Zach Katz, FaZe Nickmercs, and Lee Trink at Parq Nightclub in San Diego, California. | Photo by Cassidy Sparrow/Getty Images for FaZe Clan Faze Clan, a merchandising and influencer marketing agency that was once synonymous with the esports space, has fired CEO Lee Trink. CFO Christoph Pachler will take over for Trink on an interim basis, Bloomberg reports.Faze Clan cultivated a lavish and freewheeling image during its early years. The firm maintained teams across many different esports titles, created gaming-adjacent content for social media platforms like Twitch and Snapchat, and sold branded apparel. Trink, who had no esports background when he became Faze’s CEO in 2018, aimed to position it as a youth-oriented culture and lifestyle company. “We are the voice of this current gaming generation,” he said on an episode of The Vergecast in 2019, during which he also compared... Continue reading…

Adobe is making it easier to improve and clean up the audio quality of your recorded footage in Premiere Pro. | Image: Adobe Adobe is introducing some new AI and 3D features in beta for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Frame.io — its popular suite of video and audio editing applications that are designed to improve workflow and speed up time-intensive tasks. To start, Premiere Pro is adding an AI-powered Enhance Speech feature that Adobe claims can make poorly recorded dialogue sound like “it was recorded in a professional studio.” Enhance Speech automatically removes background noise and provides Premiere Pro users with a mix slider to customize how much of it they’d like to incorporate in their projects. A new Audio Category Tagging feature is also available that automatically flags clips that contain dialogue, music, and sound effects or ambient noise. ... Continue reading…

Illustration: Alex Castro / The Verge Sony is hosting a State of Play presentation on Thursday, September 14th, the company announced on Wednesday. This State of Play will be focused on “indie and third-party titles from around the world,” Sony said, so don’t hold your breath for big new reveals from the company’s PlayStation Studios.“Tomorrow’s broadcast will focus on updates to previously announced games coming to PlayStation consoles,” Sony’s Shawne Benson wrote on the PlayStation blog. “From indie and PSVR2 highlights, to major upcoming titles from our third-party partners, our latest show has something for everyone!” The event kicks off at 5PM ET / 2PM PT.Thursday is quickly shaping up to be a big day for gaming news. Nintendo will be kicking off the day with its next... Continue reading…

OneNote on Windows is a bit of an odd duckling. Depending upon your desktop configuration and use, you may have access to two OneNote apps. The first is the OneNote for Windows 10 - which is based on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) - and has been delisted from the Microsoft Store. The second is the newer unified version based on the classic OneNote desktop app that comes with Microsoft 365. Now, the Redmond tech firm has announced that it is ending support for translation capabilities in the old OneNote app.

Illustration by Cath Virginia / The Verge QR codes can be very useful, especially when it comes to getting to a webpage quickly and easily. (For example, I’m always resorting to the QR codes at NYC bus stops to find out that I just missed the bus two minutes ago and the next one is due in about 20 minutes.) If you want to guide somebody quickly to your website or to a webpage that they need, you can create a QR code for that page. There are a variety of QR code generator apps out there that you can access. (Keep in mind that it’s wise to be careful which one you choose since a less-than-honest app can include tracking or other code with the generated QR.) In addition, some online services, such as Instagram, may offer their own QR code generation. But for a good general... Continue reading…

Image: Spotify for Artists Spotify has launched a new tool called Showcase that will let artists pay to promote their music to listeners on the platform’s Home feed. Artists can select a song or an entire album to appear as a mobile banner, which can be set to target a specific type of listener from 30 markets at launch. The banners will note that a recommendation has been sponsored.Spotify gave us a sneak preview of Showcase at its Stream On event earlier this year as one of many new additions in a top-down revamp of its mobile app’s core homescreen. The rollout of Showcase began on Tuesday, and over the next few weeks, US artists with at least 1,000 streams in the last 28 days should see Showcase appear in the campaigns tab of Spotify for Artists. The... Continue reading…

The Apple Watch is undoubtedly the best smartwatch for iPhone users. Not only does it offer complete integration with iOS, but it also packs some pretty advanced sensors that can help you track your health and fitness habits. However, for you to actually use a new Apple Watch, you first have to pair it and set it up. To do so, follow the steps below.

There's a new high-end smartwatch in town, the Apple Watch Ultra 2. Just as the name of the watch suggests, this watch is next-level compared to its predecessor. It sports the Apple S9 processor, double tap support, precision finding, a carbon-neutral design, and a brighter screen. But what about which bands the Apple Watch Ultra 2 uses? Worry not, as the Apple Watch Ultra 2 uses the same kind of 49nm bands as the original Apple Watch Ultra.

Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge Sony is rolling out a big new PS5 update today, just over a month after it first started testing the changes in a beta. The update adds Dolby Atmos, lets you mute that annoying bootup beep, and even supports pairing a second controller as an assist one to let you help friends or family complete a game. Sony is also expanding its PS Remote Play app to Google’s Chromecast with Google TV (4K), allowing you to stream games from a PS5 or PS4 to Android TV OS 12 devices.The Dolby Atmos support comes in the form of Sony’s 3D Audio implementation (Tempest 3D AudioTech). It’s compatible with Dolby Atmos devices like sound bars, TVs, or home theater systems. Media apps like Netflix can also update their apps on PS5 soon to support Dolby Atmos... Continue reading…

Image: Larian Studios Baldur’s Gate 3 is finally about to leave early access on Mac. Developer Larian Studios said Wednesday on X (formerly Twitter) that the game’s third major patch would be arriving on September 21st “with full support for BG3 on Mac.”Baldur’s Gate 3 is technically already available on Mac, but currently, it’s only the early access version that doesn’t include all of the content in the full version of the game that first released on PC in August and recently came out on PS5. In a post on Steam from June, Larian said that the full Mac version would be released “at a later date, and we’ll update you as soon as we have a target” — I’ll take Wednesday’s post on X as that update.Thank you from the fiery infernal engine we keep in place of... Continue reading…

Photo by Nilay Patel / The Verge Starlink, the SpaceX satellite internet service, generated $1.4 billion in revenue last year, documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal. That’s up from $222 million in 2021 but $11 billion short of its original projections, according to the Journal.Interestingly, The Wall Street Journal’s report comes the same day SpaceX exec Jonathan Hofeller said at a conference that it’s no longer incurring losses for producing Starlink’s satellite antennas, reports CNBC. According to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal, profitability took a hit in 2022, but a report by the outlet last month said SpaceX did manage to turn a profit in the first quarter of 2023.In a 2015 presentation to investors, the Elon Musk-founded company... Continue reading…

This is the best TV you can buy if you're looking for one that can double as an outstanding art piece. While any TV can display an image on its screen, Samsung's The Frame TV stands out among the pack with its matte display and other technologies that really sell the look of a painting being on your wall.