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I didn’t need to be sold on Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition, but after a couple dozen hours with one of the largest and coolest games Nintendo has ever made, one moment cemented this remaster as one of the very best games on Nintendo Switch for me.

It came after I decided to get a little adventurous. Following excursions into three of the game’s five gorgeous, ecologically diverse continents, I decided to take things further and go north to Sylvalum, a region defined by alabaster white sand and spherical trees that glow at night. Getting there was a journey in and of itself, requiring me to duck and weave between enemies that could kill me in just one or two hits if they noticed me. 

But then I got there, and Sylvalum’s incredible theme music kicked in. By this point, I’m already locked the hell in. I ventured further into the continent, eventually finding an enormous lake shallow enough for me to walk across. Suddenly, the weather became oppressively misty, reducing visibility to near zero. As I carefully trotted across the lake, I found myself running underneath the legs of a gargantuan alien stag the size of a large building. It didn’t want anything to do with me, but seeing that thing emerge from the mist was a jump-scare that drove home how genuinely dangerous and alien Xenoblade X’s setting can be at its best. 

I'm so glad this dude was non-hostile. Credit: Nintendo

Xenoblade X, originally released on Wii U for what felt like an audience of about 27 people in 2015, is all about moments like this, little reminders of how physically small and cosmically insignificant humans are. I’ve never played another open-world game that so routinely makes the player feel like an ant in the coolest way possible. The alien planet of Mira, on which the game is set, was not meant for our feet, and Xenoblade X reminds you of this at every opportunity.

All of that was true of the Wii U original, and remains true with this new Switch release. To leave it there would do a disservice to developer Monolith Soft, though. Rather than making a simple remaster with cleaned up visuals and some UI tweaks, Monolith Soft went about seven extra miles. Thanks to substantial and tasteful reconsiderations of various menus and systems, as well as thrilling new story material, Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition is truly the way to play this almost-forgotten classic. You can finally put your Wii U in the closet for good.

Man in the Mira

Xenoblade X, which is narratively unrelated to the numbered trilogy I’ve gushed about on this website before, has kind of a bummer of an opening. Before you can even take control of your player-created silent protagonist, Earth has been destroyed in the crossfire of a war between two hostile alien civilizations. We weren’t even part of the fight; we just got in the way of it. 

To make matters worse, seemingly only one colony ship managed to slip away in all the chaos: the White Whale. After some more alien war nonsense, the White Whale makes an emergency crash landing on the uncharted planet Mira. The survivors manage to retrofit the ship’s habitat area into a half-built city called New Los Angeles. They get to work not only on figuring out how to survive on Mira, but also on retrieving the Lifehold, a lost part of the White Whale that is the key to the future of the human race. 

Transplanting suburban American culture to another planet is a really goofy idea. Credit: Nintendo

While that is a solid jumping-off point for a JRPG story, not even a terrific remaster can save Xenoblade X from its biggest foibles. Namely, the main story takes a really long time to find its footing. Sure, it sprinkles in some interesting reveals early on, enough to keep the player invested, but this is not the kind of strong, character-driven, emotional storytelling you’d find in a numbered Xenoblade game. Monolith Soft has gotten a lot better at visual presentation in the decade since this game came out on Wii U, and it shows. A great deal of the story in Xenoblade X is delivered through wooden conversation scenes where anywhere between three and six people stand still in a circle for a while. It’s no match for the excellent cutscene direction of something like Xenoblade 3.

Luckily, there’s plenty of charming and funny writing to be found in Xenoblade X’s treasure trove of side quests, which you absolutely should take the time to do. The main story does eventually find some interesting thematic ground to cover (who gets to leave Earth before its destruction, and who gets to choose?), it just takes too long to get there. 

Nintendo would probably prefer it if I didn’t spoil the new story stuff, which largely takes place after the original game’s unsatisfying cliffhanger ending. Without going too much into what happens in it, the new chapter is a more conclusive coda to the adventure than what was there before. It’s also thematically more in line with the other Xenoblade games, full of achingly sincere emotional beats about the existence of gods, angels, and even Heaven itself. 

And yes, fans of the other three Xenoblades will find plenty to pick through and theorize about in YouTube essays and Reddit threads in the years to come.

Be prepared to do a lot of quests The whole game is full of sights like this. Credit: Nintendo

Just like the original Wii U version, Xenoblade X Definitive Edition opens with a fairly limiting creation suite for the player character, who is a voiceless, amnesiac husk with no apparent stakes in anything that’s happening. Monolith Soft has upgraded the character creator with some new visual options, but it’s still got very rigid male/female gender options that feel out of step with where RPGs have gone in the decade since this game first came out. I understand that it’s probably very difficult to offer extensive pronoun options in a game with voice acting that was recorded more than a decade ago, but the lack of things like that does stand out now.

Regardless, once you make your little dude and go through a fairly stiff and awkward tutorial chapter, Xenoblade X sets you off on an open-ended quest to explore Mira and help humanity build a new home for itself. There is a linear series of main story chapters to complete, but accessing them (especially in the later stages of the story) often requires the player to complete seemingly optional missions or otherwise engage with its many systems.

These usually include affinity missions, each of which revolves around a different playable party member, of which there are more than 20. Affinity missions have full voice acting and even unique boss fights in some cases. These are generally the best Xenoblade X has to offer in terms of authored side material. 

My one major complaint about the quest structure here is that activating a main story mission or affinity mission locks you out of doing other story/affinity missions until you complete it. It’s unnecessarily rigid and can become quite annoying if the next objective in the quest you’re locked into is something you don’t feel comfortable doing. 

My favorite area in the whole game. Credit: Nintendo

There are also non-voiced side missions that often at least include funny premises and objectives, such as one where you have to stop a dangerous political candidate who wants to convert the entire economy into a pizza-based bartering system from winning office in New LA. Many of the side missions involve cultural exchange between humans and several different friendly alien species who shack up in NLA over the course of the story. 

I can’t lie: In times like these, I found it nice and refreshing just how much of the missions in this game involve humans embracing diversity and befriending unfamiliar immigrants who have nowhere else to go. It’s not always perfectly sensitive to every issue, but Xenoblade X carries an optimism about people and their ability to accept others that’s nice to see right now.

Beyond that, there are more basic busywork missions that mostly involve killing a certain number of monsters or collecting a certain number of items. Blessedly, these are things you can do if you want, but rarely do you have to do any of them. 

When you aren’t questing, you’ll most likely spend your time running around Mira, planting mining probes to expand the map. These also double as a source of regular passive income, making it well worth the player’s while to meticulously plan out their probe network in the in-game FrontierNav menu. 

As a lifelong fan of MMORPGs, Xenoblade X’s questing rhythm is familiar and comfortable to me. “Just one more quest and then it’s time for bed” regularly turned into late-night sessions that ultimately led to a staggering 96 hours of playtime before I hit the end credits. There’s no denying that Xenoblade X is a beast of a video game, but I had a good time for almost all of those 96 hours.

Stick with it, I promise Skells rule. Credit: Nintendo

I realize I’ve gotten nearly 1,500 words into this review without mentioning that you eventually get access to fully customizable mechs (called Skells) in this game. That’s appropriate because it takes literally about 30 hours of gametime before Xenoblade X grants access to this game-changing system. It’s another 15 hours of gametime before your Skell gets the ability to fly, which alters things even further.

A lot of people will read that paragraph, say “screw that,” and go play something else instead. To each their own, but I strongly feel that instant gratification for mech lovers would make Xenoblade X a substantially less interesting experience. 

Put simply, Skells alter the player’s perspective in a way that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen another open-world game pull off. Before you have a Skell, you are but an insect to the megafauna of Mira. Many parts of the world are fully inaccessible because you can’t jump high enough, and it’s not even worth trying to kill big monsters most of the time. Once you have a Skell, you suddenly see Mira at an entirely different scale. You can kill more things and go to more places.

Flying around Mira is a blast. Credit: Nintendo

It’s a massive change to thrust upon the player after 30 hours of gameplay, but then it happens again once your Skell has a flight module. The ability to freely fly around Mira is a profound change, and one that unlocks places you never even dreamed of being able to visit before. This is where the real magic of Xenoblade X reveals itself: Anything you can see, you can also touch. Things that would be background elements in other games are fully modeled objects that you can walk on, even if there’s no reason to do so. 

I’ve just never played another open-world game that so intentionally and effectively plays with the player’s relationship to the game world itself. You experience three different versions of Mira over the course of the adventure. It’s rad as hell. It also doesn’t hurt that the environmental art direction is outstanding across the board. All five continents are beautiful in their own way, and they all manage to put at least one fun twist on familiar concepts like “green plains” or “jungle.” 

Also, one of the new things they added in the remaster is a Skell that transforms into a jet. It’s easily the most fun way to get around Mira once you unlock it.

They fixed the combat, too

Fighting monsters is, obviously, a very big part of Xenoblade X, and it’s also the part that’s most likely to make newcomers bounce off of it. Like every other game in the series, combat here is roughly akin to that of classic MMORPGs like World of Warcraft. When you target an enemy, your character automatically begins attacking while you scroll through a horizontal bar full of Arts, which are cooldown-based combat abilities, on the bottom of the screen. 

While fights play out in real-time, this isn’t an action game. Your job is to properly position your character and manage cooldowns, not skillfully execute combos. The most unique thing about the combat in Xenoblade X relative to its peers is the general lack of healing abilities. While there are a handful of Arts that recover health, the main way to heal your party members is to use certain Arts at the right time whenever one of your teammates calls out for it, which recovers a little bit of health for everyone. 

I know this looks like a lot, but trust me, it's way cleaner than the Wii U version. Credit: Nintendo

This system, known as Soul Voices, is something you can spend hours tinkering with, or ignore entirely, as I did. In general, this is by far the most build-crafty Xenoblade game, with lots of adjusting to be done in the game’s many menus in order to put together the perfect party for any situation. It is immensely satisfying, especially in the game’s later chapters, to carefully put together a plan and see it work just as you imagined.

Combat was hectic and fun on Wii U, but it always felt like it was missing something. Monolith Soft found it in the Switch version with the quick cooldown system. By simply hovering over an Art that’s currently on cooldown and pressing a button, you can skip the cooldown and instantly use the art again, as many times as you want. This is governed by a new meter that doesn’t really refill until a fight is over, so you do need to be careful about it, which is nice because otherwise it would be totally broken.

Quick cooldowns make fights substantially faster and more fun. Monolith Soft has hit a satisfying balance of giving players more ways to succeed without trivializing combat. It can still be very challenging, but the player now has a slightly bigger margin for error. I should note that Skell combat is very similar to on-foot fights, but you don’t get access to quick cooldowns. This is a cool disparity that didn’t exist before; combat on-foot is more agile and reactive, while Skell fights are slower and more methodical, as they should be.

They fixed everything else, too Auroras are cool. Credit: Nintendo

The Wii U version of Xenoblade X was a hard game to love at times. There were certain elements of its design that made tedious grinding more necessary than I prefer, and in general, the user interface was a mess. Monolith Soft’s efforts to alleviate those problems are, by a wide margin, my favorite thing about the Definitive Edition port.

The two most important changes involve the game’s large roster of party members. In the original game, you had to manually walk up to someone in NLA and talk to them to add them to your party. The Wii U version also did not give any experience points to inactive party members, meaning you had to grind to keep people at an acceptable level. Since affinity missions have strict level requirements, this was an extremely tiresome chore.

I’m pleased to report that the Switch version allows you to switch out party members from the main menu at any time, and everyone levels up regardless of how much you use them. Affinity, a separate stat that goes up as you spend more time with characters and is usually a requirement to start affinity missions, also accumulates much faster than it did before. This makes it a breeze to complete every single affinity mission in the game, something that I would never have done before.

That’s not all, though, Not even close. Here’s just a sampling of some of the other improvements the developers made over the Wii U version:

• You can change the time of day from the main menu

• Character faces generally look a lot better

• Objective markers for quests are significantly more helpful than they used to be

• There are now multiple save slots

• You can highlight specific segments of the minimap, which makes searching for things easier

Last but certainly not least, a majority of the fonts have been updated to the admittedly kinda sterile sans serif font Nintendo uses for everything now. In this case specifically, this was a great choice. The Wii U version's text could be hard to read at times. On top of that, just about every menu has been updated to efficiently communicate as much information as possible, when possible. The Combat UI has also seen massive improvements, making it much easier to read the situation and react accordingly than before.

Is Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition worth getting?

Does the sun rise? Is water wet?

Put simply, Monolith Soft has done a remarkable job updating this game without compromising on what made it so compelling in the first place. Most of its irksome little annoyances have been removed, while maintaining a fair and enjoyable amount of friction. Mira is still an incredibly dangerous planet to explore, especially before you have Skells.

I promise I wouldn’t recommend a game that took me nearly 100 hours to finish unless I really thought it was worth the time. This is the best Xenoblade Chronicles X has ever been, and I’m extremely thrilled that people who are curious can finally check it out without digging out a Wii U.

Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition launches exclusively on Nintendo Switch on March 20.

Celine Song has come to tangle us up in an enticing love triangle all over again. The celebrated writer/director of the critically acclaimed Past Lives returns with Materialists, a tantalizing three-way romance starring Pedro Pascal, Chris Evans, and Dakota Johnson.

The logline from A24 teases: "A young, ambitious New York City matchmaker finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex."

Johnson stars as this matchmaker, described by friends as the "eternal bachelorette." However, her prospects change at a client's wedding when she meets a dashing and wealthy unicorn (Pascal), as in "an impossible fantasy." She also reconnects with her ex (Evans), a charming but broke bachelor who has a catering job, roommates, and dreams of growing old with her.

How is a gal supposed to choose between two of the internet's most beloved boyfriends?

We'll find out when Materialists opens in theaters everywhere June 13.

SAVE $70: As of March 18, the Apple AirPods Max (USB-C) are on sale at Best Buy for $479.99. That's 12% off their list price of $549.99.

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple Apple AirPods Max (USB-C) $479.99 at Best Buy
$549.99 Save $70 Get Deal

If you find yourself frequently listening to the latest and greatest songs, brand new audiobooks, or exciting podcasts, it's important to have headphones that can keep up with you. High-quality options usually come with a hefty price tag, but every once in a while a deal floats around that's worth taking advantage of. If you're an Apple user who has been looking to make the jump to the Apple AirPods Max (USB-C), you're in luck, as they're currently on sale at Best Buy.

The retailer has knocked the price of the Apple AirPods Max (USB-C) down by $70, from $549.99 to $479.99. This applies to all of the available colors as well, so you can choose between the midnight, blue, orange, purple, and starlight models. That's not all, though. Your purchase also comes with Apple Fitness+ for free for three months if you're a new subscriber and up to three months of Apple Music for free if you're a new or returning subscriber.

SEE ALSO: For gym rats and picky audiophiles alike, these are the 7 best headphones of 2025

The AirPods Max headphones offer excellent sound quality courtesy of the Apple H1 chip. They also offer noise-canceling features that let you either completely tune out the world around you or open things up to hear your surroundings without cutting off what you're listening to. We had a lot of positives to note about them in our review, with Brenda Stolyar saying, "When it comes down to it, the AirPods Max check off almost all the boxes for what makes an excellent pair of headphones: great sound quality, ideal battery life, easy controls, and a stylish design (sans Smart Case)."

We also ranked them in our roundup of the best noise-canceling headphones for flying as the best option for Apple loyalists, noting "The AirPods Max aren't just a pretty pair of headphones. With the help of eight microphones, these headphones provide excellent active noise cancellation."

If you've been looking to upgrade your headphones, don't miss out on $70 off the Apple AirPods Max (USB-C) at Best Buy.

Outside of the AirPods Max, there are a few more Apple deals worth checking out right now. Over at Amazon, the AirPods Pro 2 have had a nice little discount, and at Best Buy you can save $100 on an Apple iPad mini.

The acquisition could make the Silicon Valley giant a bigger force in cybersecurity, and arrives months after an earlier round of talks collapsed.

Netflix is continuing the rich tradition of Scandinavian crime drama with Camilla Läckberg's The Glass Dome, a thriller about a criminologist travelling back to the Swedish town where she was held captive as a child.

As you probably guessed, it's not long before another child goes missing, and soon Lejla (Léonie Vincent) is on the trail of a mystery that might be connected to what happened to her as a girl. Intriguing!

The Glass Dome is streaming on Netflix from April 15.

FREE GIFT CARD: As of March 18, Best Buy's offering a free $50 e-gift card when you purchase a 512GB Meta Quest 3 VR headset.

Opens in a new window Credit: Meta $50 Best Buy e-Gift Card with Meta Quest 3 (512GB) Get Deal

If you've had your eye on the Meta Quest 3, now's your chance to scoop it up and score a little extra cash in the process. Right now, Best Buy's offering a $50 e-gift card when you purchase a 512GB Meta Quest 3 VR headset, which comes to $499.99.

It's not the only bonus that comes with the Meta Quest 3. Purchasing this headset also comes with the VR game Batman: Arkham Shadow and a three-month trial of Meta Quest+ to kickstart your VR journey. Best Buy also notes that your purchase comes with a one month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership.

SEE ALSO: Meta Quest 3S vs. Meta Quest 3: What are the differences?

We think very highly of the Meta Quest 3, even if its battery life doesn't last for quite as long as we'd like. We rank it as the best option overall in our roundup of the best VR headsets, saying that "the Meta Quest 3 is the best Quest VR headset to date. Pretty much every single spec (save for battery life, strangely) is bigger and better than the Quest 2, including power, resolution, comfort, and more."

Similarly, our review had a lot of positive things to note about it despite its battery life, with Mashable's Kimberly Gedeon saying, "The Meta Quest 3 is a lighter, sleeker version of its predecessor with a new color passthrough feature that lets you enjoy more mixed-reality experiences, but the battery life could be better."

Take advantage of this free $50 Best Buy e-gift card with the purchase of a 512GB Meta Quest 3 VR headset at the retailer.

If you're on the hunt for more gaming-related deals right now, have a look at our breakdown of Steam's Spring Sale. If you're a PC gamer, there are plenty of excellent discounts to check out right now on a wide variety of games, including Baldur’s Gate 3, Diablo IV, and so much more.

The Mini is a bite-sized version of The New York Times' revered daily crossword. While the crossword is a lengthier experience that requires both knowledge and patience to complete, The Mini is an entirely different vibe.

With only a handful of clues to answer, the daily puzzle doubles as a speed-running test for many who play it.

So, when a tricky clue disrupts a player's flow, it can be frustrating! If you find yourself stumped playing The Mini — much like with Wordle and Connections — we have you covered.

SEE ALSO: Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more: Play games on Mashable

Here are the clues and answers to NYT's The Mini for Tuesday, March 18, 2025:

Across"Dude! Come on!"

• The answer is Bruh.

San Antonio attraction to "remember"

• The answer is Alamo.

Recurring Stallone role

• The answer is Rambo.

Stream

• The answer is Creek.

Hudson after whom the Hudson River is named

• The answer is Henry.

DownLoudly play, as a speaker

• The answer is Blare.

Dish that might come with a spoon and chopsticks

• The answer is Ramen.

Raw ___, color in the Crayola Hall of Fame

• The answer is Umber.

Something "played" to avoid class

• The answer is Hooky.

Eyebrow shape

• The answer is Arch.

If you're looking for more puzzles, Mashable's got games now! Check out our games hub for Mahjong, Sudoku, free crossword, and more.

Featured Video For You The Wordle Strategy used by the New York Times' Head of Games

Are you also playing NYT Strands? See hints and answers for today's Strands.

Not the day you're after? Here's the solution to yesterday's Mini Crossword.

SAVE UP TO 96%: The Steam Spring Sale is coming to an end, and some of the best RPGs out there are at their lowest-ever prices. As of March 18, these top picks are still up for grabs at a discount:

• Hogwarts Legacy — $14.99 $59.99

• Diablo IV — $27.49 $49.99

• Baldur’s Gate 3 — $47.99 $59.99

The best deal on Baldur’s Gate 3 Opens in a new window Credit: Larian Studios Baldur's Gate III $47.99 at Steam
$59.99 Save $12 Get Deal Why we like it

A game this good rarely sees discounts, which makes this deal even sweeter. Baldur’s Gate 3 brings tabletop RPG-style storytelling, strategic turn-based combat, and some of the most immersive roleplaying choices ever seen in a video game. This one is worth every penny at full price, but at $47.99, it’s a must-buy.

The best deal on Diablo IV Opens in a new window Credit: Blizzard Diablo IV $27.49 at Steam
$49.99 Save $22.50 Get Deal Why we like it

Hell has never looked this good. Diablo IV offers fast-paced combat, deep character customization, and a sprawling dark fantasy world with enemies to crush and loot to hoard. The addictive gameplay loop and online co-op make it a steal at $27.49, especially for fans of action RPGs.

The best deal on Hogwarts Legacy Opens in a new window Credit: WB Games Hogwarts Legacy $14.99 at Steam
$59.99 Save $45 Get Deal Why we like it

The price has officially dropped lower than a first-year’s flying lesson. Hogwarts Legacy delivers an open-world wizarding experience filled with spells, potion brewing, and enough side quests to keep you exploring the castle for hours. The game world is packed with secrets, and at just $14.99, this deal is too good to ignore.

The best Steam Spring Sale 2025 deals

The Steam Spring Sale is packed with deals across every genre. Elden Ring is still crushing spirits at 40% off. Red Dead Redemption 2 is sitting at an absurd $14.99, making it the best time to saddle up. Horror fans can prepare for the Silent Hill 2 remake, and indie lovers can grab Dredge or Undertale at deep discounts.

There’s still time to grab some great games before March 20, and these are the best deals worth considering:

• Call of Duty Black Ops — $48.99 $69.99

• Cyberpunk 2077 — $23.99 $59.99

• Diablo IV — $27.49 $49.99

• Disney Dreamlight Valley — $29.99 $39.99

• Doom — $1.99 $19.99

• Doom Eternal — $9.99 $39.99

• Dredge — $12.49 $24.99

• Dynasty Warriors: Origins — $55.99 $69.99

• Elden Ring — $35.99 $59.99

• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth — $48.99 $69.99

• Forza Horizon 5 — $29.99 $59.99

• Frostpunk 2 — $31.49 $44.99

• Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced — $14.99 $29.99

• Garry’s Mod — $5.99 $9.99

• Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut — $40.19 $59.99

• God of War Ragnarök — $47.99 $59.99

• Hades II — $26.99 $29.99

• Heavy Rain — $1.99 $19.99

• Helldivers 2 — $31.99 $39.99

• Hogwarts Legacy — $14.99 $59.99

• Metaphor: ReFantazio — $52.49 $69.99

• NBA 2K25 — $20.99 $69.99

• Palworld — $22.49 $29.99

• Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition — $3.99 $39.99

• Payday 2 — $3.99 $9.99

• Persona 3 Reload — $34.99 $69.99

• Phasmophobia — $14.99 $19.99

• Red Dead Redemption 2 — $14.99 $59.99

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl — $50.99 $59.99

• Silent Hill 2 Remake — $48.99 $69.99

• Slime Rancher 2 — $20.99 $29.99

• Street Fighter 6 — $29.99 $59.99

• TCG Card Shop Simulator — $9.74 $12.99

• The Elder Scrolls Online — $1.99 $19.99

• Titanfall 2: Ultimate Edition — $2.99 $29.99

• Total War: Warhammer III — $23.99 $59.99

• Undertale — $0.99 $9.99

• Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 — $38.99 $59.99

The NCAA basketball tournaments have finally arrived, and that means it's time to create a bracket or two.

Unfortunately, sports outcomes are almost entirely random and none of us can truly know what's going to happen. As such, some people have decided to try alternative means of putting together brackets. Let's celebrate that. Here are three of the weirdest ways people have arranged their March Madness brackets in 2025.

SEE ALSO: Samsung’s ridiculous Buzzer Beater Bundle is over $5,000 off — because one TV isn’t enough for March Madness Using ChatGPT

Perhaps the most 2025 way to put together a March Madness bracket is to use ChatGPT, which is what our colleague Nelson Aguilar over at CNET (Note: Mashable and CNET are owned by the same parent company, Ziff Davis) did. The concept here is fairly straightforward, so I'll spare you the nitty-gritty details, but one humorous thing to note is that the initial bracket ChatGPT put together didn't have the right teams in it.

SEE ALSO: The best VPN deals in March 2025

Another thing to mention is that ChatGPT's bracket is almost entirely chalk. There are only a handful of upset picks in it, which means ChatGPT is a coward.

Going by mascots

Perhaps the easiest and most fun way to figure out who you like in any sporting event is to go by team mascots. Everyone loves the big stupid cartoon characters that roam basketball sidelines! Thankfully, the NCAA March Madness app seems to have a mascot-based picking system for people who don't actually care about basketball.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

There's also a shockingly detailed and thorough article about this on the NCAA's website. Anyway, my pick for the national champion based solely on this criteria would be the Wofford Terriers.

Asking your dog

Lastly, as is very common with big sporting events, people are asking their animal companions for help. Animals don't know anything about sports, but in fairness, neither do most people who watch sports. And knowing things is overrated anyway, considering the outcomes of these games have very little to do with the seasons the teams have had up to this point.

SEE ALSO: March Madness livestreams: Watch NCAA tournament bracket matchups live

All it takes is a cursory TikTok search to find people polling dogs to build their brackets. It's adorable and can't be any worse than the brackets you make yourself.

It’s that time of year again — March Madness is officially tipping off, and 68 teams across Division I men’s and women’s college basketball are set to battle for the ultimate prize. The chaos begins on Tuesday, March 18, with The First Four — a play-in round featuring the lowest-ranked conference champions and the final at-large teams scraping their way into the main bracket.

On the women’s side, their First Four kicks off a day later on Wednesday, March 19, meaning you don’t have much time to finalize your bracket (or let an AI generate one for you).

Either way, if you’re looking to stream or watch every first-round game of March Madness, here’s everything you need to know:

How to watch men's 2025 March Madness tournament

The men's bracket opening games will be on CBS, TNT, TBS, and TruTV. As usual, The First Four will air exclusively on TruTV, continuing a tradition that dates back to 2011. Once the Round of 64 kicks off, games will be split between CBS, TBS, TNT, and TruTV.

SEE ALSO: The best VPN deals in March 2025 Must-watch matchups:

• (7) Kansas vs. (10) Arkansas – CBS/Paramount+

• (8) Louisville vs. (9) Creighton - CBS/Paramount+

• (6) Missouri vs. (11) Drake - TruTV/Max

• (5) Memphis vs. (12) UC San Diego - TBS/Max

No cable? No problem. CBS games will stream on Paramount+, while TNT, TBS, and TruTV matchups will be available on Max.

How to watch women's 2025 March Madness tournament

Unlike the men's tournament, which is spread across multiple networks, the women’s bracket will be exclusively broadcast on the ESPN family of channels — including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, ESPNews, and ABC.

Must-watch matchups:

• (3) LSU vs. (14) San Diego State - ESPN

• (1) South Carolina vs. (16) Tennessee Tech - ESPN

• (7) Louisville vs. (10) Nebraska - ESPN

• (8) California vs. (9) Mississippi State - ESPN2

No ESPN+? No problem. You can still catch the action through Sling or FuboTV. But keep in mind—some games might be region-locked, so if you’re traveling (or just want to be safe), a VPN is a smart move. Check out our best VPNs list to find the right one for streaming.

A new column of steam rises from Yellowstone.

While the expansive volcano shows no hints of an eruption, magma brews beneath the surface, fueling hundreds of geysers and other heated phenomena. In a new blog on its website, the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory reports a new steaming feature in the national park, illustrative of this dynamic world's constantly evolving, and thrilling, landscape.

"While driving south from Mammoth Hot Springs towards Norris Geyser Basin early on Aug. 5 last summer, a park scientist noticed a billowing steam column through the trees and across a marshy expanse," wrote Yellowstone National Park geologists Jefferson Hungerford and Kiernan Folz-Donahue. "The eagle-eyed scientist notified the park geology team to verify if this was indeed new activity."

It was.

SEE ALSO: What will happen when the next supervolcano erupts, according to NASA

The steaming hydrothermal vent is located at the base of an ancient lava flow, and geologists measured its temperatures at 171 degrees Fahrenheit. It could be newly spawned activity from a steaming feature previously found nearby in 2003.

Here's a recent view of Yellowstone's new hole, venting steam into the sky, which the geologists shared online:

The new steaming vent in Yellowstone National Park, photographed in August 2024. Credit: Jefferson Hungerford / Yellowstone National Park Steam rising from a new hydrothermal feature in the woods of Yellowstone National Park. Credit: Mike Poland / USGS

The vent remains active this winter, but subdued, as water has drained into the opening. But come spring, it may robustly light up again.

"The activity from these features waxes and wanes with time — you might even say that some of them pick up steam! Sorry…we couldn’t resist," the geologists wrote.

Today, Yellowstone remains a place of low volcanic risk. Sure, there are sometimes small explosions stoked by hot water and steam. But it's mostly thermal pools and awesome geysers, reminding us of what could potentially awake, one distant day.

Yellowstone's last volcanic eruption happened some 70,000 years ago, and the events weren't giant eruptions on the scale that would deposit ash over a huge swath of the U.S. "Of the past 50 or so eruptions, almost all were simple lava flows," the USGS explained. "If they occurred tomorrow or next year, they would have minimal direct effect outside Yellowstone National Park."

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If magma does once again snake its way from deep inside Earth and saturate these shallower reservoirs, an eruption wouldn't be a surprise. We'd have many decades, if not centuries, of warning. The moving magma would trigger swarms of potent earthquakes, and the ground would majorly deform.

Such new steaming features, however, are just the norm in an ever-changing volcanic world.

Apple might be preparing for a big selfie camera upgrade on the iPhone.

According to analyst Jeff Pu (via MacRumors), all the devices in the iPhone 17 lineup (that includes the iPhone 17, the iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and the rumored iPhone 17 Air) will have a 24-megapixel front camera.

SEE ALSO: Apple iPhone 17 dummies leak, revealing sleek new designs

That's a pretty big upgrade given that the currently available iPhones all come with a 12-megapixel camera. Other details are absent, though Apple sleuth Ming-Chi Kuo previously said that the camera will "significantly improve the image quality".

For the end users, this should mean more detailed, sharper selfies, but Apple could also use pixel binning tech to produce brighter selfies.

Featured Video For You Apple iPhone 16e is the new affordable Apple phone

The upgrade makes sense given that numerous Android phones come with a selfie camera with a higher resolution. For example, the recent Xiaomi 15 Ultra has a 32-megapixel selfie camera.

Pu also shared some other details about the upcoming iPhones. He says that the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max will have 12GB of RAM and a 48-megapixel telephoto camera.

Apple doesn't share details about upcoming products, so all this will be in the realm of speculation until the phones officially launch, likely in September.

The giant chipmaker has transformed its annual developer conference from an academic event into a who’s who gathering for the future of artificial intelligence.

You could call Facebook Marketplace a digital thrift shop. But that underplays how unique and bizarre the platform is.

CoreWeave, which provides computing power for A.I., was founded by three Bitcoin enthusiasts. The company is now set to make the first prominent A.I. initial public offering.

You don't see this every day.

It's rare for any observatory to directly image a planet beyond our solar system, called an exoplanet, but the powerful James Webb Space Telescope has captured four of them in the stellar system HR 8799. These large, gaseous worlds are located 130 light-years away in the Milky Way galaxy (a light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles). Importantly, viewing these worlds also revealed major parts of their composition, and how they likely formed.

"Our hope with this kind of research is to understand our own solar system, life, and ourselves in the comparison to other exoplanetary systems, so we can contextualize our existence," William Balmer, an astronomer at Johns Hopkins University who led the new research, said in a statement. "We want to take pictures of other solar systems and see how they’re similar or different when compared to ours. From there, we can try to get a sense of how weird our solar system really is — or how normal."

The research recently published in The Astrophysical Journal.

SEE ALSO: NASA dropped a new report. It's a wake-up call.

It's tremendously challenging to capture direct images of exoplanets — as opposed to common observational methods like watching them transit in front of their stars — because their nearby stars are profoundly luminous, engulfing the exoplanets in light. But Webb blocked out much of the star's intrusive light with an instrument called a coronograph. What's more, these four worlds are large, young, and hot, and orbit relatively far from their star.

"From there, we can try to get a sense of how weird our solar system really is — or how normal."

You can see four of these planets below. "The closest planet to the star, HR 8799 e, orbits 1.5 billion miles from its star, which in our solar system would be located between the orbit of Saturn and Neptune," NASA explains. "The furthest, HR 8799 b, orbits around 6.3 billion miles from the star, more than twice Neptune’s orbital distance." A star symbol covers the star HR 8799, whose light has been blocked.

No, they don't contain the stunning detail we see on the close by planets in our solar system. Even so, you're seeing far-off worlds in another part of the galaxy.

The four visible planets of the multi-planet system HR 8799. Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / W. Balmer (JHU) / L. Pueyo (STScI) / M. Perrin (STScI)

Crucially, directly viewing these planets allowed astronomers to analyze the unique light signals emanating from these worlds; these wavelengths match certain elements or molecules. Of note, the researchers detected the gases carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. These planets are extremely young, at some 30 million years old, so astronomers suspect they formed like Saturn and Jupiter, wherein they forged dense solid cores and then gravitationally pulled plentiful surrounding gases like carbon dioxide around them. (Alternatively, sometimes planets might form when they rapidly fuse together inside the rapidly spinning disk of dust and gas around a new star, meaning they're largely composed of the same stuff as their star.)

As Balmer noted above, we need to spy what's transpiring in other corners of the galaxy to better grasp how strange, or not, our solar system neighborhood truly is. Already, we know that many other solar systems contain curious super-Earths — which are bigger than Earth but smaller than Neptune — but there's no such world in our system.

The Webb telescope captured clear "spectral fingerprints" of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide in the planet HR 8799 e's atmosphere. Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / J. Olmsted (STScI) The Webb telescope's powerful abilities

The Webb telescope — a scientific collaboration between NASA, ESA, and the Canadian Space Agency — is designed to peer into the deepest cosmos and reveal new insights about the early universe. It's also examining intriguing planets in our galaxy, along with the planets and moons in our solar system.

Here's how Webb is achieving unparalleled feats, and may for years to come:

- Giant mirror: Webb's mirror, which captures light, is over 21 feet across. That's over two-and-a-half times larger than the Hubble Space Telescope's mirror, meaning Webb has six times the light-collecting area. Capturing more light allows Webb to see more distant, ancient objects. The telescope is peering at stars and galaxies that formed over 13 billion years ago, just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. "We're going to see the very first stars and galaxies that ever formed," Jean Creighton, an astronomer and the director of the Manfred Olson Planetarium at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, told Mashable in 2021.

- Infrared view: Unlike Hubble, which largely views light that's visible to us, Webb is primarily an infrared space telescope, meaning it views light in the infrared spectrum. This allows us to see far more of the universe. Infrared has longer wavelengths than visible light, so the light waves more efficiently slip through cosmic clouds; the light doesn't as often collide with and get scattered by these densely packed particles. Ultimately, Webb's infrared eyesight can penetrate places Hubble can't.

"It lifts the veil," said Creighton.

- Peering into distant exoplanets: The Webb telescope carries specialized equipment called spectrographs that will revolutionize our understanding of these far-off worlds. The instruments can decipher what molecules (such as water, carbon dioxide, and methane) exist in the atmospheres of distant exoplanets — be they gas giants or smaller rocky worlds. Webb looks at exoplanets in the Milky Way galaxy. Who knows what we'll find?

"We might learn things we never thought about," Mercedes López-Morales, an exoplanet researcher and astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics-Harvard & Smithsonian, previously told Mashable.

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In books by disgruntled former employees, it can be hard to hear real complaints over the sound of ax-grinding. Take ex-Apprentice star Omarosa's book from the first Trump administration, which unintentionally revealed its author to be defensive, shallow and complicit with the nightmare around her.

That isn't the case with Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams, former and first head of global policy at Facebook. Disgruntled she may be, but this is a self-aware woman with an important point to make, not an Omarosa-style embarrassment to herself.

This is bad news for the company now known as Meta, which wants Wynn-Williams to be seen as a mere "activist." Careless People made waves on publication, thanks to Wynn-Williams' filing a whistleblower complaint with the SEC, her accounts of sexual assault (which Meta denies), and a portrait that makes founder Mark Zuckerberg look like a clueless cult leader.

Then Meta made even more waves with the highly unusual step of going to an arbitrator, claiming Wynn-Williams' disparaging the company broke her severance contract. (What is this, Lumon Industries?)

The arbitrator issued an emergency gag order, leaving Meta to disparage Wynn-Williams in its statements, claiming she was fired for "toxic behavior" — exactly what her account says of her superiors — without fear of her responding. Not a great look for supposed free-speech advocate Zuckerberg — and now Careless People is an Amazon bestseller.

So what is Wynn-Williams' story, exactly? And do you really have to read the whole book to find out? Don't worry, we've got you. Here's what Facebook doesn't want you to know about Careless People.

Sarah Wynn-Williams is a sympathetic figure.

Memoirs usually open with an eye-catching anecdote before a chapter on the author's formative years. Aside from first ensuring readers know the book's title comes from F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous description of the wealthy Tom and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, Careless People is no different. It opens with the time Wynn-Williams had to smuggle Zuckerberg out of a state dinner in Panama, making a break for it past naked dancers and a troupe of horses.

But then her childhood chapter is unusually engaging. At age 13, in her native New Zealand, Wynn-Williams was attacked by a shark. Stoic parents told her she was fine; in fact, she was bleeding internally and had to beg to go to the hospital, where her blood pressure was so low they had to use a bone saw for the transfusion. I SAVED MYSELF was the first thing Wynn-Williams wrote to her mother afterward.

She grew up wanting to save the world too — first at the United Nations, where she served as a Kiwi diplomat working on international security and human rights before growing disillusioned by too much attention paid to wars over punctuation in agency statements and too little attention paid to actual wars. Then in 2009, Wynn-Williams gets hooked on Facebook and sees what we now know to be true: This thing will change the world, fast. It could be the greatest force for good ever created, if the company has a clue what it's doing.

Not for the last time, Facebook execs were too arrogant to have a clue. Wynn-Williams begins a multi-year campaign to get hired for a global policy position that doesn't exist yet; her interviewer says this is an American company with an American audience. When the Arab Spring started revolutions in 2011, in part because of its platform, Facebook seems to realize the world exists (and doesn't operate by U.S. laws).

Once hired, Wynn-Williams has to scramble to head off multiple government investigations made possible by the company's carelessness. She preps Zuckerberg for meetings with foreign leaders, which he hates. He claims Facebook is about connecting the world, but there's little interest in the global audience until the company goes public and starts looking for growth at any cost.

"There is no grand ideology here," Wynn-Williams writes. "No theory about what Facebook should be in the world. The company is just responding to stuff as it happens."

SEE ALSO: Zuck is a lightweight, and 4 more things we learned about Facebook from 'An Ugly Truth'

That's how she is repeatedly sent into danger alone — as in Myanmar, where she has to convince the military junta to bring Facebook back online. Back in the U.S. she warns of the anti-Muslim aggression being stoked in fake news posts that aren't even being taken down when they contain the Burmese equivalent of the N-word, because Facebook barely has any Burmese speakers. (The UN has traced Myanmar's 2017 genocide to Facebook posts which the company belatedly took down.)

Wynn-Williams also has three kids over the course of the book; watching her try to have it all, in the style of Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, is heartbreaking. She sends emails from the delivery room and returns to work earlier than she needs to. She hires a Filipina nanny because her boss insists and "I didn't want it to become an issue in performance reviews."

One time there's a risk that Facebook employees might be arrested if they step foot in South Korea because the company ignored a local law that applied to Facebook games. Executives are trying to pick a "warm body" who will test the waters. Wynn-Williams is so devoted that, in this very Succession-like story, she does a Tom Wambsgans and offers to go to jail.

"I don't think this says anything good about me," she says with typical self-deprecation, "but I would have got arrested" by being the one to fly to Seoul first — until her husband points out that she has a seven-month-old at home.

Mark Zuckerberg seems more Trump-like than we knew.

If Wynn-Williams is Tom from Succession, Zuckerberg is Kendall Roy (with more than a dash of Roman). He's the boy king who thinks he gets it, oblivious to the layers of people trying to manage his moods. He makes up policy on the fly — announcing at the UN that Facebook would provide Wifi for refugee camps, for example — then leaves it to others to clean up his mess.

"He seems to be giving less of a damn," Wynn-Williams says after the Wifi policy announcement (which goes nowhere because Zuckerberg decides he wants the refugees to pay for access.) "Saying things because they sound good. Posting things because they look good ... I regret having enabled this."

If that makes Zuckerberg sound Trumpian, it's not the only time. Like Trump, Zuckerberg says Andrew Jackson (whose Indian Removal Act led to the Trail of Tears) was the greatest president in U.S. history: "not even close." Like Trump, Zuckerberg gets seduced by the power of crowds, asking if his team can arrange "a riot or a peace rally" when he visits Jakarta (where his suite at a top hotel is described as "more like a citadel").

And like Trump, he's enraged by President Obama, who takes Zuckerberg to task for fake news on the platform during the 2016 election. Zuckerberg refuses to take responsibility, seeing "fake news" as a talking point from media organizations that see Facebook as a threat. He considers buying "the failing New York Times," but decides Facebook should make it irrelevant instead.

Zuckerberg's main focus in the wake of that election: testing the waters for a presidential run himself. "I think he came to this dark conclusion: if Trump can do it, so can he," says Wynn-Williams. "After all, not only does Mark now have Trump's playbook, he owns the tools and sets the rules ... after being shit on by Obama, he dug in."

You'd expect Zuckerberg's advisors to rein him in — but these would be the same advisors who are repeatedly found letting the boss win at his favorite board game, Settlers of Catan. When Wynn-Williams beats him at Settlers, Zuckerberg accuses her of cheating. Wynn-Williams "unwisely" unloads on his lack of strategy in general.

"You were so focused on winning the longest road just then, you weren't paying attention to the rest of what was happening on the board," she tells him. It's clear she's not just talking about the game, but Zuckerberg thinks for a while and just says: "fair."

So Zuckerberg is in a bubble of privilege? No, says Wynn-Williams: "A bubble implies flimsy transparency," she writes, "where you can see a normal life just beyond your grasp. What Mark inhabits is more like a thick opaque dome, a murky fortress that separates him from the rest of the world."

What did Sheryl Sandberg allegedly do?

Zuckerberg, always an odd duck, doesn't win the "we were all rooting for you!" award for biggest disappointment in Careless People. That goes to his former COO Sheryl Sandberg. Once seen as the adult in the room at Facebook, Sandberg became a feminist champion courtesy of the Lean In phenomenon.

SEE ALSO: Sheryl Sandberg's 'Lean In' Might Become a Movie

Then, on a private jet from the Davos conference to SFO, a pajama-clad Sandberg repeatedly insisted that Wynn-Williams join her in the plane's only bed. Wynn-Williams suggests another employee: a woman Sandberg calls "little doll" had slept in Sandberg's lap in the car while Sandberg stroked her hair (and vice versa). That employee had "slept over" lots of times, Sandberg snaps: "I'm asking you."

Apart from the inappropriateness of the ask, Wynn-Williams is heavily pregnant at the time and fears her snoring would horrify her boss. She repeatedly declines. Sandberg storms off: "people say no to Sheryl so rarely," Wynn-Williams writes, "she doesn't know what to do with this." Except to tell her again on the tarmac in California as they wait for Ubers: "you should have got into bed."

Later, confiding in another employee, Wynn-Williams is told that "half the department" has been in Sandberg's bed, so it's no big deal. After that, she notices Sandberg "beginning to ice me out."

The PJs incident happens halfway through the book, but we've already seen a widening gap between Sandberg's public image and private persona. She berates her team repeatedly for not seeing the difference. When they assume her kids will be OK eating McDonalds because Sandberg posted a picture on Facebook of herself doing just that, Sandberg hits back: she wasn't actually eating that stuff.

By the end of the book, Sandberg's staff is on another private jet, updating her on the historic Women's March that coincided with Trump's first inauguration. The feminist champion cuts them off to ask ... what Melania Trump was wearing.

What happened to the Lean In lady? Wynn-Williams recalls this maxim from author John Updike's autobiography: celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. "I feel a deep sadness for Sheryl," Wynn-Williams says, "who let the mask eat into her face."

The worst part of Careless People

Ironically, media focus on the PJs incident may have obscured allegations about Wynn-Williams' male manager, Joel Kaplan. (He's also Sandberg's old boyfriend and a former George W. Bush operative who took part in the infamous Brooks Brothers' riot that halted a crucial recount in Florida after the disputed 2000 presidential election.) Unlike Sandberg, Kaplan is still at the company and working as Facebook's vice president of global policy. But Careless People alleges multiple times Kaplan took conversations with his direct report in a sexual direction. Meta has denied the allegations.

Wynn-Williams writes how Kaplan insists on video meetings during Wynn-Williams' maternity leave. Kaplan is "sprawled across his bed," asking questions about breastfeeding. When she reveals she'll need more surgery, Kaplan keeps asking "where are you bleeding from?"

Wynn-Williams tries to transfer out of Kaplan's department, but the transfer is blocked. An investigation into Kaplan doesn't even include an interview with her, and the "toxic behavior" firing happens.

Is this the worst part of the book, then? Or is the worst part what Meta has done in response to the book — dismissing details such as the Myanmar genocide as "old news"? If this is what passes for policy in Zuckerberg and Kaplan's regime, and the gag order is what passes for free speech, then Meta is a global force run by some very careless people indeed.

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