Soylent News is slowly getting better and better. I still check it each day, and the comments section has slowly been getting more interesting and more full over time. It's not as good as /.'s comments section yet, but give it another year and it might be. Plus, the staff there are making a real effort to be transparent, supportive of the community, and extremely receptive to feedback for changes that should be made, and it's clear that it's having a beneficial impact.

This is wrong. As is the use of the word "troll" in the summary/article. Trolls and shills are distinct, and the difference isn't whether they get paid. You can be a paid or unpaid troll and a paid or unpaid shill.

Trolls post messages written specifically to generate responses. The term derives from fishing where trolling means to drag something through the water to catch fish. Internet trolls post baiting comments trying to get people to respond to them. Flamebaiting is a subset of trolling, where the aim is to generate angry responses.

Shills post messages to talk up some product, service, etc., trying to make it look good and its competition look bad.

Both categories also assume that the writer likely doesn't fully agree with what he or she is writing. If two people write the same words but one believes them while the other doesn't, the former is not a troll or shill, but the latter may be.

Note that paid trolls are pretty common on the Internet, but they tend to write the articles (or, on /., the summaries) not the comments. "Clickbaiting" is almost the same as trolling in this respect, except that a clickbait article is to collect clicks, while a troll article is intended to generate comments.

But really should be "Don't Read the Summary", since the summaries frequently get edited into incomprehensible trollishness.

"It's not irrational to consider a pressure cooker and propane tank parked near the US Capitol to be sufficiently unusual as to merit further investigation"

"Bomb squads don't "investigate" items that might be bombs."

Hard to believe they came from the same poster in the same thread, isn't it? It warrants further investigation! ... and ... What are you and idiot, it warrants no investigation! I't is always hilarious to watch idiots contradict themselves. Thanks for the entertainment!

Do you have any idea how bloody dangerous 120V DC is? You will hold that wire a long time before you die.

DC motors still have their place, but with the advent of VSDs, not as much as before. That being said, large AC motors/generators still require a DC field current. In the old days this was done by a DC generator on the same shaft(with associated brushes...). Now days we do it electrically (thyristors to make a variable field), but most medium to large AC motors I have worked on have brushes for the field current. Not everything can be self-excited or use permanent magnets.

Frankly, that would be awesome. I can think of few things that would make me happier.

I have no idea.

FWIW, at least at Google it isn't about specialization. Google SWEs are expected to be generalists, able to specialize as needed.

In fact, it's generally recommended that SWEs change teams within the company every few years, and that they intentionally look for a change that requires them to learn new skills. The belief in the company is that this approach serves both engineers and teams, providing fresh perspectives and insights to both, and spreading knowledge across teams (by moving it) and within teams (by reallocating responsibilities).

There are exceptions, of course. Some skills are rare enough that people stay within that field, even as they move between teams. On the other hand, even those exceptions have exceptions. I won't mention his name, but Google employs a famous cryptographer who recently decided that after many years of breaking the world's encryption systems he wanted to work on image compression. So he is. Another engineer I know has a PhD in computational mathematics, with a specialty in image processing. After a few years extracting building details (exterior shape, mostly) from merged aerial and street view photography, he now works on UI frameworks.

The choice of when or if to move to another team, and which, is the engineer's. The destination team also has a say, but most teams are perpetually short-staffed. Unless the team in need of some deep skill (e.g. a PhD in computational mathematics with specialization in image processing), or unless the engineer hasn't been performing well in the previous role, they're unlikely to refuse. This is why apparently-odd moves aren't uncommon; people decide they'd like to do something different, so they do.