What's something that seems obvious within your profession, but the general public seems to misunderstand?

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.

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.

The cloud is just someone else's computer

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.

Turning your computer off and back on again will solve 90% of your problems.

Of the other 10% an additional reboot while on the phone with the IT person solves those.

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.

Read the error message. The whole thing.

This comes up even with coworkers who are allegedly senior software developers.

"It's just a white page it's not working"

"Ok well what does the console say? Network requests?"

"403?"

"Ok now what's in the response body?"

"The what?"

"Click on it. Then response "

"It says I don't have permission to view this page "

"Do you have permission to view this page?"

"...no."

Building genuinely secure computer systems is incredibly difficult. You might even be in systems/software and be thinking "yeah it is hard", but to be really secure it's 1000x harder than that. So everything you use off the shelf from any vendor is a massive compromise and has holes in it. But on the other hand most people don't need really secure systems.

That current "AI" is not turning into Skynet any time soon.

Everyone gets older. Everyones body breaks down eventually. The amount of elderly who have said "I never thought something like this would happen to me". Look around Edna! What made you think you were going to avoid what happens to everyone else!?

At most corporate pizza places only a fraction of the delivery charge goes to the driver. My job, for example, charges $4.99 for delivery and gives the drivers $0.60.

If you want your chicken extra crispy, it takes longer.

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.

Still studying, but I often see people think that WiFi = Internet.

Thankfully, some of them at least acknowledge existence of "Exclamation mark WiFi".

Software doesn't age, it doesn't make sense for your computer to become slower as it becomes older. (some) Software just becomes more shitty and bloated with every release, which is what you're experiencing.

Radioactive contamination: things don't transfer the property of radioactivity to everything they touch and/or irradiate. If that were the case, the entire Earth universe would have become radioactive gray goo long, long ago.

When radiation workers talk about "contamination," we mean radioactive compounds have physically transferred from one object onto/into another. For example, tools becoming contaminated with radioactive metal dust from equipment they touch, or clothing absorbing radioactive iodine gas from the air.

There is a form of radiation called neutron radiation that does make some formerly stable things (mainly metals) radioactive. This isn't something you're likely to encounter unless you're a specific type of radiation worker, however.

This is mainly gear-grindy to me because the reason we don't have gamma-sterilized produce in the US is completely unfounded fear that gamma irradiation "contaminates" everything it touches. So we could be having lovely fresh strawberries and peppers that last weeks longer than they usually do, but no, we can't because rAdIaTiOn ScArY 🙄

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.

Maybe I am preaching to the choir on Lemmy, but:

Do your security updates and use different passwords for different sites.

I know it’s a pain in the ass, although it’s a much smaller one than you’re making it sound. But yes it is important, yes the “hackers” will come after you (or more accurately their automated systems will that come after everybody).

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.

I do not literally build buildings. I design them, I document them for construction, I collaborate with other people who do actually build the buildings to make sure everything's on the level.

Nothing about game development is "easy"

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.

Something doesn't work in a particular piece of software. "Don't they test their program?". "All they need to do is X, obviously they don't know how to code!".

Sometimes it isn't as easy as you think.

Sometimes your printer won't print in black and white if a color is out because it uses all of the colors to create a deeper black. Depends on the model though.

And some of them use yellow as a lubricant because yellow toner has a consistency close to water.

Also, please do not copy money or your butt. Trust me.

I am the company IT guy. Not your IT guy.

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…

Actors don't "act"

90% of an actor's work is preparation (memorization is just a tiny part of this- a big part of it is studying the scenes and figuring out the character's realizations and decisions)

By the time you're performing, you shouldn't have to think about the scene or dialogue at all, but just connect with your scene partner and let them guide you through it. Acting isn't about you. You're not important, it's about the moment that's in between you and the people you're performing with.

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.

The scientific method

A thicker, wider bicycle seat is going to be more uncomfortable on longer rides than a thinner, narrower bicycle seat.

That adding an exclamation mark to your password doesn’t make it secure, GREG!

Factors of safety are defined to deal with the probability of things going wrong in a manner that is acceptable to society based on a body of knowledge and experimentation. You can't just define your own.

Also, just because something is designed for a specific load doesn't mean it will fail at that load.

Ambulance’s should be used for emergencies

Most people don't understand the real cost of software development, because the price of apps creates skewed expectations. In practice, software companies employ a business model that amortizes costs over time, making the true investment less obvious to users. The apparent simplicity of well-designed apps can also mislead users about the complexity involved. So, if somebody sees an app that costs a dollar they might assume that the cost of developing the app might be a few hundred dollars, while in practices it can be hundreds of thousands.

There are different screen sizes. Your monitor isn't the standard universal size of every other monitor, some are larger and some are smaller. Your phone isn't the same width and height as every other phone. The website will look different on different devices.

The pharmacy is not where the people that stock the front of the store work. They are very busy trying to fill hundreds of prescriptions and deal with doctors, patients and insurance companies.

Don't ask them where to find the cosmetics that are on sale. We don't even know. We are not a service desk.

Solvent green is... puppies