VAVA’s new dash cam lets you video while you voom

By maliksab 

VAVA’s new dash cam lets you video while you voom

 I usually don’t like to post Kickstarters unless I’ve seen the product firsthand but I also love dash cams. What was I to do? Luckily VAVA was able to supply a demo unit so I can report that this $99 dash cam is real, works, and could let you make some clever Russian-style road videos or record conditions before an accident.

Most of the dash cams I’ve seen so far have been priced at or above $100. The VAVA, which is basically a USB-powered puck that attaches magnetically to a suction mount, is $99 and can be twisted on the fly to film the inside of the car as well as the road ahead. The kit includes a small wireless button that lets you take snapshots on the fly and your drive is recorded on a microSD and available for download via Wi-Fi.

Apple’s iPhone 6, 6 Plus are failing early thanks to ‘touch disease,’ bending problems

By Joel Hruska

 Touch. It’s a critical part of how we navigate the real world and, thanks to the success of the original iPhone, a core component of modern smartphones. Apple has been at the forefront of introducing various touch capabilities, but its iPhone 6 and 6 Plus appear to suffer from design flaws that are killing the devices more quickly than one would expect.

As iFixit reports (and our own EIC Jamie Lendino can attest), an increasing number of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices are showing up in shops with the same problem: A gray, flickering bar at the top of the display and a non-responsive touchscreen.

“This issue is widespread enough that I feel like almost every iPhone 6/6+ has a touch of it (no pun intended) and are like ticking bombs just waiting to act up,” Jason Villmer, owner of STS Telecom—a board repair shop in Missouri, told iFixit. According to multiple sources, the problem has already been identified, and it’s a familiar problem for Mac users: The underfill layer underneath the chips that handle the phone’s touchscreen degrades over time.

Apple wants you to know that it loves AI more than you realize

By David Cardinal

Apple has been busy snapping up dozens of AI startups, and its Siri product is one of the most-widely-used AI applications on the planet, but recent AI headlines have focused on more glamorous efforts — especially from competitors Google and Facebook. Both Google and Facebook have released major AI technologies into open source, and Google’s DeepMind famously tackled the challenge of Go, by beating one of the world’s best players. So Apple took the very unusual step of spending an entire day bragging about its AI efforts to journalist Steven Levy, who published a very-thorough account on Backchannel.

The article reads more like an inventory than a coherent strategy document. There are long lists of AI technologies, AI-infused Apple products, acquired startups, and key hires. So it is a little hard to connect all the dots and discern exactly which technologies are in use in which products, but one clear take away is that the neural network renaissance has had the same disruptive effect on Siri — when it moved to neural nets in 2014 — and other Apple efforts as it has for Google’s speech recognition, Facebook’s facial recognition, and plenty of other fields. Apple says Siri’s accuracy more than doubled when it made the switch, which is fairly consistent with the progress Google has made for its “OK Google” voice recognition through adoption of similar technologies — a couple years earlier.

ET deals: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon 14-inch Ultrabook for $889

By Grant Brunner

If you’re looking for a thin, lightweight laptop with all-day battery life, check out the ThinkPad X1 Carbon from Lenovo. It only weighs about 2.6 pounds, measures less than seven-tenths of an inch thick, and holds nearly 10 hours of battery life on a single charge. Better yet, today’s coupon will help you save over 350 bucks off the list price.

How To Make Ethernet Cables

By Samara Lynn, Pj Jacobowitz 

 Most networking devices ship with Ethernet cables that let you connect the hardware to your network. Many of these cables, however, are at a fixed length usually measuring no more than four feet. That lack of length doesn't present many placement options for devices that are not portable and usually are hard-wired to a network such as routers, switches, servers and NASes.
Of course, you can purchase longer Ethernet cables from Best Buy and other electronic/computer stores. Buying pre-made Ethernet cables is the most practical option if you have a couple of devices to setup on a small or home network. But what if you are responsible for a large network, or several networks, as a small-business tech consultant? Or, what if you need a super long cable that you just can't find in the store? The answer is simple: Make your own cables. Ethernet cables (also known as RJ-45, patch, and network cables) are easy to make with a little practice and the right tools.
Even with modest cabling needs, you can reach the break-even point and pay off the small investment you'll need to make your own Ethernet cables. At Best Buy, for example, a 6-foot Cat5 network cables costs $19.00; a 25-foot cable is priced at around $33.00 and for a 50 foot cable, the price is $43.00. These prices are just for one cable. Researching several online distributors, you can buy a spool of 1,000 feet of Cat5e from $65-$120.00 and the "heads;" the modular plugs used to terminate an Ethernet cable, can be easily found in 50-count bags for under $10.00. The crimping tool you also need is a one-time start-up cost of anywhere from $10-$50.00 depending on the quality and additional features that the crimping tool may have. 
Sure, it'll take a little extra time to make your own Ethernet cables, but you'll save money, you'll have cables that are the exact right length, and you might just have some geeky fun, too.