You can accidentally get an STD from a koala [Biology]

You can accidentally get an STD from a koala [Biology]:
Yes. You can. Now try to sleep tonight. Apparently, the koala population is threatened by a terrible and widespread outbreak of chlamydia. And it can be spread to humans. No. Not that way.
Between 2001 and 2008, koala populations dropped 45 percent in urban areas, and 15 percent in nature. Researchers were puzzled as to what causes the sudden drop in numbers. The population has been, like all animal populations, threatened by development, but why were city koalas dying off if they were already on developed land. After some time spent on research, they got the first hint of what the problem was. It seemed that fifty percent of wild koalas were showing signs of chlamydia. There were undoubtedly more koalas who were infected but didn't show signs. Since there were no ways of treating the population and of course no safe sex, the bacteria spread from animal to animal during fighting, mating, and birth.
There are two strains, Chlamydia pecorum and Chlamydia pneumoniae. Complicating the issue, around Queensland, is the fact that the koalas there are almost all infected with a retrovirus that takes out their immune system. Fortunately, there is a vaccine available that seems to work on female koalas.
Unfortunately, C. pneumoniae can be transmitted to humans. Koala's incredible cuteness works on the disease's behalf. People enjoy picking them up, but like many tree-dwelling animals, koalas don't much care where they urinate. If an infected koala urinates on a person, they can possibly transmit the strain of chlamydia to the human. This is something you never want to explain to a doctor. Certainly not when you have to include the phrase, "I was just trying to cuddle it." So remember, when you see a koala - don't pick it up.
Top Image: Eric Veland

Via NY Times and MSNBC.

Call Of Duty reaches bottom of comedy barrel, bravely keeps digging to planet’s molten core

Wow. That's awful.

Call Of Duty reaches bottom of comedy barrel, bravely keeps digging to planet’s molten core:

Well then. Words fail me. I’d better go check my thesaurus, I guess. Ahem. Wasn’t that a load of crap, baloney, bunk, bunkum, claptrap, drivel, foolishness, hogwash, idiocy, ludicrousness, poppycock, ridiculousness, rigmarole, tomfoolery and twaddle? Yes. A festering pile of debris, dregs, dross, junk, litter, lumber, offal, refuse, rubble, rummage, scrap, sweepings, trash and waste. There’s tortured comedy, and then there’s comedy specifically being tortured on the Judas Cradle.
Well, at least it’s free, right? Ooops, no. It’s part of the Call of Duty Elite service. They want you to pay for this. Actual money. That you could be spending on sweets instead, like a Dairy Milk Bubbly bar on top of a Milkybar, with a couple of packs of strawberry Fruitella to eat between bites.
Let us never speak of this show again.

There Were Tanks At Tankfest: A Report

The Tank Museum is ace.

There Were Tanks At Tankfest: A Report:

I don’t even like tanks that much. I have honestly no idea what I’m doing here. There are tanks everywhere. Tanks in the lobby, tanks on the lawn, tanks in the gift shop. I walk around hoping to find a Russian tank which inside houses different, smaller tanks, so that I can act bewildered and amused even though I previously suspected its existence. But it doesn’t exist. I look up. There are no tanks on the ceiling, which is a relief. But there is a small helicopter, which is disconcerting. Beneath it a placard reads, “What is a helicopter doing in a tank museum!?” and then goes on to explain the entire history of this particular helicopter EXCEPT the reason it is in a tank museum. I feel a strange kinship with the little chopper. It too has no idea what it’s doing here.
The tank museum is the setting for Tankfest, the annual festival of large, manoeuvrable killing machines held in the south of England. It is very well attended. Tanks are put on display and even rolled out onto a specially built course to rollick around and pretend to shoot things. The festival takes place near the sleepy settlement of Wool, which is a bit like holding an NRA meeting in a town called Carebear, or a nuke parade in a village called Softmint. Nevertheless, people come from all over Europe to see tanks from throughout military history and to buy souvenirs like Airfix models, or soap.
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The mirror men of Arkane | The Verge

The mirror men of Arkane | The Verge

11 Minutes Of Commanding Carrier Command Footage

Cannot wait for this.

11 Minutes Of Commanding Carrier Command Footage:

As the slow dribble of behind-closed-doors E3 videos begin – rendering that whole “behind-closed-doors” bit a little farcical as it does every year – I suggest saving them all up and watching them all in three days, ideally in rooms about half a mile apart, with five minutes to get back and forth between them. Have those rooms be un-airconditioned, sealed off heat traps with the volume three times louder than the human ear can stand. Capture the experience. One very worthy addition to your schedule is Carrier Command‘s 11 minute presentation, giving you an in-depth idea of how it will play. It’s below.
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Why the MacBook Pro makes me angry

Why the MacBook Pro makes me angry:

Last week, I had a chance to sit down and play with the new MacBook Pro for a while. That’s the one with 2880×1800 pixels crammed into a 15.4inch ‘Retina’ screen. It makes me angry – angry enough to resurrect a rant I had in the magazine just a few issues back.
Over the last ten years’ monitor manufacturers have been selling us short with screen technology, and it’s really annoying that Apple has been the lone voice to call them out.

Before I begin, let me be clear. I have no love for Apple: I’ve only ever owned one Apple product (the best it’s ever made, the iPhone 3GS) and I won’t be rushing out to buy a Retina-screened MacBook. I won’t buy one because no-one needs to spend £2300 on a PC of any kind. The fact you can’t upgrade it at a later date and it’s apparently quite hard to recycle are big black marks against it too.
But from a user’s point of view, the MacBook Pro with Retina Display is the best laptop in the world right now. Leaving the design to one side, even before you get to discussions about the resolution and whether or not you can see the pixels, comparing that 16:10 screen with its exceptionally rich IPS colours to a typical 16:9 TN panel reminds me of the first time I drank a cup of ‘proper’ well roasted coffee after being raised on sub-Gold Blend instant. That was when I first realised that appreciating quality doesn’t make you a snob.

Diablo III at 2880x1800 (click for original)

Using the Retina display isn’t life changing, nor will it ruin every other screen in the world for you. It’s not a necessity and it’s not something you should bankrupt yourself to own. It’s not even noticeably different for working on – who really writes or designs databases while squinting to see rough edges of pixels? But it is a perceptibly better, more pleasant, quality technology in a Robert M Pirsig sort of way. It is, more importantly and the focus of my anger, the future. Retina is simply better than any one of a number of screen ‘innovations’ over the last decade.
For games, it’s astounding. Only Diablo III and Portal 2 supported the native 2880×1880 resolution when I tested it, but they look incredible. They’re pin sharp and colourful, because they’re fully anti-aliased without the need to turn fake anti-aliasing on. And because you don’t need to turn AA on, both games were smooth and playable (only just for Diablo III, moreso for Portal 2) with every other image quality setting turned up to it highest setting using the built in GeForce GT660M. To put that in context, that graphics card is the equivalent of a bottom barrel GeForce GT640 on the desktop.
The effect of using the MacBook Pro for me has been to confirm something I’ve argued for years: people who make monitors and graphics cards have wasted vast amounts of money and time on perfecting technologies like anti-aliasing and stereoscopic 3D, when the best thing you can do to games is increase the resolution.
The depressing thing is that the desktop display which has something close to the 221 pixel per inch density of Retina has already been made. In 2001. That’s right: Apple is winning plaudits for its ‘Retina’ displays a full decade or more after IBM was trying out a similar but forgotten philosophy. Its T220 monitors and R50 laptops from the early 2000s were both in line with what Apple is doing now, with resolutions of 3840×2400 pixels in a 22inch LCD and 2048×1536 on a 15inch notebook. But then IBM quit the hardware business before they had a chance to hit mass production prices. It sold its assets to Lenovo and everyone raced to the bottom as far as displays went, even to the extent of abandoning the Golden Ratio of 16:10 ratio in favour of the TV standard 1080p.

Text rendering comparison in Retina res - Safari (top) versus Chrome

They got lazy. They tried to foist crap like stereoscopic 3D and glasses on us. Last year’s line-up of gaming laptops was just pitiful, as performance and quality were sacrificed by almost every manufacturer in order to include an expensive 3D display no-one wanted or could even use, because the graphics processors weren’t powerful enough for alternative frame rendering.
There have been some good things in display-land. eIPS has been brilliant over the last couple of years for weaning us off of sub-standard TN panels. Now, in the wake of the MacBook Pro we just have to hope that someone is working on a cost effective, high density eIPS display for release within the next few months. Otherwise Apple’s next Cinema Displays and the inevitable Apple TV will be the devices to intro it. Again.
There are counter arguments to all this, and reasons behind Apple’s timing. Even with the hardware at the MacBook Pro’s disposal framerates aren’t especially high, especially considering the generally low requirements for Diablo and Portal. Introducing higher density displays any earlier would arguably have been too much for graphics cards to keep up with. And as ever, reviewers – and I include myself – need to take some blame for lack of ambition on behalf of hardware vendors because of our relentless focus on price.
By the same logic, though, NVIDIA and AMD would have sold more graphics cards, like they used to gamers upgraded regularly. Plus, 2560×1600 – the resolution of a 30inch display, was playable with a mid-range card several years ago.
Despite being a resolution junkie, I was initially sceptical about Retina displays when they were announced on the iPhone and iPad, and I still can’t really see the advantage over competing tablets and handsets with fewer pixels at those screen sizes. But on the desktop and laptop front I’m convinced. I want this kind of display for all systems, and soon. And so should you.

Funcom making a LEGO Minifigures MMO

A family friendly Lego MMO? Didn't that already happen/fail?

Funcom making a LEGO Minifigures MMO:

Funcom have just announced that they’re making a LEGO Minifigures MMO. It’ll be based on the extensive collection of LEGO Minifigures which includes brides, mummies, baseball players, and one called “Gorilla Suit Guy.” He carries a banana.
It doesn’t sound like the Minifigures MMO will be aimed at the min-maxers. Instead Funcom are focussing on “maximum accessibility” and working closely with the LEGO Group to produce a “broad and enhanced experience.”
“The market for family-friendly online experiences intended for children and youngsters is brimming with potential,” says Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. “Being able to work with a world-renowned brand such as the LEGO® brand to develop an MMO for this audience is incredibly exciting to us as game developers and for Funcom as a company.”
Here’s hoping that Funcom’s MMO doesn’t suffer the same fate as the last LEGO-based MMO. Josh enjoyed LEGO Universe, but it got closed down in January due to a dwindling subscriber base. For more on that, check out his interview with the devs and retrospective on the tricky transition to free-to-play.
Funcom are also due to release a modern-day, non-plastic, MMO next week. The Secret World is due for launch July 3rd. That’s a far more serious affair set in a world where “every myth, conspiracy theory and urban legend” is true.