Attempt to compare different types of intelligence falls a bit short

(credit: MIT Press)

“What makes machines, animals, and people smart?” asks the subtitle of Paul Thagard’s new book. Not “Are computers smarter than humans? or “will computers ever be smarter than humans?” or even “are computers and animals conscious, sentient, or self-aware (whatever any of that might mean)?” And that’s unfortunate, becausethough most people are probably more concerned with questions like those.

Thagard is a philosopher and cognitive scientist, and he has written many books about the brain, the mind, and society. In this one, he defines what intelligence is and delineates the 12 features and 8 mechanisms that he thinks It’s built from,comprise it which allows him toso that he can compare the intelligences of these three very different types of beings.

He starts with a riff on the Aristotelian conception of virtue ethics. IWhereas in that case, a good person is defined as someone who possesses certain virtues;, in Thagard’sthis case, a smart person is defined as someone who epitomizes certain ways of thinking. Confucius, Mahatma Ghandi and Angela Merkel excelled at social innovation; Thomas Edison and George Washington Carver excelled at technological innovation; he lists Beethoven, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jane Austen, and Ray Charles as some of his favorite artistic geniuses; and Charles Darwin and Marie Curie serve as his paragons of scientific discoverers. Each of these people epitomizes different aspects of human intelligence, including creativity, emotion, problem solving, and using analogies.

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How leaded fuel was sold for 100 years, despite knowing its health risks

Enlarge / A 1960s Southern California gas station being restored. (credit: FarukUlay | Getty Images)

On the frosty morning of Dec. 9, 1921, in Dayton, Ohio, researchers at a General Motors lab poured a new fuel blend into one of their test engines. Immediately, the engine began running more quietly and putting out more power.

The new fuel was tetraethyl lead. With vast profits in sight—and very few public health regulations at the time—General Motors Co. rushed gasoline diluted with tetraethyl lead to market despite the known health risks of lead. They named it “Ethyl” gas.

It has been 100 years since that pivotal day in the development of leaded gasoline. As a historian of media and the environment, I see this anniversary as a time to reflect on the role of public health advocates and environmental journalists in preventing profit-driven tragedy.

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End of the line finally coming for BlackBerry devices

Enlarge / The Blackberry Torch, the company's first touchscreen phone, is held for display during its debut in New York in 2010. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

BlackBerry, the company that once dominated smart mobile devices, recently announced that it was finally discontinuing key services that support its phones. As of January 4th, the phones will no longer be provided with provisioning services, meaning that they will gradually lose the ability to join networks, including the cellular network.

It may seem difficult to imagine if you weren't using cell phones at the time, but BlackBerry once dominated the smartphone market. Its keyboard-based hardware was widely adopted in corporate settings, in part because the services it provided typically ran through BlackBerry servers, allowing for high levels of security and control. An indication of its importance is that early internal builds of Android looked like a cheap BlackBerry knockoff, rather than the cheap iPhone knockoff that was eventually released.

Unlike the people who developed Android, BlackBerry's leadership was blindsided by the iPhone's popularity. It dismissed on-screen keyboards, and counted on its stranglehold on corporate services to maintain its market. It took over a year after the iPhone's release for the company to come out with its own touch screen phone, and its software remained an awkward mix of old and new for some time after. In the mean time, corporate users fell in love with their Apple and Android phones, and compelled their IT departments to support them.

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Tesla is recalling over 475,000 Model 3 and Model S vehicles

Enlarge (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Tesla is recalling over 475,000 of its vehicles because of a pair of safety issues. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 356,309 Tesla Model 3s covering model years 2017-2020 are being recalled due to problems with the rearview cameras. The 2017-2020 Model S is the other target with 119,009 of those BEVs due to a problem with the front hood latch. 

For the Model 3, the NHTSA says that the problem comes from a cable harness for the rearview camera, which "may be damaged by the opening and closing of the trunk lid, preventing the rearview camera image from displaying."

On the Model S, problems with the latch for the front hood may cause the "frunk" to open while the vehicle is in motion and without warning, which would obstruct the driver’s visibility, increasing the risk of a crash."

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Extreme weather could be as expensive as investing in cutting carbon ASAP

Enlarge (credit: Jason Persoff / Getty Images)

Recently, a network of climate modeling groups showed that it will cost more to overshoot the Paris Agreement temperature goals than it will to stay on a low-temperature trajectory. On the same day, that collaboration also published work showing that additional risks of overshooting come in part via ensuing increases in extreme weather.These studies are two of four published this year; together they provide the most comprehensive projections of the requirements and implications of the path we take to reach our end-of-century temperature targets.

The article focused on the economic aspects of meeting the Paris temperature targets—specifically how much mitigation actions will cost and the impact on the global GDP—wasn’t designed to project environmental impacts. In fact, most economic models don’t include this level of complexity and, as a result, they underestimate the overall costs. But this additional analysis projects not only how much extreme weather will increase, but also how that will effect crop yields around the world.

“The decarbonization scenarios reviewed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in the last assessment reports do not account for the climate impacts’ feedback. The main reason is that [there are] many uncertainties surround the geophysical and economic impacts of climate change, making their integration difficult in the design of decarbonization pathways,” wrote first author Dr. Laurent Drouet in an email to Ars Technical. Drouet is a researcher at the RFF-CMCC European Institute of Economics and the Environment, in Milan, Italy.  “But, now, [our] research focuses on improving the representation of these impacts and producing results that are easier to integrate into mitigation models.”

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Say cheese for the Xiaomi 12 Pro smartphone’s monstrous camera

Enlarge / Xiaomi 12 Pro. (credit: Xiaomi)

Xiaomi's looking to put a big smile on shutterbugs' faces with a new, monstrous smartphone camera. On Wednesday, the Chinese company announced the Xiaomi 12 Pro, the first product to use Sony's massive 1/1.28-inch IMX707 sensor.

For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra has a 1/1.33-inch type sensor for its wide rear camera and a 1/2.55-inch sensor for its ultrawide rear camera.

The 12 Pro's IMX707 sensor is a refresh of Sony's IMX700, according to Gizmochina, and uses 1.22 μm 4-in-1 pixels. A bigger camera sensor combined with the lens aperture can bring in more light, allowing for less blur and artifacts. Overall, the 12 Pro's large camera "improves light capturing capabilities by 49 percent compared to the previous generation," Xiaomi's announcement claimed. According to The Verge, the phone's main camera lens has an f/1.9 aperture.

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Rivian tells buyers of trucks, SUVs with 400-mile range to wait until 2023

Enlarge / A Rivian R1T showing off its off-road capability. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

With supply chain disruptions messing with the auto industry, it's an especially challenging time for startups like Rivian. After warning of production challenges due to parts shortages early in December, the Illinois-based electric truck maker on Tuesday told some customers they would need to wait another year, until 2023, for their preorders to be delivered.

The delay affects deliveries of Rivian R1T (truck) and R1S (SUV) models with the Max battery packs, which offer a range of 400 miles on a single charge. Those account for about 20 percent of Rivian preorders, according to an email to customers sent by Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe and posted to Reddit. The rest of the preorders are for vehicles with the Large pack, providing range of around 315 miles.

"In order to serve the largest number of preorder holders, we will be prioritizing building the Adventure Package with Large pack battery during the next year," wrote Scaringe. "Explore Package preorders and vehicles with a Max pack battery configuration will follow in 2023. In setting our delivery timing, we optimized our build sequence around the build combination that would support us ramping as quickly as possible and therefore have the largest possible positive climate impact."

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A year on: the highs and lows of a new engineering education system

Enlarge / A remote controlled volume controller. It can also raise and lower the volume to preset levels using the buttons. (credit: Chris Lee)

One of the last times I wrote anything for Ars Technica, I excitedly detailed our new electrical engineering curriculum. We were starting a pilot in February and I promised to write a follow up at the end of the academic year, which was in July. To be honest, I was so exhausted by the semester that I simply could not bring myself to write about it over the summer holiday. 

Now, as we exit the Christmas holiday, I finally feel able to paint a picture. It’s not all bright colors and beautiful landscapes, but the view looks promising.

For those of you who don’t remember the earlier piece, a summary: we switched from a traditional course-based curriculum to a project-based curriculum, where the students had to choose how to show that they could use their electrical engineering knowledge. The philosophy is that being able to apply knowledge and skills in the right context is a good signal that someone understands what they've learned. That means we have to set the right context and provide the students the opportunity to acquire the right knowledge and skills.

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Worker protests, mass illness lead Apple to put iPhone plant on probation

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Apple has put a Foxconn manufacturing plant that makes iPhone 12s and is running trial production of the iPhone 13 on probation, Reuters reported today. The move comes after both Apple and Foxconn determined that some worker dorms and dining rooms failed to meet requirements.

Production at the plant in Sriperumbudur, India has already been halted for a week and a half. Apple placed a plant belonging to Wistron Corp., another one of its suppliers, on probation last year due to "unrest," Reuters noted, and Wistron didn't receive any new business from Apple during that period.

The Foxconn plant in question has been closed since December 18. Protests had broken out that week after 256 factory workers were treated for food poisoning, including 159 who were hospitalized. At the time, the local government described it as "an outbreak of acute diarrheal disease."

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Amazon Echo Show 15 review: Alexa on the big screen

Enlarge / Amazon's Echo Show 15 is about the largest smart display you can find. (credit: Scharon Harding)

When getting a display of any type, the first thing to consider is size. And unless the display will be moving around, chances are that the bigger it is, the better your experience will be. TV manufacturers have gone big, smartphones (to my chagrin) insist on doing so, and now it's time for a newer category, smart displays, to step onto the big screen.

The Amazon Echo Show 15 isn't just the biggest Echo package yet, it has the biggest screen you can easily find in a smart display of any brand. The 15.6-inch display is meant to be anchored and serve as a central organization hub for your household. Boasting Alexa-powered widgets like shared calendars, shopping lists, to-do lists, and the abilities to call household members and manage your other smart devices, there's a lot of utility to take advantage of.

Navigating the Echo Show 15's content sometimes feels clunky, and some features are hard to discover, despite Amazon's efforts to stuff the UI with tips. Different family member profiles can be activated via facial recognition, but the transition isn't always smooth. You'll have to train your family to use the Echo Show 15 to make it really worthwhile. But if you're going down the path of smart displays, the Echo Show 15 comes with a bigger screen and bigger possibilities than the competition.

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