The gist: Akai teased its new MPC Sample Key on Instagram earlier this week, and said it plans to open-source its software so the modding community can hack it to their hearts' delight. While there's no word yet on when the device will launch or how much it will cost, The Verge has received exclusive images of […]
The gist: 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
The gist: Steve Jobs famously called touchscreen laptops "ergonomically terrible," and for over a decade, Apple stridently refused to make one. Today that all changes with the MacBook Pro - the company's first laptop to embrace a touch interface. While it's unlikely that Apple can fix all the "terrible" ergonomics of having to l
The gist: As is tradition, iFixit has torn open the latest iPhone and laid its parts bare on a table. It found some interesting details about how Apple might be hiding the crease on the Duo's folding screen and gave it a 5/10 repairability score. That might not seem particularly high, but it's the best score the […]
The gist: In my mind, Spooky Season music comes in two distinct flavors. There are the fun, occasionally goofy songs like "The Monster Mash" and John Carpenter's "Halloween Theme." Then there is the genuinely terrifying: Throbbing Gristle, The Body, or Scott Walker's The Drift. This 2006 album from the singer-songwriter is truly
The gist: Social media and the iPhone Duo subreddit are filled with reports of Apple's foldable failing quickly and in spectacular fashion. Some users report having the phone for only a few hours before the hinge seems to catch on something, then audibly crack and break the screen. Tellingly, the cracks all seem to happen in the
The gist: I know many of you are mourning the loss of the Arc browser, and I get it. It felt like the first app in a long time to really offer a new approach to browser design. Atlassian bought the company last year and shifted its focus to developing Dia, its even more AI-focused browser. And […]
The gist: Instagram is continuing its expansion into living rooms with Instagram for TV, for Apple TV. The company first started testing a version of the platform focused on Reels, live streams, and other video content, blown up for a bigger screen in December of last year. Then, in June, it launched a slew of new features […]
The gist: The mods at r/opensource posted new submission rules that, among other things, banned projects that use AI. The post made Saturday evening opens by saying, "If your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource. AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source […]
The gist: BBC's Blue Planet III is looking to prove its authenticity by leaving in the less-than-perfect shots. Previous incarnations of the nature series were defined by their gorgeous, crystal-clear footage that seemed almost too good to be real. But one dead giveaway of AI is when things look too polished and seamless. To cou
The gist: On Thursday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed the Artificial Intelligence Deceptive Advertising Act into law, requiring disclosures on AI-generated ads. The law requires any ad - whether it's a still image, video, audio, or text - that "has been significantly modified or generated by artificial intelligence" t
The gist: Lindsay Powell, who releases records under the name Fielded, has spent most of her career subverting expectations and genre conventions. According to their Bandcamp page, Fielded started as an experimental noise project before growing into something closer to R&B. But from moment one, her take on the genre was restless
The gist: It feels like Apple's Welcome Home event just happened. And the iPhone Duo announcement isn't all that far in our rearview mirror, either. Yet, the company is back with another launch, focused on the MacBook Pro, it looks like. Its "Pro and tell" event is scheduled for October 28th at 1PM ET in Los Angeles. […]
The gist: Teenage Engineering is branching out into instrument amps with the previously leaked EP-35, a multi-input, multi-instrument, battery-powered amp with built-in effects. The back of the unit has a line-in port, as well as a 1/4-inch guitar input and an XLR input for mics, including mics that require phantom power. You ca
The gist: Two vulnerabilities found in the programming language PHP put enormous swaths of the internet in danger. By some accounts, up to 70 percent of websites use PHP in some capacity. It powers Wikipedia, WordPress, Drupal, and a host of other popular sites and platforms, including DeviantArt and 4Chan, which were temporaril
The gist: Two bugs found with AI are behind major issues today for 4chan, DeviantArt, Wikipedia, and the blog where the bar around the corner posts pictures of people's dogs. The "critical vulnerabilities" were discovered in the PHP programming language, which underpins much of the internet, including any site built on WordPress
The gist: Serato DJ for iOS is finally bringing the company's pro-level DJ suite to the iPhone and iPad. Until now, the company had only dipped its toes into mobile software, with apps like Pyro that basically just added some autofades between songs in a playlist. This is the first time most of the features of its […]
The gist: Arturia is adding to its Freak line of proudly weird digital synths with the MiniFreak 49. Under the hood, it's almost identical to the current MiniFreak, but it adds a number of more professional features and some interface improvements. The most noticeable change is that, rather than the MiniFreak's 37 minikeys or th
The gist: If you spend any time on r/synthesizers or watch a lot of synth videos on YouTube, you've probably noticed the explosion of custom firmware for hardware synthesizers, samplers, and grooveboxes. What unites almost all of them is that they were made possible by increasingly sophisticated vibe-coding tools. These sorts of
The gist: Now, former Savannah police officer Amber Harpe was fired in August following a department investigation that found she had shared her Flock login information with her husband, Tyler Harpe, an ICE agent. SPD does not share its Flock data with ICE and said sharing access to the system violated the department's security
The gist: Mister Organ doesn't reach the level of societal horror of The Act of Killing or the creepypasta-meets-true-crime gruesomeness of Beware the Slenderman, but there's something deeply unsettling about Michael Organ and his intimate campaign of terror against everyone who enters his life. Mister Organ is a documentary by
The gist: Carolyn Marvin was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after blocking the path of an Uber delivery robot and refusing to get out of the way. Marvin told Philadelphia's ABC13 "I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers and so, I have been protesting them whenever I saw them by standing in front […
The gist: Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York's 15th congressional district in the Bronx introduced the Power To The Players Act this week. If passed, the bill would direct the Federal Trade Commission to establish regulations that guarantee consumers ownership of a game when they pay for it, rather than a licensing agreement. It's
The gist: Dinosaur Jr. frontman J Mascis is known as something of a slacker guitar god. He stands stoically onstage, barely moving, as he seemingly effortlessly works through deft guitar solos and lopsided riffs. Unfortunately, Mascis has developed a similar reputation as an interview subject, quietly sitting and offering deft n
The gist: During a rally on Saturday, October 17th, in Highland Heights, Kentucky, Donald Trump bragged about how much more powerful and influential he was during his second term. While listing off his accomplishments, he mentioned his decision to rename the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario. "This is a much more powerful term. I
The gist: Just ahead of the wider release of Alex Gibney's Musk documentary, TikTok has banned the film's social media account from its platform. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film's distributor, Bleecker Street, was informed Friday afternoon that a "permane
The gist: In 2024, Elon Musk promised to give away $1 million a day to a randomly selected registered voter in a swing state. That prompted legal challenges, raised questions about its legality, and drew lawsuits from two Arizona residents claiming the lottery was a fraud. Musk has now agreed to settle the two lawsuits filed in
The gist: After backlash, Meta is updating its terms again to remove language that suggested it could scrape content from sites, including news sites, to train its AI. Specifically, the following language no longer appears on the commercial terms page: … Meta may use any content from such domains, web pages, or URLs to provide,
The gist: It's hard to overstate Jad Abumrad's impact on the podcasting world. He created and hosted Dolly Parton's America and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, two Peabody Award-winning shows that offered unprecedented looks at the lives of two of the most important music icons of the last century. Before that, though, he created Radiol
The gist: Sony has announced a trio of new Walkman portable media players that start at an already absurd $1,899.99 for the NW-ZX900 and climb all the way up to $5,899 for the gold-plated NW-WM1ZM3. Sandwiched in between is the $2,999.99 Walkman NW-WM1AM3, which is nearly identical to the WM1ZM3, just minus the gaudy gold shell.
