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‘Shogun’ Creator Says Season 2 ‘Defies Expectations’

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‘Shogun’ Creator Says Season 2 ‘Defies Expectations’


The “game” in season 1 was an emotionally charged structure that made you want to take sides between the opposing political forces. In season 2, Marks says, the game shifts to “unpredictable surprises.”

An important piece in making this change happen is the presence of Ochiba no Kata, played by Fumi Nikaido. “In season 1, the role of the ballerina (Anna Sawai) played an important role and functioned as part of the English-language side of the story. In part 2, Ochiba’s character is placed at the center of the story,” Condou says.

Her role in the story, which is based on Yodo-kun, the wife of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, goes beyond the confines of recreating history. This allows the political dynamics of the women to emerge as the main focus of the story, enhancing the scale of the political drama.

Shogun’s writers and producers also have to deal with issues unique to historical dramas. History buffs, and Japanese viewers in particular, are already familiar with the outcome of the battle of Sekigahara, and any deviation from this point would cause some raised eyebrows.

Still, Marks is confident about the production’s philosophy, which is to treat culture, history, and language as “structure” rather than “material.”

“We welcome fans and history buffs who are familiar with Japanese history. We are telling a fictional story based on real history. You will be amazed at how fact and fiction blend together.”

The preferred approach to making a modern historical drama is the re-editing of history as a story, rather than as a succession of “known facts.” The Shogun production process—where Sanada and other Japanese crew members are intricately involved—ensures the cultural and historical consistency necessary to make that approach work. “Mutual respect between cultures is more important than ever,” Marks says.

At the Disney Plus Original Preview 2025 held in Hong Kong in November, Marks, Condou, and star and producer Hiroyuki Sanada held a talk session.

Photograph: The Walt Disney Company



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Enjoy up to 60% Off With eBay Coupons in April 2026

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Enjoy up to 60% Off With eBay Coupons in April 2026


Long before we had Amazon or Facebook marketplace, or thousands of other online retailers, we had eBay. And now, we have an eBay coupon to help you save on basics like vacuums and phones, to even your most niche need—because eBay has everything from haunted objects to ironic landline phones to retro gaming consoles. One of the first and most enduring online shopping platforms, eBay has stood the test of time, providing us with the old-school feel of estate sales, complete with bidding wars and gently used items of quite literally every type.

Save up to 60% on Your Next Purchase at eBay

eBay has rotating deals, like 20% off up-and-coming brands, so be sure to check their page often to know which deals are next. They have huge savings on essentials, like Dyson vacuums—an enduring titan in the home cleaning realm. There’s also discounts on like-new refurbished Apple MacBooks and iPads so you can work or study for so much less. It’s not only office tech they have deals on, but even kitchen essentials, like the forever-popular KitchenAid Stand Mixer. eBay has deals on everything from clothing and jewelry to power tools, so check eBay’s deals page often.

How to Use an eBay Coupon (If you Have one Handy)

Once you’ve perused the nearly endless options of items on eBay, here’s how you can redeem the eBay discount code or offer at checkout: first, make sure your code isn’t expired (I know it sounds like a no-brainer, but you don’t want to be disappointed when that dreaded ‘invalid’ pop-up comes on the screen). Enter the code in the ‘Add coupons’ section, or check the box if the coupon is displayed. When you select ‘apply,’ you should see the discounted total, and then you’ll be prompted to pay.

Save More With Free Shipping

Once you find the special item of your dreams, go to the “shipping and pickup” search filter and check the “free shipping” box to get free shipping. Make sure you choose eBay free shipping on a multitude of items like motor parts, books, golf clubs, Pokemon cards, haunted objects, tech, and virtually anything else you can imagine.

Shop These Rotating eBay Deals

eBay has rotating deals, like 20% off up-and-coming brands, so be sure to check their page often to know which deals are next. They also have spotlighted, trending, and featured deals for huge savings on a myriad of products like auto parts, golf clubs, shoes, and more. eBay has a money-back guarantee to ensure you get the item you ordered or you get your money back.

Shop With eBay Mastercard to Get More Rewards

Have you heard of an eBay Mastercard? I hadn’t either, but if you’re a collector or frequent eBay shopper, an eBay Mastercard is a smart way to save on purchases you were already planning to make. You’ll earn five times the amount of points for the rest of the year after you spend $1,000 on eBay in a calendar year. Until then, you’ll earn three times the points per $1 spent, up to $1,000, on eBay in a calendar year. You can also earn twice as many points per $1 spent on gas, restaurant, and groceries, and 1 times as many points per $1 spent on all other Mastercard purchases.

Get Daily Deals With the eBay App

If you’re someone who shops or sells on eBay often, I’d suggest downloading the eBay app for even more perks. The eBay mobile app makes it easy to find the best rotating deals on various items and access to the hottest deals and discounts of the day before they leave. Through the app, you can browse everything from trendy items, to power tools, to tech gadgets, and then choose whatever price looks best. There’s also app-only discounts and special offers exclusively for eBay app users. Plus, eBay will help you figure out when’s the best time to buy, with price notifications to let you know when the price has dropped.



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Cintegral taps Taara connectivity for real-time live media production | Computer Weekly

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Cintegral taps Taara connectivity for real-time live media production | Computer Weekly


Taara has announced its light-based wireless optical connectivity technology will power Cintegral’s ST 2110 Fiber-over-Air, enabling real-time TV and media production workflows on remote sets where cable-based infrastructure is unfeasible.

A graduate of X and Google’s Moonshot Factory, Taara has developed technology that uses beams of light to extend high-speed internet to places where traditional infrastructure is difficult to deploy.

Its first system, Taara Lightbridge, is designed to deliver high-speed, secure connectivity across long-range and challenging terrain, helping networks reach farther.

It is claimed to be constructed to deliver bi-directional communication at speeds of up to 20Gbps, and securely transmit data across distances up to 20km while keeping connections “strong and consistent” all the time, “using the energy of a lightbulb” without digging, spectrum licensing or right-of-way permitting. It has already been deployed in more than 20 countries, with operators including Airtel, Digicel, T-Mobile, SoftBank and Liquid.

In addition, Taara’s core Beam technology is designed for operators, enterprises and next-generation data infrastructure, and is attributed with bringing fibre-like speeds to environments where traditional infrastructure is too slow, costly or impractical to build. This is claimed to mark a shift from fixed, physical networks to infrastructure that can evolve at the pace of demand.

In this industry, video footage often has to be stored locally and physically carried to post for transfer, processing and archive. Taara Lightbridge is now being used to create a high-capacity wireless bridge between those locations, allowing production teams to move data in real time across sites without laying an inch of cable.

Cintegral is a production technology specialist working with leading studios and streaming platforms such as Disney, Netflix and Amazon Studios. It has been validating Taara Lightbridge as part of the new ST 2110 fiber over the air offering.

According to Cintegral, Lightbridge enables real-time streaming of high-resolution 4K JPEGXS and 8K RAW video data between on-location and production crews elsewhere on site, helping directors, DOPs, DITs, dailies, editors, VFX, broadcasters and technical teams collaborate during a shoot rather than waiting until each day has wrapped.

“Our goal with ST 2110 Fiber-over-Air is to bring high-performance production workflows to any environment, without being limited by location,” said Cintegral CEO Dane Brehm. “What Taara’s technology enables us to do is extend that capability to places where connectivity would normally be a bottleneck, allowing real-time collaboration between crews, directors and editors on set.”

The collaboration also builds on momentum from the 2026 HPA Tech Retreat, a forum for leaders across media technology, engineering and content creation to explore emerging technologies and trends. At the event, Cintegral showcased Taara Lightbridge and claims to have generated early interest in the use of wireless optical connectivity for advanced production workflows.

For its part, Taara regards the collaboration with Cintegral as marking an important step in its commercial story, showing how wireless optical connectivity can move beyond traditional telecom use cases and into enterprise environments with what it said were “intense demands” for throughput, mobility and real-time collaboration.

Looking at media production, Taara noted that in this use case, teams increasingly need to move large volumes of high-resolution video between locations quickly and reliably, without waiting for fixed-line buildouts or relying on physically transporting storage media.

“You shouldn’t have to dig or lay miles of fiber just to tell a great story,” said Taara founder and CEO Mahesh Krishnaswamy. “With Taara, we aren’t building networks, we’re beaming them. We’re giving production teams the power to deploy fiber-class connectivity out of thin air, exactly when and where the shoot demands it.”



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This Windows Laptop Makes the MacBook Neo Look Overpriced

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This Windows Laptop Makes the MacBook Neo Look Overpriced


The MacBook Neo made quite a splash when it landed in March. $599 for a MacBook felt groundbreaking, and it was easy for casual onlookers to declare that Windows laptops had no true answer to it.

But what if I told you there was a Windows option that was better in almost every way? That’s the HP OmniBook 5, a laptop you’ve probably never heard of unless you watch the space closely. I’ve been recommending it ever since I tested it last month. The price has been fluctuating, but more often than not, the 14-inch model was selling for $500. You read that right: $500. Today, the cheapest, most consistent price you’ll find it for is $730 over at Walmart, but I’ve seen the HP frequently drop the price from $1,050 down to around $500.

And just take a look at what you get for the price, because it’s absolutely stacked. It comes with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage, double what you get on the $599 MacBook Neo. There’s a 16-inch version as well, if you like the idea of having a bit more screen real estate work with.

The HP OmniBook 5 is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X, a highly efficient chip that gets great, all-day battery life that’s at least on par with the MacBook Neo. If you haven’t used a Windows laptops in a few years and still think they can’t compete with MacBooks in battery life, you’re sorely mistaken.

The 16 GB of memory on the OmniBook 5 is particularly important to note, as it’s one of the big points of contention with the MacBook Neo. Being stuck at 8 GB in 2026 feels cruel on principle, and while testing it I was able to load up the MacBook Neo and easily find its breaking point. The 16 GB of memory on the HP OmniBook 5 is enough that you’ll never have to worry about how many tabs, applications, installations, or downloads you have going simultaneously. Combined with the better multicore performance of the Snapdragon X, it enables a kind of freedom that lets you forget about the hardware and focus on the task at hand. Don’t get me wrong—the MacBook Neo has its place, but calling it the undisputed king of budget laptops just isn’t right.

The HP OmniBook 5 Is Only $500

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Specs and performance don’t tell the whole story, and Apple has never been known for offering tons of specs for cheap. But the OmniBook 5 14 is also an attractive design in a highly portable package. At 0.5 inches, it’s exactly the same thickness as the MacBook Neo and right around the same weight too. Does the MacBook Neo have a bit more style and personality? Absolutely—especially if you fancy one of the bolder color options. But I’d say the OmniBook 5 is a very pretty laptop in its own right. It’s also made of aluminum, sturdy and well-built in your hands. The hinge is balanced nicely, allowing you to open the lid with one finger. It doesn’t feel cheap.



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