Snap is introducing a new tool called Snapchat Trends that provides a public overview of the most popular keywords currently in use on the app. Accessible via the company’s website, you can use the feature to get a sense of the topics that Snapchat users are referencing in Stories they share with the public and their friends. The tool also includes a database you can use to search for specific terms.

While the feature will primarily be of interest to marketers and advertisers looking to tap into Snapchat’s growing user base of 293 million daily active accounts, it’s something anyone can access, and looking at the trends you get an insight into what young people care and worry about. Yes, you see topics related to shows like The Bachelorette, but things like the Taliban takeover of Kabul and the lockdown in Australia are also featured. It's a reminder that there's always more to youth culture than it seems.  

Don't count on using iOS 15's SharePlay for your virtual movie nights in the near future. Apple has warned that SharePlay won't be available in the launch versions of iOS 15, iPadOS 15, tvOS 15 and macOS Monterey. You'll get that shared viewing experience through software updates arriving this fall, but the new beta 6 releases (public and private) don't include it.

Apple told Engadget it would continue to give developers access to SharePlay in order to incorporate the feature into their apps. To that end, the company has released a SharePlay profile for app makers who don't want to disrupt their work.

It may still be worth installing iOS 15 beta 6, though. Apple has further fixed Safari by introducing a redesigned tab bar — no more having to access common features through an overflow menu. You can also move the address bar back to the top if you're a traditionalist. It's not quite a reversion to the iOS 14 way of doing things, but it is an acknowledgment that many weren't fans of the original iOS 15 approach.

This wouldn't be the first time Apple reserved a feature for a post-launch update. The company didn't even release iOS 13 for the iPod touch and HomePod until 13.1 was available. Still, it's worth noting if you play to upgrade to iOS 15 quickly — Apple is more interested in polishing iOS 15 than trying to fulfill all of its promises on day one.

T-Mobile misled state regulators about its planned CDMA network shutdown to gain approval for its 2020 merger with Sprint, according to a ruling from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). As first reported by Ars Technica, the watchdog ordered the carrier on Friday "to show cause why it should not be sanctioned by the commission" over providing "false, misleading, or omitted statements."

One of the main ways T-Mobile won regulatory approval for its $26 billion acquisition of Sprint was by agreeing to sell Boost Mobile to a competitor. In 2020, Dish paid $1.4 billion to acquire the Sprint prepaid brand from the carrier. As part of the deal, T-Mobile agreed to provide 4G LTE and 3G CDMA service to Boost customers while Dish worked on moving them over to a 5G network it was building on its own. Initially, T-Mobile said it would support those customers until 2023, but the carrier's current CDMA plan will see it shut down that part of its network on January 1st, 2022. That's in 137 days as of the writing of this article.

The CPUC lists five contradicting claims from T-Mobile, one of which involves a statement the carrier made that Dish would have up to three years to migrate Boost Mobile customers. The watchdog can fine T-Mobile up to $100,000 per offense. While that's unlikely to hurt the carrier, it could lead to additional scrutiny from the CPUC. "The discrepancy between information in T-Mobile's testimony and information provided in its response is so serious that it warrants further investigation by this commission," the watchdog said. T-Mobile will have a chance to answer the CPUC's allegations during a hearing on September 20th.

T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert responded to the ruling in a lengthy blog post the carrier published last week. "Listen, this is a manufactured crisis, orchestrated by Dish, and it is about money, not customers," he said. "If Dish was really concerned for customers, they would simply take real action and get their customers new phones on time, before the network upgrade happens, just as T-Mobile is doing for affected Sprint customers."

To that point, Dish has said the number of customers involved, in combination with the ongoing global chip shortage, makes it impossible to migrate them all to a 5G device before T-Mobile shuts down its CDMA network early next year. "A forced migration of this scale under this accelerated time frame is simply not possible and will leave potentially millions of Boost subscribers disenfranchised and without cell service come January 1st, 2022," the company said in a letter to the Federal Communications Commission back in April.

We've reached out to both T-Mobile and Dish for additional comment.

The CPUC ruling follows a recent July 9th letter the Department of Justice sent to T-Mobile and Dish. The agency said it had "grave concerns" over the impending shutdown and the possibility that a significant number of Boost Mobile customers would be left without service on January 1st, 2022. The DoJ said it expected both companies "to take all available steps" to remedy the situation.

Life’s too short to drag a mouse more than three inches or remember elaborate keyboard combinations to get things done. This is 2021 and you can have a pretty, dedicated button for almost any task if you want. And if you partake in anything creative, or like to stream, there’s a very good chance that you do. Loupedeck makes control surfaces with many such buttons with a particular focus on creatives. Its latest model is the “Live” ($245) and it’s pitched almost squarely against Elgato’s popular Stream Deck ($150). Both have their own strengths, and I’ve been using them side by side for some time now. But which one have I been reaching for the most? And does the Loupedeck Live do enough to command almost a hundred more dollars?

First, we should go into what the Loupedeck Live actually is and why it might be useful. In short, it’s a PC or Mac control surface covered in configurable buttons and dials. The buttons have mini LCD displays on them so you can easily see what each does with either text, an icon or even a photo. Behind the scenes is a companion app, which is where you’ll customize what each button or dial does. Many popular applications are natively supported (Windows, MacOS, Photoshop, OBS and many more). But if the software you use supports keyboard shortcuts, you can control it with the Live.

So far, so Stream Deck? Well, kinda. The two are undeniably very similar, but there are some important differences. For one, the Stream Deck’s only input type is a button; Live has rotary dials too. This makes Loupedeck’s offering much more appealing for tasks like controlling volume, scrolling through a list or scrubbing a video and so on. But there are also some UI differences that give them both a very different workflow, too.

Hardware

James Trew / Engadget

Like Elgato, Loupedeck currently offers three different models. With the Stream Deck, the difference between versions is all about how many buttons there are (6, 15 and 32). The different Loupedecks are physically distinct and lend themselves to certain tasks. The Loupedeck CT, for example, has a girthy dial in the middle for those that work with video. The Loupedeck+ offers faders and transport controls and the Live is the smallest of the family with a focus on streaming and general creativity.

At a more superficial level, both the Stream Deck and the Live look pretty cool on your desk, which clearly is vitally important. Elgato decided to make its hardware with a fixed cable, whereas Loupedecks have a removable USB-C connection. I wouldn’t normally bother to mention this, but it’s worth noting as that means you can use your own (longer/shorter) lead to avoid cable spaghetti. You can also unplug it and use it to charge something else if needed. Minor, but helpful functionality if your workspace is littered with things that need topping off on the reg like mine is.

Clearly, one of the main advantages with the Live will be those rotary dials. If you work with audio or image editing at all, they are going to be much more useful than a plain ol’ button for many tasks. For example, I wanted to set up some controls for stereo panning in Ableton Live. On the Stream Deck I need to employ two buttons to get the setup I wanted: pan left one step / pan right one step and it takes a lot of presses to move from one extreme to the other. With the Live, I can simply assign it to one of the rotaries (clicking it will reset to center). From there, I can dial in the exact amount of panning I want in one deft movement.

That’s a very simple example, but if you imagine using the Live with something like Photoshop for adjusting Levels, you can see how having several rotaries might suddenly become incredibly useful.

Another practical difference between these two devices is the action on the buttons. On the Stream Deck, each one is like a clear Jolly Rancher with a bright display behind it. The buttons have a satisfying “click” to them and are easy to find without really looking. The Live, on the other hand, feels more like someone placed a divider over a touchscreen. That’s to say, the buttons don’t have any action/movement at all, instead delivering somewhat less satisfying vibrations to let you know you’ve pressed them.

Software

James Trew / Engadget

The real difference between these two, though, is the workflow. I had been using the Stream Deck for a couple of months before the Loupedeck Live. The Stream Deck is, at its core, a “launcher.” Assign a button to a task and it’ll do that task on demand. You can nest multiple tasks under folders to expand your options nearly endlessly, but the general interface remains fixed. So, if you wanted to control Ableton and Photoshop, for example, you might have a top-level button for each. That button would then link through to a subfolder of actions and/or more subfolders (one for editing, one for exporting actions and so on). These buttons remain fixed no matter what application you are using at a given moment.

With Loupedeck, it’s all about dynamic profiles. That’s to say, if I am working in Ableton, the Loupedeck will automatically switch to that profile and all the buttons and rotaries will change to whatever I have assigned them to for Ableton. If I then jump into Photoshop, all the controls will change to match that software, too. Or put another way, the Stream Deck is very “trigger” based (launch this, do this key command). The Loupedeck is more task-related, with pages, profiles and workspaces for whatever app is active. The net result is, once you have things customized to just how you want them, the Loupedeck Live is much more adaptive to your workflow as it “follows” you around and has more breadth of actions available at any one time. But at first, I was trying to make it simply launch things and found that harder than it was on a Stream Deck until I figured out how to work with it.

This “dynamic” mode can also be turned off if you prefer to keep the same controls available to you at any one time, but for that you can also assign set custom “workspaces” to any of the seven circular buttons along the bottom — so if you want your Photoshop profile to open with the app, but also have some basic system/trigger controls available, they can just be one button push away.

This approach definitely makes the Loupedeck feel more tightly integrated to whatever you’re doing “right now” rather than a nifty launcher, but it also takes a bit to get your head around how it wants to do things. At least in my experience. With the Stream Deck I was able to get under its skin in a day, I am still reading up on what the Live can do after some weeks, and need to keep reminding myself how to make certain changes. As a reverse example, launching an app is something Stream Deck was born to do. With a Loupedeck, you have to create a custom action and then assign that to a profile you can access at any time (i.e. a custom workspace) or add that action to various different profiles where you want it to be available.

Both do offer the option for macros/multi-actions and work in very similar ways in that regard. If, say, you want to create a shortcut to resize and then save an image, you can do so with either by creating a list of actions to be carried out in order. You can add a delay between each step and include text entry, keyboard shortcuts and running apps — all of which allows you to cook up some pretty clever “recipes.” Sometimes it takes a bit of trial and error to get things right, but once you do it can simplify otherwise fairly lengthy/mundane tasks.

James Trew / Engadget

Where the Stream Deck takes things a little further is with third-party plug-ins. These are usually more complex than tasks you create yourself (and require some programming to create). But thanks to Elgato’s active community, there are already quite a few on offer and the number is growing every day. Some of them are simple: I can have a dynamic weather widget displayed on one of the keys, others are more practical — I use one that switches my audio output between my headphones and my PC’s built-in speakers. Some of my colleagues speak highly of a Spotify controller and the Hue lights integration — both of which came from the Stream Deck community.

Loupedeck offers a way to export (and thus share) profiles, but as far as I can tell right now, there’s no way to do anything more complex than what you can do with custom controls — if that were to change in the future that could really enhance the functionality considerably.

Beyond the hardware controls and the user interface, it’s worth mentioning that both the Live and the Stream Deck have native support for specific apps. “Native” means that the companion software already has a list of drop and drag controls for select apps. Elgato’s controller, unsurprisingly, has a strong focus on things like OBS/Streamlabs, Twitch and, of course, the company’s own game capture software and lights along with some social tools and audio/soundboard features (for intro music or effects).

The Loupedeck Live also offers native controls for OBS/Streamlabs (but not Twitch) but tends to skew toward things like After Effects, Audition, Premier Pro and so on. The list of native apps supported is actually quite extensive and many more (like Davinci or iZotope RX) are available to download. If streaming is your main thing, Elgato’s solution is affordable and definitely more streamlined for that. The Loupedeck, however, is going to be more useful for a lot of other things — it’ll help with streaming, but also help you design the logo for your channel.

So which?

At this point, you can probably guess what the wrap-up is. Elgato’s Stream Deck offers less functionality overall but that can be greatly expanded as the number of plugins continues to grow. But likewise, it’ll always be somewhat limited by its singular input method (buttons). The Loupedeck Live is much more ambitious, but with that, trades off some of the simplicity. If you were looking for something that can take care of simple tasks and skews toward gaming or podcasting, save yourself the $100 and go with a Stream Deck, but if you want something that can pick up the slack for multiple desktop apps and tools, you probably want to pat your pockets a little more for the Loupedeck Live.

There's another way to access IMDb TV as of today. Amazon's free, ad-supported streaming service is now available on Comcast’s Xfinity Flex and Xfinity X1 set-top boxes. As with other apps, you can access IMDb TV using the Xfinity Voice Remote.

Along with a batch of original shows, a bunch of popular third-party TV series and movies are available on IMDb TV, including Chicago Fire, All in the Family and The Hunger Games. Amazon recently struck a deal with Universal for movie streaming rights, which includes bringing films from the studio's 2020 and 2021 theatrical slates, such as The Invisible Man and F9, to IMDb TV.

Amazon says X1 marks the first pay TV partnership for IMDb TV. The move follows the release of standalone IMDb TV apps for Android and iOS earlier this month. IMDb TV is also available on Roku, Android TV devices, Xbox and PlayStation consoles and some smart TVs, as well as Fire TV and as a channel in the Amazon Prime Video app.

IKEA won't just sell you smart lights — it'll soon sell you the electricity to power those lights, provided you live in the right country. Electreknotes that IKEA has revealed plans to sell clean energy to Swedish homes through a Strömma subscription service. Pay the (as yet unmentioned) fee and you'll get certified solar- or wind-generated electricity with usage you can track through a mobile app.

The home furnishings giant didn't say whether it would expand the clean energy sales to other countries, although it hoped to let people "use and generate" renewable energy in "all our Ingka Group markets" by 2025. The company already sells solar panels.

The retailer is no stranger to eco-friendly efforts. It stopped selling non-LED lights and will soon drop non-rechargeable alkaline batteries. It's even planning to turn a Swedish city into a sustainable community. And there's little doubt this will help burnish IKEA's public image. It can address concerns about the chain's environmental impact by serving as a clean energy source.

It's still a significant move, though, and we wouldn't be surprised if other larger stores followed suit. It's not just a feel-good effort that could reduce emissions — sales of excess clean energy could recoup costs and boost profits.

The Pixel 6 is just around the corner. But before Google brings it and its Tensor mobile chip to market, the company is updating its entry level offering with the $449 Pixel 5a. The whole point of the “a” family is to offer the basics at a reasonable price without sacrificing too much of the Pixel experience in the process. That means a relatively clean version of Android with a bunch of AI tricks and a heavy focus on photography.

But apparently Google feels like it more or less nailed that formula with the Pixel 4a 5G because the 5a is basically the same phone. (Note: The Pixel 5a is not a direct successor to the 4a, which was a much smaller device.) There are some differences — notably the addition of IP67 waterproofing — but most of the tweaks are extremely minor. Even the processor and RAM haven’t changed. So, if we said you could do better way back in October of 2020, what does that mean for the 5a in the fall of 2021?

Well, it makes the Pixel 5a about as unexciting as a phone can be, for one. But look, boring isn’t necessarily bad. Especially when you’re talking about the mid and lower tiers of the smartphone market. For one, keeping things staid allows Google to focus its efforts on battery life and performance optimization. And just like the last generation of Pixels, the 5a feels pretty responsive despite the aging Snapdragon 765G inside. That said, the 765G wasn’t exactly top of the line last year, and it’s starting to show its limits. While scrolling through the UI and doing simple things like reading email and sending text messages, the 5a is indistinguishable from any flagship device. It even handles most mobile games without a hiccup. I spent some time playing The Elder Scrolls: Blades and Wild Castle and the phone barely broke a sweat.

But, I did notice it stutter a few times while navigating YouTube, editing photos and jotting down my thoughts for this review in Evernote. The latter I could easily chalk up to Evernote’s questionable development over the last few years, but the pauses while switching to fullscreen in YouTube and swapping filters in Google Photos are a bit more concerning.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The plus side of going with something a bit older and lower-powered (not to mention with an integrated 5G modem) is power efficiency. The 4a 5G was already something of a beast, lasting over 17 hours in our battery drain test before our reviews editor Cherlynn Low simply gave up and moved on with her life. That device had a 3,885mAh battery. The 5a has a 4,680mAh cell. It took 22 hours and 56 of playing a video on loop at 50-brightness before it finally powered down.

After 24 hour of heavy usage — playing games, repeatedly running 5G speed tests, installing apps, watching videos on YouTube and even letting it play sleep sounds overnight — the battery was still at 40 percent. It didn’t finally crap out until almost 2AM on day two. And if you turn on Extreme Battery Saver, things could get even more absurd. I’m fairly confident that under normal use you could get a full 48 hours out of the Pixel 5a before needing to find an outlet.

Battery life isn’t the only difference between the 5a and 4a 5G: The new phone is also IP67 rated for water and dust resistance. At a time when many smartphones have at least some form of water resistance the Pixel 4a 5G was sort of a disappointment. In fact, the lack of waterproofing was one of the big cons called out in our review. But the Pixel 5a should easily survive getting caught in the rain or if you drop it in a toilet. It can withstand being submerged in water up to one meter deep for 30 minutes, but I wouldn’t push this to its limits. Definitely don’t go swimming with it in your pocket.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

The last difference between the Pixel 5a and the 4a 5G is in the size and construction, but it’s subtle. The 5a has a metal unibody as opposed to a polycarbonate one. The texture is still matte and similar to the softtouch of the previous models, though, and the upgrade to Gorilla Glass 6 from Gorilla Glass 3 is notable, but you’ll never notice the difference in daily use. The 5a comes in one finish: Mostly Black. Some might find the look a little dull, and it’s certainly on the utilitarian side, but I quite liked the feel of the phone. The finish is a nice contrast to the seemingly endless sea of smooth glassy surfaces and the heft is just right, too.

The 5a is ever so slightly larger and heavier, but you’re talking about a few millimeters and grams. Even if you had a Pixel 4a 5G in one hand and a Pixel 5a in the other you’d be hard pressed to figure out which is which.

The change in size mostly comes down to the slightly larger screen. The OLED panel on the 5a is 6.34 inches, versus 6.2 inches on the 4a 5G. Otherwise, though, the screens are basically the same. The increased resolution of 2,400 x 1,080 makes up for the size difference so they both have a density of 413 ppi. Both also sport a contrast ratio of 100,000:1 and support HDR and are stuck at now outdated 60Hz. And both are just bright enough to use in direct sunlight, though high brightness mode is definitely a necessity if you’re watching a video outdoors.

Even the holepunch for the front-facing camera is in the same place. That said, I appreciated Google’s “for fun” wallpapers that camouflage the hole by incorporating it into the design. My favorite is the record player where the camera becomes the hole at the center of an LP.

That 8-megapixel front-facing camera, by the way, is one of the weak points of the 5a. It does the job in perfect lighting and for video calls. But details can be a bit soft, in low light it gets noisy and portrait mode is hit or miss. Overall, I found Google’s portrait feature to be a bit too aggressive even on the main camera. You can easily adjust the blur and depth after the fact, but the default settings could stand to be more subtle.

The selfie cam, though, is the same one found on the Pixel 4a 5G, so none of this is a surprise. In fact, all of the cameras are the same. The two sensors around the rear, however, are much better than the one on the front. There’s a 12.2-megapixel main shooter with optical image stabilization and a 16-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. They have a somewhat “moody” vibe when compared to shots from an iPhone or a Galaxy device, but they’re not obviously inferior. And even though images taken with the wide-angle lens can get a little fuzzy if you start zooming in on details, Google’s processing does an admirable job of minimizing barrel distortion. Google isn’t at the top of the smartphone camera heap anymore, but it’s not far off and photography is still an undeniable strong suit of the Pixel family.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

There’s nothing new to report, though. It’s the same set of excellent photography features that you got last year: Portrait lighting can help clean up and add some contrast to photos of people (but sadly not pets — the option only appears if a human face is detected). Night Sight turns on automatically in dim lighting and at times produces mind-blowing results. And the video stabilization modes are excellent. Cinematic Pan, which combines slow motion with super smooth movement, is especially fun.

Also, just like every other “a” model Pixel, this one has a headphone jack. All I can say is: That’s great, now please bring the headphone jack back to flagship phones. I know I’m not the only person clamoring for it. And it drives me nuts that the only way to get an old-school 3.5mm jack on my phone is to go down market.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

One last thing to mention: The actual full name of the phone is the Pixel 5a with 5G. So, guess what, it supports 5G connectivity. That’s not really surprising since the Snapdragon 765G has an integrated 5G modem. Unlike the Pixel 4a 5G, however, there is no mmWave variant of the 5a. And, although technically it’s capable of C-Band support, it’s currently not enabled and Google wouldn’t commit to adding support in the future. That’s not a huge deal at the moment since there are no active C-Band networks in the US yet. But it might irk some when AT&T and Verizon start flipping the switch, likely sometime later this year. That said, full C-Band rollout isn’t expected to happen until at least late 2023.

Those caveats out of the way, 5G still seems stuck in a state of arrested development. I tested the Pixel 5a using Google Fi, which essentially means I was on T-Mobile’s network and speeds were all over the place. In my home, it was often slower than Verizon’s LTE network, averaging around 35mbps down. (Note: Verizon is Engadget’s parent company… for now.) But two and half miles up the road at a local Subaru dealership I was routinely getting over 300mbps down, topping out at 370mbps.

Terrence O'Brien / Engadget

Of course, 5G and excellent cameras aren’t a rarity at this price any more. Mid-tier phones have come a long way over the last few years. The problem for Google is, it no longer clearly “owns the midrange.” Part of that is down to price. While the 5a is $50 cheaper than the 4a 5G, it’s not the obvious bargain that the 4a was at $350. If it was even just $50 cheaper still, the 5a would be a much easier sell at $399.

The Samsung A52 5G is slightly more expensive at $500 (though regularly on sale for less) and has a slower Snapdragon 750G SoC. But, its Super AMOLED screen clearly outclasses the Pixel’s and has a 120Hz refresh rate. Plus, its camera system is much sharper and feature-packed (but that doesn’t necessarily mean “better”). In addition to a primary camera and ultra-wide shooter, there’s a macro lens and a depth sensor that helps with portrait mode. While both the A52 and 5a ship with 128GB of storage, the Samsung has an advantage in that it has a microSD card slot.

Then there’s the OnePlus Nord N2 5G. It has a trio of cameras around the back, including a 50-megapixel primary sensor, an AMOLED screen with a 90Hz refresh rate, and up to 12GB of RAM. Then again, it has a MediaTek processor, which you rarely see in phones in the US and with good reason: They’re not exactly known for their high-end performance. But perhaps more importantly, you’re highly unlikely to be making a choice between the Nord N2 and the Pixel 5a since the former isn’t available in the US, and the later is only available in the US and Japan.

Of course, if you’re more of an iOS fan, the obvious comparison would seem to be the iPhone SE. It’s the same price as the Pixel 5a for a 128GB model, but it does feel quite a bit dated. It still uses the old iPhone 8 form factor with a Touch ID home button instead of Face ID, it's positively miniscule at 4.7 inches and doesn’t support 5G. Frankly, if you’re dead set on iOS, I might suggest saving your pennies and springing for the $699 iPhone 12 mini.

So, no, Google doesn’t “own the midrange” any more. The Pixel 5a is almost aggressively boring, but it’s not bad. If you want the Pixel experience and don’t want to break the bank, this is the way to go. But if you’re just looking for the best bang for your buck, the choice is far less clear.

Android TV fans looking for something a bit more powerful than a Chromecast should consider the NVIDIA Shield TV. But at its normal price of $150, it's significantly more expensive than Google's streaming dongle. However, now you can grab the NVIDIA Shield TV for $130, or $20 off its normal price. That's almost a record low — we saw it drop to $129 ahead of Black Friday last year — but this is the best price we've seen in 2021, and it's only come around a couple of times so far.

Buy NVIDIA Shield TV at Amazon - $130Buy NVIDIA Shield TV at Best Buy - $130Buy NVIDIA Shield TV at B&H Photo - $130

Despite being more expensive than streaming dongles of similar size, the NVIDIA Shield is worth the extra money thanks to its Tegra X1+ processor. It's powerful enough to run the Android TV platform with ease, and it supports Dolby Vision HDR, Dolby Atmos audio, Chromecast 4K and AI-powered HD-to-4K upscaling. It also works with the Google Assistant and Amazon's Alexa, so you can bark orders at it instead of using the triangular remote if you wish.

Don't let the tubular design alienate you either — NVIDIA claims the shape helps avoid wireless interference, and the company still managed to include an Ethernet port, an HDMI connector, a microSD card slot and a power port on the compact device. The microSD card slot lets you expand on the Shield's internal storage, bringing additional content with you for offline viewing, and if you like to hardwire your streaming devices, the Ethernet port makes that possible. Overall, it's a powerful streaming device that's easy to use and can handle most anything you'll throw at it.

Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.

One of the more exciting Star Wars projects in the immediate pipeline is Star Wars: Visions, the anime anthology series that's coming to Disney+ on September 22nd. Disney previously offered a behind-the-scenes look at the show, and now it has revealed the first trailer. You can watch the clip below in either the original Japanese with subtitles or an English dub.

The trailer is stunning, no matter the language in which you opt to watch it. The two-minute video full of Star Wars staples like lightsabers, Star Destroyers, Stormtroopers and droids, albeit with completely distinct visuals from other animated series like The Bad Batch.

Each of the nine Star Wars: Visions episodes has a unique style and an original story. Seven studios crafted the installments: Kamikaze Douga, Geno Studio (Twin Engine), Studio Colorido (Twin Engine), Trigger, Kinema Citrus, Science Saru and Production I.G. Trigger and Science Saru each made two episodes.

“Their stories showcase the full spectrum of bold storytelling found across Japanese animation; each told with a freshness and voice that expands our understanding of what a Star Wars story can be, and celebrates a galaxy that has been such an inspiration to so many visionary storytellers," James Waugh, executive producer and Lucasfilm vice president of franchise content and strategy, said.

Disney also announced the main Japanese and English voice casts for the series. Along with returning actors such as Temuera Morrison (Boba Fett), there are a host of well-known performers involved in the English dubs, including Lucy Liu, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Neil Patrick Harris, Alison Brie, Simu Liu (star of the upcoming Marvel blockbuster Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) and George Takei.

Given that George Lucas took inspiration from the films of Akira Kurosawa and Japanese culture when creating A New Hope, Visions will sort of take Star Wars back to its roots. In any case, the episodes should offer completely fresh perspectives on the Star Wars universe.

The Consumer Technology Association is going to great lengths to keep CES 2022 as an in-person event. The organizers have announced that you'll need proof of COVID-19 vaccination to attend the technology expo when it kicks off January 5th. There's also a chance you can get in to CES with proof of a positive antibody test, although the CTA is still "assessing" that possibility.

CTA chief Gary Shapiro explained the decision as a reflection of "today's science" showing that vaccines are the "best hope" for curbing COVID-19. The SARS-CoV-2 virus' Delta variant is known to be highly transmissible and more likely to produce severe symptoms in younger unvaccinated people.

There was no mention of just which vaccines would be considered acceptable. We've asked the CTA for more details, although it did mention that it would follow "state and local guidelines" as well as CDC recommendations.

Attendance might be a problem if the CTA sticks to US-authorized vaccine regimens. If you've had mixed doses (such as in Canada) or a vaccine that hasn't been approved in the States (such as AstraZeneca or Sinopharm), you might be out of luck even if the shots are highly effective. A virtual CES show is still available for those who won't attend in person, but that may serve as a mere consolation prize if you were otherwise comfortable with going.

As it stands, it's not clear if this will reassure would-be guests and exhibitors. While the CTA is taking a number of precautions at CES 2022 beyond the vaccination requirement, such as mask requirements and extra spacing, this definitely isn't a throwback to CES 2020 and earlier events where crowds were (relatively) safe. And as other event organizers have learned, the pandemic can change quickly — what seems safe now could be risky a few months later.