The week's 7 biggest tech stories from Lego, Ubisoft, Pebble, Google, LG and more for March 22, 2025.

Looking for NYT Strands answers and hints? Here's all you need to know to solve today's game, including the spangram.

Ever get a feeling that something isnt right? An internal voice that is trying to tell you something? It could be your intuition bubbling up. Or maybe its anxiety. Or both. Learning to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition can help you determine if that feeling is something you should listen to or address in another way, but its easy to confuse the two.People have become disconnected from their emotions, beliefs, and self-confidence, says intuitive life coach Tammy Adams. They have so much doubt within themselves that they dont listen to their own intuition. People veer off with fear and live more in anxiety than they do in confidence.Your gut feeling is your intuition, says Adams. It has many different names, she says. I call it our sixth sense. The more you connect to your senses, the more information you get.Anxiety is an alert system, a feeling of apprehension, says Laura Day, a practicing intuitive and author of Practical Intuition: How to Harness the Power of Your Instinct and Make It Work for You. It can be useful momentarily because it makes you pay attention to the data that intuition is providing, she says. That data gives you a blueprint that leads you immediately to the right action or perception. Anxiety has put the spotlight on your intuition, but it is the intuition that is useful, not the anxiety. When anxiety persists after that, it is no longer useful.A test for anxietyTelling the difference between intuition and anxiety is simple, says Adams. If acting on the information makes you feel free, its intuition. If that feeling doesnt go away, its anxiety. We often create our own anxiety by putting ourselves in negative situations because were creatures of habit, she says. True anxiety is not something someone just catches or has. Its been built up.The only time that anxiety would persist in an intuitive paradigm is if a boundary has been crossed, says Day. For example, you see a good friend do something unethical and dangerous, such as stealing or lying. Your intuition tells you that the person needs to be stopped, but you will often be anxious because someone close to you has broken rules you hold dear.How to Get Better at Listening to Your IntuitionYour intuition is something that needs to be trained, and its different from belief, says Day.Trust is belief without proof, she says. Intuition provides proof; it does not require belief to be present and useful. I am wary when I hear people say, I believe in intuition. That is like saying, I believe in gravity. Intuition simply is. If you refine and document its action, you quickly discover that you can rely on it. But when you magicalize it with belief, you remove its burden of proof, thus rendering it less useful.Day recommends recording your feelings of intuition. You can use a journal, for example, but she recommends removing any attached emotional content. Also, dont try to make sense of what you feel.We get lots of information all the time, but we dont have a very good filing system, especially for our intuitive information, says Day. Intuition functions best on automatic pilot. When you document it, you begin to see that its accurate, its precognitive. Your subconscious will make it more available. Its noticing what you notice, not looking for anything.The importance of goal-settingTo use intuition, its important to know what youre working on and know what your goals are. You dont see what youre not looking for, says Day. You will know how to address your intuition when you know what your goals are.Adams also recommends practicing meditation for at least 20 minutes a day as a way to make room for intuition. Allow yourself to step away from situations that could become negative habits, such as wasting your night on things that are not important, she says. Reclaim quality time by doing meditation, being silent, or walking in nature. . . . Pay attention to your breath. When youre quiet, your soul, spirit, and bodythe true trinity thats inside of uswill have an epiphany and the knowledge and knowing inside you starts kicking in.Every human being has intuition, says Adams. We can all feel energy, because we are all energy, she says. Feel the energy coming off other people. The energy may tell you that persons not so happy, or that person is really happy. You cant lose your intuition. You can disconnect from it, you can ignore it, but you cant lose it.

Earlier this month, Apple officially announced that it would be postponing the launch of some planned Apple Intelligence features to a later, unspecified date in the future. These features mainly revolved around an AI-supercharged Siri.The news of the delay sent the tech press into a frenzy, with many writers criticizing the company for failing to deliver on its promises. Additionally, people speculated that the delay of these features could impact iPhone sales this year. While the criticism is justified, I think the prediction that the delay will impact iPhone sales places too much faith in the appeal of AI.Apple delays new Siri AI featuresAs noted by 9to5Mac, the delayed features include Siris ability to understand queries based on personal context (What time does dads train get in?), consider what you are doing on your screen when you ask it to carry out a certain task (Make a reservation at this restaurant), and perform in-app actions (Crop this photo using a square aspect ratio).When the news officially droppedApple made the announcement in a statement to well-known tech blogger John Gruberthere was a big reaction from the tech media, including my colleague Harry McCracken, who wrote a smart response in his newsletter, Plugged In. Reporters and Apple fans alike werent merely disappointed that Apple delayed the features; they were upset that Apple purportedly showcased the features working last yearbut in reality, that demonstration was nothing more than an animated mockup.Theres a name for products like that: vaporware, McCracken said. The tech industry is rife with examples. Apple, in its modern history, has been atypically disciplined about avoiding themwhich makes this incident only more striking.When evaluating Apples actions from this perspective, I agree. You dont expect a company of Apples caliber and market cap of over $3.2 trillion to show off what are essentially just concepts. Other companies, yes, but not Apple.What I dont necessarily agree with is the belief by some Wall Street analysts that Apples delay of some of its AI features will negatively affect iPhone sales in the near termor even into next year, when some of these features are now expected. That argument doesnt make a lot of sense to mefor two big reasons.The average consumer doesnt seem to care about AI smartphone features too muchWhile I know that tech enthusiasts like me seem to care a lot about Apples AI offerings, I dont believe that the same holds true for average consumers (e.g. those who dont follow tech news or consider tech gadgets to be a very important aspect of their lives).Why do I think that average consumers care so little about Apple Intelligence? Because ever since Apple announced Apple Intelligence last June and rolled it out in October, Ive never met a single person who said Apples new AI platform is why they are planning on buying a new iPhone.Ive had people tell me they bought a new iPhone 16 Pro because of the camera upgrades or because they wanted a bigger screen or a faster device. But not once has anyone ever cited Apple Intelligence as the reason for their purchase. Ive also had people tell me that they cant wait to buy the iPhone 17 Air, rumored to be released this fall, but only because of its ultra-slim design, not because of Apple Intelligence.Its not just my anecdotal observations that support my belief. As CNET reported in December 2024, a survey from trade journal SellCell found that 73% of iPhone owners and 87% of Samsung owners said that AI features add little to no value to their smartphone experiences.This was on top of an earlier CNET survey that found that among the 10 things that motivate consumers to upgrade their smartphone, AI integrations took 7th place, with only 18% of respondents saying it matters (beating out phone color). The most motivating factor spurring upgrades was longer battery life (61%), followed by more storage (46%), camera features (38%), phone display/screen size (32%), keeping the ecosystem (i.e., iOS to iOS, Android to Android) (24%), and a new product release (23%).Meanwhile, in January, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuoone of the most reputable and respected Apple analystspublished a blog post stating that there was no evidence that Apple Intelligence was actually driving hardware upgrade cycles.If Kuo, SellCell, CNET, and my observations are correctand I think they arethen Apples delay of Apple Intelligence features wont have much of an impact on iPhone sales in the near term.The iPhone is already one of the most versatile AI smartphones on the marketBut lets say Im wrong. Lets say the average consumer really does care that their smartphone is packed with AI. I still dont think Apples delay of some Apple Intelligence features matters that muchat least when it comes to the delays impact on iPhone sales.Why? Because the iPhone is already a powerful AI smartphoneand it has been for years. Not only are the majority of previously announced Apple Intelligence features already integrated into supported iPhones, but the App Store is filled with hundreds of AI apps, all of which allow you to expand the iPhones AI capabilities.These apps include chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Perplexity, plus myriad AI image-generation apps, like DaVinci and WOMBO, and AI note-taking apps like Otter. Like other tech enthusiasts, Im looking forward to the complete rollout of Apple Intelligence. But the iPhone doesnt depend on it for its AI capabilities. The iPhone is already a platform on which hundreds of AI apps and services can runand Apples delay in releasing its own AI offerings doesnt change that.

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Remembering Assassin's Creed Origins, the game which opened out the mysteries of the Great PyramidFrom all the apples coming before.Image credit: Ubisoft Feature by Christian Donlan Contributing Editor Published on March 22, 2025 There are, on balance, a couple of things I am always ready to read about. One of these things is to do with anytime some academic type puts an oil painting in an X-ray machine or something like that and discovers all these mysteries in the underpainting. Paths not taken or half taken. Forgotten faces suddenly looming out of the streaked grey murk, black eyes burning.The other thing tickles the exact same part of my brain. We're in Egypt, at Giza, and some academic type has used some kind of ground-penetrating imaging to reveal a hint of undiscovered passages within the Great Pyramid. They speak of chambers and causeways that we cannot reach, and ponder why they might be there and what they might contain. Again, I'm in that magical, electrical landscape of streaked grey murk, black eyes, burning, and some ancient figure turns towards us.Watch on YouTubeAll of which is to say, the thing I most like about the Pyramids of Egypt - and I really, really like the Pyramids of Egypt - is not that I suspect that they were built by Atlanteans or visitors from beyond the Kuiper Belt, but that they're so old, so dizzyingly, incomprehensibly old, that we don't know how the Egyptians who did build them actually did it. We have theories, and probably excellent theories, but there's still a vapour of mystery to it. How? Why? What else? These are questions I almost hope we never solve, because they are so exciting to just ponder.And this is the world in which Assassin's Creed Origins takes place. Is Origins the best Assassin's? I couldn't tell you. It's my favourite though, partly because of the lead character - although the series is not short of great leads, and Kassandra from Odyssey is right up there - but mainly because of the setting. Egypt! Finally this series has arrived at the Pyramids, where it always belonged.Here's the thing, though. Origins is not set in Egypt at the time that the Pyramids were freshly built, and this might, in fact, be the single greatest decision the developers made. This is Egypt in 49 BC. It's Ptolemaic Egypt. The Greeks are in charge, in some complex manner I don't fully understand, and the Romans are threatening incursions. Bayek, the game's brilliant, personable lead, can read hieroglyphics but has to remind himself how to do it. And the Pyramids are already old - dizzyling, incomprehensibly old. Image credit: UbisoftThere are a lot of wonderful things about Origins. Bayek is great, a kind of local Egyptian sheriff drawn into the heart of something big and terrifying. His wife Aya is even better, sheer charisma, warmth and danger combined. It's a pleasure, in among video games and all their battles and ruins, to find a couple who really love each other - that's Bayek and Aya. It's a pleasure - spoilers - to play as Aya for a little bit, and it's a genuine thrill in a later game (though possibly in Odyssey, it all blurs with this series) to enter a room deep underground somewhere and see a statue of a figure who I took to be Aya, already misted and grained by the passage of time. The past of the past and all that.Beyond that, there's Egypt itself, a huge stretch of terrain. It's filled with stuff that history enthusiasts will love. I gasped when I first reached Alexandria and its library, and gasped again when I learned the design team had based their building on a real ancient library. I loved a mission which took me out into places where natron salt is being worked with, because natron salt was used in mummification and that gives it a kind of star power. More than anything, I loved the sense of human life the game conjured. It's easy to see the empty tombs and temples of Egypt and picture a chilly culture where life was all about death. But these tombs and temples always come with workmen graffiti, the markings and signs of every day people who had their own lives and their own concerns. Assassin's Creed is the kind of series where Ubisoft spends a Pharaoh's fortune on each installment, yet it spends it not just on the kind of buildings and monuments that Pharaohs loved, but on the muddle and chatter of people who made these worlds feel alive. It's a pleasure and a privilege to see this stuff. Image credit: UbisoftI say all that - and I mean it! - but on my first playthrough of the game I was absolutely focused on the Pyramids. I was locked in. I could not be shaken. And so, of course, Origins holds them back a bit. A preamble on Bayek's home turf. A bit of tragedy and revenge to sort out, and a glimpse, inevitably, of one of the game's many ancient ancient artefacts - an apple, I think? The deadly clutter left behind by the Atlanteans or the people from beyond the Kuiper Belt or whoever they are in this particular universe.Then we get the Pyramids. And I remember thinking that Ubisoft had really done it. The big conceit had really worked. Because the Pyramids are ancient to us, it's completely harmonious that they're also ancient to Bayek. We are doubled with him as he explores them, we are right in there with him, in terms of what we're both thinking and feeling. He loves the grandeur of this place, the unknowable nature of these buildings, the sense of deep time they radiate. He is surprised that the Sphinx isn't bigger. He makes his way in to the Great Pyramid, I believe, through a tunnel hacked into it - maybe not the same tunnel visitors use today, but the sense of illicitness, the imposition of contemporary human desire on these vast, strangely voiceless buildings remains the same.I have been to the Great Pyramid. Give me a few hours and I think I even have a few pictures in a box somewhere: me in a terrible shirt in one of the upward-leading tunnels where you have to bend down just to proceed, and an awful, useless snapshot of the Grand Gallery taken without a flash - not that a flash would have helped. Image credit: UbisoftThis was the late 1990s while I was a student. My memories are already starting to fray - they already feel ancient to me - but what I can remember very clearly was reaching the Grand Gallery and feeling this distinct pang, a sense of both delight and wonder and sadness. This stuff is incredible - the Grand Gallery itself, a path to the King's Chamber which opens out and seems to fairly scream a sense of vital meaning that it's very tricky to guess at, is probably the most thrilling space I have ever been in. But I thought at the time: I'm not Egyptian. I live nowhere near this incredible place most of the time. I can never really get a proper idea of this place. I will always be passing through. For a building that can feel made of time, if that makes sense, I knew I had at best at hour. I was nineteen, and I would possibly never make it back here. (Not, of course, that I had any great purpose in being there at the time, behind holding up the queue and taking 35mm photos that had no chance of coming out properly.)And so it's safe to say that I came to Origins with my own preoccupations. Here was a Grand Gallery I could have in my home in East Sussex, and without having to steal anything or commit an international art crime. And this too is what I love about Origins' treatment of the Pyramids. They play it very straight - up to a point. And so Bayek walks through low chambers where he has to crouch. I tell myself I can remember the sense of rock looking like that, the walls feeling that rough, or with those sudden patches of smoothness. He emerges into the Grand Gallery and I can try to triangulate his journey there with my own fading memories of the route I once took. Ahead lies - surely - the King's chamber. Or does it? Did I get turned around? Did he? Image credit: UbisoftInevitably, Origins has its own designs, and it needs to use the Pyramids in part of its grand overarching storyline. Now even the game itself is starting to fade in my memory, but I do remember at one point heading down with Bayek and finding a great improbable space deep under the Pyramid filled with magical stuff and ancient computers and maybe - of course - a boss fight. But the crucial element of all this is memory. And not just memory but my own memory, an addled, fading, tourist memory of this place. Which means that I can never quite tell where Ubisoft's research ends with these spaces and where Ubisoft's imagination takes over.This is, bizarrely, and by a circuitous route, exactly what it was like to visit the Pyramids in the 1990s as a youthful idiot from England. I knew these places were special. I knew they were intricate and I'd seen cutaway maps, but I hadn't remembered the maps in great detail, and so when I went inside I genuinely didn't know what awaited me. A certain kind of tourist claims to be disappointed by the Pyramids - no hieroglyphics for one thing, but also a cramped, scattered kind of emptiness. Empty rooms. No easy indications of why or what for. For me, this was what I loved about the Pyramids. This was so much better than discovering riches, of having a panel slide away at the grace of some ancient mechanism to find myself staring at uncounted gold. Image credit: UbisoftUntangling all this now, I can see that I loved it, and that it was better than all this other stuff, for the very same reason I felt that pang of sadness in the Grand Gallery. Because the Pyramids are wildly, improbably old, and the people that built them are dust, and the reasons they built them are scattered on the wind. Ane yet we know that the people who built them were people, so we have that innate connection with them at least, that hint of a causeway towards understanding.But for us today, and for Bayek, back in 49 BC, there was no way of knowing too much more. Origins comes up with its own answers to the mysteries of the past - partial answers, obv, as there's always another game to make - but it doesn't seem as convinced by these answers as it does by its conjuring of the people in the streets of its ancient cities, the political intrigue around Cleopatra, the scholars milling in the great library.To put it another way, the Pyramids are where us humans confront some of the strangest mysteries of being human. And that is a wonderful thing to explore in a video game.