Hasta La Gadget!

Torrential rains swept through villages and flooded roads in the southern Indian state of Kerala.

Leaks are still pouring in just a day before Apple’s “Unleashed” event kicks off. According to MacRumors, Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman understands the chips for the widely expected 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models have surfaced in developer app logs under the names “M1 Pro” and “M1 Max.” It’s not certain Apple will use these names for its high-end silicon, but they suggest Apple won’t go with M1X or otherwise echo the naming scheme used for souped-up A-series chips. 

Earlier rumors have hinted at two processors destined for the new MacBook Pros. Both would include 10 cores (eight high-performance, two high-efficiency). An ‘entry’ version would include a 16-core GPU, while the higher-end model would pack a 32-core GPU. This roughly lines up with the M1 Pro and M1 Max naming schemes. Other rumors have pointed to a direct sequel to the base M1, the M2, arriving sometime in early 2022 alongside a new MacBook Air.

Gurman also reiterated the changes he and others expect from the MacBook Pro redesign. Both laptops would include mini-LED displays with higher resolutions. They may bring back welcome connectors like a MagSafe power port, HDMI and an SD card slot. You might also see support for up to 64GB of RAM and the death of the Touch Bar.

It wouldn’t be shocking if Apple brought its Pro and Max naming schemes to computer CPUs. If Apple is going to replace all Intel chips with in-house processors, as planned, those clearer names might be necessary to help buyers understand performance differences between models. If Apple does use the M1 Pro and M1 Max names, that will speak volumes about its likely chip name strategy going forward.

The Dark Knight rises once again in the new trailer for Matt Reeves’ “The Batman.”

Shooting for the first feature-length movie in space has wrapped. Space.comreports Russian actress Yulia Pereslid, producer Klim Shipenko and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy have returned to Earth after the first two spent 12 days filming their movie The Challenge aboard the International Space Station. The three left the ISS in a Soyuz spacecraft at 9:14PM Eastern on October 16th and landed in Kazakhstan just a few hours later, at 12:35AM.

Pereslid and Shipenko arrived on October 5th through an agreement between the Russian space agency Roscosmos, the TV network Channel One and the production studio Yellow, Black and White. Novitskiy had been there since April 9th as part of his regular duties, although he also played a key role — the movie has Pereslid play a surgeon who makes an emergency visit to the ISS to operate on the cosmonaut.

The filming required significant sacrifices for some of the ISS crew. NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonaut Pyotr Dubrov were originally slated to return aboard the Soyuz capsule, but both have had their stays extended by six months to accommodate the film producers. Vande Hei will set a record for the longest spaceflight by a US astronaut as a result, spending exactly one year in orbit. Pereslid also broke ground as the first professional actor to visit space, beating William Shatner by roughly a week.

It will be a while before The Challenge is ready to watch, and it’s safe to say the production is aimed primarily at a Russian audience. It’s a major milestone for private uses of space, though, and hints at a future when Tom Cruise and other stars are frequently blasting off to produce shows in orbit.

Danny “D.J.” Rodriguez was arrested after he was identified in a HuffPost story.