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While many of us wait (im)patiently for a brand new Mario platformer for the Switch 2, Nintendo is filling the gap with an upgraded version of the tremendous Super Mario Bros. Wonder for the console. Super Mario Bros. Wonder Nintendo Switch 2 Edition + Meetup in Bellabel Park (to give the new edition's full name) will arrive on March 26. Those who own the original Switch version of the game will be able to buy an upgrade pack, which costs $20. There's a lot of new stuff in the Switch 2 version, including co-op and multiplayer features. Bellabel Park, a fresh area of the Flower Kingdom, will open up. You can jump into some multiplayer modes here, such as one where you compete to collect as many coins as possible. A section that's all about local multiplayer has 17 co-op and versus modes. You can either play those on the same console or use GameShare so that up to three other people in the same physical place as you can join in on their own Switch or Switch 2. The Game Room Plaza, meanwhile, supports local and online play for six minigames each player will need their own system for those. Up to eight people can play using the local wireless feature, and up to 12 via online multiplayer.Along with those multiplayer minigame areas, Bellabel Park is home to Toad Brigade Training Camp. Here, you can take on challenges based on levels from the main game. You can tackle these on your own or recruit up to three friends to help (you'll only need one Switch 2 for this). There are new things to check out in the main game as well. You can take on boss courses that feature all seven Koopalings and (finally!) play as Rosalina.Nintendo is adding an option in which a second player can control a Luma. They can help out the main player by defeating enemies and collecting coins. You can play as the Luma by using the Switch 2 mouse control feature. That's a great idea, as it could allow, say, a parent or guardian who is not too familiar with a game controller to assist a kid who needs some extra help to get through Super Mario Bros. Wonder. In addition, there's an assist mode. When this is enabled, you can quickly recover from falling into a pit (with a propeller flower bringing you back into the action) and avoid taking any damage. That's not all, folks. Also on March 26, you can snag three new amiibo from the game: Elephant Mario (which I'm going to have to buy), Poplin & Prince Florian and Captain Toad & Talking Flower. A couple of weeks earlier, on March 12, Nintendo will start selling a physical version of the Talking Flower from Super Mario Bros. Wonder. The battery-powered device will talk to you a couple of times per hour, mentioning things like the room temperature and time. It can play music as well. There's a button you can press to hear it talk (or hold to make it shut up). There's support for 11 languages and it can chatter at set times, making it a bit similar to Nintendo's Alarmo. You'll be able to buy Talking Flower from Nintendo's New York and San Francisco stores, its online store and some other retailers, with pre-orders opening today.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/the-switch-2-version-of-super-mario-bros-wonder-arrives-on-march-26-150916983.html?src=rss
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Ahead of its upcoming price hike, Spotify is rolling out a more advanced AI playlist feature in the US and Canada. Prompted Playlist, which the company trialed in New Zealand late last year, lets subscribers "control the Spotify algorithm," as the company describes it. "You're not just asking for music, you're shaping how Spotify goes about discovering it for you."For example, you can guide it to make a playlist of songs you've saved to your Library but haven't listened to yet. (It can tap into your entire Spotify history.) Or, you can tell it to round up songs from a specific television show or movie. (It uses real-time information about pop culture, charts, and history.)The feature includes options to refresh the playlist over time (daily or weekly). You can edit each playlist's prompt at any time. Each track will include a short note to explain why it was chosen.The standard AI Playlist creator will remain alongside the new Prompted Playlist.SpotifySpotify says beta testers have used Prompted Playlist to revisit songs tied to specific moments and filter out tracks they've overplayed lately. "Others are asking for long, lyric-free electronic playlists to power through a workday, or mixing in artists connected to current pop culture moments and viral trends," the company wrote.There's room for some confusion here because Spotify already has an "AI Playlist" feature. That simpler type will stick around alongside the new "Prompted" variety, which allows for finer tuning and can sift through more data.Prompted Playlist will be available to Spotify Premium subscribers in the US and Canada "by the end of the month." Once you have access, you can try it by tapping Create, then selecting Prompted Playlist.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/audio/spotifys-prompted-playlist-lets-you-describe-exactly-what-you-want-to-hear-140000153.html?src=rss
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Scarlett Johannsson, R.E.M., Vince Gilligan and over 700 other artists are demanding that tech companies stop stealing their work in order to train AI models. A new campaign called Stealing isnt Innovation demands that AI companies take the responsible, ethical route through licensing and partnerships, according to the website. Americas creative community is the envy of the world and creates jobs, economic growth and exports, a statement on the website reads. But rather than respect and protect this valuable asset, some of the biggest tech companies, many backed by private equity and other funders, are using American creators work to build AI platforms without authorization for copyright law. The group adds that the illegal intellectual property grab has resulted in an information ecosystem dominated by misinformation, deepfakes and a vapid artificial avalanche of low-quality materials [AI slop] threatening Americas AI superiority and international competitiveness. OpenAI once argued that its impossible to train AI without copyrighted materials, since copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression. However, actors, musicians and authors take issue with that idea, particularly when they see their likenesses or work repurposed as slop or worse by large language models (LLMs). Johansson, for one, previously threatened OpenAI with legal action in 2024 over a ChatGPT voice assistant that effectively cloned her voice. More recently, Elon Musks Grok has been accused of creating millions of sexualized images of real people in just days, according to a report today from The New York Times. Big Tech is trying to change the law so they can keep stealing American artistry to build their AI businesses without authorization and without paying the people who did the work. That is wrong; its un-American, and its theft on a grand scale, the group proclaimed. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/a-list-creatives-sign-up-to-fight-ai-say-it-enables-theft-at-a-grand-scale-140000475.html?src=rss
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1Password has a new tool designed to counteract the advantages AI has given to phishing scammers. A new feature for the company's browser extension gives you a "second pair of eyes" to help you catch a bogus website before entering your login info.Before AI, phishing attempts often included telltale signs like obvious typos or rudimentary graphic design. Now that AI makes it much easier to design and code convincingly, scams are on the rise. According to Fortune, 60 percent of companies reported an increase in fraud-related losses from 2024 to 2025. And the advent of AI browsers could make things even worse.Our new phishing feature adds an extra layer of protection, 1Password says. Once the feature is activated, the extension actively watches for suspicious sign-ins. To be clear, even before this feature's arrival, 1Password wouldn't autofill saved credentials for a bogus website impersonating it. But that still left room for people to manually paste their login info, handing it over to those with the worst intentions.That moment when you try to paste your login manually is where the new feature comes in. "The website you're on isn't linked to a login in 1Password," the feature's warning pop-up reads. "Make sure you trust this site before continuing."1Password says that's the "breakthrough" moment that can help you avoid a major hassle. "That single moment of pause, that tiny bit of friction, is often all it takes to disrupt the attackers' entire plan."The new feature is available today. You can enable it in the 1Password browser extension's settings. Under the Notifications section, activate the setting for "Warn about pasted logins on non-linked websites."This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/cybersecurity/1password-adds-an-extra-layer-of-phishing-protection-140000293.html?src=rss
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If you're thinking about upgrading to a new graphics card this year, your window for doing so at MSRP has closed. When I first reported on this at the start of December, things were looking bleak but you could still find GPUs from both AMD and NVIDIA at close to their recommended prices. That changed last week when YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed reported that ASUS had stopped producing the RTX 5070 Ti and 5060 Ti 16GB due to ongoing memory shortages. After Engadget published the news, NVIDIA disputed the report. Demand for GeForce RTX GPUs is strong, and memory supply is constrained. We continue to ship all GeForce SKUs and are working closely with our suppliers to maximize memory availability, a company spokesperson told us. The next day, ASUS walked back its previous statements. After explicitly telling Hardware Unboxed it had placed the 5060 Ti 16GB and 5070 Ti into "end-of-life status," the company said "certain media may have received incomplete information from an ASUS PR representative regarding these products," adding it had "no plans to stop selling these models." Whether or not the 5060 Ti 16GB and 5070 Ti remain in production, one thing is certain: the AI boom has created a great deal of uncertainty in the GPU market. After the news, panic buying sent the price of the 5070 Ti through the roof. Right now, it's impossible to find that model priced at its MSRP of $749. As of the writing of this article, the most affordable version of the 5070 Ti I could find on Newegg was $1,199. The bigger problem is that the 5070 Ti isn't the only GPU selling for far more than MSRP. Tom's Hardware has been tracking GPU prices for months, and there's not a single model you can buy at either AMD or NVIDIA's recommended price. That puts PC builders in a tough spot. What do you do if you want to upgrade to a new graphics card this year? If you're sitting on an older GPU, the best advice I can give is to stick with your current hardware. If you're fine with the performance of your video card right now, it's best to wait a year or two for the market to settle down. On the other hand, if your current GPU is not up to the task of running the games you want to play, try to buy a card with at least 12GB of VRAM preferably 16GB if your budget allows for it. Unless you plan to play mostly older games on a 1080p monitor, it's not worth considering a model with 8GB of VRAM it won't last you long enough to warrant the purchase price. For the most part, the recommendations in Engadget's recent GPU guide are still as relevant today as they were a few months ago. The recommendations I provide here are pulled from that guide and are grouped from most affordable to most expensive. Where possible, I've tried to find options from both Newegg and Amazon. As you go about looking for a new GPU, your best friend is a website like PCPartPicker where you can track pricing across multiple retailers. RecommendationsAMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GBThe Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB is the best mainstream option right now. Devindra Hardawar for EngadgetUnfortunately if you're on a tight budget, there aren't many great options under $400. For that reason, I would steer you to the Radeon RX 9060 XT as the best "entry-level" option. AMD offers two different versions of this GPU: one with 8GB of VRAM and the other with 16GB. Of the two, the latter is the better purchase, but if it's outside your budget, the more affordable model is probably the best 8GB GPU on the market right now.While I couldn't find the 16GB variant at its recommended price of $350, I did find a few models that weren't far off. Newegg has options from ASRock and Sapphire priced at $400 and $450. At Amazon, meanwhile, you can fin models from PowerColor for $400 and $430. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 A Founders Edition NVIDIA RTX 5080 sits on a wood desk.Devindra Hardawar for EngadgetI'm somewhat hesitant to recommend the RTX 5070. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent enough card, but with only 12GB of VRAM, you may end up replacing it sooner than you think. That said, it's one of the few NVIDIA GPUs that hasn't shot up massively in price, and I suspect that's because people have been passing it over in favor of other 50-series models. If you value NVIDIA's feature set over raw frames, then the 5070 is about the only GPU that makes sense to buy from the company right now. On Newegg, I found a 5070 model from Gigabyte for $650. The retailer also has a handful of different MSI variants priced at $630. Amazon has fewer options, but it does have one 5070 from Gigabyte for $585, which is the closest to the card's $549 MSRP. AMD Radeon RX 9070 If you're a fan of Team Red, the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT are among the best cards of this generation. Devindra Hardawar for EngadgetFor a card that offers better price-to-performance than the 5070, the Radeon RX 9070 is your best bet. AMD's take on NVIDIA features like DLSS aren't as polished, but the RX 9070 offers more VRAM and excellent performance across the latest AAA games. It's unlikely you'll find one at its MSRP of $550, which was always more of an aspirational price, but I found a few models priced between $590 and $640. Both Newegg and Amazon have a PowerColor model for $590. The two also have a Gigabyte model priced at $600 after $40 rebate with coupon. AMD Radeon RX 9070XTFor those with more to spend, the RX 9070 XT is probably where I would cap things. Beyond that, you're looking at GPUs like the 5080 that cost far more than MSRP. On Newegg, I found a model from ASRock selling for $730. Amazon, meanwhile, has options from Gigabyte and ASUS for $720. None of those are great deals, but that's to be expected with a card that's at the top of the stack. This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/pc/how-to-find-an-affordable-gpu-during-the-great-ramageddon-of-2026-130000654.html?src=rss
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