How-To - Fresh From Cache

Fresh From Cache 5-Minute Tech Tip card over a clock face, reading: Want to see your mail before it gets to the mailbox?

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The post office already photographs your mail. It will send you the pictures.

USPS will email you a photo of the letters coming to your house that day, for free. Most eligible addresses have never turned it on.

A MacBook nearly closed in the dark, with colorful light from its screen glowing through the gap

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Do you need antivirus on a Mac?

macOS already runs three layers of protection for free. What XProtect and Gatekeeper cover, the one rule that does more than any scanner, and who should still install something.

Fresh From Cache 5-Minute Tech Tip card over a clock face, reading: When's the last time you used your library card?

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Your library card is a subscription you already pay for

Free audiobooks, ebooks, and magazines on the phone already in your pocket. No card? You can probably fix that today without leaving home.

A person holding a credit card while typing on a laptop.

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Do you need antivirus, or is Windows Defender enough?

Windows Defender is free, already on, and tests level with paid antivirus for most people. What the labs found, who should still pay, and how to cancel McAfee or get a Norton renewal refunded.

Fresh From Cache 5-Minute Tech Tip card over a clock face, reading: Why did nobody tell me about these shortcuts?

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Five shortcuts I wish somebody had told me about

Five small things your phone and computer have always done. I learned most of them late, and I use every one of them almost daily.

Two hands holding a smartphone showing a grid of photos

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Your phone says storage is almost full. Don't delete anything yet.

The standard advice is to delete some photos. On the wrong phone, that advice destroys the only copy. Answer one question first.

A black Wi-Fi router with two antennas sitting on a wooden wall shelf.

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Check Your Router's Expiration Date. No Manufacturer Is Required to Tell You It Has One.

Washington spent this month regulating where your router was manufactured. The far more dangerous question is how long anyone will keep patching it, and on that one you are entirely on your own.

Fresh From Cache 5-Minute Tech Tip card with a clock face and the question: Can your phone read the fine print to you?

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Your phone has a magnifying glass

The camera app zooms. The magnifier holds the image still, turns up the contrast, and on an iPhone it will even read the small print out loud.

A young woman with one hand over her forehead, looking down at her phone in a dark room

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You just got scammed. What now?

The hours lost to embarrassment are what turn a bad afternoon into a drained account. Here is the order to work in, and what is actually recoverable.

5-Minute Tech Tip card: Can you make the robocalls stop?

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Make your phone stop ringing for robocalls

Your phone can send robocalls straight to voicemail, or make them say who they are first. Here is the five-minute setup on iPhone, Android, and Samsung.

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How to get a deepfake of you taken down

The full platform-by-platform companion to our deepfake explainer: where the real removal paths are, what each report form actually covers, and what to save before you file anything.

A child and an adult flipping through a printed photo album together.

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I lost ten years of photos. Now I print a photo book every January.

Half an hour in January, and a printed book of your whole year shows up at your door. I started because I lost a decade of pictures.