That's an interesting point, doesn't this depend on the expertise of the audience? I'm not a psych expert, so if I'm unwilling to go back to school to interpret both sides "perfectly" then I'd be unsuccessful judging both sides on their factual/scientific merit. I only have other tools to choose from, ie. my personal experience, reading skills, being a (hopefully good) judge of character, etc.
I argue it's relatively scathing, because Haidt's wording is much more dramatic, negative, and more aimed at a person than Ferguson's wording is. By "facts" I assume you mean claims, no?
I'm not sure how tone would be irrelevant; similar to what a sibling commenter said, tone conveys quite a bit of information. It seems unwise or "dumb" to ignore that, because we're still humans talking to each other, even if it's bits over a wire, and we're working together in good faith to learn and solve problems, aren't we?
As a layperson who doesn't understand psychology but is interested in science and peace, I felt that Ferguson's article (this HN post) was much less directed at a person (as opposed to the person's work or theories put forward) and more professional, versus the linked blog post -- so I tend to believe the former.
Even a simple sentence like, "Ferguson did both of these things and his findings thus do not “undermine” our causal claims; he failed to accurately test our causal claims," comes across as scathing compared to the paper.
It's a huge space, so I wouldn't say it's easy. Also several ideas will just not be interesting to you at first, and many others will only be revealed as uninteresting after a while (ie you hit a problem you aren't interested in solving).
One idea might be to learn something new, if you don't have a project. Think about a textbook or a class, or online texts, or just some interesting popsci at the local bookstore/library for example. any might work depending on your style.
For one person's anecdotes on the culture, read Exit Interview by Kristi Coulter. Amazing read IMO, and it explained a lot of how I've felt at Microsoft and Google.
I would add a couple games that moved me (Hindsight, A Memoir Blue). but I also have to mention not all of their titles are smash hits IMO -- I disliked Florence, Last Stop, If Found, and Open Roads.
That said, I agree that their good games have made me a fan, and I hope the original staff keeps going in some form.
As usual from Microsoft, the answer to the Visual Studio issue is, "Fuck you." Not a surprise, but I'm grateful for the Dolphin devs working through all this.
Many "senior engineers" are BS and are just posturing. To be honest, this idea alone has been really, really hard for me to understand personally. I learn a lot by watching other people work, and I spent way too much time seeing people posturing when I really should've been watching kind, responsible, vulnerable, open-minded people with values.
Which part is bad, the worstcase part? I'm sleepy. I guess I meant a dishonest person giving positive status updates but basically lying about the progress or stealing credit. Coasting isn't the bad part i guess, it's the explicit dishonesty to other people around them.
Also, candos are trying to flag potential "warzones" and avoid them. Meaning, they don't want the job to become a constant battle with anxiety, users, other stakeholders' pressure, things like that. They just want a job, or worstcase scenario they want to coast and do less time.
That said, the right tradeoffs can make it totally worth it. I think I joined one by accident, personally, but I feel that I have the best people, career growth and tech here (always wanted to do some networking work), so it still feels right to me.
Offtopic: on mobile I get a really awful ad that puts borders on the whole screen, and cuts off the article's words on the far left and right. I'd say I will never go to this site again, but then again, I may as well never read news on mobile again, right? (As this ad might just pop up on another site anyway) Still, it's a shameful practice.
There are millions upon millions of people working in the entertainment industry globally, in some sense (videogames, TV, film, music, art) -- not even counting side hustles and hobbyists. This industry also spends and rakes in billions of dollars every year. So, yes, there is an actual need.
I think a surprising amount of people already share this view, even if they don't go into extensive treatment with references like Dekker presumably does (I haven't read it).
I suspect most people in power just don't subscribe to that. which is precisely why it's systemic to see the engineer shouting "no!" when John CEO says "we're doing it anyway." I'm not sure this is something you can just teach, because the audience definitely has reservations about adopting it.
I would have to guess you can't speed up to pass another vehicle (think bus or truck, or maybe a dangerous situation) and then you will piss off anyone in the fast lane who does not have these limiters.
What's the motivation behind going to an article about a language upgrade, then proceeding to shit on language features that have been there even before Java 8?