[2021] Updates? News?

You're absolutely correct with lots of work being backend related in the last months. Most stuff being worked on is for tackling performance and other issues and mostly boring rewriting. We're also working on features for 9.5 and 9.6 but there's nothing ready for announcement yet. Shouldn't be too far for 9.5 anymore, though.

We heard last years feedback about that and plan to remove the festive skins with a bugfix update in January after our holidays.