From the Rosetta Stone to a Charlie Chaplin film, not all amazing discoveries were actually intentional. Cracked has a great list of shocking discoveries that were complete accidents.

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Amazing Discoveries People Stumbled Into

An anonymous reader writes “If you used Ticketmaster’s website to buy tickets between October 21, 1999 and October 19, 2011, you’re in for a windfall. Well, a $1.50 per ticket order windfall. Because of a proposed class action settlement, Ticketmaster is being forced to credit $1.50 per ticket order (up to 17 orders) to customers because they profited from ‘processing fees’ without declaring as much. And despite the reparations, Ticketmaster can continue to profit off transactions — they just have to say they’re doing so on their website.”

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Ticketmaster Customers, Get Ready For Your (Tiny) Class-Action Payout

It sounds insane, but DARPA recently laid down a challenge to computer scientists: work out how to reconstruct shredded pages of paper. The winning team has finished — two days ahead of schedule. More »

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DARPA’s Almost-Impossible Challenge to Reconstruct Shredded Documents: Solved [Darpa]

Ars Technica has a small gallery of the latest Wikileaks dump, consisting of brochures from companies that sell malicious software to governments for use in spying on their citizens. I spoke at length with one of the sources for these and we agreed that it was freakishly weird and scary — I’ve spent the past two months in a bit of a paranoid stupor as a result. On the other hand, I have seen enough product brochures to know that companies often stretch the truth when they’re pimping their products, and I wouldn’t expect truth-in-advertising ethics from vichy nerds that specialize in violating the UN Declaration of Human Rights.

One product marketed by HackingTeam is the Remote Control System, malware that infects computers and smartphones in order to enable covert surveillance. The company says that its trojan can intercept encrypted communication, including Skype voice calls. They prominently advertise the fact that the malware can be installed remotely. They say that it can scale up to monitor “hundreds of thousands of targets” and is capable of being deployed to Apple, Android, Symbian, and Blackberry mobile devices.

Gallery: how the surveillance industry markets spyware to governments

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Brochures from the companies that sell malware to governments

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Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, The Piano Guys brought us Cello Wars. Steven Sharp Nelson plays several of the various themes from the Star Wars films on two cellos with light sabers. Then Darth Vader and Chewbacca dance. I think you’ll enjoy it. -Thanks, Will Findlay!

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Cello Wars

Good news Charter customers, you’re getting a speed bump! The DOCSIS 3.0-based cable service is boosting both download and upload speeds across all tiers of its service — starting at the bottom with its Express package, which will be a 15 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up offering from now on. The “flagship” Plus level is getting its rates almost doubled from 18 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up to 30 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up, offering you plenty of bandwidth for streaming, torrenting and browsing all at the same time. The fastest connection is getting not just a new speed (100 Mbps down), but a new name — Ultra 100. Sadly, your $60 a month for the big bits doesn’t get you particularly blazing upload speeds. Charter’s tops out at a pretty modest 5 Mbps up. Check out the PR after the break for a few more details.

Continue reading Charter Cable boosts downloads to 100Mbps, keeps uploads limited to a modest 5Mbps

Charter Cable boosts downloads to 100Mbps, keeps uploads limited to a modest 5Mbps originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Charter Cable boosts downloads to 100Mbps, keeps uploads limited to a modest 5Mbps

You can do just about anything to an image with Photoshop, but if you don’t have the cash to shell out, free program the GIMP—available for Windows, Linux, and OS X—can take you pretty far. Here are our favorite Photoshop how-tos that also work in the GIMP. More »

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Top 10 Photoshop Tricks You Can Use Without Buying Photoshop [Video]

wasimkadak writes “One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet, and — since last year — the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published, and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.”

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Swiss Gov't: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal

While it won’t likely mean your old card can magically run the latest games on ultra settings, overclocking your video card is a solid way to eke a bit of extra gaming performance out of your computer. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do it properly. More »

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How to Overclock Your Video Card and Boost Your Gaming Performance [How To]