Recreating a 17th Century Painting in Photoshop Is Basically Magic

Using stock images and Johannes Vermeer’s 1664 painting The Concert as a base, photographer  Erik Almas admirably recreated the lost masterpiece in Photoshop. Heck, it might be able to fool you into thinking it were the real thing… if you were standing and squinting from very far away. Still. It’s pretty neat to see Almas’ workflow and how creative he gets in trying to mimic the original. Read more…

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Recreating a 17th Century Painting in Photoshop Is Basically Magic

Ticketmaster will start selling tickets on Facebook this month

You can already buy things on Facebook, and later this month, you’ll be able to snag concert tickets without leaving the site, too. Ticketmaster VP Dan Armstrong told BuzzFeed in an interview that the ticket retailer would begin selling admission to live music and other events through the social network’s site and mobile app before April’s end. While Ticketmaster isn’t the first to coordinate purchases from Facebook, making tickets to events available on the social channel seems like a good move for both companies. Facebook users already RSVP to events on the regular, so there’s certainly a convenience in having the tickets easily accessible there. You know, so you can catch up when one of your pals RSVPs to a show you either didn’t know about or forgot was coming to town. It also keeps you on Facebook longer rather than having to head elsewhere to complete the transaction. As you might expect, Ticketmaster is hoping the integration will lead to more ticket sales. Details are scarce on exactly how the process will work, but BuzzFeed does mention that Facebook stands to collect “a standard affiliate fee” from each purchase. We’ll have to wait and see if that will affect those pesky service charges, but you will still have to claim any tickets you buy from the Ticketmaster site after the initial transaction. To start, the option will be limited to a select few general admission events, so it could be a while before you can use the feature to grab all of your concert tickets. And when it’s time to head home afterwards, just fire up Facebook Messenger to hail a ride . Source: BuzzFeed

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Ticketmaster will start selling tickets on Facebook this month

AT&T’s plan to watch your Web browsing—and what you can do about it

If you have AT&T’s gigabit Internet service and wonder why it seems so affordable, here’s the reason—AT&T is boosting profits by rerouting all your Web browsing to an in-house traffic scanning platform, analyzing your Internet habits, then using the results to deliver personalized ads to the websites you visit, e-mail to your inbox, and junk mail to your front door. In a few select areas including Austin, Texas, and Kansas City, Missouri—places where AT&T competes against the $70-per-month Google Fiber—Ma Bell offers its own $70-per-month ” GigaPower ” fiber-to-the-home Internet access. But signing up for the deal also opts customers in to AT&T’s “Internet Preferences” program, which gives the company permission to examine each customer’s Web traffic in exchange for a price that matches Google’s. AT&T charges at least another $29 a month ($99 total) to provide standalone Internet service that doesn’t  perform this extra scanning of your Web traffic. The privacy fee can balloon to more than $60 for bundles including TV or phone service. Certain modem rental and installation fees also apply only to service plans without Internet Preferences. Read 67 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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AT&T’s plan to watch your Web browsing—and what you can do about it

Spotify Now Provides Unlimited Free Music on its Desktop App

Until now, Spotify’s free accounts provided unlimited as-supported streaming via its desktop client for six months, until it then imposed a cap on your streaming. Now, though, that cap is being scrapped. Read more…        

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Spotify Now Provides Unlimited Free Music on its Desktop App

An Artist Got 16 Bucks for a Song That Pandora Streamed a Million Times

A million of anything is pretty much always an insanely impossible number. Winning a million dollars, having a million Twitter followers, selling a million products—anything done a million times is something to be proud of. But maybe not getting your song streamed on Pandora a million times. All you get sometimes is 16 measly dollars. Or $16.89 to be exact. Read more…        

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An Artist Got 16 Bucks for a Song That Pandora Streamed a Million Times

Microsoft and Symantec Just Busted a Major Cyber Crime Ring

It sounds like the plot of a movie: two major software corporations join together to shut down an evil global cyber crime operation and engage in wacky hijinks along the way. While the latter can be neither confirmed nor denied, according to an exclusive report by Reuters , Microsoft and Symantec did shut down servers that had been controlling hundreds of thousands of PCs without their users being any the wiser. More »

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Microsoft and Symantec Just Busted a Major Cyber Crime Ring