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Google Hints at Early Android 17 Launch Timeline; Second Beta Slated to Arrive in March

Google has not confirmed an exact launch date for the stable build of Android 17, but the company offered several clues about a Q2 2026 debut. The stable update is likely to be released in June. The second Android 17 beta will arrive in March. The company released the first public beta of Android 17 last week. The update includes advanced media and camera capabilitie...

A World Appears by Michael Pollan review – a kaleidoscopic exploration of consciousness

The journalist and polymath probes the mysteries of the mind in this unsettling yet life-affirming investigation

The brain, wrote Charles Scott Sherrington, is an “enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern”. The British neuroscientist created this striking image more than 80 years ago, a time when mechanised looms, not computers, embodied the idea of technology. Even so, the symbolism feels relevant. We struggle to talk of our brains or minds without recourse to the machine metaphor: once it was clocks, then looms, and now computers. We say that our brains are hardwired; we talk of our ability to process information.

The quote appears as merely a footnote in Michael Pollan’s new book, A World Appears, a fabulous and mind-expanding exploration of consciousness: how and why we are self-aware. But the whole thing can be read as a lucid and impassioned riposte to Sherrington’s conception of the mind as a machine. In Pollan’s view, we have become imprisoned by such narratives, which have obscured the richness and complexity of human and non-human consciousness. Bridging both science and the humanities, Pollan mines neuroscientific research, philosophy, literature and his own mind, searching for different ways to think about being, and what it feels like.

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Xiaomi Civi 6 Launch Rumours Resurface; Tipped to Feature Customisable AI Shortcut Key

New leaks suggest Xiaomi Civi 6 is still in development after earlier reports claimed it was cancelled. Tipsters Digital Chat Station and Smart Pikachu have hinted at the device on Weibo, including the possible addition of a dedicated AI shortcut key. Rumoured specifications include a 6.59-inch curved LIPO display, Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, 200-megapixel main camera...