What's something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand? - eviltoast
  • CuriousRefugee@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Space is hard. You’re strapping something inside a big tube with basically directed explosives at the bottom, hoping it survives the trip, then subjecting it to constant radiation, huge temperature swings, and other brutal environmental factors like micrometeoroids. Just because we’ve been sending satellites and people up to space for nearly 70 years doesn’t mean it’s gotten easier; we’re just better at knowing what to expect so we can test for it. Failures in rockets or satellites or even manned spacecraft are going to happen as much as we work to prevent them.

  • Brkdncr@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Just google the error message. Copy, paste. Read the top 5 results.

    No, click on the results and read the page.

    Did you read it? Explain to me why it doesn’t work.

    Still broken? Call the vendor.

    • trolololol@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Hello Google! Hey I was trying this function in Android and it’s not working. Plus when I search the first link is to your bug tracker and it’s marked as non fix.

      What do you mean this is a Wendy’s? What do you mean that’s a free product and there’s no support?

  • That_Devil_Girl@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    I’m a welder, and the general public doesn’t seem to understand why we charge so much for our services. Like, 80% of my work is fit-up, alignment, math, measurements, and work area prep.

    All the public sees is “durr, me hot glue metal! All done!” That’s exactly what you get with Jim Bob who owns a welder yet has never trained for it. He’s cheap, his welds are ugly, and they’re likely to fail in the near future.

    • weeeeum@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Also do trades. People seem to have no perception that quality varies. They assume it’s busy work, it’s either done or not done, works or don’t work. All as if you flip a couple magical switches and everything’s finished.

      Always frustrating to explain how the electrician that’s 15$ an hour is gonna get you killed, and that wiring isn’t just snaking cords through a conduit.

    • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Just show them some of my work as an amateur just sticking metal together and surely they’ll pay for your work.

      Like I try to at least measure, do some math, clean it up, and be steady but anybody looking at can know its my day job lol

    • DJDarren@thelemmy.club
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      4 months ago

      A huge, HUGE amount of a welder’s value - nay, almost any skilled worker’s value - is in the years you’ve spent gettin’ good.

    • EnderMB@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I remember my university orientation so vividly, because I was sat next to several people that were taking the “Game Development” degree. They spent the entire orientation talking about what consoles they brought with them.

      Two weeks later, they were all gone. The course was arguably harder than my CS course, based on some of the required classes they had to take. I think the dropout rate over the full degree was ~90%. CS was high, sure, but barely anyone actually graduated with the Game Development degree.

      Game dev is hard, and I’m yet to meet a game dev that didn’t bemoan how utterly ruthless it was.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    4 months ago

    It’s at least mostly going away nowadays, but…pulling a fire alarm will not make your school fire sprinklers go off. Getting one sprinkler to go off is just that. One sprinkler. None of the rest will go off.

    Also, fires in a building are never a spot here, a spot there, over there a spot, and just randomly burning patches all over the place. It just grows out and up from its origin point, for the most part. It doesn’t magically plant little patches all over the place. It’s also often times so smoky and so thick with smoke that you quite literally couldn’t see a big portion of fire if it were ten feet in front of you. You feel the heat and maybe see a faint bit of orange glow. Sometimes you don’t even get to see that.

  • hperrin@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The more users you have, the more expensive it is to run.

    Like, compute, storage, bandwidth, none of that is free. If you’re providing a free service, like Wikipedia, and you have many millions of users, like Wikipedia, your expenses will be enormous. You can either accept donations, like Wikipedia, require payment, or sell your users.

    If there’s something you like that’s free online, support them. If they don’t accept donations, well, I hate to tell you, you’re the product.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Also when “you’re the product” that doesn’t just mean that your data is the product. A user is a person whom you can influence. “You’re the product” means this company can direct you, influence you, change your behavior. They can offer your behavioral changes, as a service to their other stakeholders.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The speed of the conveyor belt does not impact the cycle time. No you cannot fucking slow down the conveyor belt to make it so you can work slower. You can’t speed it up to make people work faster. The speed of the fucking conveyor belt determines how long the things stay on the fucking conveyor belt. If it’s too slow things just stack up on it

    Sorry, fucking line workers, managers, and executives in a factory…

  • sbv@sh.itjust.works
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    4 months ago

    Electronic voting is a terrible idea. Lil’ bits of paper with representatives watching the vote counters is a pretty solid system. There’s no problem there that needs to be fixed.

    I say this as a Canadian who has volunteered as an observer in federal elections. I know Americans have their thing going on, but seriously. Paper ballots all the way.

    • MajorHavoc@programming.dev
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      4 months ago

      As a software development expert, I take issue with

      “our entire field is bad at what we do, and if you rely on us, everyone will die.”

      That’s way off base.

      She under-stated the hell out of that.

      Our average practitioner is bad at both their own job, and at the jobs of those whose lives their shoddy work complicates.

      Anyone trusting us with their lives or livelihood should be very very alarmed.

      We’re also now producing artificial intelligence tools that allow us to do equally shoddy work, but now in dramatically greater quantity.

      Edit: Let’s say this is 60/40 sarcasm and sincere, and I’m not sure which is the 60%…

      I work with some of the best, and I’ve worked with plenty of the worst. I’ve also been both, on different days.

  • neidu2@feddit.nl
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    4 months ago

    Just because I’m an IT guy, it doesn’t mean I know why your laptop is slow.

  • Ceedoestrees@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I can’t “blow up” an image you screenshotted from a video your sister posted on facebook and make it look any better then a pile of angry pixel garbage. I can, however, remove the pause icon from your garbage picture.

  • NineMileTower@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I can’t and wouldn’t teach your kid to be gay. I can’t get him to write his fucking name at the top of the page.

    • hperrin@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That’s generally not what they’re really concerned about. “I don’t want teachers teaching my children to be gay” is just code for, “I don’t want teachers teaching my children that it’s ok to be gay.”

      • CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org
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        4 months ago

        Or just tolerating them in front of their kid. In fact, they’d probably prefer the teacher teach Timmy to hate like mom and dad do.

  • norimee@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Medicine is not an exact science. Every human body is different and will react different to treatment or show different symptoms.

    That your doctor couldn’t diagnose you right away or a treatment is not working for you as wanted (or as it did for your neighbor) has most often nothing to do with the competence of the medical personel but with the fact, that your body is not a massproduced machine but 100% unique a änd individual biological mass.

  • rand_alpha19@moist.catsweat.com
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    4 months ago

    No, replacing your HVAC or control systems will not magically fix the engineering issues present in your home/building. You will have to compensate for poor design indefinitely unless you want to demolish and start over.