How to Clean Your TV Screen

Screens can scratch easily, and even paper towels and tissues contain fibers that can cause damage. “Your best bet is to use a soft, anti-static microfiber cloth—the kind used to clean eyeglasses and camera lenses—and wipe in a circular motion,” says Scott Meadows, who cleans more than 200 TVs a year in his role as…

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Inside the Messy, Accidental Kryptos Reveal

Jim Sanborn couldn’t believe it. He was weeks away from auctioning off the answer to Kryptos, the sculpture he created for the CIA that had defied solution for 35 years. As always, wannabe solvers kept on paying him a $50 fee to offer their guesses to the remaining unsolved portion of the 1,800-character encrypted message,…

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Video Streaming Services That Let You Cut Cable TV

Monthly bill: $85 to $110 per month What you get: Fubo is a sports-centric service that provides live and on-demand channels from ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC in most markets. It recently raised prices by $5 a month. You also get cable channels (AMC, Bravo, Discovery, FX, HGTV, Syfy, and TLC) and sports networks (BeIn…

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Shop Smarter With the Consumer Reports Price Tracker

Nice Price, No Availability We noticed a few weeks back that our Panasonic microwave and DeWalt portable generator both dipped in price at certain retailers right around the time they went out of stock. Even now, the microwave remains priced at $339.95 at Walmart—$60 below the offer at Abt Electronics—yet it’s unavailable for purchase. The…

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How to Clean Your Headphones

Except for a handful of models marketed specifically for swimming, headphones should never be submerged in water. (Electronics and water don’t mix well.) Even “water-resistant” models—which are designed to stand up to sweat or rain, not a dunking—should never get more than slightly damp. Don’t apply any liquid directly to the headphones, and when you…

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What Even Is Instagram Now?

In her classic novel Frankenstein, author Mary Shelley imagines a monster that’s reanimated with its piecemeal body sewn together, tendon by tendon. “The dissecting room and the slaughter-house furnished many of my materials,” Shelley writes. That’s exactly what scrolling through Instagram feels like right now—an ungodly morass of features stitched together. It’s an AI search…

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The Best Way to Cook a Turkey

If you forget to pull the turkey out of the freezer in time, don’t try to speed up the thawing process by leaving it on the counter or even in a cool garage or porch. Bacteria can multiply quickly when food sits at temperatures between 40° F and 140° F for longer than 2 hours….

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