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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss streaming vs ownership, the FCC recommending better minimum broadband speeds, McDonald’s and gamers, Uber setting a lawsuit with the Department of Justice, and more.
John in Montgomery, Alabama listens Online and asked: “I have a Netgear router – AC1900 – and I’ve had it 4-5 years. I’ve had people who built networks for the government who said it’s good to change out the router every 3-5 years because the hardware firewall tends to get old and you have to replace it to get that new firewall. First of all… Is it true? And if it is, what is the best router to get? I have a preference for the Netgear routers, but if there’s something better out there, let me know.”
John, no its not really anything you need to worry about.
Home router firewalls dont really evolve much, they basically just close off incoming ports unless you open them and they usually have an option to allow software to open the ports directly. Thats about it.
Home routers dont have any kind of advanced firewalls built-in and they dont really vary a whole lot from router to router.
Thats not really a bad thing, if you got a server from a service like AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, or any of the many infrastructure as a service providers, the out of the box firewall would roughly work the same way, except with an IP address range filter.
Things can and do get more complex with server level firewalls, since you can tweak them to do specific things, and when you operate them for something like government services you would need to replace aging physical firewall devices because firmware updates are important to avoid security holes that can be exploited.
A home router firewall for the most part just keeps ports closed and opens them only when you explicitly ask it to do it and they get next to no maintenance from day one.
Theres no reason to replace your router just to get another that will never have its firmware updated either.
Joe in Gladewater, Texas listens on KTBB and asked: “Hey Dave and Chris. Is there a way that I can make my iPad read within the Kindle app or within Libby, which is also a book reader? I would like to be able to let that play while I fall asleep at night. If you could help me out, that would be wonderful. I sure appreciate y’alls hard work.”
Joe, theres a screen reader built into the physical Kindle device, but theres no built-in screen reader in either the Kindle app, or in Libby.
You can get the iPads own screen reader to read the screen if you activate it in settings, but it will probably be a clunky experience since its meant to just read whats not he screen, not to go to the next page or the next chapter of a book for you.
The iPads screen reader also wont have a timer to stop it after a set number of minutes.
The other problem youll face is that the screen reader is an accessibility tool, so the dictation will be pretty robotic and it wont feel like an audiobook at all.
Libby does allow you to check out audio books from your local library though, so that may be a better way to go if youd like to have a book read aloud to you as you fall asleep.
Keigan in Newport, Virginia listens on WRAD 103.5 FM and called in to help another listener
Keigan said: “I just listened to the live radio recording where another listener was talking about his iPad trading in, possibly getting a new one. Just wanted to give advice that he could save his iPad if the trade in value isn’t very much because he could maybe give it to a kid, a grandchild. Maybe he could use it for like a security camera or something because there’s many apps where you can use it as a remote device. He could also save it and still use some of the apps that maybe aren’t updated, but he just still enjoys – and that way, he’s not losing a lot of the value from his purchase price. And he’s not just giving it away for a small amount. He could also sell it on eBay or somebody who refurbishes those devices so he could make a little bit more money than trading it in. And there’s also trade-in kiosks where he could get some other value from it, maybe for the recycled parts. And that’s all. Thanks.”
Thank you, Keigan!
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