The Big Bad Question Backlog: Modems Around the World, Weird eBay Auctions, iOS Hacks, and More

This week on the show we're getting to a backlog of all your questions, from jailbreak hacks to transcribing meetings to weird eBay auctions. We covered a ton this week, so come check it all out!

How to Listen to This Week's Episode

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Questions

Where do I buy a good Fiber-to-the-Home modem in Saudi Arabia?
We're not sure! Call your provider and ask about compatible modems. If anyone in the audience has some good suggestions, please let us know.

What's an alternative to Seen Before, the tool that helps/helped you search your browsing history?
Archify.

How do I close background apps on iOS more easily?
By jailbreaking and installing SwitcherPlus. You may want to install Auxo, too.

Is it always necessary to safely eject a disk when Windows insists files are in use (but they don't seem to be)?
Yes and no. Read this.

How can someone place a winning bid on eBay five days before the auction ends?
Magic! And that eBay's weird. Let's go with an example. The auction ends on Sunday, but someone bids a maximum of $1,000 on Wednesday. eBay doesn't automatically drive the price up to $1,000, but rather just moves it up one increment. So if it started at $5, it'd go up to $6. If someone bids $50, the person who bid $1,000 will automatically outbid them at the next highest increment. This makes it seem like they're constantly outbidding at the last second when they really just put in one high bid and eBay's automatically adjusting it. So, the person who bid $1,000 on Wednesday will win so long as the auction ends at $1,000 or less. They end up paying whatever one step up from the highest bid. It's confusing, and possibly doesn't make a lot of sense, but the simple version is this: eBay will automatically outbid at the lowest amount possible until it reaches a threshold you specify. If that threshold was specified five days before the auction ended, the winning bid will appear to have been placed five days before the auction ended.

Is there a way to migrate XBMC to Plex?
Just make sure you've cleaned up your library. Plex and XBMC use the same format.

Is it worth rooting a Kindle Fire?
Yep! Do it with BurritoRoot. Turn it into a tablet with CyanogenMod.

One thing I have found useful for note taking in meetings is to record the meeting and then listen to it later to write out the notes. I was wondering, with all the advances in speech recognition software, if there is something I can use to feed the recording through and convert that audio to text. It would make note taking so much easier.
No automated software is really any good. Adobe Premiere Pro can create transcripts if you want to pay a lot for that software. YouTube will create fairly crappy transcripts for free. You want to use humans for this sort of thing. That'll cost a little, but you can do it cheap with Amazon Mechanical Turk or Casting Words.

I decided to take the plunge a get a Nook Simple Touch and root to get my perfect ereader. I can't find a good RSS app that paginates. What would you recommend?
NewsRob, our App Directory pick.

I'm a 23yr old who's started work in a warehouse and I'm basically by myself all day (every week-day from 10 - 19 hours a day) they allow us to listen to music via headphones but pandora got real old real quick. any tips on what to listen to to help time pass quicker?
Go on Audible and look up Innovative Language Learning if you want to learn a language. Or get an audio book. Unfamiliar music can make you more productive, too.

So, I've got a twitter account, Vimeo account, google, gravatar and LinkedIn accounts. At the moment, they all have different avatars, depending on what pic was available at the time. Is there any way to update all my avatars at once? I know that's kinda what gravatar is supposed to do, but it doesn't. Are there any other options?
Nope. Sorry. :(

I was wondering if there are any ways to sync files privately. I am paranoid to use Dropbox and other cloud services. Is there anything that I can use to copy large files to my computer securely and keep my privacy?
Try OwnCloud or roll your own Dropbox with rsync.

We recently moved our studio and we decided to recycle old computers to charity but I couldn't bring myself to throw out an old G5 Mac pro, it has been harvested for parts but the tower casing is so great I want to do something different with it. Anyone I ask seem to only suggest a fish tank, which is not really feasible and you love some great ideas for what to do with a Mac when its not a mac anymore.
Turn it into a hackintosh.

I live in a condo that is controlled access. You need a gate code in order to get into the building or you can dial-up a specific apartment from the call box. I do not have a land-line so calling the apartment has no effect. Is it possible to have my "gate code" on file with the various shipping companies so that they can access my building and deliver my sweet sweet products when I'm not home.
Yes, call them. They will keep it on file and in the delivery truck.

First, some setup: My girlfriend and I used to live by ourselves, but we recently moved into a new place with her dad. In our previous home, I was in control of the router and I handled everything that came along with it (setting up wifi, printers, minecraft servers, etc.) but now, her dad pays the cable bill, and therefore has full control over the router. My fear is that he can "look into" my internet usage, and although I'm not doing anything I really shouldn't be doing, I don't like the idea that he knows how often I look at cat videos or any of the other semi-embarrassing internet things that a forty-year-old man probably doesn't get. Am I being a little too paranoid, or should I take precautions against snooping? I'm currently trying out Hotspot Shield, a VPN Service that says it protects you from "snoopers" at Wi-Fi hotspots. Will this do the trick for me, or do you guys have other suggestions?
Yeah, you're probably being paranoid but it's understandable. Pick a good VPN or mask your IP. Or just ignore him if he gives you crap for what you do online. If it doesn't get a reaction out of you, he'll leave you alone.

My workplace is stuck in 2006, and is still using IE7. Although I don't need to use an internet browser to do my job, it's frustrating when I'm trying to check up on the news or use my Google Docs and websites aren't working properly. How can I convince management to update our internet browsers, even though it's not necessary to do my job?
Tell them it's insecure.

Hey guys I recently jailbroke my iPhone and started adding all these fancy tweaks to it. But after adding all these cool features I was getting kind of nervous with security. I'm afraid some hacked tweak might steal or key log my information. Would changing the root password help? Should Cydia and its gang be trusted?
YES! You need to change your root password. Install SSH and do it. Cydia has a pretty proven track record at this point. We think they're trustworthy. Just don't trust every source in Cydia. Google it and see if there have been issues before you install.

How Do I Submit a Question?

There are two ways to send in your question:

Please keep your questions as brief as possible. This means about 3-5 sentences for emails and 30-60 seconds for calls and videos. Your questions can be specific, but broader questions are generally better because they'll apply to more people. For example, "how can I breathe new life into my old PDA?" is much better than "what can I do with an old HP iPAQ 210?" Either way, we look forward to hearing from you!

Newspaper, Computer, Clock (by Brandon Hopkins), and Alert (by Dima Yagnyuk) provided by the Noun Project.

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/q7x6YKzoZAQ/the-big-bad-question-backlog-modems-around-the-world-weird-ebay-auctions-ios-hacks-and-more

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