Before inventing Auto-Tune, the software that would change the music industry forever, Andy Hildebrand was a research scientist in the oil industry.

Working for Exxon Production Research and then Landmark Graphics, a company he co-founded, Hildebrand developed software for processing data from reflection seismology, a method of estimating properties of Earth's subsurface using reflected seismic waves. His innovations were great for finding oil, and they reportedly made him a lot of money.

Here's a screenshot of Landmark's geophysical analysis software today:

But reflection seismology was not his first love. A professionally trained flutist since a young age, Hildebrand really wanted to be involved in music, and he found a way to transfer his skills to that field in 1990 when he launched Antares Audio Technologies, a company originally focused on digital music processing and sampling software.

His breakthrough with Auto-Tune was inspired by a fluke comment in 1996 or 1997, when a distributor's wife mentioned how great it would be to have a device that kept her singing in tune, according to Greg Milner's "Perfecting Sound Forever."

Hildebrand thought this over and realized that the type of processing he used in the oil industry could also correct pitch. As he explained on PBS's NOVA years later: 

And here's a screenshot of Auto Tune's music software — note the similarities:

Although there were ways to correct pitch before Auto-Tune, it wasn't easy. Auto-Tune was incredibly good and incredibly easy, among other things allowing users to set a key and then have the software automatically correct notes to hit the right pitch.

"People couldn't believe what they were hearing," Hildebrand told Milner about debuting the software in the late 90s. "I had trouble convincing several of them that I wasn't pulling wool over their eyes."

For Hildebrand creating the software was his way of allowing artist to worry about the emotion of the recording rather than the technical aspects of it.

"The singer's first take is often their best, it's full of vitality and emotion," Hildebrand told NPR in 2004. "After the take, their producer will announce 'great but the second phrase was pitchy so let's do it again.' Well, now the singer's worried about pitch and has to focus on the intonation and the vitality and emotion are gone from their performance. What Auto-Tune lets the producer do is fix the first take."

Auto-Tune caught on quickly but was treated as an industry secret until Cher brought it to the forefront with her 1998 smash "Believe," which used the software at its most aggressive setting for a strange, robotic effect.

"Most major studios were using this software for pitch correction. The studios didn't like to talk about what they were doing," Hildebrand told the Seattle Times. "They didn't advertise the fact they were fixing the singer's pitch, but they did... [Cher] was just the first to make it public."

And then it was off to the races, with producers everywhere embracing it.

"It's a great and totally acceptable tool," music producer Pat Dillett told Billboard in 2004. "We've been trying to fix pitch for years. Well before Auto-Tune, we've had tons of methods... to speed things up, slow them down, fly them back in [to the track] and get them right. It [was] really hard. So I'm glad it's easy."

"Since rising to fame as the weird techno-warble effect in the chorus of Cher’s 1998 song, 'Believe,' Auto-Tune has become bitchy shorthand for saying somebody can’t sing," wrote The Verge's Lessley Anderson. "But the diss isn’t fair, because everybody’s using it."

Of course, not everyone likes what Auto-Tune has done to music.

Time Magazine called it one of the 50 worst inventions while others have compared it to body modifications and plastic surgery. Some artists have protested, too, like Jay Z, who released an "anti-Auto-Tune" album and a song called "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)."

But mostly, audiences have been happy to settle into ignorant bliss about how much our favorite songs, like women on magazine covers, are digitally enhanced. That's why people acted shocked, outraged, and disdainful when unedited tracks of Britney Spears' awful singing recently leaked to the internet (the version we posted is no longer online, but you can find it if you search).

But was any one really surprised that Britney sounded so bad? And will this actually hurt her career? Nah, let's just sit back and enjoy the wonders of Auto-Tune.

SEE ALSO: Here's what really killing the music industry

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In addition to being dark, ugly and in your face, "Nightcrawler" is a hilariously scathing examination of journalistic integrity. Bolstered by a career-best performance by Jake Gyllenhaal, "Nightcrawler" functions as both a send-up of the "if it bleeds it leads" mentality as well as a fascinating character study of a complete sociopath.

We meet Lou Bloom (Gyllenhaal) as he breaks, enters, and steals as his only means of making a buck. One night after witnessing a traffic accident, Bloom notices video producers shooting the grisly scene and almost immediately decides to get himself a camera and a police scanner and become a freelance video producer. It's not long before he crosses the line and starts setting up crimes just so he can get some quality coverage.

Gyllenhaal shed 30 pounds for the role, and his usually charming smile comes off a bit more sinister when it's plastered on the face of Lou Bloom, the film's deranged lead. Bloom is just as psychotic  as some of cinema's most memorable anti-heros — comparisons to Travis Bickle ("Taxi Driver") and Patrick Bateman ("American Psycho") are easy to make. 

Bloom is despicable right from the start and only becomes more depraved as he ascends the journalistic food chain by any means necessary. The dramatic weight loss adds to his character by further detaching Lou from the rest of society — his ethics barely register him as human, and his physical appearance matches this inhumanity. When his intern chastises him for not "understanding" people, Bloom later responds with the distinction that he understands people just fine — he just doesn't like them. 

Rene Russo and Bill Paxton both turn in great performances in their supporting roles, and it's a shame neither of them got more screen time, but the movie truly belongs to Gyllenhaal. Russo plays Bloom's news director who tells him that "a screaming woman running around with her throat cut" is the type of footage the network is interested in, and he takes that to heart.  

There are some incredibly memorable scenes between Nina, Russo's character, and Bloom. There's a sequence in which the two negotiate that will make you howl with laughter while also forcing you to ponder how much of what we're seeing actually goes on behind-the-scenes — the idea of monetizing tragedy is really brought home here. 

What makes "Nightcrawler" a cut above the rest is how it approaches its subject matter. Satirizing the media seems to be a hot trend in Hollywood (the recent "Gone Girl" and "Birdman" both tackle similar topics), "Nightcrawler" often plays like Sidney Lumet's "Network" if it starred Patrick Bateman from "American Psycho."

Watching Bloom rise to the top via his own obsession with business strategies and corporate thinking gives the movie an extra layer of scorn and offers a compelling look at the mind of a sociopath.  Since his obscene behavior only increases his salary and helps his career, the audience is left to their own devices to figure out the moral of the story — is this what it takes to rise to the top in our corporate-minded world? Bloom can be viewed as an embodiment of corporate America, and that's pretty a horrifying indictment. 

"Nightcrawler" is an extremely efficient thriller that is also stimulating on an intellectual level. Gyllenhaal has never been better and the role already has somethrowing his name around for the Oscar race.

Watch the trailer here. 

SEE ALSO: Here's How Jake Gyllenhaal Lost 20 Pounds For His New Movie 'Nightcrawler'

MORE: 'John Wick' Is Keanu Reeves' Best Movie Since 'The Matrix'

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Every Halloween, the morning shows battle to have the best-costumed cast.

This year, the "Today Show" went with a "Saturday Night Live" sketch theme. 

Rival "Good Morning America" mixed things up a bit more.

Robin Robers went as Elsa from "Frozen."

Lara Spencer was baby Prince George.

George Stephanopoulos transformed into George Clooney, complete with new bride, Amal Alamuddin.

The real Tim Tebow made an appearance as Maverick from "Top Gun."

And Robin Roberts and Terry Crews channeled Beyoncé and Jay Z for their second costumes of the morning.

Rachael Ray did an Egyptian-themed Halloween show, dressing as Cleopatra with her husband John Cusimano as Marc Antony.

Over on "The View," Rosie O'Donnell came out as Edward Scissorhands.

Co-host Nicole Wallace went as Effie Trinket from "The Hunger Games."

"Live! With Kelly and Michael" took inspiration from Taylor Swift's new video.

Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan appeared in more than 50 costumes throughout their Friday show.

SEE ALSO: The 6 'Frozen' Toys Kids Will Be Going Crazy Over This Holiday Season

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Seventy-six years ago Thursday, millions of Americans tuned in to their regular nighttime broadcast and got some rather shocking news. A panicked newscaster informed the masses that Martians had landed in the small town of Grovers Mill, N.J., and 7,000 US soldiers had been deployed to fight off the invaders. 

The broadcast was really actor Orson Welles performing a modern American interpretation of H.G. Wells' novel "War of the Worlds," but most listeners had tuned in too late to hear the play's introductory announcement.

"Within a couple of minutes of the first death and destruction bulletin the telephone calls began pouring in," The New York Daily News reported on Oct. 31, 1938, the day after the broadcast . "Many of the callers seemed on the point of hysteria. One woman said she has relatives in the 'stricken' section of New Jersey and wanted to know if their names were on the casualty lists."

Though the accuracy of its reports has been brought into question, the next day The New York Daily News reported that Newark's St. Michael's Hospital had treated 15 people for shock, while churches throughout the tri-state area filled with people seeking comfort and protection. 

Last year, PBS premiered "War of the Worlds," a documentary presented by "American Experience" that explains the hoax in the context of the late 1930s, an era marked by the crash of the stock market, economic depression, and threats of an upcoming war. 

"I think there’s a concept that maybe people back then weren’t as media savvy, or as smart as we are now, but I hope that this documentary shows that that just wasn’t true," producer and director Cathleen O'Connell told Insider. "The Depression had been wreaking havoc on the economy and on people’s psychology, so people had a lot of anxiety about that."

As there was little information about the possibility of extraterrestrial life at the time, listeners had no reason not to believe the fake report, which featured testimony from fake sources that claimed to be professors at Princeton University or the governor of New Jersey.  

Still, O'Connell noted that the broadcasters had nothing but the best intentions. 

"It wasn’t meant to be a hoax. It was just part of an ongoing CBS program that adapted books for the radio," O'Connell said. "Crafting a play that combined a book from the 1800s and modern news bulletins was certainly edgy and artistic, but I don't think it was part of any plan." 

The broadcast turned out to be a turning point for 23-year-old Welles' acting career, landing him on the front page of newspapers across the country.

"I think Orson Welles was genuinely shocked at the response and concerned that people were hurt," O'Connell said. "But when all of this publicity came his way, he saw the opportunity and made the most of it."  

You can listen to the entire "War of the Worlds" broadcast here:

SEE ALSO: Inside America's Real-Life Haunted Houses

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Andrew Wylie, one of the most powerful literary agents in the world, has compared Amazon to the Islamic State, saying that the ebook retailer "is sort of a ISIS-like distribution channel," the Guardian reports. 

Wylie, who can name Salman Rushdie and Philip Roth among his clients, was speaking at the International Festival of Authors (IFOA) in Toronto, Canada, on Oct. 27.

In a Q&A session after his speech, he turned his attention to Amazon's Jeff Bezos accusing him of  having "taken the business and distorted it radically." He went on to predict a gloomy future for the online store, saying that soon the readers will realize how bad Amazon is and it "is going to be buried."

Amazon was not directly available to comment.

This is not the first time Wylie has criticized the world's biggest online bookstore, although he tried to collaborate with Amazon in 2010 through one of his publishing houses, Odyssey. 

Publisher Weekly reports that he previously took a public stance in defending Hachette in a dispute against Amazon, while encouraging his colleagues to "stand firm" against the company.

The fight between Amazon and old-school publishers is a old one: Publishers say the online retailer just care about selling the books and not their literary significance. 

Earlier this month, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman compared Amazon to the early 20th century oil drillers like J.D. Rockefeller noting that giant online retailer has "too much power."

SEE ALSO: A Strike In Germany Could Cripple Amazon This Week

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The company that brought us Mario and Donkey Kong wants to get into the healthcare business. 

During Nintendo's corporate management policy briefing Thursday, company president Satoru Iwata detailed a decade-long plan that intends to focus on improving people's quality of life (QOL).

Coined "QOL," Iwata outlined Nintendo's first focus for their new business will be on health with a bedside sleep monitor. 

The health-related theme that Nintendo will first deal with in our QOL business is: Visualizing sleep and fatigue.

Everyone needs to sleep, and all of us get tired. There is no argument that whether or not we have sound sleep or not significantly affects our health, and many of us recognize through our daily lives that accumulated fatigue makes it difficult to maintain good health. However, we tend to recognize these conditions in a subjective fashion. Fatigue and sleep are themes that are rather hard to visualize in more objective ways. At Nintendo, we believe that if we could visualize them, there would be great potential for many people regardless of age, gender, language or culture.

Of course, there are currently several existing ways to measure our sleep status. However, even though there must potentially be significant demand to visualize sleep, there have not been any definitive products to date. We believe that this must be because devices launched so far have required consumers to make some kind of effort, which made it rather difficult to continue.

The monitor will be called the QOL Sensor and will measure people's "sleep condition." Nintendo paired with manufacturer ResMed, a company that makes products to treat sleep and respiratory disorders, on the sensor.

Iwata says Nintendo's goal was to make something you don't have to wear and don't have to operate or install to measure your health instantaneously. 

Here's a look at how it works:

"All you have to do is place the QOL Sensor on your bedside. Inside the QOL Sensor is a non-contact radio frequency sensor, which measures such things as the movements of your body, breathing and heartbeat, all without physically touching your body. This automatically gathered data will be transmitted to the QOL cloud servers, which will then analyze the data measured by the sensor and visually represent sleep and fatigue results."

Iwata says depending on the results, people will receive recommendations which may include exercise or changing one's diet.

The idea of QOL and the sleep monitor automatically make us think of the Wii Fit and Wii Fit Plus, Nintendo's journey into making exercise as fun and simple as playing a game, which has sold over 43 million units combined.

Nintendo once tried something similar when it previewed a Wii Vitality Sensor at 2009's E3 that was expected to read a person's vitals through a fingertip pulse oximeter. That project was shelved in 2013 saying Iwata said they "could not get it to work as expected."

The company posted strong earnings earlier this week which Nintendo attributes in part to interest in the Wii U after the release of "Mario Kart 8" in May and E3 announcements in June.

Nintendo should continue going strong through the rest of the year when the company releases anticipated game "Super Smash Bros." at the end of November. The title was released in Oct. on the company's portable Nintendo 3DS to extremely positive reviews.

The QOL Sensor won't be available until 2016.

SEE ALSO: The 11 hottest video games you can play right now

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The folks at the American Chemical Society want us to be prepared for a zombie apocalypse. Since zombies — like those in "The Walking Dead" — are attracted to the smell of live humans, chemist Raychelle Burks suggests using chemicals to mimic the smells of rotting flesh, which should ward off living corpses in the event of a siege.

It sounds like it would really work for certain zombie futures. For example, characters in AMC's "The Walking Dead" use jaw-less and armless zombies on leashes to camouflage their scent from other zombies. 

The so-called "death cologne" would be made from a combination of three stinky molecules found in rotting flesh: putrescine, cadaverine, and methanethiol.

Dead human bodies naturally produce putrescine and cadaverine early in the decomposition process, Burks says in the video. Methanethiol provides the rotting-egg, cabbage smell.

By modifying the bacteria e.coli and growing them in large colonies in the lab, scientists can isolate the nasty-smelling compounds. All you need it a little genetically engineered bacteria and a petri dish!

You can learn more about the smelly solution in the video below, from the American Chemical Society's Reactions series:

SEE ALSO: 10 Foods That Will Survive In A Post-Apocalyptic World

You might also be interested in: 19 Scientists Tell Us Their Favorite Element

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Mark Cuban made the biggest investment in "Shark Tank" history last year when he put down $2 million for a 20% stake in Melissa Carbone's horror attraction company Ten Thirty One Productions.

Carbone, the CEO and president, cofounded Ten Thirty One in 2009 with Alyson Richards for the purpose of launching the first large-scale haunted hayride in Los Angeles. After clearing out their bank accounts and scraping together investments from friends, they put down $365,000 to set up and "market the hell out of" the Los Angeles Haunted Hayride. By 2012, Ten Thirty One was selling out the Halloween season and bringing in $1.8 million in revenue in October.

Cuban saw the potential the company had for other markets and jumped at the opportunity. We caught up with Carbone to see how she's used the Shark to push forward her plan for total domination of the American Halloween market.

"The ultimate long-term goal is to have a Ten Thirty One attraction in every major metropolitan area in the United States," Carbone tells Business Insider.

She went on "Shark Tank" asking for $2 million to accelerate the growth of her existing attractions outside of California, and that's exactly how she and Cuban have used the money.

Even though, as a horror entertainment company, the Halloween season is the biggest time of the year for Ten Thirty One, Carbone has taken advantage of the summer season as well. She's used the investment to bring the Great Horror Campout, a 12-hour experience that essentially puts customers into a horror film setting, on a nine-city tour in the US.

The New York Haunted Hay Ride is set to open in 2015 with the help of Cuban's investment, and Carbone tells us that she hopes to also launch a hayride in San Francisco and Atlanta next year, as well. Each large-scale, high production quality hayride costs about $1.3 million and 11 months of planning to set up. At 30 acres (the space of about 240 football fields), the hayrides are like theme parks.

Cuban is "very involved and very hands-on when we need help with something," Carbone says. "He's really accessible and really interested in getting us to the next level." Carbone tells us she speaks with Cuban an average of two or three times a week, but there have been periods where they talk every day to see something through.

One of the first things Cuban did as a board member of Ten Thirty One is arrange a meeting between Carbone and Live Nation Entertainment's CEO Michael Rapino. He liked the direction of the company so much that he decided to invest. Carbone says that she's unable to release the details of the arrangement but could say that Live Nation's investment is smaller than Cuban's and that the company's Ticketmaster site is now the distributor for all Ten Thirty One's events. This also means that Ten Thirty One can be promoted to Ticketmaster's 60 million subscribers.

Cuban is also helping Ten Thirty One break into television, which is a world "completely foreign" to Carbone but very familiar to Cuban. He and his entertainment lawyer have been shopping for TV documentary deals for Ten Thirty One, and Carbone says it looks like at least one deal will be secured.

And even though Cuban is fully supporting Carbone's rapid growth, he's been helping to keep it focused. The best advice Cuban has given Carbone is, "Don't drown in opportunity." It's something she thinks about every day, she says.

It's common for companies to receive an inundation of proposals after appearing on "Shark Tank," whether things went smoothly or not, and since Ten Thirty One did so well it's meant Carbone has had to consider a variety of investments and partnerships. "Sometimes you have to cut some opportunities loose, and it's a little painful to do that," Carbone tells us. But she's appreciated Cuban's help to think more strategically about how she wants to spend her money.

As Ten Thirty One continues to grow, expect to see plenty of advertising. "First, we're a large attraction company, and second, we're a marketing company," Carbone says. It's an approach she's used since day one. In the company's early days, she and her former partner Richards (now a Ten Thirty One board member and Clear Channel exec) used their marketing expertise and connections to make sure as many people as possible in Los Angeles knew about their hayride.

"We marketed it as if we were Disney," Carbone says, laughing. She used a large portion of the initial $365,000 investment in 2009 to promote the hayride on billboards and radio, and she credits her intense focus on marketing for much of Ten Thirty One's rapid success. She hopes to launch the New York Haunted Hayride next year with a flood of advertising, including the possibility of a giant digital ad in Times Square.

Halloween is a $7.4 billion industry, and Carbone is using Ten Thirty One to take advantage of the young adult and adult markets. The hayrides are all-ages, while the more extreme Great Horror Campout excursions — which include "simulated torture" like being stuffed into a car trunk and tied to a chair — are ages 18+. There is also a Ghost Ship "haunted cruise" that is interactive but notably less intense, aimed at moms and dads who want to go on a Halloween-themed booze cruise.

Carbone says that Ten Thirty One will most likely never have attractions running all 12 months of the year, but she's got some other attractions in development that will give the company more opportunities to dominate the market.

Ten Thirty One has been steadily growing year-over-year, and Carbone expects to bring in over $3 million in revenue by the end of the year. She estimates that the LA Haunted Hayride alone will have 65,000 customers this year, and that Ten Thirty One has had over 400,000 customers since launching in fall 2009.

With Cuban's advice in mind, Carbone is ready to grow quickly but carefully. Her goal is to make her Haunted Hayrides and Great Horror Campout household names. And she wants "every teenager, whether they're in Miami, Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego, or Chicago, to have access to a Ten Thirty One Production."

SEE ALSO: Watch Out Marvel & DC: 'The Walking Dead' Company Has A Plan To Steal Your Thunder

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Alfonso Cuaron's space epic "Gravity" starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney won seven Oscars including Best Director and received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but there's still one surprising person who hasn't seen it.

Director Christopher Nolan, who has been working on this year's space adventure "Interstellar" featuring Matthew McConaughey, told Time Out he has yet to see Cuaron's movie and it was a little weird when he ran into him last year.

"I sheepishly admitted to Alfonso [Cuarón, the director of Gravity] when I had dinner with him during the awards season last year that I was probably the only person on the planet who hadn't seen it," Nolan told Time Out.

The "Interstellar" director explained his reasoning behind putting off seeing the Oscar winner.

"I said to him: I can't watch another great sci-fi film while I'm trying to do my own thing. I'm looking forward to seeing it in a month or two," added Nolan. "To me, I'm still making this film, and getting it out there is the last stage."

Nolan explained "Gravity" isn't the only recent film he hasn't seen. While working on his own movies, he explains he likes to stay focused on the task at hand. 

"I go through a fallow period when I'm working. I can't watch new films when I'm working. All I see is process," said Nolan. "It falls apart on me. I'm okay watching old movies, but still everything becomes a bit mechanical. It's very hard to enjoy a film when you're constructing one. So I'm very much looking forward to getting back out there and catching up what with what I've missed."

"Interstellar" is in theaters Nov. 7.

SEE ALSO: "Interstellar" reviews are not as great as expected

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Trent Reznor is working on a top secret project with Apple, which he details in an interview with Billboard's Joe Levy.

The Nine Inch Nails frontman was reportedly chief creative officer at Beats Music, the music arm of Beats Electronics, before Apple bought the company this year.

Reznor told Billboard he thinks owning music is on the way out and streaming will become the norm soon.

Here's what he said about his new role as an Apple employee:

It's related to that. Beats was bought by Apple, and they expressed direct interest in me designing some products with them. I can't go into details, but I feel like I'm in a unique position where I could be of benefit to them. That does mean some compromises in terms of how much brain power goes toward music and creating. This is very creative work that's not directly making music, but it's around music.

Apple's reputation for secrecy extends to its celebrity employees, too.

That said, Reznor says he's "designing some products" for Apple, which sounds promising, though it's unclear if he's referring to hardware or software.

Billboard asked Reznor if his new project had to do with music delivery, which he seemed to confirm:

It's in that world. It's exciting to me, and I think it could have a big enough impact that it's worth the effort. I'm fully in it right now, and it's challenging, and it's unfamiliar and it's kind of everything I asked for — and the bad thing is it's everything I asked for.

Whatever Reznor is working on, it will likely debut as part of iTunes, not Beats Music. The music-streaming service will become part of iTunes next year.

SEE ALSO: Apple Reportedly Wants To Undercut Spotify By Making Beats Music Cheaper

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Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," is making a comeback.

The tale of the Headless Horseman chasing the hapless Ichabod Crane has not only been adapted to a prime-time drama on Fox called "Sleepy Hollow," it's also helped revive a sleepy New York town.

Although the story is fictional, Irving set his tale in a real village, which is today a short train ride north of New York City. The village was officially named North Tarrytown in 1883 and kept that moniker for over a century.

But when General Motors left its Hudson River plant in 1996 for cheaper property elsewhere, North Tarrytown lost more than 4,000 jobs and its main source of tax revenue. To avoid letting their hometown fall into destitution, locals decided to think like marketers and voted to rebrand North Tarrytown as Sleepy Hollow.

The name change transformed the industrial town into a spooky destination and a beautiful fall attraction for New Yorkers. Irving's classic story looms over the entire village, and, with the help of the TV show, tourism has further picked up in the past couple years.

"Everything is all about the Headless Horseman now," Sleepy Hollow village administrator Anthony Giaccio tells Business Insider.

He points out that even when it was North Tarrytown, its high school was always known as Sleepy Hollow High with the Horsemen playing for its sports teams, but today you can find the Horseman chasing Ichabod on the village's ambulances, cop cars, and fire engines.

Tourists can visit the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where Irving is buried, and take photos with the Horseman himself.

The Historic Hudson Valley organization transforms the historical landmark Philipsburg Manor into a haunted house that, yes, also features the horseman.

And in between these attractions, tourists can grab an Ichabod Ale at a local pub — the beer may be from Michigan, but its name is too good to pass up.

Giaccio tells us that the village, with a population of 10,000, has never hired a company to measure exactly how much revenue comes in during its peak season, which is from late September through early November, but he estimates that about 100,000 tourists come through during that time.

There has been some opposition to the Sleepy Hollow brand since '96, Giaccio says — "North Tarrytown Forever" bumper stickers are a thing — but he attributes it more to a feeling of nostalgia than a hatred of tourists. He says the critics don't understand how the name has kept their town alive.

Giaccio says that he's found that the village has really started to embrace the Sleepy Hollow brand since the TV show debuted in September 2013. It has featured shots of and references to the actual village, thanks to a tourism advertising deal the town secured with New York's state government.

The Sleepy Hollow government even invited "Sleepy Hollow" cast members Orlando Jones and Lyndie Greenwood to kick off the Halloween season this year.

The government also sent scouts out to America's No. 1 Halloween destination, Salem, Massachusetts, the site of the infamous Salem witch trials, to see how a town can brand itself to be associated with a season.

"We have a long way to go," Giaccio says, explaining that the village has only recently realized how embracing the Halloween spirit has brought a surge of energy and revenue to the village. They still need to figure out a way to lure tourists in during Halloween and convince them to return at other times of the year.

"There's a lot of stuff that we really need to figure out how to do a better job at. But each and every year we get a little better," Giaccio says.

SEE ALSO: How This Successful Halloween Company Has Used 'Shark Tank' Investor Mark Cuban's $2 Million

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When Marvel released "The Avengers: Age of Ultron" trailer, fans were left with a lot of questions about the anticipated sequel. 

The biggest mystery revolved around an unidentified actress spotted at the 37 second mark of the trailer. We finally know her identity!

She popped up again in a new clip that premiered earlier this week during ABC's "Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," but once again, the actress's view was still obscured. 

Many were convinced she was Thor's girlfriend Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) because of her close proximity to the superhero in the first trailer.

Nope!

Yahoo Movies confirmed with Disney the dark-haired mystery woman is indeed Korean actress Kim Soo-hyun who is also known as Claudia Kim.

Kim has previously tweeted an image with "Avengers" director Joss Whedon which shows her name displayed on what appears to be the set of the film.

한국이 정말 정말 그립습니다..! 멋진 Joss 감독님. 마블 만화에서 튀어나온듯한 캐릭터이시다^^ 저에게 우리말도 한마디씩 꼭 연습하시는 유머러스한 분! pic.twitter.com/gIR4FFPDTP

— Claudia 수현 (@ClaudiaSKim) June 9, 2014

Disney wouldn't say anything more on the character Soo-hyun is playing.

Reports have pegged Kim as someone working with Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) in either a doctor or scientist role.

You can watch the latest trailer below. "Avengers: Age of Ultron" is in theaters May 1, 2015. 

SEE ALSO: Marvel had the best response to the "Avengers: Age of Ultron" trailer leak

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Chelsea Handler wants to take it all off, but Instagram is putting a hard stop to the comedian's efforts. 

Now Handler is convinced: the popular photo-sharing app is sexist.

It all began when Handler decided to 'gram a photo of herself topless while riding a horse, a la the now infamous photo of Russian president Vladimir Putin riding a horse sans shirt.

She posted the photo, which stayed up for 30 minutes before being removed by Instagram, which said Handler had violated the app's terms of service.

MSNBC reports,

Handler responded by posting the photo twice more, and both times Instagram responded by swiftly removing the photo.

In the captions, Handler wrote, “If a man posts a photo of his nipples, it’s ok, but not a woman? Are we in 1825?”And then later, “If Instagram takes this down again, you’re saying Vladimir Putin has more 1st amendment rights than I do.”

Handler decided to take her plight to Twitter, tweeting the photo with the caption:“Taking this down is sexist. I have every right to show I have a better body than Putin.” 

You can now find my dogs and my breasts on Twitter only where my followers have the right to choose… http://t.co/mt4fcOfLEL

— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) October 31, 2014

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When Steven Spielberg featured Reese's Pieces in his 1982 blockbuster "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial," the candy experienced a big boost in sales.

The only reason Reese's Pieces got the lucrative product placement in the first place was because M&Ms had already refused the filmmakers permission to use its product in the film. This wouldn't be the last time M&Ms passed on a high-profile product placement opportunity.

Produced by Graham Flanagan

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The World Health Organization says a healthy adult should take in no more than six teaspoons of sugar a day, significantly less than what's contained in a single can of soda. The average American, meanwhile, takes in 22 teaspoons a day— more than three times the recommended amount.

That overconsumption of sugar has been tied to a snowballing crisis of obesity and diabetes, but as John Oliver explains in his latest takedown on Last Week Tonight, it would be unwise to place all the blame on the shoulders of individuals. A significant portion of the food industry churns out a vast array of products packed with unseemly amounts of sugar while at the same time trying to keep those added sugars — and their long list of ill effects— hidden from consumers.

"Is it really fair to describe sugar as a treat considering how much of it we eat all year round?" Oliver asks, explaining that sugar is found not only where you would expect to find it — cookies, candy — but also lurking in "savory" processed foods like salad dressings, bread, and crackers. He claims that the $5 billion dollar sugar industry has "fought for decades to project their products' health benefits," once even touting sugar as a diet aid:

And while that ridiculous ad may be old, Oliver quotes the current president of industry group The Sugar Association saying that science has shown that sugar "doesn't contribute to obesity or diabetes."

"Really?" Oliver says, feigning surprise. "I'm not saying it's the only culprit, but it's definitely one of the key suspects."

He points to a review of the research from 2013 that found that while the vast majority of independent studies found a link between sugar intake and weight gain and/or obesity, the vast majority of industry-funded studies found the exact opposite.

The Food and Drug Administration has tried to shine a light in these muddied waters by proposing revisions to the ubiquitous nutrition labels that would prominently listed "added sugars," but the agency has been "swarmed with letters from every conceivable product," Oliver says — from yogurt and frozen-pizza-makers to groups representing the cranberry industry.

One point of contention? Consumer advocates want added sugars to be expressed using a measurement people can understand, like teaspoons, while industry groups have fought having "added sugars" listed at all, suggesting that — if it must be listed — it should be measured in grams.

Oliver's proposal? The label should show how much sugar is in a given product by explaining the number of circus peanuts-worth of sugar it contains. "A can of Campbell's tomato soup? Five and a half circus peanuts," says Oliver.

Watch the whole segment below.

SEE ALSO: 15 Terrible Things That Happen If You Eat Too Much Sugar

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Last week, Saturday Night Live actor Michael Che responded to the now-famous and viral "Catcalling Video" with a message on his personal Facebook page.

The catcalling video made the rounds online last week, and showed a woman being catcalled dozens of times as she walked down the streets of Manhattan. The full video is a few minutes long, but is compiled from 10 hours of footage, where the woman says she was harassed on the street over 100 times.

This was Che's sarcastic reponse to the video:

He likened being catcalled to people recognizing him for his role on SNL. If you don't know Che, or his work, you might think he was being sincere. He was not, and he made it clear in a second posting:

We reached out to Che for clarity. His reponse was flippant. It's clear Che does not think catcalling and street harassment is something to be taken seriously.

You can read more about the video here, and Che's comments here.

Che didn't respond to further questions.

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Tom Cruise has listed his sprawling 298-acre estate in Telluride, Colo. for $59 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.

While $59 million seems like a hefty price tag, this property is expansive. The gated estate not only has a 10,000-square-foot main house with four bedrooms, a gym, recreation room, and library, but a 1,600-square-foot guesthouse with three other bedrooms as well.

There’s also a sports court for tennis, basketball, or ice hockey, and a private trail system with access to and views of the 14,000-foot mountains in the distance.

Sounds simply gorgeous.

Telluride Sotheby’s Real Estate listing agent Bill Fandel told WSJ that Cruise helped design and construct the stone and cedar home, which was completed in 1994.

In addition to being a destination in and of itself, the Cruise home is a 12-minute drive from downtown Telluride, Colo., as well as close to Telluride Ski Resort, one of the best in the world.

Welcome to Tom Cruise's Telluride estate in Colorado.

The main home has over 10,000 square feet of space and four bedrooms, a gym, recreation room, and library.

It sits on 298 acres of land.

If there's one thing "Game of Thrones" is known for other than dragons — it's the Iron Throne.

In the books, the chair is forged from 1,000 swords. The person who sits in it is considered the ruler of the Seven Kingdoms.

It has become so iconic that magazines have parodied it and fans have commissioned their own versions. Several promotional thrones travel the world for fans to sit on and take photos with at "Game of Thrones" events. HBO was even selling a version of the chair for $32,000.

While the HBO version is the one fans and audiences may be most familiar with, "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin explained during a panel how no one ever gets the iconic throne correct.

At the event, held Sunday evening at the 92Y in New York City for Martin's new book "The World of Ice & Fire," he said that while numerous replicas existed throughout the world, none depicted the throne he had in mind while writing the series.

"Nobody ever got it right," Martin said. "There were comic book versions, and there were versions in the card game and the board game, and there were versions on the cover [of books], and there were versions that were done for conventions. The very first ... there was a wooden one that I sat on in 1996 ... but none of them were ever really right."

He says one person did come close, though. French artist Marc Simonetti impressed Martin so much that he collaborated with him until he produced a portrait depicting his actual vision.

"Even his first one wasn't right, but since he was the closest, I worked with him," Martin said. "We got the book and he and I went back and forth a half dozen times to get something I could say, 'Yeah, this is absolutely right.'"

Martin described at the panel how the throne was supposed to look: 

I said repeatedly the Iron Throne is huge. It towers over the room like a great beast. And it's ugly. It's asymmetric. It's put together by blacksmiths not by craftsmen and experts in furniture manufacturing. You have to walk the iron steps, and when a king sits on it he's like 10 feet above everybody else ... He's in this raised position looking down on everyone.

Back in 2013, Martin shared his thoughts on HBO’s adaptation of the iconic throne in a blog post saying that while it’s great, it’s not technically correct. 

The HBO throne has become iconic. And well it might. It's a terrific design, and it has served the show very well. There are replicas and paperweights of it in three different sizes. Everyone knows it. I love it. I have all those replicas right here, sitting on my shelves. And yet, and yet ... it's still not right. It's not the Iron Throne I see when I'm working on 'The Winds of Winter.' It's not the Iron Throne I want my readers to see.

Martin told fans at the panel that was not the show’s fault. It could never replicate on screen the image he had in his mind.

"Now, you can’t do this in the TV show," Martin said. "It’s not something I criticize HBO for. The thrones they have are enormously large and cumbersome to move and expensive to build. To build this monstrosity, would blow the budget of an entire episode, and it wouldn’t fit in the set.

"Our program is in the Paint Hall in Belfast in Northern Ireland," he added. "The Paint Hall is the largest sound stage in Europe. It [was] originally part of the old Portland Wolff shipyard where they built the Titanic. … We’ve divided it into a number of pods, and our throne room is in one of them. It’s a very large set, but it’s not large enough.”

There is one place he could see a real-life throne existing.

"If they would give us St. Paul’s cathedral … after a year, build a giant throne like that and dominate the entire thing, go halfway to the ceiling, then you could get the Iron Throne the way it’s described in the book," Martin said. "This is the difference between books and television."

Tuesday was release day for "The World of Ice & Fire."

NOW WATCH — WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Here's What The 'Dude You're Getting A Dell' Guy Is Doing Today

SEE ALSO: George R.R. Martin says a fan correctly guessed the ending of "Game of Thrones"

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One uneventful Friday night, I decided to visit Disney World. I'd been once before, packing all four parks into five days. It was intense, and I didn't get to go on all the rides. 

This time I wanted to take it easy. So I wandered around the Germany Pavilion at Epcot. I rode on Pirates of the Caribbean at Magic Kingdom. Twice, actually. I ate some snacks so I wouldn't die. 

Oh, and I did all of that from my couch in "Minecraft."  

Someone built a 1:1 scale of Disney World in "Minecraft," which is the game that Microsoft recently paid more than $2 billion to own.

"Minecraft" is what's called an open-world sandbox game, where players can build amazing creations, walk endlessly, or even play against each other online.

The multiplayer functionality of "Minecraft" is where people from all over can participate and play with each other in the same virtual world. Some people even host their own servers. There are hundreds if not thousands of gorgeous creations in the game, ranging from entire cities to replicas of real-life landmarks.

Once Upon A Dream

And that's where Disney World comes in, or as it's called in "Minecraft," the MCMagic server. 

The brains behind the magic is David Wasman, who goes by the name TheRealDuckie in the game. 

He started out building the castle with a couple friends. He then saw on the "Minecraft" subreddit that someone else had built the front train station. 

"I put two and two together, and figured I could put each one on opposite ends of Main Street, and then it just blew up from there," Wasman tells Business Insider. 

He then got to thinking that there are thousands of people who would never have a chance to make it to Disney in their lives. So he started a free server running out of his bedroom to give people an opportunity to visit the park. 

"The server could only handle around 20 people at the time," he laughs. 

Through word of mouth, other builders from around the world pitched in to help him create more of the park, brick by brick. The number of people willing to help out grew, and three years later, the entirety of Disney World was online and accepting hundreds of visitors a day. 

"I knew I had something," he says. "I knew that being able to take from that magic that Disney already created, I can't take any credit for that. But I can at least continue it in some way. It's an homage, really."

Building a team to help create stuff for a "Minecraft" server is a well-known part of the "Minecraft" world. Ever since Mojang (the maker of "Minecraft") allowed people to host games on their own servers, there have been teams of people offering their building expertise to help make each server unique.

One of those teams, called ChiseledBrick, was started by a 13-year-old. People can spend anywhere from $50 all the way up to $200 per build, depending on various factors, such as the size of the build and the level of detail involved.

"It's usually a form of investment. A server usually wants to have a good spawn area because it is the first impression of the server," ChiseledBrick founder Justin Wang says.

Spawning is where a player is placed in the game world once they sign on. Or where they are "reborn" after they die. 

In MCMagic, there's no dying. It's strictly for wandering around and checking out the parks. The spawn area looks like the front entrance to Disney World, the ticketing and transportation center. You can read about different aspects of the park, and learn how to do things and which commands to type in.

The best part is that you don't actually have to walk anywhere. For example, you can just type in that you want to go to the Magic Kingdom, and you're magically transported to Main Street.

Magic Everywhere

MCMagic is completely nonprofit. Any money that they make from donations goes right back into supporting the servers. 

"I've paid, for the history of the servers, about 90% of the costs out of pocket," Wasman says. "I've spent well over $16,000." 

There are hundreds of "cast members," too, who help guests find things and make sure that everything is running smoothly. They also ensure that the space remains family friendly. There are constant reminders in the chat area on the left that no foul language will be tolerated. 

"We are very big on the safety of our guests," Denise Neill, one of MCMagic's moderators, tells Business Insider. "We have a very young user base. We don't allow any profanity, outside links, or any advertising on the server. Our goal is to make sure that when you come here, you know that your 7-year-old is not being approached by anyone who can get them into trouble."

And even those cast members run the place on a volunteer basis. People who hang out on the server often enough and want to help out even further, whether by acting as a tour guide or a moderator, have to submit an application. 

Neill stumbled on this server before taking a trip to Disney World with her husband, and just fell in love with it, she says. She's been helping out with the server on and off for about three years, all as a volunteer. 

"It's just so much fun," she says. "I've learned something new every day, and I've built really good relationships with people I've known for three years here."

She said it's not uncommon for people who meet on the MCMagic server to hang out in real life, and even meet up in the real Disney World. 

Do You Want To Build A Theme Park?

In order to get Disney World looking like the real thing, the team solicits help from Disney fans.

They ask people who are going there to take detailed pictures, they use aerial images from Google, and they've even found the blueprints to some of the rides in order to build them to scale.

The amount of detail is insane. You can download what are called "resource packs," that allow you to experience the parks as intended. And that even includes the music. And the shows, such as "Fantasmic."

And people love it. "At this time, we've had around a quarter of a million guests on our server," Neill says. "I remember when we had a party for our 5,000th guest. We get a new player every few minutes." 

But thanks to the quick way of getting across the parks, there aren't any crowds to deal with. 

To Infinity And Beyond

There aren't any plans to expand beyond Disney World. They'll never build the Disneyland in California, or any of the other parks around the world. 

But that doesn't mean the work is over with the parks. Cast members in MCMagic are constantly building new things, ranging from changing up the different seasonal decorations, to huge projects like new rides or attractions.

For example, it was just announced that they're removing the sorcerer's hat from Disney's Hollywood Studios. So it's only a matter of time before they remove it from MCMagic. 

"They will never be done," Neill says. "This is a work in progress forever. You have to remember that Disney changes every six months. That means something new is coming."

SEE ALSO: These Video Game Images Of Paris Look So Vivid, We Mistook Them For The Real Thing

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The first trailer for "Fast & Furious 7," titled "Furious 7," is here!

Cast members Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyreese, Ludacris, Jordana Brewster, and Jason Statham premiered the trailer at a fan event hosted by E! in Los Angeles and it's full of fast cars dodging bullets and skydiving from a plane (why not?).

Statham will join the "Fast and Furious" franchise as the antagonist of the next film. Kurt Russell will also star while Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will reprise his role from the last movie. The seventh installment will be the final onscreen appearance of Paul Walker who was killed in a car accident last November.

"Fast & Furious 6" made over $788 million worldwide. "Furious 7" will be in theaters April 3, 2015.

SEE ALSO: Some of the cars that will be featured in "Furious 7"

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