Life

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Samsung Is Giving You a Lot of Control Over Your Galaxy’s Display

The gap between smartphones and computers has never been closer: Your phone is powerful and can likely do most of the things you traditionally needed a computer to do. Some things, however, are still quite different. Display settings, for one: The controls I have over my iPhone’s display pales in comparison to what I can adjust on my Mac. For most display settings, I’m reliant on Apple’s defaults.

That’s no longer the case with Samsung—at least, for some devices. While Android devices tend to offer more control over settings (including for the display), Samsung is taking things to another level. The company just released a new “Display Assistant” app in beta alongside the company’s One UI 7.0 beta. This new app adds a number of new controls for the display on your Galaxy S24, which can help for maximizing battery life or just generally getting more out of your screen.

What does Display Assistant let you control?

With the new Display Assistant beta, you’ll find six different settings you can mess with that all adjust how your display behaves. With “App’s screen timeout,” you can set a timer per app that turns off the display. Maybe you want to keep your display active for longer on apps like Instagram or WhatsApp, but prefer to keep it shorter for apps like banking or credit card apps.

“Keep screen on” lets you choose to keep your device’s display on for 30 minutes at a time, except when you press the power key, reboot the phone, or the battery is below 15%. “Brightness limit profile,” on the other hand, lets you override the standard brightness limit on your Galaxy, and push it brighter than Samsung typically allows. Android Police warns doing so will cause your phone to run hotter than usual, and it will take longer for it to cool.

“Adaptive brightness options” allows you to either double or quadruple the speed your display’s brightness changes, while “Standard refresh rate apps” lets you set a 60Hz refresh rate for specific apps. This is a good call for apps where you won’t miss the smooth motion of 120Hz: Cutting the refresh rate in half will save battery, and since this is app-by-app, you don’t have to completely go without 120Hz throughout your Galaxy.

Finally, there’s “Screen Curtain,” which puts the screen in a “doze” state, as the beta puts it. It doesn’t go into more technical details than that, but Android Authority says it puts your display in an “extremely low brightness mode,” without actually locking the screen. Samsung says it’s good for situations such as phone calls, playing games, YouTube, and YouTube Music, but I’m not so sure about two of those example. Sure, for phone calls or YouTube Music, keep the brightness all the way down (or off, even), but you probably want to be able to see what you’re doing if you’re playing games or watching YouTube.

How to try out Display Assistant

If you want to try the Display Assistant beta and have more control over your phone’s display, you’ll need a couple things. First, this only works on Galaxy S24 devices at this time. Second, your S24 needs to be running One UI 7, which is currently in beta. Once you’re running the beta, you can install the app from the Galaxy Store.

My Favorite Cookies Come From Baking Scraps

One of my first memories of Christmas baking is watching my mom cut shapes out of sugar cookie dough, then ball up the scraps to roll out again. Repeat this process, and the ball of scraps gets smaller and tougher. I didn’t have much patience for it as a kid, and now that I’m baking with my own kids, we do things a little differently. We consider the scraps to be cookies in their own right, and we bake them as-is. 

The resulting cookies are what I call “scrappies.” They’re irregularly shaped, containing the outlines of gingerbread arms and snowman hats. I don’t ball them up and roll them out again; I just cut out the shapes I want (or have the kids do that step), and put everything on a baking tray. The nice cookies go on one tray, to be carefully decorated and lovingly cared for until they can be served or gifted; and the scrappies go on the other side, to be smeared with icing and devoured willy-nilly. 

scrappie cookie in my hand

Credit: Beth Skwarecki

The scrappies solve a handful of minor problems all at the same time. First, there’s the tedium of re-rolling the scraps into a smaller and smaller canvas for cookies. This can take forever, Zeno’s paradox style. If the kids are having fun cutting them out, great, but usually everybody is impatient to get on to the decorating and the eating. 

Second, there’s the fact that re-rolling doesn’t make for very good cookies. As Allie Chanthorn Reinmann, our food editor, told me, “re-rolling cookie dough more than once can overwork the mixture, resulting in stronger gluten development. A stronger gluten network leads to tougher cookies, and not as much rise.” From a taste and texture standpoint, you’re better off baking the scraps as-is.

And then we get to the more serious issues, like how soon the kids and I can eat the cookies we’re making. Do you just chow down on a perfect gingerbread man? “Accidentally” break his head off? Wait until you see someone else sneaking a bite, and then declare that fairness insists you get a cookie too? Or make the argument that you’re not doing your due diligence as a chef unless you taste your creations early and often?

No worries when you have scrappies. The “good” cookies and the scrappies come out of the oven at the same time. You can break a scrappie to test its doneness. You can sample one to evaluate its flavor and crunch. And, best of all, you have a free supply of snacking material and a test canvas for decorations. The two-year-old wants to squeeze icing all over something? She can squeeze it onto a scrappie. I’ll be doing the same, applying a squiggle of the surplus onto a cookie that looks like a squiggle itself.

USDA Announces Final $300 Million in Automatic Assistance for Distressed Farm Loan Borrowers

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced the final approximately $300 million in assistance to distressed direct and guaranteed farm loan borrowers under Section 22006 of the Inflation Reduction Act. Over the past two years, USDA acted swiftly to assist distressed borrowers in retaining their land and continuing their agricultural operations. Since President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law in August 2022, USDA has provided approximately $2.5 billion in assistance to more than 47,800 distressed borrowers.

What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: The New Jersey Drone Invasion

No one wants it to be aliens more than me. Even if they’re planning to force us to work in outer space diamond mines, I’d still welcome alien overlords. But it’s never aliens. The “drones” everyone is seeing are not aliens. They aren’t foreign invaders, or part of a secret government project, or anything else cool either. No one can say with 100% certainty, but I’d bet my collection of solid gold backscratchers that the recent wave of reports of unidentified flying objects is because people are very bad at identifying objects. 

Here’s a brief recap if you’ve been under a rock: in mid-November, dozens of people across 10 counties in New Jersey reported seeing drones (or something) in the nighttime sky. According to authorities in New Jersey, drones were seen in the sky above critical infrastructure like water reservoirs, electric transmission lines, rail stations, police departments and military installations. After the initial media coverage, more reported sightings came in. People posted pictures and videos or lights and blobs in the sky. Congressmen called for transparency and vigilance. The Department of Defense reassured no one by saying that they don’t know what the objects are, but they aren’t from a foreign source and they aren’t dangerous. Credulous online types shared theories, blurry photographic evidence, and their feelings about the alien visitation/foreign invasion/secret project/mass psyop to distract us from the real threat: vampires. And that’s where we are now: sifting through a growing trove of over 5,000 citizen reports of UFOs or UAPS, theorizing, and waiting for an official explanation or a visitation from the mothership. 

I could see how someone might think drone-mania seems like the beginning of an alien invasion—this Pentagon briefing would fit in perfectly in act one of a Michael Bay movie, for instance—but we don’t really know what an alien or high tech enemy invasion of the U.S. would look like because it hasn’t happened before. We do know what mass hysteria (or Mass Sociogenic Technophobia) looks like, and it turns out it looks exactly like this. And it’s not just me who thinks so; the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, FAA, and Department of Defense are also like, “there’s nothing here.”

A few of the many, many things in the sky that people may be mistaking for UFOs or mystery drones

As reports of drone sightings over New Jersey and the rest of the country have spread, presumably more people are looking up into the sky, and it turns out there are a ton of things up there that can be difficult to immediately identify. Like:

Airplanes and helicopters

Many reported drone sightings are along the known paths of manned airplanes or helicopters and are almost definitely planes or helicopters. As drone expert Dr. Will Austin explains, “After analyzing numerous videos shared by concerned citizens, I’m inclined to believe that many of the reported ‘large drones’ were actually manned aircraft mistakenly identified as drones.” 

A giveaway of a plane or helicopter are the red and green lights. The FAA requires those on aircrafts flying at night, so be highly suspicious of drone photos in those colors. If you can find out the time and location of a sighting, you can check whether it’s a commercial aircraft too. 

Moving objects in the sky can appear stationary, depending on your movement relative to them, so it would be easy to mistake a moving airplane as a hovering drone. Check out this video to see what I mean: 

Venus, Jupiter, and other celestial bodies

People mistake mundane celestial bodies for UFOs all the time. For instance, Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland seems to think the constellation Orion is “dozens of large drones.”

Mundane American drones

You gotta figure that anyone with a drone on the East coast is trying to get a better look at whatever is supposed to be up there at night, and each new drone could potentially be mistaken for something mysterious. Along with hobby drones, there are commercial and governments drones used for everything from firefighting to photography. Unlike airplanes, you can’t check the flightpaths for these. 

Lens flares, bokeh, and other camera artifacts

Check out this trippy “alien orb” filmed by ABC news:

It’s actually a zoomed in, out-of-focus point of light. Probably a star. Like these:

Balloons, plastic bags, etc.

As a frequent lurker on Reddit’s r/UFO, I’m amazed at the number of people who can’t tell a mylar balloon from a flying saucer. Really anything can look like a UFO, from a weird cloud to a kite to a bug that gets close to the camera lens. 

Intentional hoaxes

Anyone interested in hoaxing people must be having a field day. It’s not terribly difficult to do, even when we’re not in the middle of a UFO craze, see?

Satellites and space junk

The International space station, Elon Musk’s StarLink satellites, and thousands of other things we shot into space are orbiting Earth. A lot of them are visible from Earth and could make you think “foreign drone!” Or “UFO!”

Secret aircraft

Now we’re getting into the more fun area of UFOs sighting: experimental aircraft. The U.S. government has a history of flying airplanes no one knows about, and many people catching sight of the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk and Northrop Grumman B-2 mistook them for UFOs before they were announced. A stealth plane even crashed in Bakersfield resulting in a scene straight out of E.T. So it’s possible people are seeing secret drones, but it seems unlikely: testing an unknown drone in a heavily populated area seems like a bad way to keep it secret, especially if there are lights on it. But it’s possible. 

…Something unknown, like an object that’s flying

Known flying objects likely account for almost all sightings reported, and if they had enough time and energy, I’m confident someone could figure out what each one actually was. But that doesn’t accounts for all UFOs and/or UAPs. There are a handful of examples of UFO sightings where multiple credible witnesses report seeing something mysterious in the sky, often backed up with hard evidence. For instance, the USS Nimitz Tic Tac was seen by multiple experienced military pilots whose accounts were backed up with footage from infrared cameras and RADAR. 

While these cases can’t be dismissed as nothing, they can’t be confirmed as something either. Right now, these kinds of sightings are in the “we don’t know what that is” file. They may be explained in the future, but for now, they’re annoying mysteries. There haven’t been any sightings in the recent wave that come close to the level of evidence needed to think there might be something “real” there, at least none I’m aware of.

That time aliens broke everyone’s windshields

If you want a prediction for how this all ends, the “Seattle windshield pitting epidemic” provides a possible outcome. This incident began in April 1954, when a handful of residents of Bellingham, WA, reported mysterious dings, chips, and pitting in their car windows that they said had been fine the previous day.

Newspapers reported on the mystery. The police at first suspected that a local gang of juvenile delinquents (I assume dressed in leather jackets and wielding switchblades) were committing vandalism, but that theory was ruled out when reports came in from all over the Pacific Northwest. Some people said they’d watched bubbles forming in the glass in real time, and it was said that car lots were hit particularly hard.

No one had any idea what was behind the phenomenon, but theories ranged from sand fleas burrowing in the glass to fallout from offshore H-Bomb tests to damage caused by radio waves. Before long, police were deluged with thousands of reports of windshield damage from as far away as Vancouver and Ontario. Seattle mayor Allan Pomeroy asked for help from the governor and from President Eisenhower, the police examined over 14,000 windshields. But Seattle’s police crime laboratory cracked the case. They issued a report a few weeks into the panic and concluded the culprit was literally nothing. Pits in windshields are a normal byproduct of driving, and the newspaper stories caused people to look at their windshields—instead of through their windshields—for the first time. Wouldn’t you know it, there were pits there.

It was a classic case of mass delusion, which is what I strongly suspect is happening in New Jersey, but instead of mistaken a pitted windshield for radiation damage, people are mistaking airplanes for mystery drones. 

Just as the theories about windshield pitting were caused by uneasiness over the then new hydrogen bomb, I suspect our current mass delusion has its roots in an uneasiness about all the new things in the sky—there are over a million drones registered with the FAA, for instance.  Back in the 1950s, people seemed to have either accepted the scientific and logical explanation, or at least stopped talking about it, and the windshield pitting epidemic faded into history.

I’d like to think something like that will happen with the drones, but these are different times, when expertise and science are not as respected, and people seem eager to find their own explanations. I’d bet a solid gold back-scratcher we’ll be talking about fake UFOs and mystery drones for a long time.

You Can Now Call ChatGPT on the Phone, for Some Reason

ChatGPT has changed quite a bit since its late 2022 debut. What started as a web app chatbot has exploded into an AI you can have a real conversation with. The bot can even see now. But even though you have your choice between that original web app or the app on your phone or computer, ChatGPT is now ready to chat via a more old-school method: by phone call.

OpenAI announced the ChatGPT phone line on Thursday, Dec. 19. (To be clear, it’s not April 1.) The number—which is literally 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478), is entirely free to call, although OpenAI warns carrier fees may apply. If you prefer to text, you can message the number on WhatsApp. (Regular SMS is not supported.) You don’t need a ChatGPT account in order to talk to the bot: Just call or message the number, and you’ll get a response .

While this experience is free, there are some limits. OpenAI says you can only talk to ChatGPT on the phone for 15 minutes a month, with a daily limit on messages to WhatsApp. The company doesn’t says what that limit actually is, but that it may change based on demand. In addition, some ChatGPT staples, such as ChatGPT search, image recognition, custom instructions, and memory, are not available with this experience. The knowledge cutoff when using ChatGPT with this number is Oct. 2023, so don’t expect ChatGPT to know anything that happened after that.

You should know that OpenAI will retain your phone calls and messages with 1-800-CHATGPT, and will associate those chats with the phone number you use to call or message the bot.

What’s it like calling ChatGPT?

To be honest, it’s pretty similar to chatting through advanced voice mode, just with the low-quality audio you’ve come to expect from a traditional phone call.

That is, until I had a relatively creepy interaction with the bot. After chatting for a couple minutes, I thought I’d see if ChatGPT would hang up if I asked it to. At first, it said something along the lines of being here to help, but didn’t actually hang up the call. So I asked again. No answer. I asked a second time. No answer. I said, “Hello?” No answer. Cue panic.

So, I hung up myself and called back. After an initial greeting, I asked my question again. ChatGPT immediately said “Sure, thanks for chatting!” And hung up. Go figure. The next time I called back, I thought to test its knowledge limits with, “Who’s the president?” I didn’t get an answer. ChatGPT instead say “Goodbye! Take care!” Then proceeded to leave the call in dead air again.

While unnerving, I think the problem is that ChatGPT has trouble understanding certain questions when asked over the phone this way. Some questions it answers with no problems, while others it seems to get wrong. I asked “Who’s the president?” on another call, and the bot thought I was asking about user privacy. But when I say “Who’s the President of the United States?” it got it.

Calling ChatGPT definitely puts up some roadblocks that aren’t there with the dedicated app, but, otherwise, it’s the usual ChatGPT experience. If you love that, great. If you don’t, you probably won’t use this. The perk here, I suppose, is you can call ChatGPT without an account. But, barring some rare cases, I don’t see that being a big plus for most people.

What’s New on Max in January 2025

In January, Max will debut its new medical drama series The Pitt (Jan. 9), which stars Noah Wyle—for fans of ER—as an attending at a Pittsburgh trauma center emergency room. Each episode comprises an hour of his character’s 15-hour shift (similar to 24) with a new installment dropping weekly after the initial two-episode premiere. January also brings season five of the adult animated series Harley Quinn (Jan. 16), in which the Harley and Poison Ivy—voiced by Kaley Cuoco and Lake Bell—find themselves in Metropolis met with villains Lex and Lena Luther and Brainiac.

On the documentary lineup is Sons of Ecstasy (Jan. 9), a Max original film chronicling the rivalries present in the 1990s ecstasy trade in Arizona, and An Update on Our Family (Jan. 15), a three-episode miniseries about controversial YouTubers Myka and James Stauffer and the world of family vlogging.

Max will add a few A24 films to its library to start the new year, including horror comedy The Front Room (Jan. 3); Look Into My Eyes (Jan. 10), a documentary about New York City psychics; and psychological thriller A Different Man (Jan. 17) starring Adam Pearson and Sebastian Stan.

Finally, fans of Bill Maher get both a new season of Real Time with Bill Maher (Jan. 17) and a new comedy special, Is Anyone Else Seeing This? (Jan. 10), the host’s 13th for HBO.

Here’s everything else coming to Max in January.

What’s coming to Max in January 2025

Available January 1

  • 5 Things with Kate Bolduan (CNN)

  • A Star is Born (1937)

  • Act of Valor (2012)

  • All Elite Wrestling: 2019 PPV Events (5 Episodes) (2024)

  • All Elite Wrestling: Collision 2024 (5 Episodes), Season 2

  • All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite 2019 (12 Episodes), Season 1

  • All Elite Wrestling: Dynamite 2024 (7 Episodes), Season 6

  • All Elite Wrestling: Rampage 12/13/2024, Season 4

  • Annabelle Comes Home (2019)

  • Annabelle: Creation (2017)

  • Balls Out (2015)

  • Batkid Begins: The Wish Heard Around the World (2015)

  • Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

  • Batman: The Killing Joke (2016)

  • Best Of Enemies (2015)

  • Bitter Creek (1954)

  • Black Gold (1947)

  • Blue Velvet (1986)

  • Buffaloed (2020)

  • Calamity Jane (1953)

  • Call Me by Your Name (2017)

  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)

  • Cow Country (1953)

  • Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

  • Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

  • Destination Tokyo (1943)

  • Diggers (2007)

  • Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)

  • Each Dawn I Die (1939)

  • Eat Pray Love (2010)

  • Fast & Furious (2009)

  • Floyd Norman: An Animated Life (2016)

  • Free Birds (2013)

  • Green Lantern (2011)

  • Heaven Help Us (1985)

  • HGTV Dream Home 2025

  • Home Again (2017)

  • Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)

  • Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)

  • House at the End of the Street (2012)

  • I Am Love (2009)

  • Injustice (2021)

  • Iris (2015)

  • It Follows (2015)

  • It: Chapter Two (2019)

  • Jason Bourne (2016)

  • Johnny Angel (1946)

  • Justice League vs. Teen Titans (2016)

  • Justice League: Doom (2012)

  • Justice League: Throne of Atlantis (2015)

  • Justice League: War (2014)

  • Keeping Up with the Joneses (2016)

  • Kept Husbands (1931)

  • Kicks (2016)

  • Lemon (2017)

  • Mad Max (1980)

  • Matilda (1986)

  • Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (2016)

  • Morgan (2016)

  • Mortdecai (2015)

  • Mrs. Doubtfire (1993)

  • My Favorite Wife (1940)

  • Mystic Pizza (1988)

  • Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016)

  • Night and Day (1946)

  • Nocturne (1946)

  • Once Were Brothers: Robbie Robertson and the Band (2020)

  • Paddington (2014)

  • Rebel Without a Cause (1955)

  • Red Light (1949)

  • Reframed: Next Gen Narratives, Season 1 (2025)

  • Room for One More (1952)

  • School Life (2017)

  • Sex and the City 2 (2010)

  • Shining Vale, Season 1

  • Shining Vale, Season 2

  • Showing Up (2023)

  • Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

  • St. Vincent (2014)

  • Steel Magnolias (1989)

  • Stephen King’s It (1990)

  • Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine (2015)

  • Sully (2016)

  • Supergirl (1984)

  • Superman & Lois, Season 4

  • Tangerine (2015)

  • Task Force (1949)

  • Teen Wolf (1985)

  • Tennessee Johnson (1942)

  • The Accountant (2016)

  • The Addams Family 2 (2016)

  • The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

  • The Big Year (2011)

  • The Birth of a Nation (2016)

  • The Boondock Saints (1999)

  • The Cable Guy (1996)

  • The Conjuring 2 (2016)

  • The Craft (1996)

  • The Curse of La Llorona (2019)

  • The Imitation Game (2014)

  • The Leopard Man (1943)

  • The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952)

  • The Mouthpiece (1932)

  • The Narrow Margin (1952)

  • The Prince and the Pauper (1937)

  • The Prisoner of Zenda (1952)

  • The Purge: Election Year (2016)

  • The Red Badge of Courage (1951)

  • The Student Prince (1954)

  • The Usual Suspects (1995)

  • The Whistlers (2020)

  • The Wrong Man (1957)

  • Volunteers (1985)

  • Warcraft (2016)

  • Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic (2008)

  • Whitey: United States of America V. James J. Bulger (2014)

  • Wild Boys of the Road (1993)

  • Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

  • Woman in Gold (2015)

  • World Without End (1956)

Available January 2

  • Expedition Files, Season 1 (Discovery)

  • Isadora Moon, Season 1A (Max Original)

  • My 600-lb Life, Season 13 (TLC)

  • The Deep 3, Episode 227 (TNT)

Available January 3

  • Beachfront Bargain Hunt Renovation, Season 10 (Magnolia Network)

  • Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Season 49 (Food Network)

  • The Front Room (A24)

Available January 4

  • Belle Collective, Season 5 (OWN)

Available January 5

  • Craig of the Creek, Season 6B (Cartoon Network)

  • Mecum Top 10, Season 10

  • Totally Spies, Season 7A

Available January 6

  • Worst Cooks in America Celebrity Edition: Heroes vs. Villains (Food Network)

Available January 7

  • Cleats & Convos with Deebo Samuel, Episode 111 (B/R)

  • How It Really Happened, Season 8 (CNN Original Series)

  • Kids Baking Championship, Season 14 (Food Network)

  • The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter, Season 3 (ID)

  • The Edge with Micah Parsons, Episode 219 (B/R)

Available January 8

  • 7 Little Johnstons, Season 15 (TLC)

  • CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute (2024)

  • Fixer to Fabulous, Season 6 (HGTV)

  • Wildcard Kitchen, Season 2 (Food Network)

Available January 9

  • Aaron Hernandez and the Untold Murders of Bristol (ID)

  • Sons of Ecstasy (Max Original)

  • The Pitt, Season 1 (Max Original)

Available January 10

  • Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This? (HBO Original)

  • Black Butterfly (2017)

  • Holla (2006)

  • Look Into My Eyes (A24)

  • Vinnie Jones: In the Country, Season 1-2 (discovery+)

Available January 11

  • Road to NHL Winter Classic, Episode 204

  • The Steam Room with Ej and Chuck 125 (TNT)

Available January 12

  • Naked and Afraid Spain (Aventura En Pelotas Espana), Season 1 (Discovery International)

Available January 13

  • Barney’s World, Season 1B

Available January 14

  • Baylen Out Loud, Season 1 (TLC)

  • Death by Fame, Season 3 (ID)

  • The Curious Case of…, Season 1 (ID)

  • The Last Party: Death on Tresco, Season 1 (discovery+)

Available January 15

  • An Update On Our Family (HBO Original)

  • Cult of Fear: The Asaram Bapu Story (discovery+)

  • Marshall (2017)

  • Uncharted (2022)

Available January 16

  • Becoming Hitchcock: The Legacy of Blackmail (2024)

  • Divided By Design, Season 1B (HGTV)

  • Harley Quinn, Season 5 (Max Original)

  • Murder Under the Friday Night Lights, Season 4 (ID)

  • My Sesame Street Friends, Season 15 (Max Original)

  • Sesame Street, Season 55 (Max Original)

Available January 17

  • A Different Man (A24)

  • Better Off Dead (1985)

  • Real Time with Bill Maher, Season 23 (HBO Original)

  • Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Available January 21

  • Contraband: Seized at the Airport, Season 1 (Discovery)

Available January 22

  • Expedition X, Season 8 (Discovery)

Available January 23

  • C.B. Strike: The Ink Black Heart (HBO Original)

Available January 24

  • Harpoon Hunters, Season 1 (Discovery)

Available January 25

  • Bugs Bunny Builders, Season 2B (Cartoon Network)

Available January 27

  • Scars of Beauty (Beleza Fatal), Season 1 (Max Original, Brazil)

Available January 28

  • Chopped, Season 60 (Food Network)

Available January 29

  • The Flip Off, Season 1 (HGTV)

Available January 30

  • Mermicorno: Starfall, Season 1A (Max Original)

  • The Other Side (Del Otro Lado Del Jardín) (Max Original, Colombia)

Available January 31

  • Guy’s Ultimate Family Cruise (Food Network)

  • The Eastern Gate (Przesmyk), Season 1 (Max Original, Poland)

Which Is the Better Watch Display, MIP or AMOLED?

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If you’re deep into comparison shopping for fitness watches, you’ve probably come across some debate on the different display technologies. Manufacturers are moving toward AMOLED style screens (bright! Colorful! Sharp! Modern!) while some longtime users are diehards for the older MIP or LCD style screens (the general vibe is: pry them out of my cold dead hands). So where does that leave you, the shopper, wondering what to get for your first or next watch? I’m going to break down all the pros and cons. 

What’s the difference between MIP and AMOLED displays? 

I’m going to gloss over a lot of the detail you’d need to be an engineer to love and concentrate on what it’s like to use these screens. With that in mind: 

  • AMOLED displays have tiny pixels that glow to create the display, leaving black areas where the pixels are not turned on. (Your phone’s screen is probably AMOLED.) AMOLED displays are full color, and they use power any time they’re on. They’re bright and highly visible in the dark, but can potentially get washed out in extremely bright sunlight.

  • MIP displays (memory-in-pixel), also called memory LCD, do not light up on their own. These displays reflect light, much like old-school LCD watches, so they are highly visible in sunlight but require a backlight to be seen in the dark. They can display color, but only a limited range of colors and they are not as vibrant or as high-resolution as AMOLED screens.

AMOLED displays tend to be higher resolution, brighter, and sharper. MIP displays look more old-fashioned, but they always look good in bright sunlight, and they can be always-on without running down the battery life (assuming you have the backlight turned off). 

AMOLED displays tend to be touchscreens, but MIP displays can have touchscreens as well. For example, the Coros Pace 3 has a touchscreen, while the Garmin Forerunner 55 does not. (If you don’t want a touchscreen, you should know that you can disable the touchscreen on most sports watches.) 

Which watches have MIP and which have AMOLED displays? 

We’re currently at a transition point where most manufacturers are moving toward AMOLED if they haven’t switched already. Any fancy-looking smartwatch is likely to be AMOLED; there’s no MIP Apple Watch, for example. But among sports watches, there are plenty of models with MIP displays still being sold new. Here’s a breakdown of some of the more popular watches: 

AMOLED (or similar) displays: 

  • Apple Watch

  • Samsung Galaxy Watch

  • Pixel Watch

  • Fitbit Charge 5 and Charge 6

  • Coros Pace Pro

  • Garmin Forerunners 165, 265, and 965

  • Garmin Vivoactive 5

  • Garmin Venu 2 and 3

  • Garmin Fenix 8 AMOLED

  • Polar Vantage, Ignite 3, Grit X2 Pro

  • Suunto Race

MIP (or similar) displays: 

  • Coros Pace 3, Apex 2, Apex 2 Pro, Vertix 2 (everything except the Pace Pro)

  • Garmin Forerunners 55, 255, 955, and any other Forerunner not ending in -65

  • Garmin Instinct (this is actually not MIP but a regular 2-color LCD)

  • Garmin Vivoactive 4

  • Garmin Fenix 7

  • Garmin Fenix 8 Solar

  • Polar Pacer, Pacer Pro, Grit X, Grit X Pro

  • Suunto Core, 9 Baro, 9 Peak

Real-world visibility tests

I’ve been reviewing watches nonstop for a few months now, mostly AMOLED models, so I was surprised when I dug into the running watch forums and found people saying they would never upgrade to an AMOLED watch because they just aren’t readable in sunlight. Huh? Every AMOLED watch I’ve tested has been great in the sun. But OK, maybe there was something I was missing. 

Ever since I read those posts, I’ve been paying attention to visibility, the better to form my own opinions. I got into the difference in display types in my comparison between the Coros Pace 3 (MIP) and Pace Pro (AMOLED), for example. And for today’s analysis, I’ve also borrowed a Forerunner 55 (MIP) to compare to my Forerunner 265S. So let’s take a look. 

In bright sunlight, at the right angle, MIP has a slight edge

Left: Coros Pace 3 (MIP). Right: Coros Pace Pro (AMOLED)
Left: Coros Pace 3 (MIP). Right: Coros Pace Pro (AMOLED)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

This is the best case for MIP superiority, and it comes with caveats, so let’s enjoy it while we can. When you have bright light shining directly on a MIP screen, it practically glitters. Modern AMOLEDs tend to be pretty bright as well, but on the brightest of days in the directest of sunlight, they can be a bit washed out. That said, AMOLEDs don’t show up well in photos on sunny days, so I don’t think the photo above really does the AMOLED screen justice. (Those black horizontal lines on the AMOLED are also an artifact of the camera taking the picture faster than the display could refresh; they’re not visible in real life.)

Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

I didn’t have a lot of great side-by-side photos in sunlight, so for another test I put both Forerunners directly under a bright desk lamp. A desk lamp is not the sun. However, I feel like this is a better demonstration of typical conditions—as judged by my own personal eyes and brain. Your own opinion might differ. If you’re making your shopping decision based on how the displays look in sunlight, trying them out in person will tell you a lot more than any photo will. (Underrated shopping tip: show up to a running club and ask everybody about their watch. They’ll be more than happy to show them off.)

In shadow (even on a sunny day), AMOLED stays visible

Left: Coros Pace 3 (MIP). Right: Coros Pace Pro (AMOLED)
Left: Coros Pace 3 (MIP). Right: Coros Pace Pro (AMOLED)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

I went for a few runs on bright sunny days with both of the Coros watches, and found I actually preferred the AMOLED display even in the sun. That’s because sunny days are also days with deep shadows. You have to get the angle just right to get that bright glittery effect on a MIP screen. But an AMOLED will shine from the shadows. Most of the time, either my body or the screen’s own bezel was shading it a bit. The photo above was taken on the same day, same run, as the outdoor Coros photo in sunlight. The sun didn’t go behind a cloud, I was just standing in a different position.

Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

And the photo here is the exact same setup with the desk lamp, but with the watches angled just a few degrees downward. Drastic difference in readability. Now, if you’re used to MIP watches, you’re used to angling them into the sun to get a good look. If you’re fine with that, great. I prefer the AMOLED in this situation.

In medium-light scenarios, both are good

Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

Here are both watches outdoors, on an overcast day, displaying the kind of screen you’d see most often during a running or other sports activity. This is probably the most telling photo of all: they are both fine. The MIP watch makes up for its potential visibility issues by defaulting to a white background, and the AMOLED just keeps showing bright numbers on a dark screen like usual. I use the AMOLED (the 265S) in this photo for most of my runs—it’s not a review unit, it’s the watch I actually own—and it’s always visible, always looks great, in any weather and with or without sunglasses. But the MIP? It’s good too! Nobody loses points here.

In the dark, both screens light up just fine

Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Left: Garmin Forerunner 55 (MIP). Right: Garmin Forerunner 265S (AMOLED)
Credit: Beth Skwarecki

You probably expected me to say that AMOLED is better in the dark. Honestly, while AMOLED is prettier in the dark (and prettier almost anytime, because AMOLED displays tend to be much higher resolution), both screens are equally readable. The same gesture that wakes the AMOLED screen can wake the MIP screen’s backlight. (Please note that both watches are much sharper than the photo in real life. The blur you’re seeing is just me failing to hold the camera perfectly steady in a dark room.)

In actual darkness, like when you’re putting your kids to bed, your best bet is an AMOLED watch with a “sleep mode” that displays the time dimly. That way you don’t need to turn on a backlight to see the time.  So if you’re concerned about the light being too bright, you probably want AMOLED.

Battery usage

MIP diehards like to say that MIP screens are more battery efficient. That may be technically true, but nobody buys a watch based on the battery life of its display. We want to know about the battery life of the entire watch. 

And honestly, AMOLED watches tend to have just as good a battery life as their MIP counterparts. Whether it’s better battery technology, power savings elsewhere in the software or hardware, or AMOLED itself being more efficient than you’d expect, it doesn’t matter. The Forerunner 965 (AMOLED) and the Forerunner 955 (MIP) both have a battery life of 8.5 hours during an activity with multi-band GPS mode and music playing. In smartwatch mode (not tracking activities), the 965 lasts 23 days in smartwatch mode, compared to 15 days for the 955. In other words, the AMOLED watch lasts eight days longer. If battery life is your priority, in this situation you’d want the AMOLED. 

This will vary by model, of course. Look up the battery life specs for the specific watches you’re interested in. Maybe the MIP model will last longer, but maybe the AMOLED will. Don’t make assumptions about the battery based on the look of the screen.

How to make a decision

You’ve seen my photos and heard my opinions, but ultimately you need to make a decision for yourself. And of the two display types, I’ll be honest: neither is unusable or terrible or has some horrific misfeature that should be a dealbreaker. I do think that most people will prefer the AMOLED style. But if you end up with a MIP display, it will be fine. So let me run through a few things to keep in mind:

  • If you already have a MIP watch and love it, I wouldn’t fault you for sticking with MIP. You already know the downsides and you don’t mind them. 

  • If you love a MIP watch but are afraid that you wouldn’t like an AMOLED watch, don’t let that stop you from shopping AMOLED models. The downsides of AMOLED (as the internet tells them) are wildly exaggerated. 

  • If you have seen both watches in person, in a wide variety of lighting conditions, and have a strong opinion, just go with your preference.

  • If you’re new to all of this and feeling confused right now, you’ll probably like AMOLED better. All the new watches are AMOLED anyway.

  • If your dream watch needs to be an older MIP watch to fit in your budget, go ahead and get it. It will be fine.

That last point is one where you’ll want to do some math. Often you can get an older generation of a feature-rich watch for the same price as the newest generation of a more barebones model. That’s the case right now for a lot of Garmin models, where pretty much everything released in the last year or so has an AMOLED screen, and everything before it is MIP. 

For example, looking only at the newest models, the Forerunner 965 is a more feature-rich watch than the 265, and costs $599 versus $449. But if you went a generation back and got the Forerunner 955, with a MIP screen, that watch is available right now for $399—which is $50 less than the new, AMOLED Forerunner 265. Worth it? That’s your call. But a lot of people would go for the 955, if they care about the 9xx series features (like maps and skiing features) more than they care about the screen. And now that you’ve seen the photos and read my deep dive, you’re able to make that decision for yourself.

This Giant Cookie Cake Gets Requested Every Year for My Christmas Party

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I host a festive Christmas bash every year. I buy the biggest tree possible, bake cookies for days, and hang enough string lights to shake the power grid. And while I always make some savory cheese boards and Thai food, there’s only one thing my friends ask about in the weeks leading up to it. “Are you making the giant almond cookie cake?” It’s called a kransekake, and this tree-shaped Scandinavian cookie cake has become the mascot of my party. There are a million reasons why, but here are three: It’s show-stopping in stature, truly scrumptious, and the dough requires only four ingredients. 

What’s a kransekake? 

The kransekake is a Norwegian wedding cake, but it fits right at home on the dessert table of any celebration. It’s essentially a cookie stack made of about 18 concentric cookie rings that subtly decrease in size. Sometimes I’ll even make extra rings for a taller cake.

The almond cookie dough is rather like edible amaretti Play-Doh. It’s thick and pliable so you can easily roll out a clump into a long pencil-thin snake. The almond rope fits into a kransekake mold and gets baked right in there to hold the shape. While you could free-hand it like they did in the Great British Bake-Off, I wouldn’t recommend it. Paul Hollywood isn’t in your house anyway, so just get the molds. They’re non-stick, heavy duty, and last for years. 

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Everyone loves an attention-grabbing, pull-apart dessert

I’ve been making this kransekake recipe for my Christmas parties for the past five years (this is year six), and every time, no matter that everyone has seen it before, this cookie cake gets showered with compliments, “oohed” and “ahhed,” and at least five boomerang videos of it will spring up on social. I do put it on a cake turntable and decorate it with edible glitter, so perhaps I feed into the attention a tiny bit. 

The part that everyone seems to love most is pulling off their own cookie ring (each one is “glued” to the next with sweet and crunchy royal icing). The practice of dismantling and consuming this cake slowly throughout the evening brings out that special twisted joy of devouring something beautiful. When only the larger rings remain, it’s common for people to start breaking off a small segment as they walk by. I like to dip them into a hot cup of this glögg recipe.

Two image composite of six cookie rings stacked on the left and many more stacked on the right.
My kransekake progression. This particular year I made extra rings so it became quite tall.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

How to make kransekake cookies

The cookie dough itself is shockingly simple to make.

1. Mix the dough

Dump equal parts store-bought blanched almond flour and confectioner’s sugar into a big bowl, add two egg whites and a few drops of almond extract. You can let a stand mixer with a paddle attachment knead the dough together, but I prefer to don a couple food-safe vinyl gloves and smash the dough together with my hands. It only takes a minute to get the dough thoroughly mixed.

2. Roll out the almond ropes

Keeping the bulk of the dough covered with a piece of plastic so it doesn’t dry out, pull off a chunk of the dough. Use both palms and a clean countertop (no flour for this recipe) to roll it out into a thin rope. Carefully lift the rope into one of the troughs in the kransekake mold. Just pick the closest fit, the dough is a very forgiving putty at this point.

If the rope is too long, tear a bit off the end and smoosh the meeting ends together to complete the circle. If the rope is just too short, you can roll a tiny bit of dough to bridge the gap. Make sure to thoroughly press the seams so you don’t have a weak spot there after baking. If your rope gets messed up or breaks, just smash it back into a ball and re-roll it. This dough doesn’t have wheat flour in it, so you don’t have to worry about gluten development or tough cookies. 

3. Bake the rings

Once I’ve filled two of the mold pans, I place them on a sheet pan and pop them in the oven to bake while I roll and fill the next two. When the baked cookies come out, let them cool completely. They’re very light and rather delicate when they’re still hot, so give them about 10 minutes to cool before you pop them out. I use a fork to release one side of the cookie ring and then the whole thing usually jumps right out. If they’re sticking a lot, return the pan to the oven for another five minutes.

Cookie rings stacked in a plastic zip-top bag.
I store the cookies together in the freezer until I need them.
Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Once I’ve baked and cooled all the cookies, I usually store them in the freezer until the big day. Then I return the cookies to room temperature and drizzle them with royal icing (powdered sugar with some egg white) and stack them up into a proud almond-flavored tree. You can press sprinkles into the icing, edible glitter, or small candies if you’d like. The cookie itself will be crisp and chewy, showcasing its light, sweet almond flavor. Enjoy the leftovers for about three days if well covered.

Ingredients:

  • 10.5 ounces almond flour

  • 10.5 ounces powdered sugar

  • 2 fresh egg whites

  • ½ teaspoon almond extract

1. Preheat the oven to 300°F. Place the kransekake molds onto a sheet pan. 

2. Mix all of the ingredients together thoroughly with your hands (gloved hands are best) in a large mixing bowl, or in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. The dough should be soft but not sticky. If it is, add a spoonful or two of almond flour and mix it again.

3. Keep the dough covered with a small piece of plastic wrap. Tear off golf ball-ish sized pieces and roll them into long ropes, the thickness of a pencil. You’ll need smaller ropes for the smaller circles and larger ones as you go on. Carefully lay the dough ropes into the mold rings, connecting the ends together by squeezing them and reshaping for an endless circle. Repeat with the rest of the rings.

4. Bake the cookies for 15 to 20 minutes, or until they’re puffed and a blush of browning occurs over the tops. Don’t overbake them or they’ll be too crunchy later.

This dough is enough to make all 18 rings. Use any extra dough to fix any mess ups, or roll it into balls and bake them for chewy amaretti cookies.

Eight Good Jobs That Come With Room and Board

The average weekly income for Americans this year is about $1,165, or approximately $60,580 annually. That’s not a lot, especially when you consider the fact that the average rent is now $1,748 (about $21,000 per year) and the minimum recommended grocery budget is about $421 per month (about $5,052 annually). Just like that, more than a third of your gross income is just gone.

You could get a second job to cover the rent or grocery bill, but another way to make those numbers more manageable is to find a job that includes room and board. Getting a free place to live and having meals provided is an incredibly valuable benefit, and the good news is you don’t have to join the military to get it (though that’s one option, certainly). While a lot of jobs that provide housing and meals aren’t ideal because they’re seasonal or temporary jobs usually staffed by travelers or nomads, there are some full-time jobs you can find that offer room and board.

Park ranger

If you’re the outdoorsy type who likes the idea of living in nature (and doesn’t mind fairly limited access to the internet or even regular phone service), becoming a park ranger usually entails room and board. For example, working at one of the Yellowstone National Park Lodges includes housing, and while meals aren’t free for regular employees they are for managers. You can learn more about how to become a state or national park ranger over at Park-Ranger.org.

Au pair

One of the classic live-in jobs, being an au pair (essentially a live-in nanny) usually means living in the home with meals provided. It also means being on-call almost all the time to care for the household children, and generally a lower salary than a nanny due to the whole room and board situation. A lot depends on the family you’re placed with, of course—it could be dream accommodations with terrific roommates, or a nightmare. Either way, at least your rent is covered.

Cruise ship staff

If you’ve ever been on a cruise, you may have noticed that there are a ton of people working on those ships—and they all have room and board included with their jobs, for what should be obvious reasons (though watching hundreds of people helicopter on and off the ship every single day would certainly be entertaining). Depending on the job you can get, the pay may not be terrific (about 40% of cruise ship employees earn less than $2,000 per month), but in addition to room and board you usually also get free medical care, and you can usually arrange a few free shore excursions when your work schedule allows.

Live-in caregiver

Live-in caregivers to the elderly or infirm are usually offered room and board as part of their compensation. On the plus side, many of these jobs don’t require much in terms of education or experience beyond a high school diploma, solid interpersonal skills, and the ability to pass a basic background check. On the negative side, these jobs can be demanding and both physically and emotionally exhausting, involving everything from helping people bathe, preparing and serving meals, helping people with transportation, and simply being a companion.

Ranch worker

Ranch work is very physical, whether it’s a guest ranch or a cattle ranch, but these jobs typically come with room and board provided. Some ranches only operate seasonally, but others can offer year-round employment. If you’ve never been near a horse or cow in your life, there are still opportunities to be had—ranches need maintenance workers, laborers, and even office staff, so if the idea of ranch life appeals to you, there’s likely a position somewhere you’re qualified for.

Hospitality jobs

Many jobs in the hospitality industry, especially those located in remote areas, offer room and board as part of the compensation package simply because there aren’t a lot of housing options nearby. These jobs run the gamut from maintenance and custodial positions to front desk workers and concierge positions, but if you’re not afraid of public-facing customer service or moving to a location like Alaska, you can land a hospitality job that offers room and board.

Building superintendent

Most cities require larger residential buildings to have superintendents, and while some smaller buildings will utilize “visiting superintendents,” many of those positions enjoy free housing (but not free meals, typically), although in some cases they only receive a reduced rent. While having a degree or certification in building management won’t hurt, many superintendent jobs only require a high school diploma and relevant experience—typically in the trades, as one of your main responsibilities will be to repair and maintain the building’s infrastructure. If you’re a bit of a jack-of-all-trades, you can probably find a superintendent job that offers free or discounted housing as part of the gig.

Housekeeping

Yep, people actually do hire live-in housekeepers (and butlers are still a thing), and these jobs by their very nature provide room and board. These jobs often require more than just cleaning, cooking, and laundry, requiring you to act more like a personal assistant by running errands, organizing travel, and even providing occasional childcare services. There are usually no formal qualifications for the job, but many people look for a background in hospitality or professional cleaning, and may also have their own list of requirements, like first aid certification or experience cooking in a professional kitchen.