If you love dinosaurs (and who doesn’t?), you’ll want to mark May 23rd on your calendar. That’s when Prehistoric Planet, a new five-part documentary series narrated by Sir David Attenborough will debut on Apple TV+. Produced by the BBC’s Natural History Unit, which previously worked on Planet Earth, the show promises to tell the story of some of the dinosaurs that roamed the Earth more than 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.

It will also feature music from Hans Zimmer and visual work by MPC, the VFX unit that helped Disney create its live-action adaptions of The Jungle Book and The Lion King. Apple said the series would incorporate the latest findings from paleontologists. Among other things, expect to see an “eye-opening” look at how the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex took care of its young. All five episodes of Prehistoric Earth will premiere the week of May 23rd, with one new episode each day.

Not two weeks after Epic Games removed the feature, Building is back in Fortnite. On Saturday, Epic re-addedFortnite’s classic Battle Royale mode to the game’s casual queue. It now lives side-by-side with the recently introduced Zero Build mode, and you can queue for both either individually or as part of a group made up of two or more players.

Epic announced it would temporarily remove building from Fortnite at the start of Chapter Three, Season Two on March 20th. The studio’s decision to do so was surprising given that the feature was what made the game stand out when Epic eventually decided to release a battle royale mode in 2017 after seeing the success of PUBG. Judging by the response to Saturday’s announcement, most people weren’t happy about the change, even if it was always intended to be temporary.

Russia’s Roscosmos will stop working with NASA and other western space agencies on the International Space Station. On early Saturday morning, Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin slammed international sanctions against Russia and said normal cooperation between the space agency and its western counterparts would only be possible after they were lifted.

“The purpose of the sanctions is to kill the Russian economy, plunge our people into despair and hunger, and bring our country to its knees. It’s clear they won’t succeed, but the intentions are clear.” Rogozin said in a tweet spotted by Reuters. “That’s why I believe that the restoration of normal relations between the partners at the International Space Station and other projects is possible only with full and unconditional removal of illegal sanctions.”

Rogozin said Roscosmos would submit proposals on ending its work with NASA and other international space agencies to Russian authorities. It’s unclear how the decision would affect the space station. The ISS is not owned by any single country. The US, European Union, Russia, Canada and Japan operate the station through a cooperative agreement between the countries. Roscosmos, however, is critical to the ISS. The Russian Orbital Segment handles guidance control for the entire station.

The US and many other countries imposed harsh sanctions on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine on February 24th. Among other effects, those sanctions have seen average Russians lose access to many western-made services, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. They have also made it difficult for Russian businesses to cash out their earnings from online marketplaces platforms like Steam.

The ISS isn’t the first joint space program to see its future thrown into uncertainty due to rising tensions between the West and Russia. In March, Roscosmos said it would not ferry OneWeb’s internet satellites to space until the UK government sold its stake in the company. That same month, the European Space Agency announced it was suspending its joint ExoMars mission with Roscosmos.

Google has begun rolling out a new update to its iOS YouTube TV app that allows both iPhone and iPad users to take advantage of picture-in-picture functionality. To watch something in PiP mode, swipe up from the bottom of the screen. The video will then automatically resize and move across your device’s display.

Today’s update is long overdue, a fact Google acknowledged. “We really appreciate your patience while we worked on enabling this key feature for your iOS 15+ devices,” the company said on Twitter. To put the wait in perspective, Apple’s mobile operating system has supported picture-in-picture functionality on iPad since iOS 13 and iPhone since iOS 14. What’s more, the feature has been available through the company’s main YouTube app since last year.

It may look a lot like the redesigned iMac, but Apple’s new Studio Display is in many ways a more complicated device once you open it up. Next to the company’s all-in-one desktop, the monitor is about 50 percent thicker, and there’s an interesting reason for that.

Following its recent Mac Studio teardown, iFixit took apart the Studio Display to see the engineering that went into Apple’s first dedicated monitor since the Pro Display XDR. What ends up making the studio display thicker than the iMac is a complicated, multi-board power supply board that’s housed within the monitor. Unlike with the iMac, you don’t need an adapter to power the Studio Display. It's one of those features that might seem small on the surface, but it ultimately leads to a better user experience.  

“If [Apple] had gone with an external power supply, this could have been the same design as the iMac,” iFixit said. It notes Apple likely invested a significant amount of engineering effort and cost to design a power supply that is as slim as the one found in the Studio Display. 

In taking apart the Studio Display, iFixit also discovered a few other interesting tidbits about the monitor. Almost every review of the Studio Display has complained of poor web camera quality. Apple has said it will release a software update to address the problem. In the meantime, iFixit says the Studio Display’s camera module looks nearly identical to the one found in the iPhone 11. “Hardware-wise, a three-year-old sensor is perfectly capable of packing a better punch than all these reviewers are seeing,” the company said. That’s something to keep in mind if you’re thinking about purchasing the Studio Display.

For those who want to try their hand at audio production, one of the most significant barriers to entry is the cost of equipment and instruments. That Korg Minilogue you have in mind for a killer synthwave track? Even a pre-owned one will set you back about $400. In recent years, audio plugins you can use with your favorite digital audio workstation have made it more affordable to dabble in audio production, but even those can be expensive.

Universal Audio wants to make its audio plugins more accessible with a subscription service called UAD Spark. Priced at $20 per month, the package includes some of the company’s most popular plugins, including ones that replicate the Neve 1073 preamp and Studer A800 tape recorder. You’ll also find a handful of exclusives. One such exclusive emulates the Opal Morphing Synthersizer.

But what’s likely to make UAD Spark compelling to a lot of people is that you don’t need one of the company’s Apollo or Volt audio interfaces to take advantage of the service. All the plugins included in Spark will run natively on your Mac (and Windows machine come this fall). And if you already own a Volt audio interface, you’ll get a free 30-day trial to the service. Should you decide to subscribe, any plugins you already own will be available through Spark.

A former DeepMind employee has accused the company of mishandling a series of serious sexual harassment allegations. In a report published Wednesday, The Financial Times recounts the experience of a former female staff member who alleges she was sexually assaulted twice by a senior researcher at the Google subsidiary. She says her harasser also sent her multiple traumatic documents, including one where he made allusions to raping unconscious women.

DeepMind eventually dismissed the researcher, but not before it subjected his victim to a disciplinary process she argues showed major flaws in how the company handles such incidents. All told, it reportedly took DeepMind seven months to address the complaint, and only did so after the former employee filed an appeal. It then allegedly took another two months before the company finally dismissed her harasser in September 2020.

During that period, the former employee was told she would face “disciplinary” action if she talked about her complaint with colleagues. She was advised not to visit the office where her harasser worked, but her manager, not knowing the full scope of the complaint, repeatedly pushed her to attend meetings at that same building. According to The Times, DeepMind did not place any restrictions on the alleged perpetrator, a claim the company disputes. 

A spokesperson for DeepMind said the firm told the researcher not to contact the staff member in September 2019. The company also disputes a claim the researcher received an award for their work during the time they were being investigated by the company. DeepMind says the award was one meant for the team the alleged perpetrator worked for and was related to a historic research paper.

“According to your own findings, I was subjected to sexual harassment, assault and abuse… I will never be the same person. I have spent almost the entire last year fearing for my safety. There is absolutely… no reason why the investigation was so dysfunctional,” the former employee said in an August 2020 email to DeepMind’s senior leadership.

“Any incident of sexual assault or harassment is abhorrent. DeepMind takes all allegations of workplace misconduct extremely seriously and we place our employees’ safety at the core of any actions we take,” DeepMind told Engadget. “The allegations were investigated thoroughly, and the individual who was investigated for misconduct was dismissed without any severance payments.”

Following the incident, DeepMind told Engadget it implemented a series of policies to change how it investigates such matters. Among other changes, the company says it now communicates more clearly how employees should go about raising concerns, and that it has a better system in place to support workers who complain of harassment and discrimination. It also told The Times it “regrets” the former staff member was provided with “incorrect guidance around breaking confidentiality.”

Last Summer, Spotify introduced Blend, a fun feature that allows you and a friend to compare your musical tastes. After inviting another Spotify user to take part, the platform generates a shared playlist that pulls songs from both your libraries. It also provides a match score and updates the playlist daily, allowing you to see how your tastes change over time.

One limitation of the feature was that you could only create a Blend playlist with a single friend or family member at a time. That’s now changing. Starting today, you can create a Blend playlist with up to 10 people, with Spotify taking into consideration all your disparate music tastes at the same time. Additionally, you can now also create Blend playlists with select artists, including BTS, Diplo, Mimi Webb and others. In that case, it's partly a showcase of the artist's latest music, but it's still fun to see where you overlap.

As with Blend playlists you create with your friends, Spotify will generate a story you can share on Instagram, Twitter and other social media platforms to show off how close you are two are on your favorite tunes. If you haven’t made a Blend playlist yet, you do so by typing "Blend" within the "Search" tab and then inviting the people you want to take part.  

If a startup from New Jersey has its way, the next Ray Kroc will be a robot. In the last week, a company called RoboBurgerinstalled an autonomous burger chef in Jersey City’s Newport Centre Mall. Over on its website, RoboBurger breathlessly describes its vending machine as the “biggest innovation in hot food vending since the invention of the microwave.”

Inside of a frame that occupies about 12 square feet, the RoboBurger features everything it needs to make a complete – if somewhat visually unappealing – burger in approximately six minutes. And while there may not be any humans involved, the machine uses the same five-step cooking process employed by many quick-service restaurants. An automated griddle grills the patty at the same time the machine toasts the bun. When you order your burger, you can decide whether you want ketchup, mustard and cheese on it. There’s even a built-in cleaning system that is up to the standards of the National Sanitary Foundation. Oh, and you can pay for your burger with both Apple Pay and Google Pay. Handy that.

And while we can’t speak to the taste of the burger, RoboBurger claims it only uses the best ingredients possible. The patty is made from grass-fed Angus beef that isn’t subjected to antibiotics. As for the bun, it’s a potato one that comes from a local bakery. If you can’t make it to New Jersey for a taste test, fret not. RoboBurger says it plans to bring its automated burger chef to airports, malls, colleges and other similar venues across the country in the coming weeks and months.

Verizon is aware of a spam campaign that is targeting its customers with their own phone numbers. As first reported by The Verge, some of the carrier’s subscribers have complained in recent days of receiving text messages that offer “a little gift” for paying off their monthly phone bill, with a link that leads to a Russian website. What has made the campaign unsettling for some is that the perpetrators are spoofing the numbers of their targets.

“Our team is actively working to block these messages, and we have engaged with US law enforcement to identify and stop the source of this fraudulent activity,” a Verizon spokesperson told Engadget. “Verizon continues to work on behalf of our customers to prevent spam texts and related activity.”

When reports of the campaign first started to appear online, some Verizon customers speculated it was the result of an internal breach, a claim the carrier denies. “We believe this activity is being generated from external bad actors with no direct tie to our company,” the company told The Verge. Verizon also said it has no evidence that suggests the texts are coming from Russia. The texts come as US officials, including President Biden, have warned of potential Russian cyberattacks in response to the sanctions imposed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. Like with most spam and phishing attempts, the best thing you can do to protect yourself is to not open the link that accompanies the text.