Articles by Joe Maring

Everything’s broken.

Updated 2:27 PM ET: A couple of hours after this outage began, things seem to have calmed down. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, U.S. Cellular, and Straight Talk all have substantially less reports flowing in. Things have also settled a bit with Verizon, but as of 2:09 PM ET, there were still 1146 outage reports.

What you need to know

As of January 31, every major phone carrier is having service issues.
Affected companies include Verizon, Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, and others.
The main problem seems to be with making phone calls.

If you live in the United States and are having problems with your wireless phone service, you aren’t alone. In fact, regardless of your carrier choice, there seems to be widespread funk across the board.

Around 9:00 AM ET on January 31, numerous reports began flooding Down Detector with service outage complaints. We aren’t talking about just one carrier, either. Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T (though not as bad) are all ha…

After a bit of use, any headphones can start looking grimy and dirty. Whether you wear your headphones to the gym, rely on them to get you through long-haul flights, or keep them at home to listen to music while you do chores, it’s natural for germs and gunk to build up. Thankfully, with the proper tools and know-how, keeping your headphones clean is a fairly easy thing to do.

Products used in this guide

Affordable ANC: Anker Soundcore Life Q20 ($60 at Amazon)
Essential cleaner: Mrs. Meyers Clean Day Hand Soap ($11 at Amazon)
Pick-a-size: Presto! Paper Towels ($10 at Amazon)
Germs begone: Swan Isopropyl Alcohol ($13 at Amazon)
Nice and gentle: AmazonBasics Microfiber Cleaning Cloth (From $13 at Amazon)

How to clean your headphones

When it comes to cleaning headphones, you’ll want to make sure you clean both the headphones themselves and, perhaps more importantly, the speaker pads covering them. Starting first with the outside of your headphones, here’s what you’ll want to do:

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