quarks) [1][2].

Regarding “Inertial mass”, I want to note the following definition for clarity:

Inertial mass is a measure of an object’s resistance to acceleration when a force is applied. [5]

Higgs makes it hard to push something. Gravity makes it hard to lift something.

The Higgs interaction contributes to both. Mass due to the Higgs interaction is a component of inertial mass, given that the Higgs boson gives mass the elementary particles contained within [3]. Inertial mass is a measure of an objects inertia (ie its resistance to acceleration when a force is applied) [1][2].

Note that the concept of “lifting” only applies in a gravitational field when a force is able to be created by pushing off of a surface — the resistance to the “lift” being created by the objects weight. If one is in free-fall, for example, the effects of gravity are no longer apparent given that one has no reference to the fact that they are falling.

the other is called gravitational mass (what we feel due to gravitational attraction between two masses).

I’m not sure exactly what you are trying to say here, but I suspect you are perhaps referring to the following excerpt(s) from Wikipedia:

Active gravitational mass is a measure of the strength of an object’s gravitational flux [1]

Passive gravitational mass is a measure of the strength of an object’s interaction with a gravitational field. [1]

I’ve personally never heard the term “gravitational mass” before, but it could be found from the above two statements, or more succinctly stated:

Gravitational mass is the “m” in F = GmM/r2 (Newton’s law of universal gravitation) [2]

They are usually the same so the distinction is usually ignored.

This statement is rather dubious. Simply put, there has simply not been found any empirical difference between inertial mass and gravitational mass. [1]

I don’t actually know what the higgs field is.

I wouldn’t be comfortable getting into the details of the actual “Higgs field” is, nor the Higgs boson, as I am not confident in my understanding, but, for the sake of the meme, the following excerpt from Wikipedia should suffice:

via the Higgs mechanism, [the Higgs boson] gives a rest mass to all massive elementary particles of the Standard Model, including the Higgs boson itself. [source]

I assumed it was gravity.

Gravity can be understood as the attractive force that two massive objects impart on eachother [1.1] ­— the strength of the gravitational force imparted by one object onto another is proportional to the mass of the former object [1.2]. Do note that this is a simplification. Gravity, as far as it is currently understood, is quite a bit more complicated than this (I am primarily referring to General Relativity) [1].

I was assuming that the image was confusing the term “weight” with “mass” (a completely forgivable and understandable mistake for a layman, given that both are equal on earth — give or take the variance in Earth’s gravitational field [2.2])). If weight was intended to be a separate term, then it’s just incorrect. Weight is the term given to the force that objects in a gravitational field impart on others when they are not accelerating (by “not accelerating” I mean, for example if one looks at the Earth, the object is still with reference to the surface of the Earth) [1.1], whereas mass is the term for the measure of an objects inertia [2.3][3]. Relativity shows that mass is equivalent to energy [4]. In SI, weight is measured in Newton’s [1.2] and mass is measured in kilograms [2.1].

As far as my current understanding goes, the majority of mass derives from the binding energy between particles; only a small portion of the mass is due to the higgs interaction.

Your requirements are pretty strict

Ha, I honestly thought I was being pretty lenient with just requiring what I thought were, more or less, the base requirements for a pill tracking app.

Didn’t get the encryption point

If I understand you correctly that you mean that you don’t understand the point of encrypting the data, the reason why I want that is to protect unauthorized access to the data if the device becomes compromised.

MedTimer

I’ve been using this one for a bit, and it does the job pretty well. It definitely is lacking polish and is somewhat buggy, but it’s certainly usable.

MediTrak

I found this one’s UI was rather cumbersome. I would choose MedTimer over it.

Home MedKit

I hadn’t heard of this one! It looks well made. It’s a shame one cannot input entries on any day though. I’m a little wary of a Russian app whose development history I cannot read, especially given that it’s such a small app in terms of popularity, but it seems genuine. The development cadence is perhaps a little lacking.

Interesting idea to use a tasks app for taking pills (presumably with it set as a recurring task). I agree that the format is quite similar in how the data is input and read, but I think there’s still some merit to having a dedicated app for this purpose. Things like data visualizations for dosages, and tracking missed dosages and alternate reminders for things like stock I think are better suited to an app that is dedicated.

they’re selling their own “AI” bullshit

Omg, they are. I had no idea that that existed. I’m not surprised at all, though — it seems AI is to businesses as podcasts are to middle aged dads 😜

Hrm, it’s only a survey. I think having information on people’s opinion of a new/emerging technology is a good idea.

They have a section on databases, but, yeah, it looks like nothing for query languages.