• Silicon Valley startup System1 is a new biotech company growing "mini brains" to create new drugs for psychiatric diseases including autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia.
• By growing the organoids from the stem cells of patients with the diseases, they hope to illuminate new hallmarks of the illnesses and then make treatments that target those hallmarks.
• Backed by the venture arm of drug giant Pfizer and several of Silicon Valley's leading venture capital firms, System1 has raised $25 million.

Behind a rusted metal door in an industrial part of San Francisco, a live display of miniature brains flickers with activity.

Grown from the stem cells of patients with autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia, the mini brains — more accurately called cerebral organoids — are expected to help reveal to a team of researchers some fundamental hallmarks of those diseases, which can then be treated with new drugs.

The researchers are employed by a small, but well-funded, startup called System1. Traditionally in neuroscience, drug developers have homed in on specific molecules or cells that they believe play a role in psychiatric disease. But System1's scientists are zooming out. They are looking instead for key hallmarks of diseases that may reside across larger networks of brain activity and cause everything from the forgetfulness of schizophrenia to the seizures common in epilepsy.

"The traditional target-based drug discovery approach is broken,"Sean Escola, the co-founder and CEO of System1, told Business Insider. At the same time, "people are hungry for innovation."

The idea that sick systems — rather than simply sick molecules or sick cells — cause psychiatric disease has only recently begun to yield new research efforts. It may also be one of the reasons why some drug giants are returning to neuroscience despite previous failed attempts to create new drugs for diseases like depression. In October, drug giant Pfizer resurrected its brain division by launching the company Cerevel Therapeutics. Allergan and Johnson & Johnson have also made recent rebounds into the area with investments in depression drugs inspired by the club drug ketamine.

Several big-name investors are betting that System1's system-level approach could work, having poured a total of $25 million into the startup.

They include Pfizer's venture arm, as well as bi-coastal venture firm CRV and the Longevity Fund, the first VC firm dedicated entirely to anti-aging startups. Frederic Kerrest, the COO and co-founder of the enterprise identity software company Okta, serves on System1's board of directors and was joined by CRV's George Zachary and Pfizer's Margi McLoughlin.

Current attempts at creating drugs could be missing the forest for the trees

For decades, researchers who study psychiatric diseases have been coming up with new drugs by homing in on what they believe are broken or sick molecules or cells that may be causing the symptoms of the disease. But in about 90% of cases, some part of their thesis about those molecules was wrong in the first place, and large amounts of time and billions of dollars have been wasted.

Still, most of our current drugs are a product of this model.

The most popular drugs for schizophrenia, for example, target dopamine — a molecule that's thought to play a key role in memory and pleasure. But these drugs fail to help many people. One reason is that many schizophrenia symptoms, from hallucinations to memory loss, could be the result of a much more fundamental set of cross-brain issues.

But current drug development approaches in neuroscience don't probe these system-level problems. Instead, they focus on one or two isolated components of the disease. Escola, who's also an assistant professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, believes that's a tragic oversight. He thinks it could also explain why so many medications fail to help patients.

"It is very possible that for some psychiatric disorders, you don't have any sick molecules or cells, you just have sick wiring diagrams," Escola said.

Put another way, that could mean that many of our previous attempts at creating drugs for psychiatric diseases like epilepsy and schizophrenia have been missing the forest for the trees.

To address that problem, Escola and his co-founder Saul Kato, a professor of neurology at the University of California in San Francisco, aim to mine the activity across their mini brains for signs of disease that could be happening at a much more foundational level of the illness.

"We're not measuring one thing," said Escola. "We're measuring many interactive features across many different levels of biology."

If they make a promising discovery in their work with mini brains, Escola and Kato's researchers will need to further test their idea and eventually run clinical trials in people. Escola wouldn't provide Business Insider with a timeline on that work, however.

Rows of little tiny brains

System1 is using its fresh funding to grow as many three-dimensional mini brains as possible.

For now, the stem cells used in the process come from nearby banked stem-cell lines designed for research, but Escola said they've already exhausted all of the global suppliers. Their next sources will likely come from research institutions and universities where they've developed close relationships.

The researchers then spend months studying the organoids using software powered by machine learning. They hope to end up with several of what Escola calls "deep phenotypes," or characteristics of diseases that can be seen across entire systems of activity as opposed to just inside specific molecules or cells.

"It may be the case that the pathology is most clear at a complex, network level rather than at the level of individual molecules," Escola said.

Several startups in the drug development field are using a similar approach to System1's data analysis component. Silicon Valley-based startup Numerate is using machine learning to optimize small-molecule drug discovery and better predict toxic side effects.

Insilico, a startup out of Baltimore, is using what's known as "deep learning" to assess data on the genome, epigenome, and microbiome-level. And London-based startup BenevolentBio feeds data from clinical trials and research papers into an AI-powered algorithm that helps reveal deeper relationships between diseases and drug candidates.

But System1 is the only company doing it with their own source of biological data — the cerebral organoids.

"One way you could conceptualize our company is we've got our own data-generating process wrapped inside of a machine learning team," said Escola.

SEE ALSO: 40 AND UNDER: The Silicon Valley biotech stars who are backing startups aiming to cure disease, prolong life, and fix the food system

DON'T MISS: A pair of high-profile Stanford scientists wants to use marijuana to treat an entire class of diseases where big pharma has fallen short

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• Tesla is heading into 2019 in better shape than it ever has been in the past.
• But that doesn't mean it's time to let Tesla bullishness run free.
• Many of Tesla's ambitious supporters are making big mistakes about the company.

Tesla turned an important corner a few weeks back when it reported its first quarterly profit since 2016. Coming after easily the most surreal and strange summer in the company's 15-year history, this was good news — and a fulfillment of CEO Elon Musk's prediction that the carmaker would swing from red to black by the end of 2018.

Don't be fooled: Tesla's balance sheet remains debt-laden, and its future cash needs are likely to be a drag on future profits.

But don't overlook the most salient aspect of the company's finances — its revenue. Tesla topline was almost $7 billion for the Q3. Tack on another $3 billion, not a stretch given Tesla's growth in vehicle deliveries, and you have a quarter to one-third of what GM or Ford does every three months, with a global manufacturing footprint and dozens of cars and trucks sold.

All the money that Tesla has coming in the front door is an inconvenient truth for the company's naysayers, who would rather fixate on quality control, Musk's shenanigans, or on the competition that is set to arrive — even though the global electric-vehicle market is currently so small that nobody really wants to compete yet.

That doesn't mean Tesla's latest results should overly embolden its boosters. We're not talking about Toyota here; Tesla is a small carmaker that captures an outsized share of media attention, and that can often mask its  shortcomings.

The inconvenient truth for this group is that Tesla's isn't actually going to take over the world and become the Apple of cars — or match GM's prodigious achievement, over 50 years ago, of capturing half the US auto market. As with most things when it come to Tesla's biggest fans, that hasn't stopped them from making huge mistakes. Here's a rundown of the five worst.

SEE ALSO: Elon Musk needs to stop lecturing everybody about how hard it is for Tesla to build cars

The electric-vehicle market will see massive growth in the next decade, and Tesla will dominate.

Years ago, this unsupportable argument came largely from the more emotional regions of the pro-Tesla camp. Those who made it were justifiably disgusted with the traditional auto industry for its many sins of the past, hated the idea that they had to buy a car from it, and saw Tesla as a sort of savior company. 

As Tesla has grown and experienced all the pain that car companies deal with all the time, this view has retreated. People still love Teslas. But because a lot more of them own an actual vehicle, they understand that Tesla is making something that has four wheels and windows. 

Impractical expectation have migrated out of the early adopter space and into the finance realms, where it's always been important to promote investment stories about Tesla that are mega-bullish.

Loup Ventures' Gene Munster, for example, argued last year that Tesla's addressable US market could be 11-million vehicles annually (Munster offered this prior to Tesla's summer of discontent in 2018, and even before the carmaker's Model 3 sedan hit serious production delays, since resolved). 

As I noted at the time, Munster's number is borderline nonsense. If Tesla were to sell 11 million vehicles annually in the US, it would control 65% of the 2018-level market, which should come in at over 17 million. And bear in mind that at its peak in the 1950s — when it had only two major domestic competitors in Ford and Chrysler — General Motors captured just over 50% of the market; it now leads all US sales with less than 20%.

Equally egregious is Ark Invest, whose CEO, Cathie Wood, thinks Tesla will in five years will transform itself from being primarily a carmaker to being a mobility service-provider, minting a share price of as much as $4,000. Tesla has nothing that even vaguely resembles even an incipient mobility business. Waymo, which has been testing self-driving vehicles for close to a decade, has just started to roll one out. 

It doesn't strain credibility to propose this as an investment thesis — it insults it. (Ark was among Tesla investors who argued against Musk's failed effort to take the company private, and to Wood and her team's credit, seems to have delivered admirable returns to investors through its stakes in "disruptive" technologies.)

It gets worse. Ark also thinks that 17 million EVs will be selling annually by 2022. Forgetting for a moment that there's something of an unrealized contradiction between Tesla plugging EVs into a service, rather than the ownership model, the math here is challenged by reality. 

We would be much, much better off as residents of planet Earth if the EV were to grow rapidly over the next three years. Five-to-seven million in annual sales would be wonderful. If you go to 17 million, however, you have to figure out how the globe's automakers are going to either convert existing factories now assembling gas-powered cars to build EVs; or locate the capacity expansion worldwide that would support manufacturing EVs at a level equal to the entire yearly US market for passenger vehicles, in a boom state.

Disagreeing with these Tesla ultra-bulls doesn't mean that you're anti-Tesla, by the way. It just means that you'd prefer for Tesla to be part of a reality-based scenario — one in which Tesla doesn't dominate, but participates, in a robust market for EVs.

Teslas will be able to drive themselves.

Maybe someday. But not any day soon. The first highly automated vehicles are just beginning to appear, operated by Waymo and GM's Cruise unit. This is an extremely high-cost undertaking that GM President Dan Ammann has called the biggest engineering challenge of our generation. 

Tesla's vehicles have the hardware and software to provide what experts call "Level 2" autonomy. The Autopilot system is extremely good. Cadillac Super Cruise — also a Level 2 system — is better at hands-free highway driving, but Tesla's Autopilot can handle most other situations a bit better.

That's not good enough for some Tesla boosters, who grasp that although Tesla has for over a decade been famous as an electric-car company, self-driving doesn't require electric propulsion. There are good reasons to use electric batteries and motors for autonomous vehicles, but they aren't dealbreakers.

Autonomy has captured the tech world's imagination, and so a hard pivot has been made in that direction. If you don't attach full autonomy to the Tesla story, well, then Tesla could become just another electric-car company among many manufacturers, slogging it out for market share while Waymo and Cruise capture all the new, rapid, lucrative self-driving growth.

Can't have that. So Teslas must drive themselves. Even if it's currently unlikely they will.

Tesla is the next Apple.

The analogy-or-bust crowd loves this one. Apple had a charismatic oddball as a leader — and so does Tesla! Apple almost went bankrupt before a gargantuan resurgence — and so did Tesla! Apple links hardware and software in a gorgeously designed and cultishly valued ecosystem — and so does Tesla! 

I could go on, but you get the point. 

The core concept here is that Tesla is making the automobile into a software platform, just as Apple made the iPhone into one. This implies the software-driven hypervalue creation that Silicon Valley prizes.

True, iPhones aren't cheap. But even if you pay $1,000 for one and don't have it subsidized through your wireless carrier, you can own it more or less free an clear in a year or two. At which point it has depreciated a terrifying amount. Apple iPhones are worth essentially nothing in a very short period of time. They don't even make attractive paperweights.

Luckily for Apple, iPhone owners tend to commit to lifetime participation in the device, upgrading to new ones at regular intervals. 

This can be compared to what people do when they lease cars. But it gets tricky when you look at car ownership. Cars and houses are the two things that people are willing to go into pretty significant debt to buy. For houses, you usually wind up with an appreciating asset. For cars, you don't. 

Folks are willing to borrow quite large amounts of money to buy Teslas. Over time, if you're shelling out $1,000 a month for your vehicle, you expect it to do what it's supposed to do. An iPhone, by contrast, can be a less-good hunk of hardware than an Android device and still win because it's part of Apple's ecosystem. It can be good enough.

Tesla has kind of gotten away with being incredibly good at some stuff and not very good at all at other stuff. And the most part, its vehicles have been superb. But they need to remain stupendous, especially at lower price point, if Tesla is to prosper.

• US manufacturing activity fell more than expected in October.
• Tariffs are casting uncertainty over factory activity.
• Price pressures look poised to worsen throughout the fourth quarter.

Manufacturing activity in the US slowed to a six-month low in October. And the overwhelming concern within the sector appears to be rising protectionism.

"For the consumer, the tariffs are for the most part still an abstract idea, but for manufacturers they are real, and a big problem," said Ian Sheperdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

The Institute for Supply Management, a trade group of purchasing executives, said Thursday that its index of national factory activity dropped 2.1 percentage points to 57.7 in October from a month earlier. The decline was largely thanks to uncertainty related to tariffs, according to survey respondents. 

"Mounting pressure due to pending tariffs," observed one respondent in the ISM survey. "Bracing for delays in material from China — a rush of orders trying to race tariff implementation is flooding shipping and customs."

"Higher costs related to trade tariffs are starting to be passed on to the cost of goods sold," another said.

President Donald Trump has clashed with several countries on trade, including the US's biggest business partners. His administration has placed import taxes on $300 billion worth of products so far, prompting retaliatory measures from major economies.

It may be just the beginning of price pressures within the manufacturing sector. Jeffries economist Thomas Simons said some of the effects may have been masked as businesses try to rush orders ahead of anticipated price increases.

"According to comments by survey respondents, backlogs are starting to fall, so we may start to see more of the negative effects of the tariffs put downward pressure on the ISM PMI heading into the end of the year," Simons said.

Even as an anticipated meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping next month eases some of the most high-profile concerns, the trade outlook remains far from certain.

"We also need to see significant progress with our European trade partners before the tariff clouds begin to lift," Simons added.

Trump, however, asserts tariffs will ultimately help defend the US against trade practices perceived as unfair. Bringing back jobs by reducing the trade deficit, which the president views as a general sign of economic weakness, has been one of his signature promises since the campaign trail.

SEE ALSO: Trump's next move in the US-China trade war could hit your wallet harder than the last

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• There's been a recent resurgence of interest in psychedelic drugs' potential to address conditions like anxiety and depression.
• That research is beginning to lead to the development of new and novel drugs.
• Illicit drugs like mushrooms, ecstasy (MDMA), and ketamine are inspiring a range of potential treatments for diseases that currently lack good medications.

Once portrayed as illegal ways to "drop out" or "tune in," psychedelic and semi-psychedelic drugs like psilocybin and ecstasy are finally starting to turn into federally-regulated medicines.

The tide began to turn over the summer, when a little-known startup backed by Silicon Valley tech mogul Peter Thiel churned out enough of the active ingredient in magic mushrooms to send 20,000 people on a psychedelic trip. It was part of a larger research effort by the company, called Compass Pathways, to study how psychedelic drugs could be used to treat depression.

It was only the beginning. Earlier this month, a German entrepreneur launched a new company called Atai Life Sciences with $25 million to back more studies that explore the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs on psychiatric disease. And last week, federal regulators deemed psilocybin worthy of "breakthrough status," a designation designed to speed the drug approval process for treatments that serve unmet needs.

MDMA, better known as ecstasy, nabbed that designation last year. Just this week, researchers published a new study that suggested MDMA could help people dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Prior to the recent wave of research, the study of psychedelic substances — many of which remain officially recognized as Schedule 1 drugs with no legal medical use — was nearly impossible. But in recent years, the efforts have begun to make headway.

The obvious psychedelic suspects aren't the only drugs in the realm that are turning into medicines. The first prescription drug made with marijuana, which many experts consider a psychedelic in high enough doses, was green-lit by U.S. federal regulators in June.

A type of ecstasy might accelerate PTSD therapy

On Monday, researchers published the latest findings of a year-long study designed to assess if MDMA could play a role in treatment for PTSD. Their positive findings suggest that it could.

After the treatment, in which patients were given MDMA alongside traditional talk therapy and compared with a group that got the same treatment only using a placebo instead of the drug, some three-quarters of the participants no longer met the criteria for a PTSD diagnosis. In other words, their symptoms had resolved.

That's a significant result. One of the chief problems with current talk therapy is that even when patients are able to afford and access the treatment, they grow tired of the painful process of rehashing traumatic events and sometimes disappear for months on end, according to psychiatrist Julie Holland, who currently serves as a medical observer for the MDMA study.

Still, the treatment was tied to some unpleasant side effects including insomnia, tiredness, and headaches. The drug, which amps up the activity of chemical messengers involved in mood regulation, can be dangerous when used without medical supervision because it raises body temperature and blood pressure.

MDMA also recently received a key federal designation designed to hasten the research and approval process. Some experts believe the drug will be approved as early as 2021.

A compound in magic mushrooms is showing promise for anxiety

Researchers studying psilocybin, the main psychoactive ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms, have likened its quick effects on cancer patients to a "surgical intervention" for depression.

Brain scan studies suggest that depression ramps up the activity in brain circuits linked with negative emotions, and weakens the activity in circuits linked with positive ones. Psilocybin appears to restore balance to that system.

Two for-profit companies are currently leading the research in the space. The first, called Compass Pathways, is backed by entrepreneur Peter Thiel and has plans to start its own clinical trials of magic mushrooms for depression later this year. The second, a biotech startup launched last month called Atai, is focused on financing more of the kind of research that Compass is doing. Atai has already raised $25 million from investors like ex-hedge fund manager Mike Novogratz and Icelandic entrepreneur Thor Bjorgolfsson.

Some researchers have high hopes that a psilocybin-inspired drug will get approved within a decade. David Nutt, director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit at Imperial College London, told Business Insider last year that he believed psilocybin would become an "accepted treatment" for depression before 2027.

The first prescription drug made from marijuana won federal approval this summer

The first prescription drug made from marijuana won federal approval this summer.

Called Epidiolex, the drug is designed to treat two rare forms of childhood epilepsy using a cannabis compound called cannabidiol (or CBD).

British-based GW Pharmaceuticals makes the drug. It does not contain THC, the well-known psychoactive component of marijuana responsible for the drug's characteristic high.

The federal thumbs-up comes on the heels of several months of promising research results and a positive preliminary vote from the Food and Drug Administration this spring. Experts are hopeful that the approval will unleash a wave of new interest in the potential medical applications of CBD and other marijuana compounds to treat other psychiatric and neurological diseases.

Ketamine is inspiring a handful of novel drugs for depression

A widely used anesthetic that is also known as a party drug, ketamine was shown to have benefits as a rapid-fire antidepressant nearly a decade ago. Early studies suggested ketamine could help people who failed to respond to existing medications or were suicidal.

The authors of one paper called ketamine "the most important discovery in half a century."

As opposed to existing antidepressants, ketamine acts on a brain mechanism that scientists have only recently begun to explore. Homing in on this channel appears to provide relief from depression that is better, arrives faster, and works in far more people than current drugs.

After a lack of new drugs for depression spurred scientists to go back to the drawing board, pharmaceutical companies like Allergan and Johnson & Johnson are now in hot pursuit of new blockbuster depression drugs that take after ketamine.

Allergan's drug is in the last phase of clinical trials and has received a key FDA designation designed to speed it through the approval process. A Johnson & Johnson spokesperson told Business Insider that it expects to file for FDA approval of its drug — a nasal spray made with the chemical mirror image of ketamine — this year, despite what some experts have called disappointing results from a study done in its most recent phase of research.

Read more of our psychedelic medicine coverage:

• Why psychedelics like magic mushrooms kill the ego and fundamentally transform the brain
• The DEA's surprising shift on marijuana could keep a booming $1 billion industry in check, experts say
• Stanford researchers are learning how ketamine fights depression — and why the drug's called 'the most important discovery in half a century'

SEE ALSO: A team of Johns Hopkins researchers is calling for magic mushrooms to be made legally available as medicine

DON'T MISS: A new biotech company has raised $25 million to help unleash a 'virgin market' of psychedelic research

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First lady Melania Trump has evolved from a background character in her husband's raucous presidential campaign to the increasingly vocal center of her own controversies.

Through Melania has been an active part of official duties including youth programs, diplomacy events, and crisis outreach, most of the media and public attention on her has been about her outfits.

Here are some of the clothing choices that have caused the biggest stirs.

SEE ALSO: Melania Trump's spokeswoman got into an argument with an 'Ellen Degeneres Show' producer on Twitter

DON'T MISS: 15 of Melania Trump's most expensive outfits

Melania first formally appeared on the national stage as a political spouse alongside then-presidential candidate Donald Trump.

1. After months in the background of the Trump family image, she set off a firestorm in October 2016 in a Gucci "pussy-bow" shirt days after audio was leaked of her husband saying that since he was famous, he could "grab" women "by the p---y."

Source: Business Insider

A campaign spokeswoman said the similarity was not intentional.

Source: Business Insider

• The Ottawa Redblacks defeated the Toronto Argonauts, 24-9, on Friday night.
• Following one Redblacks touchdown run, offensive lineman Jon Gott ran to the fans, grabbed a beer from his girlfriend, and chugged it.
• Gott drank the beer while still wearing his helmet and then smashed the can against it.
• After the game, Gott said he had been contemplating the celebration for about five years and had to do it because it was the final regular-season game.
• When asked about how the CFL might react to the stunt, he replied with a sly grin, "it was water, it was nothing though, it was just water."

Here is the celebration, via ESPN. The full highlight and post-game interview can be seen below.

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• A Silicon Valley startup called Carbon Health has been quietly rolling out medical clinics across the Bay Area after merging with a Berkeley-based urgent care provider over the summer.
• Carbon Health offers same-day appointments, easy-to-read lab results, travel vaccines and even some in-house medications.
• The new network is quickly shaping up to be a competitor to larger health startups like One Medical and Forward— only it doesn't charge a yearly fee.
• Eren Bali, one of Carbon's co-founders, also created online education platform Udemy and previously made Business Insider’s list of Top 100 Innovators.

When entrepreneur Eren Bali would tell his friends about his dream of building a physical healthcare clinic to complement the medical software app he'd created, they'd always brush it off as a joke.

But starting last year, 34-year-old Bali began making his dream a reality. He began working with Caesar Djavaherian, an emergency medicine doctor who founded a network of urgent care clinics.

This week, he's lifting the curtain on the project they created together: a network of seven medical clinics across California's Bay Area where patients can get checkups as well as treatments for everything from broken bones to colds and UTIs.

Called Carbon Health, the new company was born from the merger of Bali's tech startup — a comprehensive medical app called Carbon that lets you do everything from text with your clinician to order prescriptions and view lab results — and Djavaherian's clinics, formerly known as Direct Urgent Care.

Carbon isn't the only clinic startup on the block. One Medical, Forward, and several urgent care chains are all competing for similar patients. The private equity firm Carlyle Group invested $350 million in One Medical this summer, in a bet that consumers and companies will gravitate toward friendlier and more convenient ways of seeing a doctor.

Unlike its competitors, Carbon doesn't charge subscription fees and accepts most forms of insurance — meaning that it's often cheaper.

Since Bali and Djavaherian began collaborating last year, more than 100,000 patients have walked through their doors, they told Business Insider.

They're currently working with NorthBay Healthcare and El Camino Hospital, as well as three other health systems they're not yet ready to name. One of them is outside the state, the founders say.

"We want to become the preeminent health care provider in the country,"Bali, who previously founded the online education platform Udemy, said.

SEE ALSO: A controversial startup that charges $8,000 to fill your veins with young blood is opening its first clinic

DON'T MISS: 'This test is garbage': Experts and former employees allege that a Silicon Valley startup gives bogus 'cellular ages' based on a flawed blood test

With Carbon, you can do everything from booking a doctor's appointment to viewing your lab results to scheduling a live video session with a provider — all via a single app.

Carbon Health has $9.5 million in venture funding from backers including Javelin Venture Partners, Two Sigma Ventures, and Elad Gil, the co-founder of personal DNA-testing startup Color Genomics and the former vice president of corporate strategy at Twitter.

But Carbon isn't the only tech-savvy medical startup on the block. Two other Silicon Valley firms — One Medical and Forward — offer a similar range of services and apps to complement them.

Yet they differ in some key ways: both charge a yearly subscription fee of $150-$200 (Carbon charges no fees), and Forward doesn't accept insurance (Carbon accepts almost all the major providers except Kaiser).

When I tried out Carbon's app and visited one of its clinics in Oakland and another in San Francisco's FiDi neighborhood, I was blown away by how seamless the experience felt.

• Asset managers are continuing to try and launch bitcoin ETFs, despite no sign that US regulators will approve these funds.
• A bitcoin ETF has long been viewed as a natural next step in bitcoin’s maturation as an asset class.
• Reggie Browne, senior managing director and global head of ETF trading at Cantor Fitzgerald, believes a bitcoin ETF will be approved "no time soon." 

The world is still waiting on the first bitcoin exchange traded fund after months of pushback from US regulators. And according to an executive known as the "godfather of ETFs," bitcoin enthusiasts will have to continue to wait.

Reggie Browne, a senior managing director and head of ETF trading at Cantor Fitzgerald, said bitcoin ETFs will be approved "no time soon." 

Browne, speaking on Thursday at Georgetown University's Financial Markets Quality Conference in Washington D.C., said bitcoin ETFs will only come once there is a strong regulatory framework in place for these digital assets. But as of now, "it's very difficult for the commission to wrap their heads around a positive approval because there's no data yet ... the markets just aren’t here."

A bitcoin ETF has long been viewed as a natural next step in bitcoin’s legitimacy as an asset class. It would likely make it easier for retail investors tap into the market, which known for its volatility and market manipulation.

But the idea of a bitcoin ETF has received pushback from regulators that don't think markets for cryptos are properly monitored. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission rejected a slew of nine fund proposals by numerous asset managers.

Browne joined Cantor in 2013 from Knight Capital Group, in which he became one of the most influential figures in the ETF world by helping the funds grow globally and become a $4.7 trillion market. 

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The economist that predicted the housing crisis warns the Fed is engaging in behavior that's almost always caused a recession

• BlackRock President Robert Kapito said on Thursday that his firm is looking to invest in cannabis stocks at a conference in Toronto. 
• Kapito said the world's largest asset manager is sitting on the sidelines for now because most bank custodians won't clear cannabis stocks. 
• Kapito said he's not a big supporter of cannabis, but the "world wants to go the other way."

The world's largest asset manager wants to invest in cannabis stocks — but is sitting on the sidelines for now. 

BlackRock President Robert Kapito said on Thursday morning his firm is looking to invest in the red-hot sector at the Prime Quadrant Conference in Toronto, Canada.

"We will be investing, but right now because of issues with states and the federal government in the US, some of the custodians will not clear cannabis stocks and we will have to wait until that happens," Kapito said, per Bloomberg.

Cannabis is legal for recreational users in nine states and for medical users in a further 31 states, though the US federal government considers it a Schedule I drug. 

Kapito said while he's not a big supporter of cannabis, the "world wants to go the other way." 

"I don't think the story ends well," Kapito said. "That's my personal story but this is what the world is looking at."

Until recently, institutional investors have steered clear of the volatile cannabis sector, even though Canada legalized the drug for all adults earlier in October.

Canada's largest pension funds, including the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), so far haven't invested. 

For the most part, high-net-worth individuals and family offices have put the bulk of the money into the sector. 

Hedge fund billionaire Leon Cooperman has invested personally— not through his fund — in Green Thumb Industries, an Illinois-based cannabis cultivator. And Tiger Global's venture arm invested in Green Bits, a software platform for cannabis dispensaries in April.

The sector gained mainstream attention after Constellation Brands, the beverage giant behind Corona and Modelo, sank $4 billion into Canopy Growth, a Canadian marijuana cultivator in August. 

Some analysts expect cannabis to be a $75 billion industry— or larger — globally by 2030. 

See also:

• The top 12 venture-capital firms making deals in the booming cannabis industry that's set to skyrocket to $75 billion
• The CEO of the biggest cannabis company in the US reveals what's next following a $682 million acquisition
• Hedge fund legend Leon Cooperman is investing in the marijuana industry — and it's another sign the sector is heating up

SEE ALSO: Top cannabis VCs give their best advice on how to invest in the booming marijuana industry

AND MORE: The CEO of Molson Coors says the market for cannabis-infused beverages could be worth billions. Here's why it's 'chasing down' that opportunity.

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In New York, a city where the average apartment rent is $3,600 a month, many residents don't mind living in a tiny space to save extra cash. There's just one problem: Microapartments are technically illegal under the city's 1987 zoning laws, which require dwellings to have an area of at least 400 square feet.

That leaves two options for people who want a small space: find an apartment built before 1987, or turn to one of the newer developments that have secured a special waiver from the city.

Even as the city's regulations make microliving somewhat difficult, the trend has taken off in neighborhoods across Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Despite their minimal square footage, these newer apartments offer innovative design features like hidden drawers and closets, along with luxury amenities like butler services and rentable ice-cream makers.

But for the thousands of residents who live in older microapartments, the lifestyle can be somewhat dismal. Take a look.

SEE ALSO: 32 crazy photos of micro-apartments from around the world

READ MORE: Manhattan’s first micro-apartments just won a prestigious design award — here’s what it’s like to spend a night in one

If space isn't an issue, microapartments can lend a more glamorous lifestyle at a lower price.

This loft on the Upper West Side features multi-level platforms with a small bathroom hidden beneath the stairs.

The loft is at the top of a six-story brownstone, with access to a rooftop garden.

• There are now six Amazon Go stores in existence, located in Seattle, Chicago, and San Francisco.
• Four out of the six stores are closed on the weekends.
• New data from InMarket shows that the peak time for Amazon Go store visits is around noon, meaning the stores are more lunchtime destinations.
• The visitation data combined with the store hours and assortment suggests Amazon might be leaning into that model.
• Still, the Amazon Go format has already proven to be flexible, with the different stores varying in size and offering different products. 

Don't try visiting most Amazon Go stores on the weekends.

Four out of the six Amazon Go stores currently open in Seattle, Chicago, and San Francisco do not open on either Saturday or Sunday. 

They are listed as selling "Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snacks" on Amazon's website dedicated to the Go stores. The two stores in Seattle that are open on the weekends also sell "Grocery Essentials."

The one exception so far is the newest store in San Francisco, which is not open on the weekends but also sells "Grocery Essentials."

It makes sense that Amazon Go would not be open on the weekends, according to new data from InMarket, which used location data from mobile apps to track visits to the stores.

For the five stores it included in its report, the peak time for Amazon Go store visits is around noon. The analysis was conducted over a 60-day period, concluding on October 22. Weekday visits are much more common than visits on the weekend. Wednesday is the busiest day, followed by Thursday. 

That means customers are likely using the stores as a lunchtime, weekday grab-and-go option.

Amazon Go's customer visitation patterns are more like a convenience store than a grocery store, but it has aspects of both.

Amazon Go is "sort of a hybrid because people are going in during the workday, which shows that it trends more towards convenience stores, but the dwell time is a little bit higher than you would expect for those at 27 minutes," Cameron Peebles, chief marketing officer at InMarket, told Business Insider. "So it's sort of become [its] own thing with those two characteristics in there."

The visitation data combined with the store hours and assortment suggests Amazon might be leaning into the prepared-food model, but it's likely Amazon will tinker with that as Amazon Go expands and the company is able to test it in more markets.

The Amazon Go store format has proven to be flexible, with the different stores varying in size and products. The stores even have different operating hours in different parts of cities.

Amazon Go is also successful in other areas, including having an above-average rate of customer retention of 44%, and a high dwell time — meaning the time customers spend in the store — of 27 minutes.

Amazon is considering opening as many as 3,000 Amazon Go stores across the US by 2021, according to Bloomberg.

SEE ALSO: 12 devices and services that could help you ditch Amazon completely

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NOW WATCH: Target has a few sneaky ways it gets customers to spend more money

• Experts say that Dollar Tree, the discount store chain that sells products for $1 and under, will be the retailer worst hit by tariffs.
• This is in part because it has a less flexible business model than its competitors. 
• Dollar Tree is likely to have to find new manufacturers outside of China or take a hit on margins, which could have "devastating" impacts on its business, one expert told Business Insider.

In September, President Donald Trump announced his latest round of tariffs on imports of Chinese goods. For the first time, the tariffs took a direct hit on retailers, prompting stores such as Costco, Walmart, and Gap to announce that they would likely be increasing prices on the consumer side further down the line.

On Monday, Bloomberg reportedthat another wave of tariffs on $257 billion worth of Chinese goods could hit as early as December.

While the resulting price hikes are likely to have a negative impact on these retailers in the eyes of the consumer, analysts say they will be shielded somewhat by strong consumer spending. However, it is the stores that don't have the option to raise prices or to cut costs elsewhere that will experience the most drastic consequences, and Dollar Tree is a shining example of that.

Not only is Dollar Tree in the direct firing line of tariffs, as around 40% of its products are sourced from China, but its unique business model also means it's more likely to suffer than its competitors, analysts say. 

Dollar Tree is known for selling items for $1 or less and for operating on a low-margin, high-volume basis, which is dependent on low prices. 

"The tariffs are more difficult for Dollar Tree than rivals because the company has a one-dimensional business model that is not easily flexed or changed," Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, told Business Insider in an email.

Saunders is referring to Dollar Tree's fixed $1 price point, which makes it almost impossible for it to increase costs on the consumer side without changing its entire business model. Moreover, as the very nature of its business is to be cost-cutting, there are very few ways to cut costs elsewhere. 

"There is not much fat at any stage of the supply chain," Saunders said, comparing Dollar Tree to Dollar General or Walmart, which have more room to maneuver.

"They could, for example, raise prices on less price-sensitive categories to offset margin erosion on lower priced items. Or they could try and push higher margin products with in-store marketing or campaigns. Dollar Tree will struggle to do any of this as it has a ceiling on its prices and not many options to flex ranges. In short, there is just no easy win for Dollar Tree," he said. 

Dollar Tree runs a no-frills shopping experience. Its stores are basic and light on staff, and there's almost no advertising. 

This means it's faced with an ultimatum: take a hit on margins or find new manufacturers. 

The former could have a devastating effect on the business given that its margins are already thin, Jack O'Leary, a senior analyst at PlanetRetail RNG, told Business Insider. 

O’Leary believes the best way around this is to seek out new manufacturers outside of China that have a similar cost structure.

"I don't think this is the last round of these tariffs," he said. "It really does seem like if they are over-indexed to China, this is going to continue to be a major risk going forward."

Moreover, if Dollar Tree makes cuts on the store experience, it risks driving its shoppers into the arms of its main competitor, Dollar General, which is already on a path to rapid expansion in the US. Dollar General is slated to open 900 stores at a rate of about three stores a day in 2018.

SEE ALSO: These popular brands say Trump's tariffs are forcing them to raise prices

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NOW WATCH: Why Louboutin shoes are so expensive

• Black Friday falls on November 23 this year.
• The day is becoming increasingly less important to the retail industry, thanks to the rise of e-commerce and frequent discounting.
• In-store shoppers can still take advantage of certain deals.

Black Friday is swiftly approaching.

The holiday season in the United States spans from the day after Thanksgiving through December. That kick-off day is known as Black Friday, and it's traditionally marked by massive crowds rushing into stores in order to take advantage of slashed prices on high-ticket items. However, in the retail sphere, the rise of e-commerce and discounts are steadily eclipsing Black Friday.

Whether you're planning on venturing out into the fray or surfing the web for the best deals, it helps to arm yourself with information about this year's discounts.

Here's what you need to know about Black Friday this year:

When is Black Friday?

Black Friday is always the day after Thanksgiving. This year, Black Friday falls on November 23. Cyber Monday will take place on November 26.

That being said, some stores will likely seek to court early-bird deal-seekers. Chains haven't yet announced any early deals, but keep your eyes peeled.

Is everything open on Black Friday?

Some retailers prefer to keep their doors shut on Black Friday.

REI is one of those brands. Black Friday just doesn't fit in with its mission. REI CEO Jerry Stritzke told Business Insider's Kate Taylor, "You don't win in the long-term by pushing ... what I call rampant consumerism."

Other employers give their whole workforce the day off on Thanksgiving.

According to BestBlackFriday.com, Costco, H&M, The Home Depot, IKEA, Lowe's, Nordstrom, Publix, REI, and Sam's Club will not open on Thanksgiving this year.

Do any retailers open up early?

JCPenney isn't waiting for Black Friday to get started on its sales. On Thanksgiving at 2 p.m., the retailer will usher in shoppers. The stores will stay open until 10 p.m. on Black Friday.

Kohl's will open on Thanksgiving at 5 p.m. local time. The deals will run until 1 p.m. on Black Friday.

Macy's will reportedly welcome in shoppers at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving and close up shop at 2 a.m. on Black Friday. It will then reopen at 6 a.m. and close at 10 p.m. on Black Friday. 

Meanwhile, Costco will be closed on Turkey Day. But the warehouse club is still hosting a number of online sales on Thanksgiving.

• These days, many richNew Yorkers don't seem to care about the prestige of living in a penthouse apartment.
• New York City is seeing an overabundance of penthouse units on the market, with a 16% uptick in listings in October compared with the same month last year.
• The surplus means real-estate agents are considering offers well below asking price, according to Jason Haber of Warburg Realty.
• And these days, "not everyone needs a penthouse to feel like they got the trophy," Reba Miller, a broker at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, told The Real Deal.

The penthouse apartment, which occupies the highest floor of a residential building, has long been synonymous with wealth and luxury.

But for affluent New Yorkers, the luxury penthouse apartment seems to be losing its allure.

New York City has a surplus of penthouses on the market, according to The Real Deal. There were 443 penthouses for sale in the city as of October 12, a 16% increase from the same time in 2017. And 81 of those units are asking more than $15 million, The Real Deal reported.

"Like any commodity, when the market is saturated with them, their value declines," Jason Haber, an agent at Warburg Realty in Manhattan, told Business Insider. "If under every rock you found a diamond, diamonds would decline in value. That's what is happening right now."

Agents are increasingly willing to consider offers well below the asking price, Haber told The Real Deal.

"Any offer will be responded to," he said. "You didn’t get that a year and a half ago."

Beyond oversaturation, the glut of penthouses may suggest that the way New Yorkers view luxury real estate is changing.

"Historically, penthouses have been the trophy property," Reba Miller, a broker at Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, told The Real Deal. "Today, the trophy is many things. Not everyone needs a penthouse to feel like they got the trophy."

A penthouse in an older building may not attract buyers the way a unit in a lower floor in a newer building with exciting amenities might, according to Miller.

"You can go to many buildings, buy on a lower floor, and feel like you bought the penthouse," she said.

For Haber, penthouses haven't necessarily become less of a trophy — there are just too many of them.

"As the days on market for apartments becomes longer, more penthouses are lingering," Haber said. "As a result, buyers have more penthouse options. Generally speaking, a penthouse means views, views, and more views."

But views may not always be enough given the high price tags of some penthouses.

To sweeten the deal for an $85 million penthouse in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood that's been on the market for at least two years, the building's president threw in perks including a $1 million yacht, a one-year vacation rental in the Hamptons, two Rolls-Royce Phantoms, and even two tickets for a trip to outer space. It has not yet sold.

Some buyers may be confused these days about what even constitutes a penthouse.

A penthouse in New York City's tallest residential building has been listed for $82 million for least two years — and it's not even on the top floor. In fact, the top six floors of 432 Park Avenue are considered penthouse units because they have different layouts than the other floors and some units occupy an entire floor, a representative for the building told Business Insider.

"The days of the penthouse being the top floor are long gone," Haber said. "Developers have realized there is a premium to be paid for the top floors of a building to have the penthouse moniker." In some cases, an apartment is called a penthouse not because it's on the top floor but because it has a different layout, higher ceilings, or other amenities that differentiate it from other units in the building, he said.

But even if a unit is not on the very top floor, buyers are attracted to the fact that higher floors tend to have fewer units, James Morgan, an agent at Compass, told Business Insider.

For others, the eternal draw will be "the exclusivity of pushing the only PH button in the elevator," Morgan said.

SEE ALSO: This tiny NYC penthouse costs $2,143 per square foot, but every detail was designed so it 'functions like one twice its size' — take a look inside

DON'T MISS: A new perk for the wealthy, right in their own apartment buildings: resident-only restaurants and drinks on the house in private bars

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The real-estate trick billionaires use to sell their penthouses faster and for more money

Warning: Spoilers for "The Haunting of Hill House."

• Mike Flanagan, the director of Netflix's "The Haunting of Hill House," revealed how he kept the secret of the "Red Room" hidden from the audience.
• He said that the set had to be "constantly refined."
• He added that there needed to be one element that was constant so that it would feel familiar when revealed, and that was a "vertical window."
• Flanagan also said that Hugh Crain could never open the room because "he exerts control over the house, on a physical level."

There are plenty of mysteries in Netflix's hit new horror series, "The Haunting of Hill House," but the biggest was hidden in plain sight the entire time. 

That means that director Mike Flanagan had to go to great lengths to keep the secret of the "Red Room" hidden from the audience. Throughout the first season, the characters are unable to open a red door when living in the haunted Hill house as children. When they return to the house as adults, they finally discover that they had each actually been in the room countless times, and it acted as their own personal spaces that nobody else could unlock. 

Flanagan told The Wrap that to conceal what the Red Room was from viewers, the set was "constantly refined."

"But we needed one element to be constant so that once the reveal occurred, a second viewing would feel like it was always obvious," Flanagan said. "We chose that distinct vertical window. We also made sure to shoot the room from the same angle in all of the episodes leading up to it, so that even the camera framing was familiar. We really just hoped that Hill House was so sprawling, people would assume there were just a lot of rooms they hadn’t seen. What’s odd if they look a little similar?"

READ MORE: Netflix's 'The Haunting of Hill House' cast revealed what disturbed them most about the show

Flanagan also explained why the room never opened for Hugh Crain, the father of the series, played by Henry Thomas in the past and Timothy Hutton in the present.

"Hugh is a man who fixes things," Flanagan said. "He exerts control over the house, on a physical level. He is in charge of the physical work being done to it, and that gives him a sense of security, comfort, and order. To put him in a position where he is incapable of something as simple as opening a door strikes to the very heart of his confidence as a character. Between that and the mold, I think it erodes his sense of competence, and everything else tumbles for him as a result."

But that doesn't mean that Flanagan didn't envision what the room would be like for Hugh, saying that it would have been "full of tools and other things from his work."

SEE ALSO: Netflix's 'The Haunting of Hill House' director explains what to expect in a potential season 2

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How 'The Price Is Right' is made

• The typical US home costs about $280,000 in 2018, but compared to some houses on the market today, that number looks tiny. 
• Business Insider created a list of the most expensive house for sale in every US state with some help from Trulia.
• From a $3.5 million secluded woodland home in Iowa to a $175 million estate in the Hamptons in New York, here are the most expensive houses on the market right now.

The median US home price is about $280,000, according to Zillow, but some lavish homes currently on the market cost much more than that — millions and millions more, in some cases.

Trulia helped Business Insider put together a list of the most expensive homes currently for sale in every state and Washington, DC.

Here's a look at all 51 houses, ranked in ascending order of price:

SEE ALSO: This $45 million San Francisco home could shatter the city's real-estate record — take a look inside the gorgeous complex

DON'T MISS: An $82 million penthouse apartment in NYC's tallest residential building offers 360-degree views of Central Park and the city — but nobody wants to buy it

Iowa: $3.5 million

City: Elkhart

Size: 10,666 sq. ft.

Bedrooms/bathrooms: 5 beds/9 baths

North Dakota: $3.65 million

City: Williston

Size: 6,755 sq. ft.

Bedrooms/bathrooms: 5 beds/5 baths

Nebraska: $3.75 million

City: Elkhorn

Size: 10,572 sq. ft.

Bedrooms/bathrooms: 4 beds/10 baths

In many ways, Apple's new iPhone XR is superior to the also-new iPhone XS. 

But if you're set on the iPhone XR, you only need to make a few final decisions, like storage size, and most importantly, the color.

If you don't feel like visiting an Apple Store to see the new iPhone XR colors for yourself, YouTuber Marques Brownlee, a.k.a. "MKBHD," spent some time with the new iPhone XR at Apple's big September event and took some beautiful footage of the colorful new phones using his incredible 8K camera rig. His photos are the next-best thing to seeing these phones in person.

Here's a high-definition look at the red, blue, yellow, white, black, and "coral" versions of the new iPhone XR:

SEE ALSO: The new iPhone XR's six available colors, ranked

First, let's look at the white iPhone XR. Here it is from the front.

And here it is from the back.

Here it is next to the silver iPhone XS. As you can see, the iPhone XR has a much brighter white color.

• The uncensored director's cut of Lars von Trier's controversial serial-killer movie, "The House That Jack Built," will be released for one night only on November 26.
• The R-rated cut will be released December 14.
• The film prompted over 100 people to walk out during the Cannes Film Festival this year because of its graphic depiction of violence against women and children.

The uncensored director's cut of the controversial serial-killer movie that caused uproar at this year's Cannes Film Festival is getting a theater release for one night only this month.

Director Lars von Trier's "The House that Jack Built," starring Matt Dillon as a twisted murderer, prompted at least 100 people to walk out of the film at Cannes during its premiere in May because of its grotesque depiction of violence against women and children, particularly a scene in which two small kids' heads are blown off by a hunting rifle. 

According to Indiewire, that uncut version will be released to theaters for just one night on November 28, while an edited, R-rated cut will be released on December 14.

Von Trier doesn't mind the controversy and has even welcomed it. Posters for the film released in September showed people contorted into disturbing positions, including actress Uma Thurman, who also stars as one of Jack's many victims.

Some critics called the movie "unpleasant" and "torturous," while others actually liked it. The film received a standing ovation at Cannes from those who stayed until the very end. Indiewire film critic David Ehrlich tweeted this week, "i sincerely regret to inform you that THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT will 100% be on my list of the year’s best films. please make your peace with that now."

SEE ALSO: YouTube star Logan Paul says he lost $5 million because of the 'suicide forest' video controversy

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: How 'The Price Is Right' is made

Actress Amber Heard's latest movie isn't just a bomb, it's one of the biggest bombs of all time.

The movie, "London Fields," based on the 1989 novel by Martin Amis, debuted over the weekend with just over $168,000, according to Box Office Mojo. It made only $300 per screen on average. That's one of the worst box-office takes of all time for a movie opening wide on 600 screens or more.

According to Variety, the movie has had a bumpy road to theaters amidst a wave of legal battles. In 2015, director Matthew Cullen sued producers Chris Hanley and Jordan Gertner, who countersued and claimed Cullen went over his budget for the movie. The producers also sued Heard, claiming she breached her contract, but Heard countersued Hanley and Gertner.

Critics did the movie no favors, either. It has a 0% critic score on review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.

We rounded up some of the other worst box-office openings of all time for movies premiering on over 600 screens, and ranked them based on numbers from Box Office Mojo, adjusted for inflation. We also included the original opening and adjusted total domestic gross, along with what critics said about the movie.

Below are the seven worst box-office openings of all time:

SEE ALSO: Disney is reportedly trying to reboot 'Pirates of the Caribbean' — and this chart shows why

7. "Men, Women & Children" (2014)

Adjusted opening: $337,400

Original opening:$306,367

Number of theaters: 608

Adjusted domestic gross:$777,300

What critics said: "The dozen or so main actors do their best to breathe nuance into characters that are standing in for social statements."— Richard Corliss, Time

Description: "'MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN' follows the story of a group of high school teenagers and their parents as they attempt to navigate the many ways the internet has changed their relationships, their communication, their self-image, and their love lives. The film attempts to stare down social issues such as video game culture, anorexia, infidelity, fame hunting, and the proliferation of illicit material on the internet. As each character and each relationship is tested, we are shown the variety of roads people choose - some tragic, some hopeful - as it becomes clear that no one is immune to this enormous social change that has come through our phones, our tablets, and our computers."

6. "The Passion Recut" (2005)

Adjusted opening: $319,100

Original opening: $223,789

Number of theaters: 957

Adjusted domestic gross: $724,800

What critics said:"It was the palpable realness of the violence in 'The Passion of the Christ,' the image of flesh transformed into meat, that gave the film not only its reason for being, but also its only point of cinematic interest. What remains now of the film is just blunt-force dramatics and kitsch."— Manohla Dargis, New York Times

5. "Transylmania" (2009)

Adjusted opening: $317,000

Original opening: $263,941

Number of theaters: 1,007

Adjusted domestic gross: $477,600

What critics said:"'Transylmania' is such a colossal comedic misfire that it makes the execrable 'Scary Movie' films look like masterworks of Preston Sturges-esque genius by comparison."— Steven Hyden, A.V. Club

Description:"Stoked over the smokin’ Romanian hottie he’s meet online, an über-randy college student talks his dimwitted friends into joining him for a semester of beer, babes and bongs at what they think is a prestigious Transylvanian university. What they discover instead is a creepy castle populated by a torture-loving mad scientist, an overcybersexed humpback, the nubile spirit of a decomposed sorceress and a bevy of horny vampire chicks that have finally found a student body they can really sink their fangs into."

Apple's MacOS might seem simple — but it's an absolute powerhouse if you know how to use it.

Some of the easiest ways to get the most of out of Apple's desktop operating system are hidden in plain sight: Keyboard shortcuts.

Flick between applications and tabs. Take screenshots. Fine-tune settings. Knowing the right keyboard shortcuts will save a second here and there —  and over the course of a week, or a month, or a year, it adds up dramatically. 

If you're feeling adventurous, Apple lists all of its Mac keyboard shortcuts here. 

Here are 13 of the most useful keyboard shortcuts that will save you time on the little things so you can focus on the big things:

(Max Slater-Robins contributed to an earlier version of this article.) 

1) ⌘ + Space — Bring up 'Spotlight' search

Apple improved its search with the release of OS X. The search bar, accessed by typing ⌘ + Spacebar, can do sums, search the web, and convert currency. 

2) ⌘ + F — Find things in documents

Finding words in documents is tedious, but typing ⌘ + F speeds up the process. The command works in Pages, Safari, Chrome, Word, and just about everywhere else.

3) ⌘ + A — Select everything

Selecting everything, especially in a big document, can take ages. Hitting ⌘ + A selects everything instantly.