My #SEM shows a female of the #mite #Histiostoma sp. (H. feroniarum-complex, special fixation) on #rottenlemon from Italy, #feeding a mixture of #fungi and #bacteria. It is seen from above and displays the symmetrically #fenestrated #proterosomashield that i.a. stabilizes muscle origins and still needs research. I published research information on that mite as poster #publication.

© #StefanFWirth Berlin (2006-) 2025

Poster S. F. Wirth, FAO, Global Soil Partners. (2024)
https://www.fao.org/global-soil-partnership/gsid24/posters/en/

In an age of LLMs, is it time to reconsider human-edited web directories?

Back in the early-to-mid '90s, one of the main ways of finding anything on the web was to browse through a web directory.

These directories generally had a list of categories on their front page. News/Sport/Entertainment/Arts/Technology/Fashion/etc.

Each of those categories had subcategories, and sub-subcategories that you clicked through until you got to a list of websites. These lists were maintained by actual humans.

Typically, these directories also had a limited web search that would crawl through the pages of websites listed in the directory.

Lycos, Excite, and of course Yahoo all offered web directories of this sort.

(EDIT: I initially also mentioned AltaVista. It did offer a web directory by the late '90s, but this was something it tacked on much later.)

By the late '90s, the standard narrative goes, the web got too big to index websites manually.

Google promised the world its algorithms would weed out the spam automatically.

And for a time, it worked.

But then SEO and SEM became a multi-billion-dollar industry. The spambots proliferated. Google itself began promoting its own content and advertisers above search results.

And now with LLMs, the industrial-scale spamming of the web is likely to grow exponentially.

My question is, if a lot of the web is turning to crap, do we even want to search the entire web anymore?

Do we really want to search every single website on the web?

Or just those that aren't filled with LLM-generated SEO spam?

Or just those that don't feature 200 tracking scripts, and passive-aggressive privacy warnings, and paywalls, and popovers, and newsletters, and increasingly obnoxious banner ads, and dark patterns to prevent you cancelling your "free trial" subscription?

At some point, does it become more desirable to go back to search engines that only crawl pages on human-curated lists of trustworthy, quality websites?

And is it time to begin considering what a modern version of those early web directories might look like?

@degoogle #tech #google #web #internet #LLM #LLMs #enshittification #technology #search #SearchEngines #SEO #SEM

Up Close and Personal with a MEMS Microphone - If you’ve ever wondered what lies beneath the barely visible hole in the can of a ... - https://hackaday.com/2023/12/20/up-close-and-personal-with-a-mems-microphone/ #microelectromechanicalsystems #scanningelectronmicrophone #digitalaudiohacks #microfabrication #microphone #teardown #etching #silicon #mems #sem

Been working on some electrode patterns, starting to get some nice results.

Edges are a bit fuzzy/burry since I'm sputter depositing rather than something more line-of-sight like thermal evap. Getting a better dep method is high on the todo list.

Resist stack is an MMA/PMMA bilayer, substrate is silicon + ~100nm CuO, and electrodes are 150nm of aluminum via lift-off.

In theory, these should act as metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors. Unsure if my test gear is sufficient though, might need to upgrade my electronics a bit. We'll see!

Getting a Close-Up View of Chip Formation with an SEM - When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And when you’ve got... - https://hackaday.com/2023/06/01/getting-a-close-up-view-of-chip-formation-with-an-sem/ #electronmicroscope #chipformation #metalwork #shearzone #science #carbide #chips #sem

Building an Electron Microscope For Research - There are a lot of situations where a research group may turn to an electron micro... - https://hackaday.com/2023/04/14/building-an-electron-microscope-for-research/ #electronmicroscope #creativecommons #microscope #opensource #research #scanning #science #license #sem

Hmm. Technical proficiency, and good pipes, but the song is meh.

Everything's spot on, but it's a boring song. For me. YMMV.

The rowdy audience participation is taking some processing.

#Sem #DSDS #TrashTV
#DeutschlandSuchtDenSuperstar

Hey, now! Sem is killing it!

#Sem #StandByMe
#DSDS #Recalls #TrashTV
#DeutschlandSuchtDenSuperstar

A call for Associate Editors to extend the board of 'Quality of Life Research' has opened:
https://www.isoqol.org/call-for-qlr-associate-editors-2023/

We are looking for a range of expertise in #HRQL #ResearchMethods such as clinical trials #RCT, #epidemiology, #HealthServices research, #Psychometrics #SEM #IRT, #PublicHealth & a range of #QualitativeMethods.

3ax accelerometer/gyro chip. Composite of 3 different chips that I decapped. Didn't get a complete view of top right unfortunately.

I thought the bottom was accel at first, but thinking they are gyros now? Dual mass vibrating kind? Lack of combs on the top devices is throwing me, just a few plates that I can see.

There are "pits" or cutouts under two of the three devices under the bottom, which is contributing to my feeling they are gyros (to help allow coriolis distortion)

Faraday Mode = ACTIVATED

Which would you feel more comfortable learning to use?

A brand new #JEOL #SEM (Scanning #Electron #Microscope)

or a semi-functioning Russian 80's #Oscilloscope? Read disclosure in next post before voting

3rd option would be using the shell to make a #Cyberdeck or, even better, a #Solardeck to use when #JohnMastodon calls.
r/cyberDeck

Images in next post.

Quick little video about a bottle of "ceramic" spray.

This is a hydrophobic spray coating, and supposedly contains amorphous silica. I was curious if it was in nanoparticle form, aggregate, etc so I popped it under the AFM and SEM to investigate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up_iNN3cQ-A

Does anyone have a set of articles for teaching #SEM #StructuralEquationModeling that are relatively short, straightforward, and also mostly accurate? I have a hard time finding papers that are not either very complex or riddled with technical errors. (Errors are useful for teaching but I wish they weren't quite so prevalent...) Or do you teach SEM to #undergraduates and have tips/resources to share? Prepping a small undergrad seminar and trying to keep it simple...

#Introduction time: I'm a Lecturer in mental health #nursing at King's College London. My research interests are #eatingdisorders #FamilyTherapy #attachment #psychometrics #mentalization #SystematicReviews #SEM and #qual methods.

I'm also interested in #OpenScience and #ClinicalAcademic pathways for nurses and #AHPs.

New case study exploring likelihood computations (+ approximations) for Bayesian structural equation models with ordinal data, with application to WAIC and friends.

https://ecmerkle.github.io/cs/ord_ic.html