The MPC Sample Key looks like the MPC Sample just with keys instead of pads. | Image: Akai
The MPC Sample Key isn't even formally announced yet, but Akai is already showing off what the modding community is cooking up through vibe coding. Akai has decided to embrace the explosion of hackers and custom firmware developers by giving them early access to the device, which will have open-source firmware.
It will likely run some version of the same software found on the MPC Sample, but with tweaks to accommodate the traditional keyboard, pitch, and mod wheels. Unlike the higher-end MPC Key 37, however, the Sample Key doesn't have pads. Instead, you play back samples with the keys.
For the last several years, Readwise has been building tools for power readers. There's the eponymous product, Readwise, which stores and categorizes your Kindle highlights to help you remember what you've read. There's Readwise Reader, an app for reading newsletters, PDFs, and web articles you've saved for later. And now there's Readwise Books, a full-fledged platform for buying, reading, and talking about books.
Readwise Books is currently in beta, available through invite or to existing Readwise subscribers. I've been testing the app for a few days, and it's a much bigger take on reading than most. Tristan Homsi and Daniel Doyon, Readwis …
TikTok is launching an in-app restaurant guide in a challenge to other platforms like Yelp and even Google Maps.
The company on Wednesday announced the launch of Must Eat, a new section of the TikTok app built on 40 million posts, reviews, and comments about dining on the platform. The new feature uses videos and discussions of buzzy local businesses to create restaurant recommendation guides. Users can leave reviews of restaurants, call and make reservations, and search for nearby businesses on a map.
At a launch event this week, TikTok US CEO Adam Presser called Must Eat "the compilation of all of the conversation that's happening on the …
In Marvel's VisionQuest, a superpowered robot tries to better understand humanity by getting lost in elaborate, digital daydreams in which he and other artificial intelligence-powered beings live together in a home. The series is deeply fantastical, yet it plays with some of the ideas that have come to dominate the conversation about real-world generative artificial intelligence, exploring whether we should look at thinking machines as people and if AI truly poses the kind of existential danger that should keep us up at night. It's also a reminder how aggressively Silicon Valley has used the trappings of science fiction to sell us on its AI …
Fans cheer during game two of the 2026 World Series between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Tampa Bay Rays | Getty Images
On October 2nd, just as Major League Baseball's Division Series was kicking off, the main MLB Instagram and TikTok accounts posted a video hyping up the teams still in the running for the World Series. It featured clips of players from the Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, and more sliding into home plate, hitting homers, and celebrating hits - standard fare for a highlight reel. What really makes the montage, though, is that it's set to an Olivia Rodrigo song.
The song, "My Way," is an album track - not even a single - from Rodrigo's latest record. It's not exactly the soundtrack one might expect from an MLB-produc …
On October 31, 1992, the BBC aired a 90-minute documentary-style program called Ghostwatch, which was promoted as being broadcast live from “the most haunted house in Britain.” Presenting the show that evening were such trusted BBC personalities as Michael Parkinson and children’s TV host Sarah Greene. This helped lend it some credibility because, in actuality, the whole thing was staged and had been filmed months in advance. Despite that, millions of viewers believed they were watching a real paranormal investigation unfold.
The story revolved around Pamela Early and her two daughters, who were reportedly living with a ghost known as Pipes. The alleged poltergeist was given the nickname due to his habit of banging on their water pipes. As time went on, the family was subjected to more and more terrifying experiences, and Pipes could be spotted lingering in the background during certain scenes. By the end, Pipes “seized control” of the cameras and the folks watching from the TV studio were shown fleeing as the paranormal activity appeared to spread beyond the house.
THE BBC’S ‘Ghostwatch’ Traumatized Countless CHILDREN
Ghostwatch was so convincing that the network received upwards of 20,000 calls while the show was on the air. Evidently, many of the 11 million viewers who tuned in were children, who’d been traumatized by the experience. “It was partly that it scared people, but the complaints were actually more that the BBC had made them feel like mugs,” recalled screenwriter Stephen Volk. “People felt the BBC was something they could trust, and the programme had destroyed that trust,” he continued.
The broadcast was even blamed for the suicide of a teenage boy, whose parents said he’d been hearing banging noises in their house like the ones from the show. This allegedly terrified him to the point that he hanged himself five days later. In the boy’s pocket was a note to his mother, saying, “If there [are] ghosts, I will now be one and I will always be with you as one.” An investigation by the Broadcast Standards Commission concluded that the BBC had made a “deliberate attempt to cultivate a sense of menace,” and the network quickly issued an apology.
Ghostwatch was never broadcast on the BBC again and wouldn’t be released on home video for another decade.
On February 9, 1956, 96-year-old Samuel J. Seymour appeared as a mystery guest on the game show I’ve Got a Secret. Seymour’s secret, which the panel was tasked with guessing, was that he’d seen John Wilkes Booth shoot Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Based on Seymour’s age, panelist Bill Cullen quickly figured out that the answer had something to do with the Civil War, and Jayne Meadows (sister of Audrey Meadows from The Honeymooners) then connected what Seymour had witnessed to Lincoln. “Was this a pleasant thing?” Meadows asked, to which Seymour replied, “Not very pleasant, I don’t think.”
Once the cat was out of the bag, host Garry Moore went on to explain that Seymour was just five years old when he was taken to see the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., where Lincoln was assassinated. What Moore found especially interesting about Seymour’s story was that he wasn’t focused on the president because he didn’t realize he’d been shot. Instead, when Seymour saw Booth jump from the presidential box onto the stage, his only concern was for the man he thought had fallen out of the balcony.
“I was shot 50 times, at least in my dreams”
In a 1954 article referenced by Moore during the show, Seymour went into further detail regarding his experience at Ford’s Theater. According to him, his godmother lifted him up at the beginning of the play so that he could see the president’s arrival from across the theater. “He was a stern-looking man,” Seymour recalled. “I guess I just thought he looked stern because of his whiskers, because he was smiling and waving to the crowd,” he continued.
Eventually, a shot rang out, and Seymour noticed that Lincoln was slumped forward in his chair. “Hurry, hurry, let’s go help the poor man who fell down,” Seymour begged, after seeing Booth try to make his escape. “[My godmother] swept me into her arms and held me close and somehow we got outside the theater,” Seymour remembered. “That night I was shot 50 times, at least in my dreams—and I sometimes still relive the horror of Lincoln’s assassination, dozing in my rocker as an old codger like me is bound to do,” he concluded.
Seymour appeared on I’ve Got a Secret just a couple of months prior to his death. By the time he shared his story publicly, he was believed to be the last living witness to Lincoln’s murder.
On the August 13, 1997 episode of The Howard Stern Show, Stern and co-host Robin Quivers took a call from a man named Clay, who told them he was a serial killer. Clay was unusually calm from the beginning as he revealed that he’d supposedly murdered 12 prostitutes up until that point. He also said he had a pretty good idea of why he committed the heinous crimes. “I think I just do it for the sense of the power,” Clay explained.
From there, Clay got into the specifics of how he carried out the murders. According to him, most of the women were killed with a hammer after he’d had sex with them—except for one, whom he decided to strangle. Two of these incidents reportedly took place in parking garages, whereas the rest happened on the side of the road. “Dude, you’ve gotta have a lot of anger in you,” Stern suggested, to which Clay bluntly replied, “Yes.”
Stern then questioned Clay about whether or not he’d had an abusive childhood or if he’d killed small animals growing up, like some serial killers have been known to, but the host didn’t make any progress getting to the bottom of things. Perhaps the most bizarre detail Clay shared during this conversation was his desire to leave his mark by using the fingers of the dead women to paint pictures. Evidently, he hadn’t gotten around to doing that just yet.
In the end, Stern hung up on Clay without obtaining much useful information from him, other than the way he allegedly murdered his victims and his claim of being from New Orleans. To this day, it’s unclear if the caller was serious, though many have noted that his story somewhat lines up with the crimes of the Storyville Slayer, who killed at least 12 prostitutes in New Orleans between 1991 and 1995. However, the problem with that theory is the man police suspected to be the murderer was arrested weeks before the call to Stern was made.
You can listen to Stern’s full exchange with the mystery man below.
From the bright minds that brought you FTX Arena and NBA Top Shot NFT maketplace (where sales last month dropped to $762,781, which is a 99.66 percent decrease compared to the February 2021 peak of $226,350,843), the NBA announced Monday that it has new "preferred" prediction market deals for Kalshi and Polymarket, as well as a memorandum of understanding with the US CFTC about how to manage the relationships. It also announced an expansion of its DraftKings deal to include prediction markets, and says that more expansions will be announced with others soon.
The NBA is already facing scandals after Jontay Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy …
The RealReal, a secondhand luxury fashion consignment retailer, said it's updating its bot defense system, effectively making it harder for AI agents to shop on its site.
The change comes days after The Vergereported that an AI agent could be used to take advantage of The RealReal's item reserve system. On the retailer's website, an item goes "on hold" and is unavailable for other customers to buy for 20 minutes once it's placed in a user's shopping cart. Using Meta's Muse, The Verge was able to instruct the AI agent to continuously re-add The RealReal listings in a shopping cart as soon as the 20-minute hold had expired, effectively block …
On October 24, the legendary actress Amy Irving made an appearance at the revered Jacob Burns Film Center in celebration of the iconic horror movieCarrie‘s 50th birthday. The special event came as part of an ongoing retrospective dubbed “Starring Amy Irving.” Throughout the evening at the Burns, Irving couldn’t have been more lovely: Not only did she speak beautifully and answer every question as informatively as possible, but she kindly signed and posed for fans. Located in Pleasantville, NY, the Burns has been championed by everyone from Ron Howard to the late Jonathan Demme, so it was great that this fine institution was able to welcome Irving back. Irving’s husband, Kenneth Bowser, actually sits on the Board of Directors.
The Burns’ screening of Carriegave viewers an opportunity to appreciate Irving’s mastery of her craft, as she triumphed in the role of Sue Snell. In addition, attendees were moved by the remarkable performances of Irving’s co-stars, as Sissy Spacek, who will forever be remembered for playing the lead. With its outstanding cinematography, artful lighting, and dazzling colors, Carrie, which many of us have seen only at home, was a joy to behold on the big screen. The film remains refreshing in its charm, which is of a rare, human breed that has since become more or less extinct. Of course, this artistic yet organic milestone proves as relevant as ever in its exploration of bullying and overall themes.
Amy Irving in Carrie
‘Carrie’ Star Amy Irving Reveals the Surprising Story Behind the Movie’s Iconic Ending
After the screening, rock-star writer and curator Eric Hynes joined Irving for a fantastic Q&A. As always, Mr. Hynes served as the ideal moderator, steering the conversation in all the right directions and later kindly opening the door to audience questions when the time came. Upon taking the stage, Irving, who looked gorgeous, revealed that seeing her very own mother, Priscilla Pointer, who played her parent in Carrie and five other films, brought her to tears. Pointer passed away in 2025, and Irving broke hearts when saying, “I just miss her so much.”
De Palma had wanted Pointer for the part; Irving emphasized that the director really took her under his wing. Although she was clearly born into an incredible acting family, made her stage debut as a baby, and studied the art form, Irving stated that De Palma taught her all she needed to know to move forward in the business while collaborating on Carrie and The Fury (1978) — her first and second motion pictures. She reflected, “He’s a real teddy bear, so he was really sweet with all of us. He held our hands.” De Palma actually volunteered himself to coach Irving for a Star Wars (1977) screen test, despite her initial objection that she had already committed to Carrie — auditions for Carrie and Star Wars had been held together, as De Palma and George Lucas are famously friends. While Irving wasn’t cast in Star Wars, she was the Princess Leia actress Carrie Fisher’s “date for the first time she ever saw Star Wars.” Irving continued, “She nearly broke my hand she was holding it so tight.” Star Wars wasn’t the first time that De Palma tried to help Irving win over his friends — Irving amusingly described how he set her up with her now-ex-husband Steven Spielberg twice.
In an ultra-cute anecdote about Spielberg and Lucas, Irving shared how the pair coped with the stress of releases, as box office numbers were important to both men, “Every time Steven’s or George’s movies opened, we would have to go to Hawaii so they weren’t there for the opening, and they would build sandcastles, and that was their way of avoiding it.” When speaking about the camaraderie between these revolutionary filmmakers, Martin Scorsese, and Francis Ford Coppola, it became apparent that the old canonical works were great due to the genuine spirits of those involved; authentically fabulous people like Irving made Carrie the classic it is.
In regard to the grave scene toward the very end of Carrie, Irving, who became irradiant and angelic in her white dress, recalls De Palma having her walk backwards down the street to achieve a subtly otherworldly quality and adds, “And then, he said I had to walk into this pit of rocks, and they were very sharp… He goes, ‘Amy, you have to glide. This is a dream.’ And I’m like, ‘But it really hurts.’ So, I’m pretending it doesn’t hurt as I walk out of there. And then, Sissy insisted on it being her arm [that reaches up from the ground]. She has very specific arms. And she had us bury her alive, literally. The thing about that ending is it wasn’t written in the film; we had no ending… They hadn’t decided who was going to survive, so everybody wanted to survive. I remember Betty Buckley campaigning like crazy. She actually told Brian, ‘I’m the more expressive actress. I should live.’ It was crazy.” Surprisingly, Irving harbored some doubt as to whether the killer scene worked until she saw the amazing crowd reaction once it hit theaters.
As one audience member at the Burns pointed out, the complexity of Carrie‘s characters really enriches the film. Irving commented, “I’m the nice girl. Some people didn’t get that, because I’m not very nice in the beginning. That was a really ugly moment in all of our lives, but then she’s the one that has a conscience and does right by it all.”
In 1997, Trailers From Hell co-founder Elizabeth Stanley snapped a picture of rock critic Brett Meisner at Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris. What Meisner claimed he didn’t notice until five years later was that the ghostly figure of a man who looks an awful lot like Morrison can be seen standing behind him in the photo. Check it out for yourself right here:
The story spread like crazy on the internet, with many, of course, debating whether or not it was a ghost or some kind of fake. Meisner eventually agreed to have both the picture and the negative sent for extensive analysis. According to the 2009 book Ghosts Caught on Film 2: Photographs of the Unexplained, researchers who studied the photo back then determined that it hadn’t been faked. However, they were apparently unable to establish what caused the illusion of a ghost in the background—if it is, in fact, an illusion.
The Creepy 1997 Photograph That Allegedly Shows Jim Morrison’s Ghost
For starters, the folks who examined the picture ruled out the possibility that a trick of the light was responsible for the apparition. They also said that image manipulation—the most plausible explanation—appeared “unlikely.” In conclusion, the book called the image “unexplainable.” But that didn’t end up being the final word on the subject.
In 2010, members of the Miami Paranormal Research Society declared that the photograph had been fabricated using the Pepper’s ghost illusion technique—a process that involves projecting an image off of a sheet of glass. The proof of this, they explained, is that you can see breaks in the arms of the “ghost” if you look close enough. The so-called phantom person, whoever they are, clearly follows the contours of the doorway they were allegedly projected onto as well. If the technique was indeed utilized here, the negative would show no signs of alteration.
As for the rumor that Tom Petty had taken the picture in question, the team in Miami found no evidence of that. Stanley publicly acknowledged that she was responsible for it in 2014, but didn’t mention anything about it being a hoax.
Apocalypse Now was an extremely troubled production that nearly cost both Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Sheen their lives, but it also came close to featuring a few people who were already deceased. According to the film’s co-producer, Gray Frederickson, rumors that human corpses would be used in the movie were going around early on, and he initially dismissed them as being “ludicrous.” Then a prop guy said something one morning that made it clear this wasn’t just some tall tale.
After Sheen’s wife complained that there were dead rats on the temple set, production designer Dean Tavoularis told Frederickson that they were being kept there for “real atmosphere.” That’s when the aforementioned prop guy chimed in, saying, “Wait till he hears about the dead bodies.” Frederickson was then taken to the prop store, conveniently located behind the tent where everybody ate dinner. Inside, he was shown a row of cadavers laid out on the floor.
The Time Police Found a Room Full of Human Corpses on the Set of ‘Apocalypse Now’
The source of the corpses was a man who supplied bodies to medical schools to use for autopsies. However, it was later discovered that he was a graverobber. “The police showed up on our set and took all of our passports,” Frederickson recalled during a 2009 interview with The Independent. “They didn’t know we hadn’t killed these people because the bodies were unidentified,” he continued. “I was pretty damn worried for a few days, but they got to the truth and put the guy in jail.”
Eventually, a large truck full of soldiers showed up and the bodies were thrown inside. “Where do we take these?” one of the men asked. Frederickson suggested a cemetery, but that was off the table because nobody was willing to pay for their burial. “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll dump them somewhere,” Frederickson was informed, just before they drove away. In the end, he never did find out what became of the mystery cadavers, but thankfully they didn’t wind up in the movie.
Before he decided to only make movies with the word “Avatar” in the title, James Cameron was planning to shoot a documentary in space. The filmmaker initially approached the Russians, who agreed to let him visit the Mir space station, but he eventually set his sights on the ISS instead. As Cameron explained to NASA administrator Daniel Goldin, who was overseeing the assembly of the ISS at the time, he saw Mars as the future, and getting there would require a lengthy flight. For that reason, Cameron wanted to observe what it was like for people who were already living in space.
Goldin considered Cameron’s proposal, but ultimately felt it would be too difficult to pull off. Alternatively, Goldwin offered Cameron the opportunity to take a shuttle flight. That way, he’d at least get to see space for himself and view the Earth from above. After thinking it over, Cameron declined to go on the flight, sticking to his guns about traveling to space on his own terms, even if it never came to be.
How James Cameron Narrowly Avoided One of NASA’s Deadliest Disasters
Cameron’s rejection made Goldin realize how determined the director was to make the project happen, and he finally gave him the green light to venture to the ISS. Cameron then flew to Houston to train for his trip, and started mapping out the logistics of the shoot. “And they were going to fly me,” Cameron told GQin 2022, “and then Columbia was lost.” For context, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated while reentering the Earth’s atmosphere in 2003, killing all seven people on board.
The eerie part of all this is the Columbia flight was actually the one Cameron had turned down. “I f—king saved my own life by choosing the higher path!” Cameron recalled. When asked if he had any regrets about not going to space, Cameron said, “Zero,” adding, “The stuff I did instead was equally cool. Yeah, it would’ve been great and I think if I had really, really put my mind to it, I could have remanifested that a few years later with a better camera system and a better plan.”
Horror movies have never gotten much love at the Academy Awards. And even when they do get some attention, it’s rarely in the Best Picture category. To date, only nine films in the genre have been nominated for the highly coveted award: The Exorcist, Jaws, The Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Black Swan, Get Out, The Substance, the 2025 version of Frankenstein, and Sinners. To make matters worse, just one of those actually went home with the Oscar.
The lone winner in question was The Silence of the Lambs, which pulled off another extremely rare feat at the 1992 Academy Awards: it swept the so-called “Big Five” categories. For the record, that includes Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Screenplay. That evening, the Jodie Foster-Anthony Hopkins classic became the third film in history to accomplish that. It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had done so previously (in 1935 and 1976, respectively).
The Oscars Have Snubbed Horror for Decades, but One Movie Broke the Curse
But while the members of the Motion Picture Academy have shown a significant lack of interest in horror over the years, it isn’t the most snubbed genre there is, believe it or not. For instance, no animated or comic book film has ever won Best Picture, though three movies of each kind have received nods. And as far as disaster films go, Titanic remains the single, solitary Best Picture winner. That’s more than we can say for documentaries, which haven’t even been given the opportunity to walk away with the sought-after trophy.
Why Oscars are so elusive for certain genres is unclear. Circling back around to scary movies, it seems like a huge oversight that films like Psycho and The Shining weren’t major winners—in fact, The Shining was nominated for a whopping zero Academy Awards. At the end of the day, very few horror movies have won Oscars since the ceremony began in 1929—some of the more notable examples being Rosemary’s Baby, The Omen, and Alien. However, this past year Frankenstein, Sinners, and Weapons were all surprisingly victorious, so maybe things are finally starting to change.
On June 7, 2016, James Wan’s first sequel to 2013’s The Conjuring, fittingly titled The Conjuring 2, had its world premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. 10 days later, two Indian men attending an evening screening of the film in Tiruvannamalai became the subject of a creepy mystery that doesn’t appear to have ever been solved. According to a report from The Times of India, one of the men complained of chest pain during the movie’s climax and fainted.
The 65-year-old was then rushed to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead. For whatever reason, the hospital staff asked the man’s friend to bring his body to a medical college on the outskirts of town for postmortem, instead of transporting him themselves. And that’s where things get even eerier. You see, as it turns out, the corpse never arrived at its destination, and we still don’t know why.
The Bizarre Story of a Man Who Died Watching ‘The Conjuring 2,’ and Then Vanished
Evidently, both the living man and his deceased friend’s body disappeared after leaving the hospital. Police were said to have been inquiring with the different hotels in the area to try and figure out who the dead guy was. However, they don’t seem to have had any success identifying either of the two men.
The New York Post noted that the friend was seen hurriedly bringing the body to an auto-rickshaw that the pair had apparently been staying in. No additional information has come to light since. Naturally, this has led to some speculation as to whether or not the story was real, but it’s worth pointing out that it was covered by several reputable news sources at the time.
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