Balanced News from the Right & Left

A friend turned me on to Tangle News, yesterday. Unlike Ground News (which reports on how other news outlets are reporting news), Tangle News reports a story and then reports on what the Right and Left are saying about the topic followed by the author's personal take. 

I'm trying it out with the latest story that was published about Matt Gates' Attorney General bid. This article was published just before he withdrew his name, so it's a little stale but still interesting. I also turned the article into a podcast for alternative consumption. 

Pocket Travel Router & Repeater for the Win

A coworker who was visiting San Diego in September mentioned that he always travels with a pocket-sized travel router so I decided to check one out on Amazon. I'm impressed; especially since it cost less than $40 with tax and shipping and it was delivered in under three hours.

I'm simply using mine as a WiFi repeater to deliver connectivity to a dead spot at home and it's working magnificently. It is ideal for using at a hotel so you and your fellow roommates don't need to keep logging into the hotel room's WiFi. And it's especially useful on a cruise ship or airline flight where guests are charged for Internet access for each device. Simply pay for connecting one device, the travel router, and then everyone else in your stateroom can connect it. 

To use it, you log into it, like a typical router or cable modem, and then connect it to your current home (or hotel, etc) WiFi network (you can also use ethernet or tether it to your phone’s hotspot). Once it's set up, it creates its own WiFi network so multiple people can connect to the travel router without needing to log into the hotel’s network.

iPhones Running iOS 18.1 Automatically Reboot and Lock Down After Being Idle for 96 Hours

This is an interesting new iPhone feature that causes an iPhone to automatically reboot if it's turned on but hasn’t been unlocked for 96 hours.

The thinking is that if your phone is taken from you then it’s harder to hack after it reboots, which is completely true.

Law enforcement has recently encountered this new feature from iPhones they’ve confiscated. The phones that law enforcement have been storing were inexplicably rebooting after 96 hours.

How It Works

When you turn on your iPhone, after it’s been completely powered down, or reboot it, your keys are still encrypted. Entering your six digit PIN unlocks the keys.

This is why, after you turn a phone on, but don’t unlock it, phone calls or text messages don’t display the names of who they’re from on the Lock Screen - rather the notifications simply show the phone number of the sender. The iPhone can’t decrypt a lot of things, like your address book, until you enter your PIN after turning it on or rebooting.

Once you unlock your iPhone for the first time, all the keys are decrypted and kept in memory until the next time you reboot the phone.