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Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook Released

New submitter GammaKitsune writes: “The Player’s Handbook for the fifth edition of Dungeons and Dragons, formerly known as “D&D Next, ” released today to major bookstores and online retailers across the U.S. The Player’s Handbook, which contains core rules for gameplay and character creation, is one of thee core rulebooks that developer Wizards of the Coast plans to release in 2014. The Monster Manual is scheduled to release in late September, and the Dungeon Master’s Guide will release in mid November. Also out today is the first of two adventure modules in which players team up to battle against the dragon goddess Tiamat. Fifth edition has a lot to prove following the highly-controversial fourth edition, the rise of competing roleplaying game Pathfinder, and two years of public playtesting. Initial reviews posted on Amazon appear overwhelmingly positive at the time of writing, but more skeptical gamers may wish to take a look at the free “Basic Rules” posted on the official D&D website. The basic rules contain all the bare essentials needed to create a character or run your own adventure, and will serve both as a free introduction for new players and as a holdover for long time players until the remaining two rulebooks are released. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Fifth Edition Dungeons and Dragons Player’s Handbook Released

PayPal Just Made In-App Impulse Buying Way, Way Easier

You know how hard it is to buy anything from your smartphone. You need to look up your card details, tap them out precisely on the tiny screens and pray for the best. PayPal wants to make that process a snap. Read more…

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PayPal Just Made In-App Impulse Buying Way, Way Easier

Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data

itwbennett (1594911) writes In a follow-up to yesterday’s story about the Chinese hackers who stole hospital data of 4.5 million patients, IDG News Service’s Martyn Williams set out to learn why the data, which didn’t include credit card information was so valuable. The answer is depressingly simple: people without health insurance can potentially get treatment by using medical data of one of the hacking victims. John Halamka, chief information officer of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and chairman of the New England Healthcare Exchange Network, said a medical record can be worth between $50 and $250 to the right customer — many times more than the amount typically paid for a credit card number, or the cents paid for a user name and password. ‘If I am one of the 50 million Americans who are uninsured … and I need a million-dollar heart transplant, for $250 I can get a complete medical record including insurance company details, ‘ he said. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Why Chinese Hackers Would Want US Hospital Patient Data

AMD Launches Radeon R7 Series Solid State Drives With OCZ

MojoKid (1002251) writes AMD is launching a new family of products today, but unless you follow the rumor mill closely, it’s probably not something you’d expect. It’s not a new CPU, APU, or GPU. Today, AMD is launching its first line of solid state drives (SSDs), targeted squarely at AMD enthusiasts. AMD is calling the new family of drives, the Radeon R7 Series SSD, similar to its popular mid-range line of graphics cards. The new Radeon R7 Series SSDs feature OCZ and Toshiba technology, but with a proprietary firmware geared towards write performance and high endurance. Open up one of AMD’s new SSDs and you’ll see OCZ’s Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 controller on board—the same controller used in the OCZ Vector 150, though it is clocked higher in these drives. That controller is paired to A19nm Toshiba MLC (Multi-Level Cell) NAND flash memory and a DDR3-1333MHz DRAM cache. The 120GB and 240GB drives sport 512MB of cache memory, while the 480GB model will be outfitted with 1GB. Interestingly enough, AMD Radeon R7 Series SSDs are some of the all-around, highest-performing SATA SSDs tested to date. IOPS performance is among the best seen in a consumer-class SSD, write throughput and access times are highly-competitive across the board, and the drive offered consistent performance regardless of the data type being transferred. Read performance is also strong, though not quite as stand-out as write performance. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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AMD Launches Radeon R7 Series Solid State Drives With OCZ

The Saleen FourSixteen Is A Faster, Louder And More Slippery Tesla Model S

 The Tesla Model S is already a shockingly quick car. The electric drive train will propel the car to 60 miles per hour in just over five seconds. But that’s not fast enough for Steve Saleen, owner of Saleen Automotive, who recently said his company’s upgraded example of the Model S, called the FourSixteen, will sprint to 60 mph in the mid- to low four-second range. Because why not. Read More

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The Saleen FourSixteen Is A Faster, Louder And More Slippery Tesla Model S

Daimler’s Solution For Annoying Out-of-office Email: Delete It

AmiMoJo writes Sure, you can set an out-of-office auto-reply to let others know they shouldn’t email you, but that doesn’t usually stop the messages; you may still have to handle those urgent-but-not-really requests while you’re on vacation. That’s not a problem if you work at Daimler, though. The German automaker recently installed software that not only auto-replies to email sent while staff is away, but deletes it outright. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Daimler’s Solution For Annoying Out-of-office Email: Delete It

Watch How "Electronic Makeup" Completely Transforms This Model’s Face

Nobumichi Asai has used projection mapping to put CGI onto cars, docks, building and more. His latest canvas? A real, live human face. Read more…

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Watch How "Electronic Makeup" Completely Transforms This Model’s Face

This DIY Internet Speedometer Visualizes Network Speed in Real Time

There are plenty of ways you can go about monitoring your network performance, but this setup using a BeagleBone Black is always running and visualizes your speed in a fun, colorful way. Read more…

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This DIY Internet Speedometer Visualizes Network Speed in Real Time

Why did JJ Abrams make these new stormtrooper helmets for Star Wars?

The new Star Wars hardware keeps trickling out. This is the new stormtrooper helmet, an updated model that looks way more modern but also less menacing than the original one. The left one is an actual unit in a warehouse. The right one is a render. They look nice but I have a question for all of you: Read more…

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Why did JJ Abrams make these new stormtrooper helmets for Star Wars?