We still don’t know what Liam Hemsworth will look (or sound) like when he takes up the role of Geralt of Rivia in The Witcher. But we do know how long he’ll be wearing the white wig: Netflix has confirmed that the show’s fifth season will be its last.

The news comes as Netflix has confirmed that it has started production on season 4 of The Witcher — the first that won’t feature Henry Cavill in the lead role — and that it and season 5 will be filmed back to back. The two upcoming seasons will “complete the adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books,” according to Netflix. That means they will cover a trio of Witcher books: Baptism of Fire, The Tower of the Swallow, and Lady of the Lake.

Netflix first announced that Hemsworth would be taking over the role in 2022, and a fifth season was confirmed last year. Last summer’s season 3 of The Witcher thus ended up being a send-off for Cavill’s take on the character, which began in 2019. In addition to Hemsworth, season 4 will introduce new cast members including Laurence Fishburne.

Now, we wait to see what the new Geralt looks like in a wig.

If you watch a Twitch streamer, it’s almost guaranteed that they will be using at least one Elgato product. After dominating this part of the market for years, Elgato is now shifting its primary focus away from gaming with its new Neo line while also preparing a bevy of AI features to improve new and existing gear.

Neo is a collection of Elgato’s most popular products made simpler, more affordable, and more compact so they can be used easily with a laptop or iPad. “They look more accessible, they look more friendly,” says Julian Fest, general manager of Elgato, in an interview with The Verge. “The entire industrial design is focused on being more appealing to a less technical audience.”

The $99.99 Stream Deck Neo is the star of the show, essentially the command center for Elgato’s products. It has eight LCD keys that can be paired to automate tasks like turning on lights or joining video calls. I use Stream Deck buttons to mute myself on calls, pause my notifications in Slack, and see what music is playing on Spotify. Elgato has added two capacitive buttons to let you switch pages for an infinite amount of customizable keys. There’s also an info display between these buttons that acts like a digital clock that’s always available.

Neo is Elgato’s way of bringing its expertise in streaming to the masses — an acknowledgment that the line between creator and professional is increasingly blurred as more and more people dial into meetings remotely. But it’s also an admission that setting up webcams, lights, and microphones isn’t an easy task for most people.

“We want the out-of-box experience to be quite seamless,” says Fest. Elgato’s Neo line is designed to be plug-and-play so you can quickly and easily improve your setup without having to install multiple apps and tweak settings. Elgato is trying to appeal to people who are looking for something in between a basic webcam / microphone combination and the more high-end audio and video setup it’s typically known for.

The lineup includes key hardware for video calls. The $99.99 Facecam Neo webcam supports 1080p video at 60fps, includes an integrated privacy shutter, and can easily slot onto the top of a monitor or your laptop. The $89.99 Wave Neo condenser microphone has a raised desktop stand and a tap-to-mute feature and will also integrate into Elgato’s more advanced Wave Link app.

If you need better lighting at your desk or on the go, the $89.99 Key Light Neo is a diffused light that’s designed to pair with a webcam. While Elgato’s other Key Lights have typically shipped with stands, the Key Light Neo can be mounted to the top of a laptop or a monitor so it doesn’t take up any desk space. It has up to 800 lumens of brightness, and there are controls at the front to adjust the brightness and color temperature.

The $119.99 Game Capture Neo is still very much rooted in the history of Elgato products aimed at streamers and gamers. You can use it to capture video from a PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch, and it also includes pass-through support of up to 4K / 60fps with HDR enabled. Game Capture Neo supports capture at up to 1080p 60fps, so it’s ideal for Twitch or YouTube streaming. It’s designed to work out of the box with Discord, OBS Studio, and other apps for streaming to Twitch, YouTube, and TikTok.

All of these Neo devices are available to order today, with the exception of the Facecam Neo webcam. Elgato says it’s making “further fine tuning” to the out of box experience, and expects to launch Facecam Neo in May or June.

“It’s the start of a longer-term mission where we’re really trying to make more people aware that even if you don’t consider yourself a content creator, in many ways you are,” says Fest. Elgato is targeting people participating in online sales, video podcasts, events, product demonstrations, community building, and other areas where audio and visual content has been growing in recent years. “Neo really is a bet that this trend is going to keep accelerating,” says Fest.

With just one exception, each product in the Neo lineup costs less than $100. That’s still a lot more than a $20 microphone or webcam you could buy on Amazon, but the Neo devices are designed to be premium only at a lower price point.

“We have a history of launching products where everybody is like, ‘That’s way overpriced, and I can get this cheaper elsewhere,’” says Fest. “You’re always going to find cheaper options, but I do think we’ve built products here that, for a lot of people, are going to hit that sweet spot.”

The entire Neo range comes in a white finish, which is designed to blend into rooms with white walls. The compact nature of the Neo lineup also makes it easy to use these devices in smaller spaces or even on the go.

All of these Neo products also work on iPad for the first time, a clear invitation to an emerging line of creators that make TikTok and Instagram videos with just their phones or tablets. “We’re able to really accessorize an iPad now and make it a content creation powerhouse,” says Fest. The iPad is often marketed as a creative device, but “the reality of the situation is that the majority of people just use their iPads to watch Netflix and YouTube,” says Fest.

Even the Stream Deck Neo will work on an iPad, thanks to a new SDK that will allow app developers to send a profile to the device that lets it control their app. That works around the many restrictions in iOS that don’t exist on Windows or macOS, but it means it will take some time for app developers to build up this support.

As Elgato looks at new workflows and increased momentum away from being seen as just for gamers, it’s also looking at using AI to make its products even smarter. Fest tells me that Elgato has a new Light Strip launching next month where the 160 LEDs are individually addressable. This is Elgato’s first AI push, with a feature designed to improve how you create a colorful scene. “We built a frontend where you can put in ‘I want a dark forest,’ and on the backend, it will go to ChatGPT ... which will always give us a range of RGB values that serves you three options as a user to pick from,” says Fest.

Elgato’s new Prompter hardware is also getting some AI-powered improvements. The teleprompter will soon have voice-based auto-scrolling, making it easy to read off of a script and not have to fiddle with buttons to pause the scrolling. “A few years ago, this would have been a pain in the ass to build,” says Fest, but the availability of large language models has made this a lot easier for the 140-person team working on these products.

But for all the advantages of AI, the use cases could eradicate the need for Elgato’s webcams and microphones if the future swings radically toward AI agents that handle our meetings for us. “To some people, that might be appealing, but I don’t think that’s the future I want to fight for,” says Fest. “I think AI can help us in everything we do, and it can make things easier and maybe more fun. It can help unlock creativity, and that’s where we’ll invest and try to build.”

Google fired 28 employees in connection with sit-in protests at two of its offices this week, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge. The firings come after 9 employees were suspended and then arrested in New York and California on Tuesday.

The fired employees were involved in protesting Google’s involvement in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion Israeli government cloud contract that also includes Amazon. Some of them occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian until they were forcibly removed by law enforcement. Last month, Google fired another employee for protesting the contract during a company presentation in Israel.

In a memo sent to all employees on Wednesday, Chris Rackow, Google’s head of global security, said that “behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it.” You can read the full memo at the bottom of this story.

He also warned that the company would take more action if needed: “The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination.”

In a response statement, the “No Tech for Apartheid” group behind the protests called Google’s firings a “flagrant act of retaliation.”

“In the three years that we have been organizing against Project Nimbus, we have yet to hear from a single executive about our concerns,” the group wrote in a post on Medium. “Google workers have the right to peacefully protest about terms and conditions of our labor. These firings were clearly retaliatory.”

You can read Rackow’s full memo below:

Serious consequences for disruptive behavior

Googlers,

You may have seen reports of protests at some of our offices yesterday. Unfortunately, a number of employees brought the event into our buildings in New York and Sunnyvale. They took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers. Their behavior was unacceptable, extremely disruptive, and made coworkers feel threatened. We placed employees involved under investigation and cut their access to our systems. Those who refused to leave were arrested by law enforcement and removed from our offices.

Following investigation, today we terminated the employment of twenty-eight employees found to be involved. We will continue to investigate and take action as needed.

Behavior like this has no place in our workplace and we will not tolerate it. It clearly violates multiple policies that all employees must adhere to — including our Code of Conduct and Policy on Harassment, Discrimination, Retaliation, Standards of Conduct, and Workplace Concerns.

We are a place of business and every Googler is expected to read our policies and apply them to how they conduct themselves and communicate in our workplace. The overwhelming majority of our employees do the right thing. If you’re one of the few who are tempted to think we’re going to overlook conduct that violates our policies, think again. The company takes this extremely seriously, and we will continue to apply our longstanding policies to take action against disruptive behavior — up to and including termination.

You should expect to hear more from leaders about standards of behavior and discourse in the workplace.