I host a full Friendsgiving meal in early November because it’s truly heartwarming to bring my chosen family all together for a home cooked meal—but low-key. I also need to test side dishes to share with you all. This year, the most surprising dish I made wasn’t squash, or another spin on sweet potatoes, but a resurrection of summer fruit. I made a warm roasted tomato salad, and I think it may have earned its spot at the table forever. 

I think we can all acknowledge that the Thanksgiving meal is primarily a parade of luscious fats, umami, salt, and carbs. I have no issues with this. However, repetition of the same flavors can cause something called palate fatigue (often a term used in wine tasting): Nuanced flavors become harder to detect because your taste buds are exhausted. Including an acidic dish, like tomatoes, creates opposition, gives you the feeling of a “palate cleanser,” essentially kicking your buds back into gear.  

Revive cold-weather tomatoes

Yes, you could serve a raw tomato salad to access the fruit’s bright acidity, but fall and winter tomatoes have a diminished flavor compared to the peak season ones we saw a few months ago. My guess is that’s why we don’t see them a ton on Thanksgiving tables. Luckily, a quick trip to the oven can change all that. 

Roasting dull winter tomatoes evaporates some of their water, thus concentrating their flavors, and it browns the bottoms, exhibiting the maillard reaction and caramelization of the natural sugars. That’s my long way of saying: Roasted tomatoes will have much more flavor than raw tomatoes in fall. Plus, it couldn’t be easier.

How to make a warm roasted tomato salad

I like plum tomatoes for this, but Campari tomatoes work too. I prefer these varieties because of their medium size, and they happen to soften nicely. Using my air fryer secret for roasting, sprinkle some salt into a bowl with the tomatoes. Then drizzle a teaspoon of oil into one palm. Rub your palms together and then rub each tomato with your oily hands. The salt will naturally get picked up. Place the tomatoes, either whole or halved, on an unlined baking sheet. Unlined baking sheets will give your tomatoes more color. 

Roast the tomatoes at 375°F for about 30 minutes, or—if they’re whole—until they’ve just burst slightly. If they’re halved, they’re done when the bottoms have some browning. (You can place halved tomatoes either cut-side down or skin-side down, but I’ve found that cut-side down is more prone to sticking.) Plating this dish is flexible, and there’s almost no way to screw it up. Carefully scoop the tomatoes onto a serving dish, and place hunks of burrata or fresh mozzarella in between the burst tomatoes. If you don’t like soft cheese, you can shave large sheets of Pecorino Romano over the top instead. 

Drizzle it all with some finishing olive oil, and a sprinkle of (fill in the blank): This is really where you can make the dish your own. I used dry Calabrian chili flakes this year. Perhaps you’d scatter chopped fresh basil over the top. Maybe chopped salted pistachios and za’atar are more your vibe. If you have garlic confit, you know what to do. But even if you skip the final garnish, you must crush some flaky salt over the top. 

The dish will look simple but tantalizing nonetheless. I actually prefer making dishes that have easily identifiable ingredients so I don’t have to field as many questions. You don’t need a ton—maybe one or two tomatoes per guest—to supply an acidic intermission halfway through the first helping. 

Warm Roasted Tomato Salad

Ingredients:

• 8-14 Campari tomatoes

• Neutral cooking oil to coat

• ½ teaspoon salt

• 1 ball burrata cheese (or fresh mozzarella)

• A drizzle extra virgin olive oil

• A sprinkle flaky salt

• Chopped basil, pistachios, chili flakes, or other garnish (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. 

2. Put the tomatoes in a bowl and sprinkle the ½ teaspoon of salt over top. Drizzle a small amount of oil into your palms; it should be enough to coat the tomatoes. Rub your palms together and then rub all of the tomatoes, rolling them around to pick up the salt. Place the tomatoes on an unlined baking sheet, drizzle with any excess oil, and roast them for about 30 minutes or until they just begin to crack and burst. Cool them for a few minutes.

3. Put the tomatoes on a serving platter. Rip the burrata into six or seven hunks and dot the dish with the cheese. Drizzle the dish with a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of flaky salt and any additional garnish you like. Serve warm. 

Spotify might have pioneered the yearly streaming recap, but these days, every other service has its own version of “Wrapped.” If you’re a YouTube Music subscriber, for instance, not only do you have the option to check out a year-end summary of your listening habits, those stats are rolling out to select users now.

While you might think December would be a better time to start recapping the past year of music activity, YouTube wants some of us to go back in time right now. It’s not that weird for YouTube in particular, since its music streaming service offers seasonal recaps throughout the year. However, as Mashable highlights, the feature isn’t rolling out for all users yet, so don’t be bummed if you have to wait a bit longer for your summary.

If it is working on your end, here’s what you can expect. You’ll see the standard stats, such as your top tracks, artists, and podcasts, complete with listening time for each. But you’ll also see some more abstract results, as well. YouTube Music will let you know what your “listening vibes” were this year, including genres like “Electronic,” to moods like “Hyped” or “Pumped up.” You’ll also see your “music character,” which breaks down the “personality” of the types of music you listened to this year, as well as your “musical moods,” which can include anything from “Dramatic” to “Dancey.”

How to access your YouTube Music recap

As the feature is actively rolling out, you may open your YouTube Music app on your iPhone or Android and see a “2024 Recap is here” alert, above the new “Speed Dial” section. If you don’t see the alert, you can try looking for your recap yourself: Tap your profile, then choose Your Recap. From here, you can tap Get your Recap to, well, get your recap. You can also try heading directly to yt.be/music/recap to see if that will force YouTube Music to show you your recap.

Thinking about getting a new iPhone? You certainly have options: Apple’s latest generation of smartphones, the iPhone 16 series, offers four different models, each with their own plusses and minuses. If you’re not set on having the latest and greatest, you could consider last year’s iPhone 15, or even 2022’s iPhone 14. They’re all great.

However, there’s one iPhone here that stands out from the rest: the iPhone SE. Unlike every other iPhone Apple currently sells, this one has a Home button. In fact, the phone looks nearly identical to the iPhone 8 Apple released back in 2017, which itself borrows the design from 2014’s iPhone 6. That means it has a smaller, lower quality display than many might be used to these days, a single camera that isn’t as capable as newer iPhones, and poor battery life for its size. In short, the current SE is a bit of a black sheep, and is probably not the iPhone I’d recommend you buy in 2024—even if it only costs $429.

That price is the main selling point of the SE brand, especially when this particular model launched back in 2022. Apple takes the design from the last generation (in this case, the iPhone 8 style), packs a modern chip inside, and slashes the MSRP. In effect, you get an iPhone that can keep up with the performance of the flagship Apple phones, but at half the cost, if not more. Sure, the cameras aren’t as good, and the device looks a bit dated, but again, you get a lot of iPhone for the price.

To be frank, if you’re eyeing a mid-range device at a good price, I wouldn’t recommend buying an iPhone at all right now. If you can wait until spring, Apple might just have exactly what you’re looking for in a brand-new SE.

2025 could be the year of the SE

As reported by MacRumors, analysts have confirmed Apple is working on a fourth-generation iPhone SE. The only “confirmed” spec from this report is an Apple-made 5G modem. If true, it would be the first iPhone with a non-Qualcomm 5G modem, but it’s not clear whether that would mean any performance gains or other positive changes for customers. Analysts say the SE is set to launch at the end of Q1 2025, which might track with a rumored March announcement. Apple unveiled the SE 3 in March 2022, so it’d be consistent.

According to the rumors, we’ll see an iPhone SE 4 with some decent specs. MacRumors says the SE could have a 6.1-inch OLED display with Face ID, an upgraded A-series chip (though it’s not certain which chip Apple would use), USB-C, a 48 MP rear camera, 8GB of RAM, and this new 5G modem. That extra RAM would allow the SE 4 to run Apple Intelligence, which is obviously important to Apple, but perhaps not to anyone who has already turned it off.

If those features come to pass, this would be quite the upgrade over the current iPhone SE. The SE 3 is rocking a 4.7-inch 750p LCD, a much smaller and lower resolution display than what’s rumored. It uses the A15 Bionic chip, which is still powerful enough in 2024 (it’s the same chip used in the iPhone 14), has a Lightning port, a 12 MP rear camera, 4GB of RAM, and, of course, a Qualcomm 5G modem.

The SE always borrows from the previous generation of iPhone, and right now, that’s likely the iPhone 14. You probably won’t be able to tell an SE from the 14 at first glance, but based on these rumors, the new SE would have some edge over the iPhone 14: The 14 has 12 MP rear cameras, 6GB of RAM, a Lightning port, and doesn’t support Apple Intelligence, all of which the rumored SE improves upon. And while the 14’s A15 Bionic chip is plenty powerful for iOS 18, the SE 4 will undoubtedly come with a newer A-series chip. The A15 was the newest iPhone chip at the time when the SE 3 came out: If Apple continues the trend, the SE 4 could get the iPhone 16’s A18 chip. Even the 15 Pro’s A17 chip would be quite the upgrade.

Will Apple keep the price low?

Of course, the value of a rumored SE all hinges on the price. Ideally, Apple would keep the same $429 price point for the SE 4—which, itself, was a hike from the $399 starting price for past SE models. These rumors point to a excellent all-around iPhone that omits certain modern or “Pro” features like a Camera button, Action button, zoom lens, titanium build, 120Hz ProMotion display, Always-On display, Dynamic Island, and a brightness maximum of 2,000 nits. Hopefully, scrapping these features most users don’t want or need can motivate Apple to price the SE accordingly. As of this writing, rumors don’t suggest what Apple will do, one way or another.

At the end of the day, most people looking to buy an iPhone want something that can handle iMessage and FaceTime, run their favorite apps, and take great photos and videos. The SE traditionally handles these tasks without issue, so if the fourth-generation iPhone SE does indeed deliver on these rumors, and is priced appropriately, it might be the best iPhone for most of us.

Strava announced this week that going forward, it’s restricting API access for some third-party apps. Although they’re careful to say that the change will cause “no impact to most developers,” many runners and cyclists are discovering that the change is, in fact, likely to kill features, and possibly entire apps, they’ve been depending on.

Here’s the breakdown on what you can expect. 

What is Strava again? 

Strava is an app used by runners and cyclists to track their training data, compete with other runners or cyclists on leaderboards, and draw maps based on where they and other Strava users like to run and cycle. I’ve crowned it the best running app out there, but also reported on privacy concerns inherent in its mapping tools.

Aside from these baked-in features, Strava is also popularly used to glue other apps together. All of your fitness trackers (and their associated apps) can probably sync to Strava, and a lot of coaching and analysis apps can pull data from Strava in turn.

What is Strava changing with their new data policy? 

According to the announcement on Strava’s website, third-party apps that use Strava data may now only display a user’s own data, not anybody else’s. This means it’s fine for your Oura app to pull the time and distance of your latest run from your Oura Ring, but apps that aggregate multiple users’ data (for example, to build their own heatmaps or let coaches check on their athletes’ progress) will no longer be allowed. 

Strava says, “Specifically, we want to thoughtfully address situations where users connect to a third-party app and are unaware that their data is being surfaced not just for their own use and visibility, but also to other users (for example, in a public feed or heatmap).” 

The changes to the API terms also prohibit third-party developers from training AI on Strava data and seek to “protect Strava’s unique look and feel and functionality,” which seems to mean they are pulling certain features from their API so that third party apps can’t boast to have all the same features as the Strava app. 

Which apps will be affected? 

Tons of apps pull Strava data, and their developers have only just learned about the API changes, so I can’t give a complete list of affected apps just yet. Strava predicts that “less than 0.1% of applications” will be impacted, but if any of those are among the most popular fitness tracking apps, lots of users will be affected.

So here’s a little bit about what we do know: Coaching apps will be affected, since those apps have been pulling one user’s data (the athlete’s) to serve to another user (the coach). The developer of intervals.icu, one popular app for analysis and coaching, is urging athletes and coaches to change their app settings so their data goes directly to intervals.icu instead of going through Strava. 

That’s a workaround that isn’t possible for everybody, though. The reason Strava was so popular for coaching and analysis apps is that there are tons of gadgets and devices that record workout data, from smartwatches to bike power meters. It’s impractical for small app developers to write code for every device a user might use, but easy for them to pull data from Strava.

So if you use Garmin devices and your favorite app can connect to Garmin, great. But if not, you may not be able to use those apps anymore. (That intervals.icu developer, for example, is hard at work getting Zwift integration up and running.) 

The changes may also block any kind of analysis by third-party apps. According to DC Rainmaker’s reading of the new API terms, even simple calculations like “how many miles did I run this week?” could run afoul of the modified API agreement. 

What you can do about this

Right now, if you use any apps that pull data from Strava, go to their associated website (or check your email) and see whether their developers have said anything about how they’ll handle things, given the Strava changes. You may be able to link your data directly, as in the Garmin and Zwift examples above, but that will depend on your particular devices, what apps you use, and what data you expect to see there. This complexity is exactly what using Strava as a data bridge was supposed to solve! Sadly, those days are apparently over. 

I find it ironic that Strava is positioning this change as an important one for users’ privacy. While Strava’s privacy controls are complicated enough that people definitely could be sharing more information than they realize, that’s also true within Strava itself, and the company hasn’t done much to correct that issue. 

As I’ve previously written, Strava’s “de-identified” data is still specific enough to doxx some individuals based on their running habits. When I asked the company to comment on that issue, they answered, “Public heatmaps (whether Weekly or Night) use only aggregated de-identified data—no personal information. Strava has a number of privacy settings in place to empower users to design their experience on our platform, including the ability to opt out of contributing to the Global Heatmap. We are committed to evolving these experiences with privacy at the forefront.”

But when your running route itself is what identifies you, stripping identifiers from running (or cycling) data doesn’t always truly anonymize it. And since only Premium users have access to Strava’s most precise mapping tools, free users can’t necessarily see how their data is being used. It seems Strava only recognizes these privacy issues when they’re happening on third-party websites, and it won’t fix the same problem when it’s happening in-house. (If any of this is concerning, you may want to check your privacy settings.)

The PlayStation Portal, Sony’s latest crack at a gaming handheld, disappointed fans of the PSP and PS Vita when it hit store shelves last year, requiring owners to stream games from a PS5 console rather than being able to play games on its own. Now, it’s getting a little more standalone with a feature that everyone has been asking for—the ability to stream compatible games from the cloud. Sony announced that an upcoming system update will allow the PS Portal to stream games without the help of a console, and while it’s still not quite a dedicated portable gaming machine, the update does make it more of its own thing— potentially, you could even get it instead of a PS5, assuming you don’t mind cloud gaming and a somewhat smaller library. You’ll need a PlayStation Plus Premium subscription for this to work, and thanks to a beta, you’ll be able to try it later today.

Why the PS Portal’s cloud streaming feature is a big deal

The PS Portal is a $200 accessory that’s basically a DualSense controller with a screen. Up until now, it had a few limitations that made it a hard sell for many. It allowed you to remotely play games you already had installed on your PS5, but you couldn’t do much else, and you couldn’t use the Portal if you didn’t already own a PS5.

With the planned update, your PS Portal will finally be able to stream games off the cloud. Your gameplay will no longer depend on the strength of the internet connection where your PS5 is located, or the available free space on your PS5.

How to stream PS5 games from the cloud on the PS Portal

Before you can start cloud gaming on your PS Portal, you’ll need the following:

• A PlayStation Portal

• A PSN account with an active PS Plus Premium membership (costs $17.99/mo or $159.99/year)

• An internet connection with a minimum of 5Mbps upload and download speeds (Sony recommends 7Mbps for 720p streaming and 13Mbps for 1080p)

To get started, you’ll need to update your PS Portal’s system software. Sony says the update will start rolling out today (Europeans will have to wait until Wednesday), so if you don’t see it, wait a little bit and try again. To update your device’s system software, follow these steps:

• From the top right of your PS Portal’s home screen, swipe left to see the Quick Menu.

• Navigate to Settings > System > System Software

• Select Update System Software

With that, you can finally start playing your games by enabling the Cloud Streaming beta:

• Open the Quick Menu again and navigate to Settings.

• Select Cloud Streaming (Beta).

• Turn on the Cloud Streaming (Beta) toggle, which is off by default.

• Back on your PS Portal’s home screen, you should now see an option to access compatible games using Sony’s cloud streaming service.

This software update also introduces a lower minimum volume, Sony says. The cloud streaming beta will be available in regions where PS Plus Premium is available. The full list includes Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Cyprus, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and United States.

The PS Portal will not be able to stream PS4 or PS3 games, but PS5 games are supported, Sony says. The company adds that the PS Portal will not initially support certain features, including game trials, party voice chat, the Create button, 3D audio, and in-game transactions, but that these could be added at a later date.

Weeks after making its Copilot AI features free for Microsoft 365 (the successor to Office), subscribers in certain parts of Asia and Oceania (perhaps a precursor of things to come around the world), Microsoft announced at its Ignite conference today that it’s now vastly expanding what Copilot and AI can do in its office apps.

The juiciest of the new features center around new “AI Agents,” essentially pitched as set-it-and-forget-it virtual coworkers who can help collaborate on and automate repetitive tasks. These could be anything from drafting up summaries of Teams meetings, helping answer IT questions, or even planning and assigning projects. While this isn’t Microsoft’s first go at AI Agents, with previous releases being more aimed at sales and finance, it drastically increases what they can do within Microsoft 365.

If that all sounds a little enterprise focused, Microsoft’s AI can also now use Copilot Actions, which are similar to AI Agents but considered separate, to help on an individual level. For instance, Copilot will soon be able to translate entire PowerPoint presentations across 40 different languages. Alternatively, upcoming versions of Excel will begin suggesting AI-baked templates to help you get started on a presentation.

Not all of the agents Microsoft discussed today are available yet. One of the AI agents, a real-time Teams translator bot called Interpreter, is slated for next year. Microsoft will be adding available agents to Copilot Studio, currently an extra $200 charge on top of Microsoft 365, as they are ready, with a library for downloading agents currently in public preview. Developers are also able to create their own agents for 365, too, via an SDK that’s also now in public preview.

As for Copilot Actions, these are currently in private preview and will seemingly be available for everyone with a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription (although Microsoft is mostly talking about them in an enterprise context). They are currently an extra $30 on top of the base Microsoft 365 subscription, assuming you don’t live in one of the areas that just got access to Copilot in 365 for free.

It’s likely, given Microsoft’s experiments with making Copilot free in Office in other markets, that pricing is set to change in the future, with AI simply becoming an expected fact of life within our productivity software as it gets cheaper to make. “Copilot will empower every employee to do their best work in less time, and focus on more meaningful tasks,” Microsoft says. At the same time, it’s not hard to see how having a bot that can assign tasks or answer benefits questions might make it easier for a company to save some cents on salaries, or at least expect more out of the project managers and HR representatives they do keep around.