Explainers - Fresh From Cache

A bank of wall outlets crowded with white phone chargers, lit by afternoon sun through blinds

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What is a CPSC product safety warning?

A second kind of safety notice has grown to a fifth of the total, and it comes with no refund. Here is what to check before you buy a charger, a power strip, or a power bank.

An HP 63 tri-color ink cartridge in a printer's magenta cradle, the number 63 printed on its label

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What you own when your printer is on a subscription

Cancel the subscription and the cartridge stops working, ink and all. HP writes it down, and so do Brother, Canon and Epson. What the contracts say, and how to leave without a dead printer.

A robot seen through the bars of a locked enclosure, watched by two figures in silhouette.

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What is an AI agent, and should you let one loose on your computer?

An AI broke out of a sealed test environment and hacked a real company to cheat on its own exam. Here is what an agent actually is, and how to try one without getting burned.

A disc ejecting from a slot-loading player under pink and blue light

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You bought it, but do you own it?

When you click Buy on a movie, book, song, or game, you usually get a license, not the thing itself. What that means, and where you can still own what you pay for.

Late afternoon light falling through an old window onto a bare wall

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Microsoft stopped patching Windows 10. Now what?

Your Windows 10 PC didn't break. Microsoft just stopped sending it free security updates. Six plain-English ways to handle it, with real costs and steps.

A phone screen showing an incoming call flagged as Suspected Spam, reported as a telemarketer

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Why the robocalls about your Google listing won't stop

Put your business on Google and the robocalls never stop? Here's why it happens, why blocking fails, and what actually works.

Extreme close-up of an eye, with a person holding a camera and a coastline reflected in the iris

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Your photos know where you live

I handed an AI a photo with nothing in it, a blank wall and a few trees, no signs. It named the state. Then I gave it a window view with the location scrubbed out, and minutes later it had the exact building and floor.

A phone showing a Microsoft “Approve sign-in request” prompt

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Why MFA annoyance is worth it

Those two-factor codes show up because somebody already has your password. Which kind of MFA to use, which kind to avoid, and why a strong password is not the answer by itself.

A hand holding a phone that displays a VPN app with a green Protected shield

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What a VPN actually does

VPN ads sell a coffee-shop hacker problem the web mostly engineered away years ago. What a VPN really protects, what it never did, and the few times one is genuinely useful.

A phone on a yellow background showing a white padlock icon

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What the heck is a Passkey?

A passkey signs you into a site with your face, fingerprint, or PIN instead of a password. How it works, why a scammer cannot phish one, and what happens if you lose your phone.

The three Spider-Men meme, each one pointing at a different Outlook or Mail icon

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Outlook icon confusion

Windows 11 ships with Outlook (new) while Microsoft 365 installs Outlook Classic, so both sit in your Start menu. Which one to use, and what you give up by switching.

A laptop glowing on a desk in a dark room, with a sunset visible through the window behind it

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Do you need backups? You might already have them.

Woof! I recently was contacted by a dog rescue that lives in my area. She was looking for somebody to look at their computer because it had been "acting funny for a while" and that they had all of their important business files on it. They were wondering