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.
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.
Marketing can be such an immoral, insidious process.
And it takes thousands of people pushing this shit mindlessly, because hey… “It’s just a job, right? Nine to five”.
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?
Not anymore. Companies paint cars in such a rushed and cheap way that you can find examples all over of huge differences in paint thickness on new cars.
I believe you. I wonder why it’s gotten all the way to the point where someone can just totally confabulate something cynical-sounding and believe themselves.
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.
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.
Yeah I don’t hire tradesfolk thinking I’m getting something cheap. I hire tradesfolk thinking I’m getting something that’s gonna fucking work when I need it to for as long as it can be expected to. That weld ain’t the cheapest part of the bridge by any means but it cannot unexpected fail without catastrophe, so if trained and reputable welders are expensive then welds on that bridge is expensive.
I can run my own wires when the wife lets me. But I won’t because that expensive electrician will do it safely and in a way that doesn’t cause even more expensive problems in the future
Good labor isn’t cheap and cheap labor is rarely good.
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.
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 remember hearing that money is n issue since it has some copy protection features, but your butt? What’s wrong with that? (Other than sitting on a piece of electronic equipment, lol.)
Also, depending on the model of the copier, it will not let you copy money, and if you attempt it too many times, it will literally brick the machine.
Something cool to do is to take your phone and turn on the selfie camera. Lay that on the platen and make a copy to see a trippy pattern.
If you want to screw with someone, lay a single paperclip on the platen and make a bunch of copies of it. Take your copies and shuffle them into the paper tray face up (assuming you’re using an office laser copier) so every once in a while, someone will get a paper clip on their print.
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.
Yep, so many clients: I have this problem and an error pops up, I need immediate help.
Me: Ok send me the data and the error log, and a description of what it is telling you on screen.
Client: I forget what it said, i didn’t save the log, And i needed to keep working so I deleted the file and started again.
OR
Client: My set of files is doing this, and giving me this specific error.
Me: Ah OK, that is a known issue, close all the fikes and open the top level only, open each sub fike one by one till the error pops up, that will be the culprit so run this clean up tool on that file only.
Crickets
Week later, Client : Im having that same error again, can you help?
Me: That cleanup tool should have fixed it.
Client: I didn’t have time to do those steps so I just kept working as is.
me: hopefully a gangster shoots me in a drive by crossfire on the way home.
Yep, but that is their problem, I have it logged that I gave them the tool with instructions on how to use it, with them dismissing it, even when I followed up on it.
I won’t work myself up over a user who is not interested in solving their issue.
Now obviously in real life I would remote in and run the tool for them, but there have been time when they have been unwilling to do that due to some pointless reason, that’s fine, I have logs showing that I tried.
Yeah, sometimes we can’t remote in due to IT policy or ITAR data. And I was just being dramatic with the comment, it just boggles my mind that they will just keep calling back without even trying to help themselves. Even scheduling a call…“I don’t have time for a call I just want it fixed” LOL
I literally once got an email from another engineer using our internal tool at the big tech company I used to work for which said something like, “the page isn’t working. Please help. Attached screenshot of error.” The attached screenshot showed the error message, “Your authentication token has expired, please refresh the page.”
I emailed him back, “oh yeah, that happens when your authentication token expires. Try refreshing the page.”
I’ve had this and similar conversations far too many times, I keep professional but holy shit, and then when they do get a call going with a screen share they zoom past the error every. Single. Time.
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.
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!?