I've spent quite a lot of today trying to figure out why, exactly, some of the monsters in the Monster Hunter Wilds beta looked like bundles of copulating pyramids slathered in crocodile gravy. Nic clued me in on this reddit thread earlier, which cites unnamed Chinese players who've allegedly data-mined the beta's monster models, and learned that they are extremely large, encompassing hundreds of thousands of polygons.

If every monster in Monster Hunter Wilds were that fancy all of the time, your computer would become a volcano. As such, the game resorts to loading-on-demand systems to ensure that you only see those gorgeous details when the monsters are close by and, as the case may be, angrily sitting on you. When they're further afield, the flourishes fall away to free up memory and processing power. The popular Redditor explanation for the presence of monsters that look like Henry Moore sculpture is basically that the LOD systems are being forgetful, and neglecting to load the additional polygons at proximity.

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Putting aside my natural annoyance at Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater for almost beating out the Twarhammer series in the headline real estate wars, I am more than a little excited to play. Some days, you simply must feast on a tree frog, and while we still don’t have a solid release date, that day doesn’t feel too far away. Good news for stealth fans, and perhaps gooder news for a dozen strapline writers sweating profusely, soiling themselves in anticipation of using “kept you waiting, huh?”.

Until then, I at least have a steady drip feed of new information to keep me sated, the latest of which is the substantial hint that there'll be some new dialogue in the game, as per the video below. Alongside that, the previously pseudonymous Suzetta Miñet - who was credited with voicing EVA in MGS3 and Peace Walker - has revealed herself to be Jodi Benson, the voice of Ariel in Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Cheers for the spot, Automaton West.

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When I was a competitive long-distance runner at school, breath control was paramount. We were never really taught this, mind. It was an art you picked up through practice: how to breathe before the race, saturating your blood with O2 without dizzying yourself; when to permit the shorter, emergency breaths and when to apply restraint; when to deepen your inhales and charge yourself up for an attack on a hill.

And then, how to organise your body around your breath, straightening your posture to expand your lungs without tipping back too far and squandering muscle power; how to breath in time with your stride and the movement of your shoulders, so as to firm up your momentum and shave a miraculous-feeling minute off your finishing time. All this, plus various daft psychological war gambits of my own devising. When overtaking or being overtaken, I used to seal my lips shut on that side and breath through the other corner of my mouth, to make it look like I was hardly out of breath at all.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s been almost a month since Hurricane Maria destroyed much of Puerto Rico and killed at least 48 people. The island and its residents are still coming to grips with the scale of the devastation.

William Brangham brings us the latest.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Many Puerto Ricans are still in the dark, without electrical power. Hundreds of thousands still have no access to running water, and the rebuilding of the countless damaged homes, roads and facilities is just beginning.

The Associated Press reported yesterday that almost half the sewage treatment plants on the island are still out of service, increasing the risk of contamination and disease.

I’m joined now by David Begnaud. He’s a correspondent from CBS News who’s been doing some very strong reporting there from since when the storm hit, and is just back from his latest trip to the island.

David, welcome to the NewsHour.

I wonder. We saw many of your reports and others of people still three weeks out from the storm who are still drinking from streams and creeks. You heard — I mentioned this AP report about fears of contamination.

Can you just tell us what is going on there? How are people getting water now?

DAVID BEGNAUD, CBS News: Well, let me tell you this.

The governor of Puerto Rico said this morning that he’s aware of those reports and that they’re looking into it. What’s concerning, William, is that three weeks after the storm and at least a week after the allegations first surfaced that people might be trying to drink from toxic wells at what’s known as Superfund sites, the governor of Puerto Rico is still saying, we’re looking into it and telling people to stay out of rivers where sewage may be spilling into the river.

And, he said, we want them to stay away from the coastal areas.

How are people doing? They’re still desperate to get water. No one seems to be able to figure out how to get enough water to every single person on that island who needs it. And as long as people need water, it’s still an emergency phase.

Nearly four weeks later, no one seems to be able to move from the emergency to the recovery.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So, people who are — we see them drinking out of these PVC pipes that they have kind of rigged and sort of poked into the side of a creek.

People are just drinking that water straight, without purification, without boiling it; is that right?

DAVID BEGNAUD: Absolutely.

Look, they have got the PVC pipes tapped into the mountains so that it’s coming out of the stream that way. And they literally are — I saw a woman walk up to a potable water tank that the military had brought in, and she had a Clorox bottle.

And I said, “Ma’am, you’re putting drinkable water in a Clorox bottle?”

And she said, “It’s all I have got.”

Now, that was a good scenario. The other scenarios are people right now who are drinking from streams and creeks and rivers who have no water filters, who have nothing, right? They’re just taking this water.

Now, listen, the government got a million water-purifying tablets within the last week. It took almost three weeks to get those. Now there’s a large push to bring in water filters.

I have got to tell you, most of the water filters I’m seeing brought in are coming from the private sector, and civilian samaritans who are getting 1,000 or more from the mainland and flying them over to Puerto Rico and personally hand-delivering them.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: That’s really incredible.

Medical facilities were another big — just a huge devastation on the island. I know you have been doing a lot of reporting on the USS Comfort.

DAVID BEGNAUD: Yes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: This is the huge Naval hospital that is now just offshore Puerto Rico.

But I understand it hasn’t been fully utilized. Can you tell us what your reporting has found there?

DAVID BEGNAUD: The two men running the ship told us that nearly 87 percent of the ship is empty. Sounds alarming, right? They have 200 beds, and 87 percent are empty.

Now, here’s what they said: We stand ready for whatever the government wants to do. We are waiting to be told by the government.

So, I went to the governor, and said exactly what’s happening. And he said: “Look, I’m not satisfied with what the protocol was from the beginning.”

He said, initially, they were prioritizing only the most critically ill patients go to the Comfort. And he said there was a layered process that was complicating things.

So, the governor, Ricardo Rossello, said: “I started to take out some of those layers, and I, said, listen, take people on the ship who may not be critically ill, but need good medical care and can’t get it at the hospital, where the lights are flickering and the A.C. is not running.”

That’s what the governor said.

Within a matter of hours, I got a tweet from a third-year medical student who said: “Let me tell you what a nightmare it has been to reach the Comfort.”

He said: “We have got a pediatric patient who desperately needs to get off this island, either to a hospital on the mainland or to the Comfort.”

And he said: “I went through Google and the local newspaper to find the number. I couldn’t find it.”

Now, here is how things work. Within about 30 minutes of that tweet going out and that medical student’s story being posted, the governor’s spokesperson responded with numbers that should be able to help.

The bottom line here, William, is that asking relentless questions and the good work of journalism is what’s making a difference there. It’s no one person. There’s no heroic work that’s being done by any journalist, other than people who are going back to the same officials and asking some of the same questions, relentlessly seeking the right answer that will make a difference.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: One of the other pieces of reporting that you did that was very early in the story was this backlog of supplies trapped in container ships on the ports in Puerto Rico.

I understand some of that — some of those supplies are now moving. Can you tell us, are they getting to where they need to be throughout the island?

DAVID BEGNAUD: So, the shipping containers you’re talking about, about 3,000 sitting in the Port of San Juan, have been moved out, not all of them, but a majority of them.

And they were intended for grocery stores around the island. Right? So, those were private companies that had brought in these shipping containers, paid for the supplies, but couldn’t move them because their truck drivers were either at home, because the home had been destroyed, or the road was impassable.

More and more supplies are getting out. But let me tell you, the grocery stores around the island, they have a lot of nonperishables, Pringles, candy, cookies, all on the shelf.

But when you go to the meat section, it’s nearly 75 percent empty at the stores we have been to, the produce section 90 percent empty. And finding bottled water there is almost like playing a game.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: David Begnaud, CBS News, thank you so much for your reporting. Thanks for your time.

DAVID BEGNAUD: You bet.

The post Puerto Ricans still don’t have reliable drinking water, and fears of contamination are rising appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Planets that orbit close to their parent stars are blasted with radiation and contorted by gravity – and the exoplanet TOI-6255b might be the most extreme example yet

Mars rocks that were blasted off the surface of the Red Planet millions of years ago have been traced back to craters where they originated, which could transform our understanding of Mars’s volcanism and evolution

A radio signal detected in 1977, sometimes claimed as evidence for aliens, may have been caused by a laser-like beam of microwave radiation

Astronomers have identified patterns within the motion of stars stretching across the Milky Way, hinting at the presence of a vast wave

Ganymede, the largest moon in the solar system, has signs of an enormous ancient impact that would have redistributed its mass, changing its orientation in relation to Jupiter

Space missions are extremely hard. Things going wrong should be expected, so having a sensible plan B is crucial

A nearby star that exploded some 3 million years ago could have removed all dust smaller than a millimetre from the outer solar system

A small world in the outer solar system appears to have volcanic activity possibly spurred by liquid water

In order to figure out how something came from nothing, we first need to explore the different types of nothing

Who built this ripped, anatomically graphic snowman? Is there a world of snowmen offscreen waiting to be turned into sex objects for widows?

Tech expert Kurt “CyberGuy" Knutsson says opening emails is safe, but risks arise from interacting with links, attachments or HTML content.

Getting virus alerts on your iPhone? Tech expert Kurt “CyberGuy" Knutsson helps you learn how to handle fake scam alerts and boost security.

Arsenal and England midfielder Jordan Nobbs will be a columnist for 90min & BBC Sport pundit at the Women's World Cup in France this summer, as Phil Neville's Lionesses' look to secure a maiden World Cup triumph. Two wins from our first two games is obviously what we were all hoping for. The first game of a World Cup, or any other major tournament, is never going to be one where you're playing at your absolute best. But the 2-1 win over was Scotland was great given the pre-match hype, the..

Artificial intelligence can be the key to unlocking better relationships with work, HP revealed in its new Work Relationship Index (WRI) report. “AI represents a significant opportunity to transform our work dynamics and unlock a more positive and productive environment for all,” stated Dave Shull, president of HP Workforce Solutions at HP Inc.. “To foster […]

Human cognitive performance can be significantly influenced by the presence of audience members.

The post Study: Chimps Perform Better on Challenging Computer Tasks When They Have Audience appeared first on Sci.News: Breaking Science News.

Computer simulations of how influenza A moves through human mucus found it is ideally configured to slide through the sticky stuff on its way to infecting cells

Israeli President Isaac Herzog says hostages are "going through hell in the dungeons of Gaza" during meeting with President Biden at White House.

Health officials in Saskatchewan Canada are urging customers of Domino’s Pizza in Martensville to watch for symptoms of typhoid fever. The restaurant’s customers may have been exposed to Salmonella typhi, also known as typhoid fever. Anyone who consumed food or drink from the Domino’s store at 717 Centennial Drive South... Continue Reading

A new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that some dairy farm employees showed signs of infection, even when they didn’t report feeling sick. The CDC concluded that more bird flu testing of dairy farm employees is required. According to Dr. Nirav Shah, the CDC’s principal... Continue Reading

Politics and pinball do sometimes have a lot in common. Both can produce surprising and unexpected results. Those lights and metal balls that pinball was known for before the digital age sometimes would make you an unexpected winner. Politics may do that for all those who want to revive the Farm Bill. Politics... Continue Reading

The Dallas Cowboys quarterback got another opinion on his hamstring and decided that surgery would be the best way to address the injury.

More blazes break out where wild land and urban areas overlap.

The huge four-storey walls of the Lightroom in London are showing ‘Vogue: Inventing the Runway'.

On this timeline Russia is nearly a decade and a half behind SpaceX.

Speculator swapped pricey domain for OpenAI shares instead of taking cash payment.

1. Have a protein-rich breakfast every day for these 7 benefits  Hindustan Times
2. 6 Protein-Packed Breakfast Without Eggs  HerZindagi
3. 8 High-Protein Indian Breakfast Recipes to Fuel Your Day  Recipes
4. Wholesome Indian breakfasts that boost energy  Business Insider India
5. 5 DIY Protein-Packed Snacks That You Can Replace Breakfast With  WION

1. Bulldozer justice: SC lays down pan-India guidelines for demolition of properties, says Executive can’t become judge and accused, convicts have certain rights  The Hindu
2. "House Embodies Hope": Supreme Court Demolishes 'Bulldozer Justice' Idea  NDTV
3. Unconstitutional to demolish house without following due process merely because they are involved in a crime: SC  The Indian Express
4. Supreme Court on bulldozer action: ‘No demolition without following guidelines, 15-day notice’  Hindustan Times
5. Bulldozer justice: Executive can't become judge, demolish house of accused, SC says  The Times of India

Cloud-based business management software (CRM, ERP) can revolutionise an SME.

The contract software company closed a $110 million Series D round in 2023, one of the largest venture capital deals in Washington last year.

"If Jupiter doesn’t have a surface, what does it have? "

I was surprised to learn from a recent press release that the American College of Cardiology is planning to have some live participants at its annual scientific sessions meeting in May. The college said it is also partnering with a technology company to offer these participants a wearable monitoring device “as an added safety measure...

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Around half of Wales’ community pharmacies have expressed interest to health boards in providing COVID-19 vaccinations as part of the national programme.

• How to Catalyze a Clinical Trial - My inaugural post introducing the blog and its purpose
• Video: Predicting Referral Conversion in Clinical Trial Advertising - A somewhat technical but very important topic, how to visualize and model the “real time” results of recruitment advertising at the sites.
• The Crystal Ball is on the Fritz - What to do with a broken enrollment feasibility process, and how asking will never be as good as measuring

• The New Breed of Clinical Trial Matchmakers - A (hopefully pretty complete, thanks to knowledgeable commenters) listing of services looking to match interested patients to clinical trials
• Rethinking Patient Enrollment, in One Graphic - The perils of predictability in site-based enrollment
• Seize the Data! Will Big Data Save Us from Ourselves? - My take on what I consider to be the large and serious obstacles in the way of “Big Data” solutions for patient recruitment

Feb 10, 2024

Assaf Zoran argues that it is crucial to hold Iran accountable and convey the cost associated with arming, training, financing, and promoting violence through proxies.

Shahbaz noted that Zardari appealed to the PML-N to avoid mentioning allegations that former Chief Justice Hamid Dogar had arranged preferential treatment for his daughter's school admission

Pakistan's National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, Mahmud Ali Durrani, on the 2008 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul

The debate around India’s erosion of democratic values has surfaced again after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s remarks in the U.K.

MLAs in Karnataka have on average assets worth ₹34.6 crore, the highest among all the States

Jun 3, 2024

As the climate crisis intensifies, demand is surging for minerals needed to manufacture clean energy technologies. In the race to secure supplies of critical minerals, Africa and the Arctic have taken center stage as companies and governments around the world eye their vast mineral deposits. These seemingly disparate regions now face the same question: how to capitalize on their mineral wealth while maximizing the socioeconomic benefits and minimizing the environmental harms of mining.

Apr 18, 2024

The human tragedy continuing to unfold in Gaza and Israel reminds us how important it is to get strategic forecasting right. While in no way excusing Hamas’ culpability for 7 October, we also cannot dismiss the fact that the failure to anticipate and prepare for such an attack has had grave consequences for communities on both sides of this conflict, undermined efforts to bring peace and prosperity to the region, and affected global interests through the expansion of the conflict to the Red Sea and potentially beyond. 

Mar 13, 2024

David Kearn argues that even in the absence of restrictive resource and budgetary constraints, a focus on identifying and achieving concrete objectives that will position the United States and its allies to effectively deter aggression in critical regional flashpoints should be the priority given the stressed nature of the defense industrial base and the nuclear enterprise.